Japanese counter word
'helping number word'), appears to have been literally calqued from the English term auxiliary numeral used by Basil Hall Chamberlain in A Handbook of Colloquial Japanese.
[2][3] In Japanese, as in Chinese and Korean, numerals cannot quantify nouns by themselves (except, in certain cases, for the numbers from one to ten; see below).
[4] For example, to express the idea "two dogs" in Japanese one could say either: 二nitwo匹hikismall-animal-MWのnoPOSS犬inudog二 匹 の 犬ni hiki no inutwo small-animal-MW POSS dog犬inudog二nitwo匹hikismall-animal-MW犬 二 匹inu ni hikidog two small-animal-MWbut just pasting 二 and 犬 together in either order is ungrammatical.
パンpanbread一斤ikkinone-loafパン 一斤pan ikkinbread one-loaf"one loaf of bread"パンpanbread一枚ichimaione-flat-MWパン 一枚pan ichimaibread one-flat-MW"one slice of bread"There are numerous counters, and depending on the kind or shape of nouns the number is describing, different counters are used.
In generative grammar, one proposed structure of Japanese nominal phrases includes three layers of functional projections: #P, CaseP, and QuantifierP.
[5] This structure relies on movement in order to satisfy agreement via extended projection principle features.
This grammatical feature can result in situations where one is unable to express the number of a particular object in a syntactically correct way because one does not know, or cannot remember, the appropriate counting word.
However, many speakers will prefer to use the traditionally correct counter, 頭 tō, when speaking of larger animals such as horses.
Some counters, notably 日 nichi and 人 nin, use the traditional numerals for some numbers as shown in the table below.
Other uses of traditional numbers are usually restricted to certain phrases, such as 一月 hitotsuki and 二月 futatsuki (one and two months respectively), 一言 hitokoto (a single word) and 一度 hitotabi (once).
While 回 kai (occurrences) and 銭 sen (0.01 yen, now rarely used) follow the euphonic changes listed above, homophones 階 kai (stories/floors of a building) and 千 sen (1000) are slightly different as shown below, although these differences are not followed by all speakers.
To express a period of time one may add 間 kan to the following words: 秒 byō, 分 fun, 時 ji, 日 nichi (and its irregular readings aside from tsuitachi), 週 shū, ヶ月 kagetsu and 年 nen.
In addition, kagetsukan is rarely heard due to essentially being superfluous, the ka already functioning to express the length.
One of the theories is that in Edo-era, eating four-legged animals was strictly forbidden by the government, and people were not allowed to consume rabbit meat.
