On the structure of classifiers in non-quantified contexts in Mandarin and Thai

In this paper, I propose that classifiers in non-quantified contexts such as those occurring with a demonstrative and an adjective are used as topic markers in Thai and Mandarin. The different word orders in the two languages result from the movement of the noun plus pied-piping to Spec of Topic Phrase in Thai, producing N-CL-Dem while the noun stays in situ in Mandarin, yielding Dem-CL-N order