 Some classifier @-@ noun pairings are arbitrary , or at least appear to modern speakers to have no semantic motivation . For instance , the classifier 部 bù may be used for movies and novels , but also for cars and telephones . Some of this arbitrariness may be due to what linguist James Tai refers to as " fossilization " , whereby a count @-@ classifier loses its meaning through historical changes but remains paired with some nouns . For example , the classifier 匹 pǐ used for horses is meaningless today , but in Classical Chinese may have referred to a " team of two horses " , a pair of horse skeletons , or the pairing between man and horse . Arbitrariness may also arise when a classifier is borrowed , along with its noun , from a dialect in which it has a clear meaning to one in which it does not . In both these cases , the use of the classifier is remembered more by association with certain " prototypical " nouns ( such as horse ) rather than by understanding of semantic categories , and thus arbitrariness has been used as an argument in favor of the prototype theory of classifiers . Gao and Malt propose that both the category and prototype theories are correct : in their conception , some classifiers constitute " well @-@ defined categories " , others make " prototype categories " , and still others are relatively arbitrary . 
