 Historians agree that at some point in history the order of words in this construction shifted , putting the noun at the end rather than beginning , like in the present @-@ day construction Number – Classifier – Noun . According to historical linguist Alain Peyraube , the earliest occurrences of this construction ( albeit with mass @-@ classifiers , rather than count @-@ classifiers ) appear in the late portion of Old Chinese ( 500 BCE to 200 BCE ) . At this time , the Number – Mass @-@ classifier portion of the Noun – Number – Mass @-@ classifier construction was sometimes shifted in front of the noun . Peyraube speculates that this may have occurred because it was gradually reanalyzed as a modifier ( like an adjective ) for the head noun , as opposed to a simple repetition as it originally was . Since Chinese generally places modifiers before modified , as does English , the shift may have been prompted by this reanalysis . By the early part of the Common Era , the nouns appearing in " classifier position " were beginning to lose their meaning and become true classifiers . Estimates of when classifiers underwent the most development vary : Wang Li claims their period of major development was during the Han Dynasty ( 206 BCE – 220 CE ) , whereas Liu Shiru estimates that it was the Southern and Northern Dynasties period ( 420 – 589 CE ) , and Peyraube chooses the Tang Dynasty ( 618 – 907 CE ) . Regardless of when they developed , Wang Lianqing claims that they did not become grammatically mandatory until sometime around the 11th century . 
