  This paper proposes an analysis of classifiers into four major types: UNIT,
METRIC, GROUP and SPECIES, based on properties of both Japanese and English.
The analysis makes possible a uniform and straightforward treatment of noun
phrases headed by classifiers in Japanese-to-English machine translation, and
has been implemented in the MT system ALT-J/E. Although the analysis is based
on the characteristics of, and differences between, Japanese and English, it is
shown to be also applicable to the unrelated language Thai.
