Is a bullet spherical or dangerous? Classifier-aligned object categorisation in speakers of Mandarin Chinese

“A bullet!” you exclaim. “一颗子弹” Mandarin Chinese speakers would say, inserting the obligatory classifier 颗 between the numeral and noun. More than simply syntactic placeholders, classifiers subtly encode perceptual noun features (e.g. 颗 conveys a small, round shape). Is it then plausible a bullet might seem more spherical to Mandarin vs non-Mandarin speakers? We investigated whether Mandarin speakers' judgment of linguistic and non-linguistic stimuli aligns with classifier categories when tested in their native (Exp.1, N= 400) and second language (Exp.2, N= 400). Participants initially viewed single stimuli (e.g. “pistachio”), then selected the most similar of two targets. One target shared classifier with the initial stimulus (e.g. “bullet”), while the other was more semantically related (e.g. “oil”). Mandarin speakers consistently selected shared-classifier targets more frequently than English controls, particularly when completing the task in English. Our results reveal classifier-aligned categorisation, implying that perception may mirror language.