General classifiers refer to classifiers with a high level of general use.They can be used to modify entity nouns that belong to at least two different categories on the animacy hierarchy,which indicates a reduction in their classification function.There are similarities as well as distinctions in the form,distribution and total number of general classifiers in the Yi-Burman languages and dialects,which demonstrates different genetic distances among the languages as well as the fact that general classifiers are mostly subsequent development with multiple origins.