[Kronopath]

A better comparison for numerical classifiers would be uncountable nouns.

In English, you don’t say “give me three waters”, you say “give me three glasses of water” or “three bottles of water”. You can think of the classifier words as being that, but for everything:

三杯水 three glasses of water

十头牛 ten heads of cattle

两支铅笔 two rods of pencil

一条路 a strip of road

六只猫 six animal-units of cat

五个人 five “gè” (generic units) of people