This study argues that, besides quantifying and classifying nouns, numeral-classifiers foreground NPs to highlight their discourse salience. Two measures provide support for this claim: the analysis of morphosyntactic characteristics of classified NPs and a quantitative analysis of the discourse features of naturally occurring data. The former found that numeral-classifiers pattern more with prenominal modifiers while the latter showed that classified NPs pattern with foregrounded clauses or sentences that introduce foregrounded items into the discourse. A grounding account of numeral-classifiers is given supporting the principle of iconicity in terms of participant coding.