A Study Of Chinese Classifiers In The Perspective Of Language Typology

Classifiers are words which were established late in modern Chinese language. They were not established until 1950s. The established process reflects hardships it got rid of the western grammar system’s constraints. Classifiers are one of noun classification systems. However, this only limited to sort classifiers. There are many differences between sort classifiers and measure words, containers classifiers, set classifiers, temporary classifiers and quantifiers. So we decide to make a research on sort classifiers from the perspective of language typology as these differences above and the limited time.From the current situation, we see that more and more linguists both china and abroad pay more attention to the classifiers. But it isn’t mature from the perspective of typology. For one thing, the materials in classical Chinese aren’t valued by the linguists abroad, for another thing, the study about classifiers in china is only limited to Chinese and is usually short of a new perspective. So we decide to combine the two: investigate the classifiers’ process in classical Chinese from the perspective of language typology. And we will make a research on the law in this process. Specifically, we will try to answer these questions:what are differences between classifiers and measure words, containers classifiers, set classifiers, temporary classifiers and quantifiers? what typology features do the classifiers reflect before and after Han dynasty? What function do they make? Which subsystem has the most obvious change? How did it change between the Tang dynasty and modern Chinese language? What mechanisms do they have in these changes? And how does it achieve the process of lexicalization and grammaticalization? How does it realize some special function, such as definiteness function?In order to answer these questions, we decide to make three-steps:Firstly, we should make sure the basis of our research and the historical time our research based on. We find that the use of classifiers has some relation with our cognition. The classifiers in Chinese reflect our cognitive classification of the noun. In other words, classifiers have the function of classification of the concept that the noun represents. As the things that are classified have the similar salient characteristics and the language can have different codes for the same thing, we find the psychological reality for the classifiers’ classification. We also need choose a time to continue our research. That is to say we should choose a dynasty from Chinese history. As we know different scholars have different ideas about the origin of classifiers in academic circles. So we choose a conservative time-Han dynasty which links Xia, Shang, Zhou dynasty and Wei Jin dynasty. It can provide a platform for the research of most classifiers’origin and development. And we consider that the noun’s (verb or adjective) grammaticalization process lasts a long time, some special classifiers are not limited to Han dynasty.Secondly, we will discuss the change of shape classifiers in Chinese history, especially during Tang dynasty and modern Chinese. We will not only pay attention to every classifier but also concern its family’s changes and the mechanism during this change. In this process, we will also concern Chinese dialects, minority’s languages and other languages in the word. There will be a comparison between them.Thirdly, we’ll have a research on the law during the classifiers’development. From the perspective of typology, we will make a summary about these laws and study the cognition in this development. They are the focus and difficulties in this paper.The frame of this paper is as follows:Chapter one is an introduction of our research. It defines the objects we will discuss according to the language typology. It also makes a summary about research situation, explains the perspective and the main questions we want to answer.Chapter two mainly discusses classifiers’ systems in Han dynasty. We have a detailed description about the classifiers in Han dynasty. From this description, we get a semantic level figure. We also study the syntax and its functions in Han dynasty. The main functions include description function, individualization function, classification function and reference function.Chapter three discusses the main typology features in the development of classifiers. We take Han dynasty as a medium. This chapter involves a comparison between Han dynasty and pre-Qin, Han dynasty and Wei Jin south and north dynasty. In the comparison, we find that shape classifiers change obviously compared with other classifiers. So we’ll focus it in the next chapter.Chapter four is a continuation of chapter three. In this chapter, we mainly discuss the development in Tang and modern Chinese. It’s found that:Firstly, the function development of shape classifiers have gradual changes. It will last a long time from birth to mature or death. Among this process, all the shape classifiers will go through a process in which the objects it modified or limited will have a change, different dynasty, different objects.Secondly, the objects the shape classifiers modified or limited follow a unidirection from concrete to abstract when they spread, namely from discrete or concrete objects to abstract objects; the way that they follow includes two kinds: radiation spread and uniline spread. No matter how it spread, the core of sememe keep stable.Thirdly, the system of shape classifiers has a strong stability, which guarantees the continuity of the whole shape classifiers system.Chapter five will discuss the cognitive mechanism behind the classifiers’birth and development, which, in our opinion, follow the "Metonymy-birth and Metaphor-development" cognitive mechanism and "convention" mechanism.Chapte six will focus on a deeper grammatical performance in chinese dialects and minority languages. And we will study the special function of the classifiers. From the research above, we find that language is a complex of similarity and non-similarity. The history of classifiers, especially the history of shape classifiers’ development shows that there are similarities between classifiers and things that it modified or limited. But these similarities will gradually weaken untill disappear (so we need make it standard by convention), which lead to an inverse relationship between the classifiers’ similarities and their grammaticalization.The last chapter is the summary of this paper. We also point out the next work we need to do in the future.