The Study Of Chinese Numerals Under Decategorization Theory

As one of the self-governed part of speech in Chinese, the numerals are alwaysthe focus and hot subject of Chinese linguists. At present, Chinese numerals have beenanalyzed mainly in four aspects, namely, traditional grammar, culture, figure ofspeech and cognitive linguistics. However, the previous studies are concentrated onstatic description or conclusion of Chinese numerals’ functions, meanings or otheraspects. Philosophically, everything is progressive rather than static. So do theChinese Numerals. As a part of speech or a category, Chinese numerals must haveboth static and dynamic attributes. And its new-arising functions and meanings are themanifestation of Chinese numerals’ dynamic features. But there are few scholars whotry to give a uniform and reasonable explanation for those new-arising functions andmeanings. Therefore, this paper mainly studies the following three research questionsby virtue of the Decategorization Theory: Firstly, what are the specific forms ofChinese numerals’ decategorization? Secondly, what is the dynamic process thatChinese numerals derive new meanings and usages from its prototypical ones?Thirdly, why do these Chinese numerals have such decategorization phenomena?Based on the studies of previous scholars, this paper has the following majorfindings by collecting and analyzing plentiful examples: To begin with, the process ofChinese numeral’s decategorization is actually a process that numerals gradually loseits categorical features. It is mainly reflected in the following three aspects:syntactically, its distributing features have extended; semantically, the Chinesenumerals have undergone abstraction, generalization, losing or shift; in discourse, ithas extended the discourse functions, namely, it gets referential function.Moreover, based on the prototype, the Chinese numerals take advantage ofmetaphor and metonymy and extend their syntactic functions and meanings. Finally,the main reason for so many decategorized phenomena among Chinese numerals isthe language itself. On account of the generality and principle of economy in language,on the one hand, the Chinese numerals can be generalized as “much” and “less” insemantics; on the other hand, the principle of economy in language facilitates Chinesenumerals to acquire new syntactic functions and be able to be put in many places of asentence.The comprehensive and systematic study of decategorization of Chinesenumerals is illuminating both in teaching Chinese as a second language as well as in study of decategorized phenomena in other parts of speech in Mandarin Chinese.