A Contrastive Study Of The Number Category Of Nouns In Chinese And Russian Languages

The category of number is one of the categories that result from people’s perception of the attributes of the objective world.The objectively existing quantity are given concrete form in language,forming the category of number in language.The category of number always reflects a quantitative relation between objects.Noun is one of the main parts of speech.Without nouns,it would be impossible to name things,objects,animals,and people.Nouns in many languages can express different grammatical categories,and the category of number is no exception.In different languages,this category is expressed in different ways.For example,in Russian,this category is expressed through morphological and syntactic means,such as the use of suffixes and endings,as well as phrases with nouns formed with other word classes.In Chinese,the number category of nouns is expressed by syntactic means,lexical means,and pragmatic means.This paper is devoted to the analysis and comparison of the number category of nouns in the Russian and Chinese languages.In addition to finding reasons for the differences in this category of nouns in both languages.For this purpose,we used literature,descriptive,comparative,and exemplary research methods.The main content of this paper consists of the following three parts:The first chapter reviews the number category of nouns in Chinese and Russian languages.This paper provides an overview of the number category of nouns in the Chinese and Russian languages.An overview of the category of nouns in the Chinese language is given.First,the category of number is defined.We then classify the nouns based on our defining criteria and the theory we have studied.Then we gave the classifications of the number category of a noun.The number categories of nouns in Russian are analyzed and classified,and the similarities and differences between the number categories of Chinese and Russian nouns are compared.The comparison reveals that the existence of the number category of nouns in Chinese is still controversial among linguists,so there is no universal classification.The number of nouns in Russian is a wellestablished category,so there is a general classification.In Russian,every noun has either a plural or a singular form.In Chinese,on the other hand,nouns themselves are neutral in terms of number category.Unlike Russian,in Chinese,almost all words can express plural and singular meanings.There are a number of nouns(e.g.proper nouns,collective nouns,pair nouns,etc.)that are similar and different in terms of number in the two languages.The second chapter analyzed the means of expressing the number category of nouns in both languages.Firstly,it described the syntactic,lexical,and pragmatic ways of expressing the category number of nouns in Chinese.Then,it described the morphological,syntactic,and other ways of expressing the number of nouns in Russian such as change of emphasis and change of word bases.We have also provided an overview and summary of the similarities and differences in the means of expression of the number category of nouns in the Russian and Chinese languages.In the third chapter,we analyzed the reasons for the differences in the expression of the Chinese and Russian noun quantity categories.It was found that: the main reasons for the differences are the differences between the two languages in terms of writing systems,types of languages,and certain differences in the way of thinking of people who speak these two languages.These differences explain the specificity of the number of categories and expressions of nouns in the two languages.Specifically,the influence of the differences in the writing types of the two languages,the language typology and the differences in the national thinking on the quantitative categories of nouns in Chinese and Russian is analyzed.The content of the work is summarized,and the main conclusions are presented in the concluding remarks of the research work.The novelty of this paper lies in the fact that for the first time a comparative study of the number category of nouns in Russian and Chinese language is conducted.The shortcomings of the study are,firstly,the lack of complete and reliable data on the Chinese and Russian number categories of nouns,which makes it difficult to conduct an adequate analysis.Then the second drawback is that it provides only a preliminary analysis of Russian-Chinese number categories of nouns and that semantic functions are not included due to limited space and research purposes.Further research on this issue is needed.Finally although the author has described and compared the RussianChinese number categories of nouns as extensively as possible,there are still some aspects that are not covered in this paper.The writer hopes that this comparative study will encourage future researchers to study this topic in greater depth.