A Study On The Use Of Quantity Categories In Chinese And Urdu

Quantifiers are a linguistic phenomenon particular in Sino-Tibetan languages.Linguists have done research on quantifiers for a long time.There are already many articles on the subject making comparisons between Chinese and other languages,however,apart from English,most of these studies have focused on other East Asian languages such as Japanese,Korean,Vietnamese and Thai.Currently,there is an academic gap in terms of research contrasting the use of quantifiers in Urdu and Chinese.Specialized study on the grammatical characteristics,similarities and differences and the interaction between these two languages has not yet been undertaken.Therefore,as a native speaker of Urdu who has learned Chinese in China for many years,I would like to bring forward my own viewpoint and make a tentative study on this subject whilst also making use of previous academic studies.I hope that the comparative analysis provided in this dissertation will serve as guidance for foreign students studying Chinese and likewise advance the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language in a more scientific and targeted way.Based on the theories of typological linguistics,cognitive linguistics and comparative linguistics,this dissertation makes comparative analysis between quantifiers of common use in both Chinese and Urdu(There are no quantifiers in Urdu,the so-called quantifiers in Urdu should be referred to as quantity categories.In this dissertation,the word quantifier is used in order to correspond to the usage of Chinese.) By way of detailed description and comparison of the quantifiers in common use in both languages,I intend to define the usage of quantifiers in Urdu,a language which is an amalgamation of many different languages.The first chapter is an introduction,giving a general outline of Urdu as a language and introducing previous studies on quantifiers as well as the fundamental framework of this dissertation and methods adopted.In chapter two the quantifiers used in Chinese and Urdu will be analyzed from the perspective of typological linguistics,cognitive linguistics and grammaticalization.In chapter three and chapter four detailed comparative analyses will be conducted on quantifiers that are commonly used in both languages.In chapter five the rhetoric features of quantifiers in both languages will be described and analyzed.Chapter six includes the summary and concludes the similarities and differences of the two languages in terms of quantifier usage whilst seeking to give reasonable explanations. To sum things up,this dissertation compares the quantifiers used in Urdu with those used in Chinese.As a newcomer in the research of quantifying systems in both Chinese and Urdu,I will try to depict and analyze the quantifying systems in as detailed and as clear a manner as possible.It sincerely hope that more and more scholars will engage in the study of this field in the future.