Comparison On Vague Quantities Between Chinese And English

The study compared different kinds of vague quantities between Chinese and English on four aspects:structure of vague quantities, semantics, pragmatics and cultural perspective. According to the summary of the common place of the vague quantities in two language, the factors to the vagueness of quantities were found, the quality of language vagueness was discovered much further. By analyzing differences, it was shown that how culture, pragmatics and native language structures have effect on the using and understanding of vague quantities.Vague quantities were categorized into two big parts:vague quantifiers and vague quantities of gradabilities; Vague quantifiers were divided into three small parts: approximating quantifiers with numbers, plural quantifiers and approximating quantifiers without number; Vague quantities of gradabilities were divided into two small parts:vague quantity of degree adverb and vague quantity of adjective. The order of the vagueness of different kinds of quantities from low to high is as following:Approximating Quantifiers with Numbers