Study Of The Non-number Meaning Of Cardinal Numerals

Language and characters are the vectors of culture as well as the essences of it. Numeral character is a special language symbol, in addition to express the meaning of counting it also exist widespread in daily life and literature. Numeral characters were given rich cultural connotations from the moment they were created. With the developing of society, they are carrying rich cultural meanings in the field of the different ethnic, religious, history and social customs. Different nationalities use them differently because of the vary culture. However, previous researches on the numeral characters are all based on mathematics background, at the same time, they all ignored their cultural implications as a kind of character. From the perspective of linguistics and philology, based on the origin of figures, from the perspective of synchronic and diachronic, from the foothold of the cardinal which are used by each country, this paper studies the numerical culture application in Chinese, English, Japanese and French with the method of vertical relationship and transverse comparison; From Chinese to other ethnic languages, this paper gives an overall explanation for the cardinal numerical culture in time order. The research shows that the numerical cultures of different ethnic are both various and common, such as the same way of thinking in numerical implicit meaning, symbolic meaning, and primitive thinking. The performance of the same way of thinking in the different environments is the cause of the difference of the numerical culture in different regions.