Study On The Numeral And Classifier Measure Words Of Ancient Chinese

This thesis compares and studies six ancient books: "inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells", "jinwen", "shangshu", "guoyu", "lunyu", and "mengzi" at the foundation of thorough statistics and arrangement, and draws such conclusions of ancient numeral classifier compounds and their utilizing characteristic as following:1. there are 27 numerals in ancient Chinese: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, and so on; 161 classifier measure words can be classified into six sorts: (1) classifier measure word of capacity and weight unit. (2) classifier measure word of individual unit. (3) classifier measure word of collective unit. (4) classifier measure word of currency unit. (5) classifier measure word of time unit. (6) classifier measure word of establishment for army unit and local administration organization unit.2. There are timely difference of usage of conjunctive "have"(or "and") in counting in ancient Chinese: it's rather casual of using "and" or not when counting in early stage of west zhou dynasty; "and" is used in calculating in later-period of west zhou dynasty; and "and" is not used in calculating in period of zhanguo.3. There are differences of usage of numerals such as " " and " ", " " and " ", " "and " ", " " and " " in ancient Chinese.4. The basic law of origin, development and change of ancient Chinese is that: Chinese classifier measure word develops gradually from birth to growth, from few to quite a few. Classifier measure word of noun appears firstly and later does the classifier measure word of verb. West zhou dynasty, later period of chunqiu and period of zhanguo are three periods when classifier measure words develop rather quickly. Many classifier measure words emerge at above three periods, but the total amount is still small than that of later ages. Classifier measure word of verb does not appear in all the ancient books concerned in this thesis.5. There are two marked characteristics of usage of classifier measure word in ancient Chinese: (1) nor less one classifier measure word coordinates the same noun. (2) the same classifier measure word can express the amount of different objects.