A Contrastive Study Of The Usages Of Non-quantitative Numeralsin Chinese And Korean

In this paper, the author compares the numerals "Yi(one), Shi(ten), Bai(hundred),Qian(thousand) and Wan(ten thousand)" (including the syntactic unit combined withother morphemes or words by these words), which are not used as measure words inChinese, with the corresponding numerals "Ir/Hana(one), Sip(ten), Pek(hundred),Tsen(thousand) and Man(ten thousand)" (including the phraseologies combined withother morphemes or words by these words), which are not used as measure words inKorean, from the aspects of semantics and pragmatics. This paper emphasizes on theaspect of meaning difference of non-quantitative numerals in Chinese and Korean.As for the comparison of classification and application for numerals in Chineseand Korean, this paper compares the numerals system in Chinese and Korean fromthe aspects of enumeration and pragmatics. The numerals system in Korean is dividedinto inherent numerals and numerals of Chinese origin. The numerals enumeration,concepts and characteristics of ordinal expression of numerals of Chinese origin inKorean are different from those in the numerals system of Chinese, so the inherentnumerals system in Korean makes the numerals are more abundant in Korean than inChinese. The comparison in type and usage of non-quantitative numerals in Chineseand Korean from the aspects of semantics and pragmatics are generally divided intoapplication type of non-quantitative numerals and the application type of non-quantitative numerals in negative sentences. This paper also compares the non-quantitative usage of the numerals such as "ten, hundred, thousand and ten thousand"in Chinese and Korean from the aspects of semantics and pragmatics. When used asnon-quantitative numerals, these words usually do not appear in a single form butcombined with other morphomes or words. Besides, this paper makes a furthercomparison in non-quantitative applications between Chinese numeral " Yi" andKorean numeral "Ir, Hana" from the aspects of semantics and pragmatics, and makesa study of the application of these words as negative polarity words, restrictivefunction and modest meaning. Thereinto, the inherent numeral "Hana" in Korean canbe used solely as a non-quantitative numeral, but "Yi" and "Ir" should combine withother morphemes or words before being used as a non-quantitative numeralAccording to the above analysis, we have understood that the numerals inChinese and Korean have many various meaning;the numerals in these two kinds oflanguages have so much similarities and characteristics respectively.