A Contrastive Study Of The Categorization Of Chinese Animal Collective Classifier Qun And Its English Counterparts

The classifier is an independent word class in the grammatical system of Chinese. Generally, Chinese classifiers have the following features:They are large in number, diverse in variety, exclusive in purpose, rich in emotion and flexible in usage. Conversely, English is not considered as a classifier language. Though there do exist certain classifier structures, they are much less in number, variety and flexibility of usage as against to their Chinese counterparts. Noticeably, such a tendency is reversed especially when it comes to the animal collective classifiers. It is problematical to find that the Chinese language is poor in the number of animal collective classifiers, with the classifier qun having the capacity of referring to the concept of the collective of animals. In fact, the category of qun could be extended to all animals, yet it features low accuracy and keeps a neutrality in modality at the same time. This is obviously contrary to the general characteristics of Chinese classifiers. In contrast, the English counterparts of qun are quite different, as they seem richer in number, usage and modality. There often appear specific classifiers in accordance with the categories and features of animals. That being so, the differences of animal classifiers between the Chinese language and the English language are obvious indeed and do merit careful study, yet seldom are there any scholars paid attention to this field before.Categorization and prototype theory is an important branch of contemporary cognitive linguistics, which proposes to construct categories on the basis of prototype. With prototype as the cognitive referent, category is a result of continuous outward extension. Categorization, in fact, constitutes the basis of human beings’cognition of the objective world. Similarly, the categorization of classifiers reflects the characteristics of categorization. It represents human beings’cognition the world as well. Accordingly, the categorization of animal collective classifiers should also presents the result of the cognition and classification of animal collectives. Meanwhile, the classifier is always an important field of research in terms of cognitive categorization theory. It is justifiable, thus, to investigate the animal collective classifiers from the perspective of categorization. In addition, since prototype theory has been widely used in linguistic analysis, its principles and methodologies may prove to be helpful to improve the study of Chinese and English classifiers.In view of this, this present thesis, on the basis of cognitive prototype theory and methodology, analyzes and contrasts the categorization of animal collective classifiers between Chinese and English, so as to investigate the motivations and rules existing behind the categorization and cognition of animal collective classifiers in Chinese as well as in English.According to the above line of thought, this present thesis is composed of five chapters, of which Chapter One introduces the research background, significance and organization of this thesis; and Chapter Two reviews the relevant literature. It examines the study of Chinese and English classifiers as well as the study of collective classifiers in Chinese; and Chapter Three, following on from the above, focuses on the theoretical basis of this present thesis. In retrospect to the theory, research methodology, application and research perspective of categorization and prototype theory, this chapter justifies the feasibility of studying the Chinese and English animal collective classifiers from the perspective of prototype theory; and Chapter Four goes on to analyze in detail the categorization of the Chinese animal collective classifier qun and that of its English counterparts. This chapter commences with the analysis of how the category of the Chinese classifier qun gradually extends from the prototypical members to the marginal ones, which followed by the categorization of qun’s English counterparts. In this way, this present thesis manages to initiate a comparison of the animal collective classifiers between the Chinese language and the English one; and Chapter Five concludes with a summary of the gains and deficiencies of this present thesis and proposes suggestions for future studies in this field.