Abstract
Academic discussions of the count/mass distinction in Chinese feature three general problems, upon which this essay critically reflects: 1) Most studies focus either on modern or on classical Chinese, thus representing parallel discussions that never intersect; 2) studies on count/mass grammar are often detached from reflections on count/mass semantics, which results in serious theoretical and terminological flaws; 3) approaches to Chinese often crucially depend on observations of English grammar and semantics, as, e.g., many/much vs. few/little patterns, the use of plural inflections, etc., which is seldom justified. This article investigates the relevant discourse on the count/mass issue in classical and modern Chinese and concludes with exploring two distinct areas related to countability: the semantics of singular in contexts in which objects are introduced as referential-indefinite and the semantics of number and countability as revealed in diangu.
關於中文中的可數名詞與物質名詞區分的學術研究,通常表現以下三個嚴重問題:1) 大多數的調查分别分析古代中文或者現代中文,而没有綜合性的、既討論古代也考慮現代中文的分析;2) 由於可數、物質名詞語法研究者經常不考慮到語義學方面的問題,這導致很多術語上及理論上的嚴重缺陷;3) 在描寫中文中的可數、物質名詞時,很多學者強調英語語法的重要性,如 many/much 跟 few/little 的對立、復數名詞詞尾、不定冠詞的使用等等。本文集中考慮有關古代中文及現代中文中的可數、物質名詞的論述。文章收尾的部分調查指稱不定指事物的單數形式的語義學及典故中的光桿名詞的可數性問題。
Notes
7 CitationYang Xiaomei 2011, p. 161: “The claim that count nouns in classical Chinese behave as mass nouns do leads to the denial of the Chinese babies’ ability of abstraction in learning language.”
16 Hansen concludes his essay with the following programmatic words: “[W]e may justifiably generalize that there is no individualism in Chinese philosophy” (CitationHansen 1985, p. 54).
25 Cf. the way he introduces grammatical features of English mass nouns to elucidate the mass noun semantics in Chinese: “The ordinary world of Western common sense is a collection of particulars or individual objects. Water, gold, grass, wood, furniture, and beef are English mass nouns. We measure them rather than count them […]. Grammatically they resist pluralization and direct numbering. We modify them using much and little instead of many and few” (CitationHansen 1992, p. 47). Cf. CitationHansen 1985, p. 41.
33 For more details concerning the semantics of bare nouns in Chinese, see Part IV of the present study.
35 CitationMa – van Brakel 2016, p. 147: “According to Robins, all classical Chinese nouns function most commonly as mass nouns”; p. 338: “If a noun (and its context) divides its reference, it is a count noun on that occasion.”
38 Note that in English, “people” is a special form of plural reserved for humans, cf. similar count noun plural forms in German (Leute), French (les gens), Russian (люди). In contrast, “la gente” (people) in Italian is a mass noun used only in the singular: Unlike the Chinese ren (man/people), it does not – and cannot – divide its reference.
41 Cf. CitationFraser 2007, p. 428: “[T]he mere fact that a noun functions as a mass noun has no consequences whatsoever for how we conceive of the things referred to by that noun.”
42 Generic nouns (e.g., min 民, “people”) are introduced as follows: “Unlike count nouns, generic nouns are never modified by shu 数 ‘a number of’. Like count nouns, but unlike mass nouns, generic nouns can be modified by qun 群 ‘the whole flock/crowd/lot of’, zhu 诸 ‘the various’, zhong 众 ‘all the many’ etc.” (CitationHarbsmeier 1991, p. 55).
50 Scholars discussing Chinese clearly overestimate the theoretical value of some patterns of English grammar, e.g., that of “many/much.” They often ignore that the corresponding patterns are missing not only in Chinese, but also in a number of Indo-European languages. Consider, e.g., “veel water” (much water) vs. “veel mensen” (many people), “weinig water” (little water) vs. “weinig mensen” (few people) in Dutch; “много воды“ (much water) vs. “много людей“ (many people) in Russian, “beaucoup d’eau” (much water) vs. “beaucoup de gens” (many people) in French, etc. That no formal difference is made here between count and mass nouns cannot be interpreted as in any way suggestive of the semantics in, e.g., Chinese. Yet they are important for studies of countability in Dutch, Russian, and French as evidence against the universal validity of the “many/much” pattern.
63 The following words by CitationWilliam Boltz 1985, p. 309 may serve as a typical example of discussing the mass noun hypothesis for modern Chinese as something self-evident: “The Mass Noun Hypothesis is in itself neither especially novel nor particularly controversial; it has long been recognized as valid for modern Chinese.” Among studies which rest on observations of the strange behavior of Chinese nouns are those provided by Niina Zhang and Susan Rothstein. Both follow the same argumentation: “[I]t is undeniable that no noun in Chinese may combine with a numeral directly in a numeral expression. […] Therefore, all nouns in the language have the feature [-Numerable]. This means that no noun in the language is a count noun” (CitationZhang 2013, p. 29). Cf. CitationRothstein 2010, p. 348: “Some languages, such as Chinese, have only nouns that behave as mass expressions,” and CitationRothstein 2017, p. 89: “In Mandarin Chinese, all nouns show the grammatical properties of mass nouns, and none can be directly counted. As illustrated in: ‘liang ge pingguo’ (‘two CL apple – two apples.’).”
87 CitationLin – Schaeffer 2018, p. 2: “Nouns are both mass and count: evidence from unclassified nouns in adult and child Mandarin Chinese.”
109 For the history of classifiers in Chinese, see, among others, CitationPeyraube 1991 and CitationGurevič 2008, esp. pp. 74–78. Among various interpretations of the classifiers’ development, the arguably most controversial ones are those by CitationHansen 1992 and CitationWillman 2018. While Hansen (p. 49) argues that the mass/stuff ontology of classical China may have had a direct impact on the standardization of classifiers as markers of masshood, Willman (pp. 171f.) discusses this development as due to the natural selection and progress in Chinese language and thought: “[C]hildren today growing up in linguistic environments in which Chinese is spoken are learning Chinese more rapidly, but not because they are smarter. It is because over the past several millennia, Chinese itself, through its classical variants and into its modern forms, has adapted itself more efficaciously to the neurobiological mechanisms children have been utilizing to learn it.”
116 CitationZhu Xi 2008, “Liang Hui wang zhangju shang” 梁惠王章句上 (“King Hui of Liang” I.7), pp. 207f.
117 Bold type added, V. V.
119 Pi chu is a not to be understood as a [Cl-N], but rather as a determining-determined construction, meaning “duckling” (lit.: a duck nestling).
123 鬢毛不覺白毿毿,一事無成百不堪 (The hair on my temples is suddenly all white, how can I bear the fact that I haven’t completed one single thing [in my life]?). CitationGu Xuexie 1979, p. 505. This verse gave origin to the idiom yi shi wu cheng 一事無成 (to achieve nothing).
124 見一葉落而知歲之將暮 (It is enough to see one falling leaf to understand that the year is approaching its end.). CitationHe Ning 1998, Chapter 16 “Shui shan xun” 說山訓 (A Mountain of Admonitions), p. 1158. These words gave origin to the expression yi ye zhi qiu 一葉知秋 (seeing one single leaf is enough to know about the autumn’s advent).
136 Cf. the German translation by CitationMögling 1984, p. 545, who interprets the object as a singular: “Daraufhin legte der Mann seinen Hakenpflug beiseite und hütete den Stumpf in der Hoffnung, noch einmal einen Hasen zu fangen.”
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Notes on contributors
Viatcheslav Vetrov
Viatcheslav Vetrov (Si Feng 思風) received his Ph.D. in Sinology at the University of Bonn in 2009 and has since worked as a researcher in the Sinology departments of the universities of Münster, Zürich, Kyoto, and – currently – Heidelberg. His interests include philosophy, anthropology, and linguistics. Among his most recent publications are “Politically correct: Von philosophischen Entgleisungen zu einer gereinigten Philosophie,” minima sinica 2017/2, pp. 1–26, “Xin zi xue: Hanxuezhuyi de tidai zhe?” 「新子學」——漢學主義的替代者?” Zhuzi xuekan 諸子學刊 2019, pp. 271–286, and “Coming to Terms with Evil,” in: Gotelind Müller-Saini and Nikolay Samoylov (eds.), Chinese Perceptions of Russia and the West (Heidelberg 2020), pp. 181–223.