现代汉语手部词语表“量”的动因探讨

Motivations for the HAND-Words as Classifiers in Mandarin Chinese

据对《现汉》第5版的初步统计,有23个手部词语,即指称手的词语和指称由手直接参与的动作行为的词语,已被认为是量词,另有"寸""揸""拳头""巴掌""指肚儿"等也在某种程度上具有表量功能。文章将其聚为一类旨在探讨其可表量的动因,并得出结论认为,这主要是受人类"以自我为中心"的认知观、认知的有界性、隐喻性、人类认知的原型性及人类认识和语言表达精确和模糊交互作用的结果。

The data in The Dictionary of Modern Chinese show that there are 23 HAND words, which are words referring to the hand, the parts of the hand or the activities involving the hand and are la-beled as classifiers （or measure words）. Apart from those 23 words, such words as： ＂寸＂ cun（ 1/3 decimeter） ＂, ＂揸 zha（ the distance between top of the thumb and the index finger or middle finger when the hand wide spreads）＂, ＂拳头： quantou（fist） ＂, ＂巴掌 bazhang（palm） ＂, and ＂指肚儿 zhi-duer（finger breadth）＂, though not labeled as classifiers in the dictionary, can also act as measure words. In this paper, we put all of them into the same group so as to explore the motivations for their functioning as measure words. We argue that the classifier function of these words is the consequence of the interaction between the requirement of both accuracy and fuzziness for human language and the mechanism of human cognition which is characterized by ego-centrism, boundedness in construal, metaphorical thinking, and prototypicality in categorization.