Abstract:
There are two different views concerning the character, coverage and function of quantifiers in Chinese. We insist that quantifiers play the main part of expressing notions of quantity. The grammaticalization of Chinese quantifiers went through a considerably long course which started in the period of the Oracle script. Down to the Zhou, the West and the East Han Dynasties classic Chinese had already developed a complete system of quantifiers of measurement. Later large quantities of quantifiers of number occurred one after another, including other kinds of quantifiers. The grammaticalization of Chinese quantifiers had basically been established in the Wei and the Jin Dynasty, when one third quantifiers in modern Chinese appeared.
