108
K. M. A. BARNETT
Another common word is ZHEONQ53 which besides being a surname was the word for to stretch or spring a bow from the character, the basic meaning. But another ancient usage is still current to unfold or stretch out other things that can't be used until so unfolded, such as fishing nets and traps. But the commonest use is as a "classifier" for articles of furniture, indicating (I suppose) that such articles were thought of as being folded away when not in use, unfolded when required,
The number of such verbs, pressed into use for the ever more graphical refinement of congruence-classes, is great; furthermore a vast number of nouns, used for objects such as cups, plates, boxes and anything in which anything else can be carried or contained, are regularly used as measure-words without further ado, just as English speaks of a cup of tea, a plate of meat, a bowl of rice where other languages of the Indo-European family insist on a separate word like cupful, plateful, bowlful; but Chinese goes further. English has to expand into a trainload of passengers, a busful of people, where Chinese is content with JHATCHEAHX XAAK. In this direction the scope for expansion is endless.
Congruence-words are used to distinguish between the number-groups, which (as I said about personal pronouns) in Chinese are not really "singular" and "plural" but rather "particular" and "general".
In English, the basic form of most words indicates a single example of the class: this house, my house, one house, a house, the house. More than one example, or a class or sub-class, requires a separate form: houses (in general), new houses, these houses, some houses, two houses. English is not consistent in this regard. Some words are used in their singular form, written with a capital letter, for the whole class; Man, Woman, without the definite article. Or with a lower-case initial, with the definite article: the horse is a domestic animal. Other words have only one form for singular and plural, particular and general, e.g. sheep. Others again reserve the plural form for some special sense, e.g. water (but, to take the waters), fish one fish, three fish, but Ye Gods and little fishes. Quite a study.
53張
54 一乘客