Chinese Word For Horse Views

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Many languages close to Chinese exhibit similar classifier systems, leading to speculation about the origins of the Chinese system. Ancient classifier-like constructions, which used a repeated noun rather than a special classifier, are attested in Chinese as early as 1400 BCE, but true classifiers did not appear in these phrases until much later. Originally, classifiers and numbers came after the noun rather than before, and probably moved before the noun sometime after 500 BCE. The use of classifiers did not become a mandatory part of Chinese grammar until around 1100 CE. Some nouns became associated with specific classifiers earlier than others, the earliest probably being nouns that signified culturally valued items such as horses and poems. Many words that are classifiers today started out as full nouns, and their meanings were gradually bleached away until they could only be used as classifiers.

In Chinese, a numeral cannot quantify a noun by itself; instead, the language relies on classifiers, commonly referred to as measure words.[note 1] When a noun is preceded by a number, a demonstrative such as this or that, or a quantifier such as every, a classifier mandatorily appears directly before the noun.[1] Thus, while English speakers say one person or this person , Chinese speakers say respectively 一个人F (yí ge rén, one-CL person) or 这个人 (zhè ge rén, this-CL person). If a noun is preceded by both a demonstrative and a number, the demonstrative comes first.[2] (This is just as in English, e.g. these three cats .) If an adjective modifies the noun, it comes after the classifier and before the noun. The general structure of a classifier phrase is

It may not have always been the case that every noun required a count-classifier. In many historical varieties of Chinese, use of classifiers was not mandatory, and classifiers are rare in writings that have survived.[95] Some nouns acquired classifiers earlier than others; some of the first documented uses of classifiers were for inventorying items, both in mercantile business and in storytelling.[96] Thus, the first nouns to have count-classifiers paired with them may have been nouns that represent culturally valued items such as horses, scrolls, and intellectuals.[97] The special status of such items is still apparent today: many of the classifiers that can only be paired with one or two nouns, such as 匹s pǐ for horses[note 16] and 首 shǒu for songs or poems, are the classifiers for these same valued items. Such classifiers make up as much as one-third of the commonly used classifiers today.[17]

The first character is from the Bronze Vessel inscriptions, which are the earliest pictographic characters in the Chinese history. Bronze Vessel inscriptions were used around 1500-1100 B.C. Also, different pictographs of horses were found. Some Chinese scholars still believe that the horse character should develop from the symbols of before the Bronze Vessel inscriptions.