Projet ANR-06-BLAN-0259 – QUANTIFICATION : Quantification et Pluralité-Nombres et Personnes en langues d'Asie
Programme : Programme blanc (BLANC) 2006
Année de financement : 2006
Coordinateur du projet : CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE - DELEGATION REGIONALE ILE-DE-FRANCE SECTEUR PARIS A (CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE - DELEGATION REGIONALE ILE-DE-FRANCE SECTEUR PARIS A)
Partenaires : Centre national de la recherche scientifique
Montant : 63000.0 euros
Date de début : 2006
Durée : 48 mois
Résumé : Quantification is one of the fundamental notions in natural languages. Human activities need quantification. It can be explicitly expressed as numbers, classifiers, articles, demonstratives or implicitly on nouns or noun phrases. The number category deserves much more attention from linguistic research (Greville G. Corbett, 2000). The present project aims to investigate the number category across Asian languages which may have impacts on linguistic typology, ethnology, psychology, and also mathematics. Previously this subject has not been sufficiently developed for Sino-Tibetan and Hmong-Mien (Miao, Yao), while Chinese classifiers have been widely studied by scholars (Liu Shiru, 1961, Greenberg, 1972, Hashimoto, 1977, Matisoff, 1982, A Peyraube & T Wiesbusch 1993, A Peyraube 1998, among others) since it is often assumed that number is the simplest problem in natural language. In fact, the number category is an interesting realm to explore. Number expressions interact with case, gender and person. This assumption implies that number has a close relationship with the nominal category or even could be treated as a nominal category. Actually, numbers can behave as verbs in Old Chinese. Number can be abstracted into quantification. Quantification can be expressed by nominal category as well as by verbal category (for instance in French, German, etc.) In languages such as contemporary Chinese which does not possess a morphology, the notion of number (quantification) can be conveyed by adverbs.  Basically, number presents an opposition of singular versus plural. As is well known, many languages have a richer system with a dual that is distinct from singular and plural. Plurality is linked to numbers but not necessarily expressed by numbers. Quantification cannot exist without the notion of plurality. Plurality varies from language to language. A systematic comparison between Sino-Tibetan and Hmong-Mien languages will be useful in understanding their historical relationship and contemporary behaviors. Plurality has drawn the attention of many scholars (Greenberg, 1988, Heide 1995, Lü Shuxiang 1984 among others). Our investigations will focus on Sino-Tibetan and Hmong-Mien languages and will be complementary with previous studies. Number and person interact in languages and constitute the core vocabulary of elementary words in all languages. This is because an item/entity expressed by an NP can be quantified by numbers and a human being can be indicated by personal pronouns. Number and person are closely related to each other and reflect the notions of quantification and plurality in the surface structure or in syntax, identified by native speakers. Since Swadesh (1951) established his hundred-word list, much research has been done (See Gudschinsky, 1956, Chen Baoya, 1996). Languages have loss and change, but numbers and persons always remain the core vocabulary of languages even though some lexical replacement may be found. Among different language families, "Sino-Tibetan contains the language with the largest number of speakers in the world today" (B. Comrie 1990, p15). The Chinese language with its different dialects is always of great interest. For the moment, few specialized studies on quantification and plurality are found. Why are such investigations feasible and meaningful today? The following conditions have been fulfilled allowing us to do such research:  (1)	Significant development on theoretical and empirical approaches.  For many decades, different and complementary approaches have been applied to linguistic research such as grammaticalization theory, surveys of typology, study of cognition, and language contact investigations. The results of this research along with functional approaches will be exploited and used in the present project.   (2)	Important collection of data.  More and more data about different languages are being found and described. This facilitates the collection of data and offers rich material for analy