Abstract
The Huayinqimengyanjie is a Chinese language textbook published by the Joseon Dynasty national government agency, Si Yi Yuan, at the end of 19th century. The textbook was written in colloquial Chinese and is a very important source of reference for studying contemporary Chinese grammar, and vocabulary. However, until recently, academic studies of the Huayinqimengyanjie were skewed toward revealing modern Korean language evolution and reflecting contemporary Korean language characteristics; scarcely toward revealing modern Chinese language evolution and reflecting contemporary Chinese language characteristics. The limited studies for the latter touched upon the significance of the book to Chinese language, but lacking other aspects of its contribution. By researching previous studies and examining the original textbook, the author discovered the need for further study of “classifiers” in the Huayinqimengyanjie.
In this , the author categorized all classifiers according to their statistics in the textbook, described and analyzed selected some, compared their usage with those appeared in the several edition of Laoqida compared them with modern Chinese language classifiers and finally provided summary of the work. According to the analysis of the classifiers in the Huayinqimengyanjie and the comparison with those appeared in the new edition of Laoqida, it can be concluded that the contemporary classifiers formed a category of vocabulary of its own. Furthermore, according to the comparison of classifiers in the Huayinqimengyanjie and those in modern Chinese language, it can be concluded that there is no significant difference in overview and sub divisions, except the classifiers in the Huayinqimengyanjie are not as well evolved and their usage is not as stable.
This research does not compare the Huayinqimengyanjie to the contemporary Chinese literature, does see the classifiers comprehensively and does not reveal their deeper contemporary characteristics. This may lead to future research on the matter.
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