Spatiality and Its Semantic Consequence of the Quantitative Expression '—CCN' in Mandarin Chinese

摘要

In Mandarin Chinese, reduplicative classifiers can be used to express plurality, which is closely related to the spatiality of nouns. This paper takes "— CCN" (short for the construction "One + Classifier + Classifier + Noun") as an example to analyze the spatial presentation of "—CCN" and discusses its semantic consequence. Different from other quantificational expressions such as "Number + Classifier + Noun", "—CCN" does not express a small quantity and "—CC" cannot fall in the scope of quantitative adverb 只 and 才. By analyzing the contexts in which it can or cannot appear, and comparing it with 很多/许多 ("many"), we conclude that the "many" meaning of "—CCN" is not its literal but inferential meaning.