Fractions in the Suàn Shù Shū (China, beginning of the 2nd century BCE)
西汉出土文献《算数书》分数表达
Rémi Anicotte

Abstract 摘要
The Suàn Shù Shū contains 301 instances of regular expressions for fractions. They can be “mono-dimensional” (formed with one integer name only) for unit fractions, “bidimensional” (with two integer names) for both unit and non-unit fractions, or lexicalized only for 1/3, 1/2 and 2/3. The present paper gives a complete description of the diversity of these forms. Bidimensional expressions are predicative phrases: the name n fēn of a unit fraction 1/n acts as subject and the numerator’s name as predicate; according to the syntactic context, the morpheme zhī can be used as an optional marker of this predicative relation.

西汉出土文献《算数书》中表达分数的短语有301例。本文全面描述该书中的那些短语。在文中,我把它们定义为“一维短语(即包括唯一一个整数名)”和“二维短语(即包括两个整数名)”,前者表达单位分数,后者表达单位和非单位分数,除此之外还有三个词汇化的短语专门用于表达1/3、1/2和2/3。在二维短语中,单位分数1/n作为短语的主语表达分母,而表达分子的那个数名作为短语的谓语,根据语境,“之”字可作为短语标志放在主谓语之间。

Keywords 关键词

Chinese historical syntax 中文语法历史 Fractions 分数 Numerical expressions 表数短语 Separable semantic units 离合词组 Measure words 量词 Suàn Shù Shū 《算数书》


Journal of Chinese Linguistics vol.45, no.1 (June 2017): 21-67
Copyright © 2017 Journal of Chinese Linguistices. All rights reserved.

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