Historiography of category of quantity in modern Japanese on the base of foreign studies

Category of quantity represents a unity of two components namely the number - meaning discrete quantity and the value - meaning continuous quantity. Number and value being two constituents of category of quantity can be expressed with various ways in language. Sphere connecting with expressions of quantity is varied in modern languages. It has relation to all main layers of language structure - lexical, word-building, morphological and syntactical. At that it must emphasize on heterogeneous used linguistic measures, they not form united grammatical system. One of the manifestations of grammatical category of quantity is category of number. But only personal pronouns has grammatical category of number in Japanese. This article describes the ways of expression and meanings of category of quantity in Japanese language in according with our understanding of category of quantity as a semantic category and simultaneously as a group of different methods expressing this category and also in according with structure of semantic field having the following structure as we consider. The nuclear is formed with quantitative numerals and pronouns having the category of number, the center is formed with words of different parts of speech namely noun, adjectives and adverbs and also combinations of words expressing quantity. Middle part is formed with words including morphemes with quantitative meaning and periphery is formed with phraseology and terminology. Category of quantity includes some functional and semantic categories namely singularity, duality, plurality and numeral. Plurality includes collective and representative meanings. Numeral includes concrete, approximate and indefinite meanings. We have analyzed monographs and scientific articles in English and Japanese concerning category of quantity in according with our understanding structure of semantic field of category of quantity. We have distinguished fundamental monographs in which meanings and ways of expressions of quantity are described in different parts of book. We have also analyzed works concerning study of the system of classifiers, history, morphology, semantics, anaphoric using, relations between indexes of plurality and classifiers. The problem of so named «floating classifiers» is connected with the using of classifiers. Many of scientific articles is concerned with analysis of lexica having quantitative meaning: demonstrative pronouns in the form of plural number, indefinite pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, quantitative nouns, restrictive particles and so on. We have distinguished works concerning word building in which methods of word building are analyzed. The methods are roots building (the words with coordinative relations between components or compound dwandwa, reduplicated nouns, compound verbs) and affix derivation (suffix derivation is more developed and more often used and prefix derivation is less developed in Japanese concerning with category of quantity). We have analyzed works concerning numerals and word including morphemes with quantitative meaning in stable expressions of Japanese (phraseology, proverbs and sayings).