Category of quantity and ways of it expression in Chinese and Japanese languages

In this article we have analyzed the category of quantity in Chinese and Japanese languages and the ways of its expression which are common for the both languages. The category of quantity represents a unity of two components, namely the number-meaning discrete quantity-and the value-meaning continuous quantity. The number and the value, as two constituents of the category of quantity, can be expressed variously in a language. Their usage spans all main levels of language structure: lexical, word-building, morphological, and syntactical. Regardless of their heterogeneous usage, they do not form a uniform system within grammar. One of the manifestations of the grammatical category of quantity is the category of number. But the category of number is absent in Chinese as in Japanese. The category of number is obligatory only for pronouns in both languages; in this case the plural marking is used. The aim of this work is to clarify the common features of category of quantity and the ways of its expression in typologically different languages on the base of Chinese and Japanese languages. We come to the next conclusions on the base of made analysis. The absence of grammatical category of number means that expression of number is not obligatory in common but only in the case if number is relevant for given phrase (statement). There is no initial thought about singularity; nouns are so named mass nouns which are divided into discrete and non-discrete. Discrete nous express the meaning of quantity in two ways: with the help of classifiers (precise quantity) and with reduplicated forms (indefinite amount). Classifiers are obligatory in Chinese as in Japanese when using numerals but classifiers in Chinese and Japanese in different way reflects linguistic picture of the world, namely for the same thing it may use different classifiers. Reduplication and plural marking are optional. One of the ways of expression of quantity cannot co-occur with the others. For example, reduplicated noun or noun with numeral and classifier is not combined with plural marking. In both languages, we can express quantity with the help of nouns with quantitative meaning, reduplicated nouns and nouns having coordinative relations between parts of the word so-named dvandva.