Morphologic ways of expressing quantity in the modern Japanese language

In this article we have analyzed morphologic ways of expressing quantity in the modern Japanese language. The category of quantity has opposition of plurality and singularity. As the semantic field of plurality has some levels, semantic of plurality is heterogeneous. The structure of the semantic field of plurality in the Japanese language has a number of elements. The nuclear is formed with cardinal numerals, personal and demonstrative pronouns in the form of a plural number; the center is formed with the words with meaning “many, much” of different grammatical classes (nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs) and a combination of words with the meaning of plurality; words with morphemes “many-, poly-” in their structure; terminology and phraseology. The boundary of the semantic field of plurality intersects with the field of singularity. The aim of this article is to study morphological components with quantitative meaning in the word structure and reveal semantics that they express. Components that are used as prefixes can form words or be added to a word to show plurality. Components 多 ta, 少 shou, 重 juu, 複 fuku and 数 suu regardless of the place in the word structure express meaning of indefinite plurality. Components that are used as suffixes with the meaning “group” 団 -dan, 隊 -tai, 派 -ha, 層 -so:, 族 -zoku, 閥 -batsu, 会 -kai, 群 -gun, 組 -kumi «группа», 側 -gawa express the meaning of collective plurality. Dvandva formed from the all layers of Japanese lexica (wago, kango and gairaigo) express meaning of an indefinite discrete amount with preservation of significance of each component. Reduplicated nouns also express the meaning of an indefinite discrete amount with preservation of significance of each component but this meaning has a cumulative (group) connotation. Components that are only used as suffixes 全 zen-, 諸 sho-, 総 sou- express the meaning of collective plurality, 各 kaku- (distributive plurality). In future we plan to study syntactical using words with analyzed components.