Are Japanese counters an adoption from the Chinese language?


The Japanese language uses counters to count different kinds of items, animals
as well as people such as 一本 to count a long cylindric object or 二枚 two count
flat objects (in thi case two flat objects). However, I have been wondering if
this system is original to the Japanese language or if it was imported and
adopted from Chinese.




Japanese already had counters before Chinese contact, but only a few. After
Chinese they increased a lot.

Old Japanese (Nara period, before the Sinification of the language) had a
handful of true counters:

  * _-pasira_ (modern _hashira_ ), used to count Deities and Emperors.

> _pîmê kamï **yö-pasira** [四柱] nö sumê kamï_…  
>  the Princess Deities, the Four Imperial Deities… (2)

  * _-tari_ / _-ri_ , for counting people (still seen in 一人 _hitori_ , 二人 _futari_ , and in Old Japanese also _mitari_ etc.)

  * The generic _-tu_ (modern _-tsu_ ), used with most numerals (including 10000, _yörö-du_ , but not all numerals; e.g. 100 _momo_ , 10 _töwö_ (> _tō_ ) or 500 _ipo_ (> _io_ ) were used directly). Maybe this began as a number suffix; but the contrast between e.g. _ya-tu_ , never used for people, and _ya-tari_ , only for people, means that by Old Japanese time it was starting to work as a very general classifier for anything non-human (animals included).

  * _-ka_ for days, still visible in fossils like 二十日 _hatsuka_.

It had also had counter-style usage of words like:

  * _-tuka_ 束 (modern _tsuka_ ), for a handful of grain (used in religious liturgies only).

  * _-pê_ (modern _-e_ ), for layers, comparable to English -fold.

> _ama nö **yapê-kumô** [八重雲] wo…_  
>  the eightfold heavenly clouds…

  * _-maki_ 巻, for volumes;

  * etc.

This system seems somewhat incipient and limited; yet it provided a syntax for
true counters, of the same type seen in other counter-based languages (that
is, for expressions of the form "three X of Ys", where X and Y are not the
same word, and X is not a quantity measurement, as in 三人の人/三つのりんご). It's true
that the system expanded explosively after Chinese contact: both the number
and the usage of counters increased dramatically. But Chinese-style counters
probably only took so well to Japanese because Japanese already had the
infrastructure in place.

Sources:

  * Downing, _Numeral classifier systems: The case of Japanese_.
  * Bentley, _A Descriptive Grammar of Early Old Japanese Prose_.

