Abstract: The class concept is an essential category in general logic. Based on its emergence and development, we can observe the change of Chinese language and characters, and find the interaction between national characteristics embodied in logical thinking and the pattern of language development. There are three stages as to the development of the class concept in ancient China, namely, “yi lei ming wei xiang”, “cha lei ming gu” and “ci yi lei xing”. Both stage of “yi lei ming wei xiang” and the “tong yuan zi sheng” in Chinese vocabulary system reflect the understanding and selection of external characteristics of substance. Similar external characteristics lead to identical or similar phonetic forms in language. In “cha lei ming gu” stage, classification begins to matter in the understanding of things under the relevance of external characteristics, which emerges in Chinese vocabulary system through the generalization of pictographic symbols and morphemes. In the “ci yi lei xing” stage, with the understanding of induction, deduction and analogy of classification, Chinese language and characters tend to generalize pictographic symbols in constructing new characters and to generalize morphemes in compounding new words.

Key words: class concept, the generalization of pictographic symbols, the generalization of morphemes of morphology