The Study Of Measure-words Of ShuiHuZhuan

The article is a study of grammar of special literature about modern Chinese. It thoroughly describes and analyzes measure-words of ShuiHuZhuan, which has one hundred chapters, and was written by Shi NaiAn and Luo Guanzhong. At the same time, we comprehensively use the methods of synchronic description and diachronic comparison, of quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis, of systematical study and individual analysis. We comprehensively compare the language facts of ancient Chinese, contemporary Chinese dialects and contemporary Chinese common speech.During the studies, combining with the dialectal facts of contemporary Chinese, we thoroughly describe and classify measure-words of ShuiHuZhuan in terms of theories of categorization, decategorization, family resemblances of parts of words. On the one hand, according to theories of three-level grammar, stereo study grammar, structuralist linguistics and system-function linguistics, we thoroughly describe and analyze from various facets morphology characteristics, syntactic function, semantic features and structures of measure-words of ShuiHuZhuan. On the other hand, we diachronically investigate the change and development of word-class members, the word-class characteristics, the syntactic functions and structures of measure-words of ShuiHuZhuan.According as the studies above, we can draw a conclusion that the measure-words system of ShuiHuZhuan is one which had not only succeeded mainly to the usages of measure-words of the former Chinese but also developed partially them, and the succession and development subsystems of what were imbalanced. As compared with contemporary Chinese common speech, the noun-measure-words system was more mature than the verb-measure-words system in the period of ShuiHuZhuan. Chinese measure-words system was not wholly mature.