Research Prototype Theory And Quantifier And Noun Collocation

Since Chinese measure words were determined as a separate part of speech in Chinese in the middle of the twentieth century; linguists have launched deeper research about it. Measure words, as an important branch of Sino-Tibetan language, are also a mark to distinguish Chinese with other languages. Measure words, as the most basic grammatical units, are usually used to modify the number of people or things, and sometimes they can also modify some abstract concepts to vividly express their meanings.Chinese abounds in measure words, so they are very widely used in the Chinese language, be they in spoken and written Chinese. As a language learner, one has to master the law and the relationship between measure words and modified nouns before he can better understand deep cultural connotation of the measure words, then master the specific usage of them, and at last correctly use them in all kinds of occasions.This thesis is based on the theory of prototype theory. It emphasizes the members of the prototype as the center, aims at finding out the similar and marginal category between the members as led by the principle of family similarity and then probes into the development law of the language through the expansion and extension of this principle, which helps the learners grasp the rule of language learning and accelerate the speed of learning. The prototype can help us explore the original pattern and meaning of language development and then understand the changing and developing process of a certain language. Therefore, I hope to study the developing rule of the collocation of measure words according to the prototype theory, and based on it then figure out the prototype of it, which must be very convenient for Chinese learners to learn and master."Due to the ambiguity of the bound of prototype theory and the possible impacts on the study of the collocation of measure words as a result of their evolutionary history and human factors, the semantic domain of some boundary members get blurred. In view of my limited research ability, this part will not be discussed in this thesis.