The Shuihu Dynamic Classifiers And The Development Of Dynamic Classifiers In Modern Chinese

Measure words are words that express a unit of things or actions, and they can be divided into the nominal measure words and the verbal measure words. It is one of the characteristics of the Chinese language and a difficult language point most Chinese-learners will meet. The measure words matured with the development of the Chinese language which can be divided into three periods: ancient Chinese, pre-modern Chinese, and modern Chinese. The middle period is important but lacks of study, so in this thesis I try to compare the usage of measure words in Water Margin with that in ancient Chinese and in modern Chinese in order to find some regulations of verbal measure words usage in this period and some rules in the development of verbal measure words.According to the verbal measure words system that Shao Jing-min created, verbal measure words in Water Margin were divided into four layers: general verbal measure words, self- verbal measure words, secondary verbal measure words and modal verbal measure words. And they were studied from the points of view of sense, grammar and historical development.The study came into some conclusions: 1. "遭" and "回" were most often used. "次 " and "遍" increased and started to take an important role in the system. 2. The trend had established of using verbal measure words as complements.Some rules can be found after the study: 1. The original meanings of words provide a good method to identify the difference between similar verbal measure words. 2. Verbal measure words develop in two directions: being general and being specific. 3. There are two causes for the decline of a certain verbal measure word: the over generalizing and the disobedience to the trend of the development of most verbal measure words.