Beijing Dialect Commonly Used Quantifiers Using Social Differences

The quantifier, one of the characteristics of Mandarin Chinese and Chinese dialects, is one kind of polysemy and relatively active parts of speech. This paper investigates Beijing citizens' usage of29Beijing-dialect-only quantifiers (BDOQ) by sociolinguistic research methods to understand the Beijing citizens'awareness and the quantifier use in Beijing dialect, and predicts the language use, variation law and development trend in Beijing.The Findings of this research go as below:Firstly, the awareness and use of BDOQ are positively related, which are lower than those of Mandarin. The usage of Erhua (suffixation of a nonsyllabic "r") in BDOQ is also comparatively high, few BDOQs can be both used and unused with Erhua.Secondly, the use frequency of BDOQ is associated with the users' social status. Age affects the use frequency of BDOQ significantly, and then influential factors are the living environment and education. Otherwise, the ethnic and occupation have weak influence over the use frequency of BDOQs.Thirdly, the language users have positive attitudes toward BDOQs. Most Beijing citizens believe that Beijing dialect is very important to them and hope that the BDOQs remain and flourish in the future.