Study On The "numeral + Quantifier + Verb" Structure Of Modern Chinese

As a distinctive feature of the Sino-Tibetan language, quantifiers act as an important role in daily communication. It is generally known that quantitative phrases are often used in front of noun, as well as to modify the noun. In daily communication,however, we found that not only could quantifier be used before noun to modify noun,it also could be placed before verb to modify the verb. This thesis summed up this kind of phenomenon as the modern Chinese "numeral + quantifier + verb" structure,and studied it from various perspectives.The first chapter is an introduction, mainly presents the current status and significance of the research. Together with an introduction to theoretical methods,research contents and objectives, features and innovation points. As well as some related illustration of corpus, lexical category and classification of quantifiers.The second chapter puts forward a concrete study of "numeral + quantifier +verb" structure, including the component analysis and analysis in the light of the three levels. From the angle of components in "numeral + quantifier + verb" structure,common ordinal numeral does quite fit for the structure with numeral "one" takes the majority. Almost all types of quantifiers are covered in while verbs are mainly double syllable bounded verbs with semantic features denoting continuity, controllability or state.The sequence of syntactic function that this structure possesses is as follows:object> subject> predicate> attributive. Besides, this structure has such ideographic characteristics as ambiguity, subjectivity and referentiality. With an effect of enriching expressions, the structure is often used in spoken language, serving as a focal point or sub-topic of sentences.The third chapter focuses on comparison among these three structures, namely, "numeral + quantifier + verb", "numeral + quantifier + adjective" and "numeral +quantifier + noun". The findings suggest that in these three structures which together constitute the "numeral + quantifier + X" structure, the most extensively and flexibly used one is the "numeral + quantifier + noun" structure, followed by the "numeral +quantifier + adjective" structure, and finally the "numeral + quantifier + verb" structure. In the above-mentioned structure, numeral and quantitative phrases obtain functions of measurement to "X", but accurate only when "X" is noun and they takesome subjective obscure measurement when "X" is verb or adjective. From the perspective of syntactic function, the whole structure is nominal, but when "X" refers to a verb or adjective, it owns predicative syntactic function. From the pragmatic point of view, the structure is a regular expression when "X" is noun while it enjoys rhetoric features when "X" is verb or adjective.The fourth chapter is the conclusion part. Due to limited capacity and energy of the author, several remaining issues are presented at the end of this chapter in the hope that they can be completed in further studies.