Study On The Decategorization Of The Chinese Classifier Zhang

Classifier is a peculiar part of speech in Sino-Tibetan languages.It is widely used in people's daily life and academic works for its vividness and visualization.Generally speaking,a classifier combines with a numeral forming a quantitative structure to modify a noun,expressing the meaning of number.However,in some cases,a classifier is not as a regular classifier anymore.It has lost the typical features of classifier.Decategorization theory is put forward to study the irregular phenomena of language.It focus on the dynamic development of language.According to the theory,the non-classifier phenomenon is the result of decategorization.The previous studies on classifier are mainly static description rather than paying attention to its dynamic change.As for the decategorization theory,most scholars applied it into researching the noun decategorization and the verb decategorization.There are few studies about the analysis of classifier from the perspective of decategorization.Therefore,the present thesis combines decategorization theory with the classifier study,trying to explore the syntactic distribution features,function changes and semantic changes of classifier in the process of decategorization.Classifier zhang is a representative classifier since it constantly occurs in daily communication and academic works.And the data in the corpus of it is moderate to analyze,so it is the study object of this thesis.All the entries including zhang in the corpus is the data.Having segmented and tagged the data,the researcher picked out the non-classifier expressions of zhang to research its syntactic distribution,function change and semantic change based on the qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis.According to the decategorization theory and its related theories,the results showed that classifier zhang has different state in the process of decategorization.In some sentences,zhang has fully decategorized and has entered into a new category.While in some sentences,zhang is still in the intermediate stage of decategorization in which it has lost some typical features of a classifier but obtained some attributes of other categories.Moreover,in the syntactic distribution,the syntactic distribution of the prototype classifier zhang has extended.It can integrate into its adjacent noun morpheme forming a new noun.In the intermediate stage of decategorization,some can combine with the numeral one and the function word de to modify a verb or they can follow a preposition to modify a verb.In some situation,zhang can attach to an adjective morpheme forming a new adjective.Furthermore,in the function change,it can be explored from the syntactic function and the semantic function according to the study mode of previous researches.From the aspect of syntactic function,decategorized zhang can serve as an affix,an adverbial modifier or an object.And when it attached to the adjective morpheme,the syntactic function as an attribute has been weakened.From the aspect of semantic function,the prototype zhang neither has the referential function nor the assertive function but the decategorized zhang has expanded these two functions.At last,in the semantic change,there are three manifestations of decategorized zhang,meaning loss,meaning transferring and meaning abstraction and generalization.The detailed analysis from the aspect of syntactic distribution,function change and semantic function helps readers have a whole picture about the dynamic development of classifier.