Characteristics Of Measure Word In Terms Of Grammar,semantic Meaning And Application: A Discussion With Relation To The Foreign Teaching Of Chinese Classifier

Measure word is a part of speech peculiar to Chinese-Tibetan language family represented by Chinese language. It is one of the parts of speech that shows the most distinctive national features of Chinese expressive system and on the other hand causes much trouble for foreign students studying Chinese. This essay probes into characteristics of Chinese measure word in six chapters. First it discusses how Chinese measure word has come into being and developed. Then it analyses the developing process of the naming of Chinese measure word from the angle of traditional grammar, and introduces the different opinions of Chinese grammarians on the classification of measure word and the commonly-used classification at present. It continues to divide semantically measure word into noun ones and verbal ones, and analyze the matching mechanisms of noun classifier and noun, of verbal classifier and verb, and of classifier and numeral. It also illustrates measure word's syntactic, morphological, and rhetorical functions. Finally, based on teaching experience and through a comparison between Chinese classifier and its English and Japanese counterparts, it analyses some problems facing the current foreign teaching of Chinese classifier. After that, it suggests that the teaching of measure word should be combined with context and conducted step by step in an accurate, proper and orderly way. I hope this essay will contribute to the foreign teaching of Chinese, especially Chinese measure word.