【正文】 （ 13） , Dai Qingxia et al. (310).The contact between Hengyang dialect and Putonghua are not exceptional. The most influential and representative scholar who devoted to studying the contact of Putonghua and Hengyang dialect is Li Yongming. He gives a quite systematical and prehensive description to Hengyang dialect in terms of phonology, lexicon and grammar and th。 Chinese dialects are plex and changeable. The plexity reflects on two aspects: the kinds of dialects are plenty and the distinction among them is huge. But anyway they still belong to Chinese dialects and not different languages. Super dialect—Putonghua and written language acts as a bridge connecting other dialects. Putonghua has bee a necessary language skill for people in present society. With the increasing economical globalization and modernization, the contact between other dialects and super dialect are more and more frequent. They mutually impact. Putonghua, . standard Chinese, is a mon language used in Chinese different ethnic groups for munication. Putonghua is China‘s official language and it is also one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Putonghua is directed at standardization. It is also a mon language prescribed by law throughout the country. It is used nation widely including ethnic autonomous regions and inhabiting region of minorities[3]. According to article 19 of ―The Constitution of the People‘s Republic of China‖, ―The state promotes the use of mandarin.‖ And it establishes the legal status of Putonghua and standard spoken and written Chinese language standard[4]. There is a mon perception in China that people who can only speak local dialects are uneducated and lower class. This is a mon phenomenon in dialectstandard situations in which the instrument of written munication is a standard promoted by the education system。 awareness of quantifiers and the quantifier use in Hengyang dialect, to research the situation of language use, language attitudes and the correlation of the two with social characteristics of the users (including age, gender, education level, occupation and occasion), and to predicate developing trend in Hengyang. The meaning of this study is summarized as the following aspects: (1) In theoretical sense, the research explores frequently used quantifiers in Hengyang dialect and uses it as an observation point to catch a glimpse of overall law of development of Hengyang dialect, pursues its variation patterns, and furthermore probes into the social and psychological factors behind. It provides a typical case for studies of language variation and change and the protection and maintenance of dialects. (2) In practical sense, the detailed research and description of features and using situation of frequently used quantifiers in Hengyang dialect can provide first—hand data for further studies and lexicography of Hengyang dialect. Meanwhile, it can arouse people‘s awareness of the importance and urgency of protection of local dialects. Last but not least, it can also offer evidence for related dialectal studies. Research Questions The research is an empirical study adopting the sociolinguistic methodology within the framework of language variation and change theory. It tends to exploit how the frequently used classifiers in Hengyang dialect are correlated with different social variables, like age, gender, education level, occupation and social settings plus the Introduction 3 possible factors that lead to the variation and change. The author attempts to work out the following questions: 1) What is the variation and change in terms of frequently used quantifiers? 2) How do different social factors like age, gender, education level, occupation and occasion affect the variation and change of frequently used quantifiers in Hengyang dialect? 3) What kind of language attitudes do local people have when they use different forms of frequently used classifiers? Organization of the Thesis The thesis is about the social distinction in usage of frequently used classifiers in Hengyang dialect and its causes under the guidance of language variation and change theory. There are five parts in this thesis: The first part introduces the whole study in general from research background information, objectives and significance of the research, research questions, research methods, and anization of the theses. Chapter one is about the previous literature related to this research. It firstly describes the previous researches on language contact, which covers the viewpoints of variationists on language contact, outes of language contact and language contact between Putonghua and Hengyang dialect. Then it depicts the previous researches on Chinese classifiers and classifiers in Hengyang dialect, which includes Chinese classifiers types of Chinese classifiers, variation in usage of Chinese classifiers and mon classifiers in Hengyang dialect. In the end, it is of brief ments on the preceding reviewed researches. Chapter two focuses on the theoretical foundation of this research. The research is built on the language variation and change theory which is a core theory of sociolinguistics. It serves as a pass to guide the explanation of the variation and change of the frequently used classifiers in Hengyang dialect. Chapter three mainly elaborates the research methods used in this survey. Firstly, it brings about hypotheses of the research. Secondly, it states how to select the target Introduction 4 informants. Thirdly, it introduces the data collection process and method applied. Finally, the data processing process is introduced in a specific way. Chapter four shows the research results and discussion from different aspects. The results are analyzed in three parts. The first part is the change of the use of classifiers in Hengyang d