| 英文摘要 | 第1-6页 |
| 中文摘要 | 第6-7页 |
| Chapter Ⅰ Introduction | 第7-14页 |
| 1．1 The Significance of Linguistic Studies on MEE | 第7页 |
| 1．2 Purpose of the Study | 第7-8页 |
| 1．3 Nature of the Study | 第8页 |
| 1．4 Methods and Tools of the Study | 第8-9页 |
| 1．5 Corpora Used in the Thesis | 第9页 |
| 1．6 Definition of Articles | 第9-10页 |
| 1．7 Classification of Articles | 第10-13页 |
| 1．7．1 The indefinite Article | 第10-11页 |
| 1．7．2 The Definite Article | 第11-12页 |
| 1．7．3 The absence of the Article | 第12-13页 |
| 1．8 Layout of the Thesis | 第13-14页 |
| Chapter Ⅱ An Overview of Articles | 第14-28页 |
| 2．1 Development of articles | 第14-15页 |
| 2．2 The Linguists' Viewpoints about Articles | 第15-17页 |
| 2．3 Syntactical functions and parts of speech of articles | 第17-19页 |
| 2．4 Functions of article | 第19-20页 |
| 2．5 Systems of article usage | 第20-28页 |
| 2．5．1 Generic Reference | 第21页 |
| 2．5．2 Non-countable and plural countable nouns | 第21-22页 |
| 2．5．3 Specific reference: indefinite and definite | 第22-23页 |
| 2．5．4 Common nouns with zero article | 第23-24页 |
| 2．5．5 Article usage with common nouns in intensive relation | 第24页 |
| 2．5．6 Unique reference: Proper nouns | 第24-25页 |
| 2．5．7 The following list exemplifies the main classes of proper nouns | 第25页 |
| 2．5．8 Personal names | 第25-26页 |
| 2．5．9 Calendar items | 第26页 |
| 2．5．10 Geographical names | 第26页 |
| 2．5．11 Proper nouns with definite article | 第26-28页 |
| Chapter Ⅲ Functions of Articles | 第28-76页 |
| 3．1 Basic functions of articles | 第28-45页 |
| 3．1．1 Indefinite article | 第28-32页 |
| 3．1．2 Definite article | 第32-36页 |
| 3．1．3 Minor articles | 第36-45页 |
| 3．2 Secondary Functions of Articles | 第45-57页 |
| 3．2．1 Numeral implication of indefinite article | 第45-47页 |
| 3．2．2 The demonstrative function of definite article | 第47-49页 |
| 3．2．3 The function of unique reference of article | 第49-51页 |
| 3．2．4 The implication of distribution of articles | 第51-52页 |
| 3．2．5 The typical implication of the article | 第52-54页 |
| 3．2．6 The frequency of the three articles | 第54-55页 |
| 3．2．7 Emotional color of the article | 第55-56页 |
| 3．2．8 The choice of articles and possessive pronouns | 第56-57页 |
| 3．3 Articles Compared with Other Grammatical Units | 第57-76页 |
| 3．3．1 Apostrophes and articles | 第57-58页 |
| 3．3．2 Predicative and articles | 第58-60页 |
| 3．3．3 Appositives and articles | 第60-62页 |
| 3．3．4 Prepositional phrases and articles | 第62-66页 |
| 3．3．5 Positions of article | 第66-70页 |
| 3．3．6 Repetition of Articles | 第70-72页 |
| 3．3．7 Conflicts between articles | 第72-73页 |
| 3．3．8 The function of differentiation of articles in sentence analysis | 第73-76页 |
| Chapter Ⅳ Statistics and Analysis of Articles in MEE Compared with Other Corpora | 第76-84页 |
| 4．1 Respective Statistics and the General Analysis of Frequency of Articles in the Six Corpora | 第77-80页 |
| 4．2 Sums and Proportions of Articles in the Six Corpora （especially in MEE） | 第80-82页 |
| 4．3 Chi-Square Test and Comparison for the Distribution of Articles between MEE and the Other Five Corpora | 第82-84页 |
| Chapter Ⅴ Conclusion | 第84-86页 |
| Acknowledgements | 第86-87页 |
| References | 第87页 |
