This paper employs a study to shuo in modern Chinese.Shuo has8senses representing3different fields and possesses some pragmatic functions,such as quotative,quotation,evidential,and subordinator,and serves as a discourse marker.The comparison reveals resemblances and differences between modern Chinese and other languages.The basic evolvement of shuo is to grammaticalize from reference of concreteness to of abstraction with various developments.The agents contributing to grammaticalization include high frequency,semantic bleaching,reanalysis,and ...