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In standard Mandarin, verbal classifiers in association with cardinals are used to count iteration or duration of an action. This article discusses the different types of verbal classifiers by questioning the traditional classification which is problematic according to our studies: the traditional specific verbal classifiers are not exclusively verbal, they can also be used for nouns and are therefore polyfunctional and polysemic; the classifiers used temporarily in verbal quantification can be of verbal or nominal origin, they are also polyfunctional. Verbal classifiers are complements of frequency or duration when they are postverbal and circumstantial frequency complements when they are preverbal. With these two positions, we can observe different semantic or pragmatic values: v + card + clv only expresses objective quantity or duration while card + clv + v highlights situational features, and expresses subjective quantity or short duration of an action with certain communicative aims.