《水滸傳》為近代重要白話小說，無論在文學性或語言性上皆深值探究。然由於作者不明，成書複雜，其成書年代向來充滿爭議，最主要的兩種看法，一為元末明初說；一為明嘉靖年間說。本文嘗試從語法角度探討《水滸傳》，一方面分析近代漢語的語法特性，另一方面亦根據其語法特性判別其著作年代。本文以為（1）從書中「則個」的使用看出其年代深受元曲、雜劇影響，而「則個」的入聲字來源也使得元末明初說比嘉靖年間更能反應時代音韻背景。（2）《水滸》僅有「好不」否定式，不使用明代中晚期興起的「好不」肯定式，更是一個支持它為元末明初著作的有力因素。（3）《水滸傳》幾乎很少使用否定副詞「沒」來對行為動作實現加以否定，而自《西遊記》開始「沒」的使用漸增，明代中晚期的《金瓶梅》更是大量使用「沒」來做否定副詞。（4）《水滸傳》大量使用「吃字句」被動形式，而「吃字句」被動形式在明末就已經逐漸凋零。因此本文結論支持《水滸傳》著作年代大約在元末明初的說法。

The writing age of ＂Water Margin＂ has always been quite controversial, traditionally it has been dated to the time between the late Yuan dynasty and the early stage of Ming Dynasty, while in the recent years some scholars has a new proposal which claims that its writing age is around the late middle period of Ming Dynasty. Since the syntactic characteristics are hard to forge, compared with the content facts, it would be a more reliable source for determining the writing time. Thus, the main aim of this study is to discuss this issue through the Investigation of the linguistic phenomena on ＂Water Margin＂. The text data used in this study is from the Ai Ru Sheng Chinese basic classics database. In addition to＂Water Margin＂, data from other classic novels like ＂Chin P'ing Mei＂, ＂Journey to the West＂, ＂Xi Yang Ji＂, ＂The Dream of the Red Chamber＂ etc… are also used for comparison. This research finds out some syntactic characteristics of ＂Water Margin＂ are: (1) The use of ＂ze ge＂. (2)The use of ＂hao bu＂ negative form instead of ＂hao bu＂ affirmative form. (3)Some occurrence of different types of negation structures. (4) It rarely uses ＂mei＂ negation to negate the past events. (5) Besides the regular ＂Bei＂ passive form, it also heavily uses a special ＂chi＂ passive form. (6) The occurrence of a particular passive structure, which includes both ＂Bei＂ passive form and ＂Chi＂ passive form, conveys special semantic meaning. Most of these linguistic phenomena are traits belong to late Yuan and early Ming Dynasty rather than the late middle period of Ming Dynasty. Thus, this article concludes that the writing time of ＂Water Margin＂ would most possibly be the time between the late Yuan dynasty and the early stage of Ming Dynasty. The traditional view still remains correct.