The nonlinear behavior varying with the instantaneous response was analyzed through the joint time-frequency analysis method for a class of S. D. O . F nonlinear system.A masking operator on definite regions is defined and two theorems are presented. Based on these, the nonlinear system is modeled with a special time-varying linear one, called the generalized skeleton linear system ( GSLS ). The frequency skeleton curve and the damping skeleton curve are defined to describe the main feature of the non-linearity as well. More over, an identification method is proposed through the skeleton curves and the time frequency filtering technique.