| Words which convey similar concept are connected to each other within the same language.In order to study the history of Chinese lexis, we have to know the relationship among one word and others.A language is a system of total net work, which consists of many conceptual fields distributing in different levels. So it is an important task to study Chinese lexis in the form of conceptual fields.Common words is a major part of Chinese lexis. And their development and variations have great importance to the whole lexical system of a language. So it is a main task to study conceptual fields composed of common words in our research of the history of Chinese lexis.The conceptual fields about displacement of objects have changed a lot in the history of Chinese language. Diachronic description on these words carefully is benefit for the research of common words and historical lexicology of Chinese language. To explain some phenomenon of their diachronic change has the great significance to the historical lexicology of Chinese language.We choose four conceptual fields about displacement of objects—in the meaning of moving, dragging, raising, and heading—as our target, and make scientific research on their diachronic variations. We also take conceptual elements analysis to dissect every prototype member in each conceptual fields, and distinguish their similarities and differences of their meanings.The dissertation is divided into three parts. The first part namely Chapter One introduces the development of theory of conceptual field, and the value, object materials, purpose, principle, method of this study. We also introduce the essential points and difficulties of it.The second part includes Chapter Two to Chapter Five, which investigate diachronic evolution of each conceptual field.First, we try to analyze the source of its related meaning of every prototype member in each conceptual field. Besides we also dissect the conceptual elements of them. Second, We divided the history of Chinese language into Old Chinese, Middle Chinese and Early Modern Chinese, and make a comparative diachronic study of each conceptual field. We try our best to investigate the materials of each period of archaic Chinese language carefully and comprehensively. And then we try to describe the diachronic evolution of prototype members of each conceptional field particularly.Finally, we have a brief introduction of non-prototype members in each conceptual field and describe the distribution of the members of four conceptual fields in modern Chinese dialects.The third part namely summarizes the main information of diachronic development of the lexical system in each conceptual field and the characters of their diachronic development based on our description of diachronic evolution of each lexical system in different conceptual fields from Chapter Two to Chapter Five. We also try to find the reason for their evolution and discuss several questions in this study. Moreover we raise our tentative idea about how to do research on the diachronic evolution of the whole Chinese lexical systems.Generally speaking, Chinese lexis inherit a lot from early stage, and prototype members in a conceptual field are more stable.Although the number of prototype members often increase in later stage, the number of all members in a conceptual field is getting less. On the one hand, some members in one conceptual field turn from synthetic into analyticity at the same time. On the other, they have both similar and different features in meaning and grammar.There are many reasons for diachronic development of a lexical system in a conceptual field, including some elements inside a language and other elements outside a language, such as subjectivity, the development of a society.lt is a enormous project to research in diachronic development of the whole Chinese lexical system. Through some scholars have raise their tentative plans for this, we can only do it step by step now.
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