Chinese Dialects Lexical Semantic Study

The thesis, with the semantic theories as its theoretical foundations, is to categorize and generalize the discrepancies between Chinese dialects of different kinds and those between mandarin Chinese and the Chinese dialects on the basis of the subtle comparison of the semantic phenomena concerning Chinese dialectal vocabulary. The present research aims to construct a comparing system for the dialectal lexical semantics, provide a theoretical perspective to describe the phenomena and uncover the hidden regularities governing dialect comparison.The thesis consists of five parts in addition to the preface .The main contents are as follows.Chapter one is concerning the comparison between the semantic values of the dialectal sememes. Differences of semantic values occur between the frequently-used sememes, such as tian, dan, zou, ting, wen, all of which belong to different semantic fields with different structures and sememe relations. It can be deduced that the semantic values of dialectal sememes are determined not only by themselves per se but also by the other related sememes in one and the same semantic field. Then, the difference types of denotation values in dialectal homonymy are summed up and explained, which prove that there are no direct relations between reference and linguistic signs. The discrepancies of the denotation values existing among the dialects demonstrate that the Chinese dialectal sememes, although originating from the same source, possess great similarities with minor alternation during their evolution. Differences of grammatical meaning, especially those related with word classes, also contribute a lot to the differences of dialectal sememes. Different meaning usually means different times or different development. Lastly, polysemy fields with the same basic sememes are discussed and explained under the framework of cognitive metaphors and Rakova's non-polysemy hypothesis. It is difficult to precisely predict the evolution track of dialectal polysemy; however, it is possible to explain why the development occurs, i.e., there exists a combination of random and certain; peculiarity and regularity. Furthermore, we are greatly encouraged by the results of the comparison...