Research On The Meaning Extension And Decategorization Of "Kan"

“See” is a basic word of modern Chinese, meaning is very rich, particularly strongfunction. The some meanings of “See” are not existed in the beginning. Those areextended in the long process of evolution language. Shuo Wen Jie Zi interpret that “See”means sights to the distance. Therefore, the earliest meaning is sight. Then meaningexpanded to say common visual significance. Articles draw on previous research results.The article focuses on the extended process of “See” from the ordinary visualsignificance to the other sense. And the article researches the non-scope of thephenomenon of “See” in the process.According to a representative dictionary, the article includes the meanings of “See”,and speculated three routes which the semantics of extended for “See”, combined withthe actual corpus. The one route is that the original meaning of “See” extended to theperception of other organs. Then the perception of other organs. Ultimately,“See”extended as an aspect particle that represents meaning of attempt. The second route isthat the original meaning of “See” extended to the meaning of “watch, enjoy, visit,treatment, observation”. And then those meanings extended to the cognitive verb. In theend,“See” turn into the discourse markers. The third route is that “See” extended as thediscourse marker composition that expressed as attention, blaming, threatening andcaring.In the extended process of semantic meaning, there is usually weakening anddegradation for the part of speech. The Decategorization is common syntacticperformance in the process of emptiness. The syntactic features of “See” are change inthe extended process toward the three paths. When “See” used as the original meaning, ithas the typical characteristics of the obvious verb. When “See” become preposition,dynamic particle and discourse markers, it lose the several features of original areas, andobtain the several features of new areas.Finally, the article researches the extended mechanism for the meaning of “See”,and combined with the three extended route of “See”. The article summed up the extended mechanism for semantic meaning of “See”. It include: subjective, semanticgeneralization, re-analysis, metaphor and metonymy.