A Study On The Historical Evolution Of Verbs Relevant To Sleep

Words in common use are the core of lexical system. They play an important part in guaranteeing the continuation of language and creating new words. In a certain sense, the change of the common words is the deep, essential change of the whole lexical system. The history of Chinese lexemes is the science of studying the diachronic change of Chinese lexemes. It should make research into change of the important common words in the lexical system. Without research into the history of common words, one can not have an outlook of the lexis of the period and can not supply scientific evidence for the lexis history of different periods. Verbs are an important part of the common words. Many delicate phenomena and rules of the change of the lexis represent on verbs most and concretely. In the history of the development of Chinese, verbs replaces the most. Verbs signifying sleep has the closest relationship with the people's daily life. Ever since the appearance of the human being in the world, sleep has always been a part of their life. The replacement of the verbs signifying sleep profiled among the change of lexis. Every glosseme of the verb signifying sleep experienced a course of change. In light with the historical documents, the paper makes an investigation on the change of the verbs signifying sleep throughout the historical periods, and analyses the features and the causes of the change. The paper consists of four parts.The first part is a description of the change of the verbs signifying sleep. A thorough investigation and analysis is made on the words meaning sleep. We describes the diachronic evolution situation from four periods.The second is the historical changes and the features of these changes of semantic field of sleep. The exploration to the historical changes and the features of the changesare made from paradigmatic and syntagmatic sides. Each side is given a synchronic and diachronic explanation. The author thinks that Chinese lexis has a strong tendency of transmission. The course of the change is a gradual one. Meantime, the core words in the "sleep field" are also different in different historical periods. What's more, Chinese lexis tend to change into double-syllable ones. In the course of the words change in the history there is the phenomenon of loss of the lexical element. There are also some combination forms between words and phrases. The third part is an analysis on the reasons of the change. The main reasons come from the influence of Cognition, the psychological enhancement of "love the new and loathe the old".And in order to avoid ambiguity and falsification also plays a part.