A Case Study On The Semantic Items Of Commonly Used Words

With the appearance of a sufficient amount of monographic and synchronic research on Chinese vocabulary, the diachronic study has become more and more important. Among a constellation of diachronic studies, the commonly used words with great vitality will necessarily come to be the focus of pursuits on vocabulary. The generation mode and historical evolution of the commonly used words have great value for reference and great significance for investigations on Chinese vocabulary history, Chinese language history, and even the civilization history of Chinese nation.Take "shangliang ""shengfa"and other words for example. These words were and are still the common words in Chinese, its semantic items are rather complicated and its evolution cannot be simply regarded as a substitution of words. Therefore, the study on the evolution of semantic items becomes one of the major methods and contents of studies on commonly used words.Owing to the immense number of Chinese words and its complicated semantic system, the construction of both a complete Chinese vocabulary history and a Chinese language history still has a long way to go. The present study, focusing on the case study of Chinese words, is believed to be definitely necessary and significant for the construction work.