The Study Of The Evolution Of Verbs In The Concept Of "change" In Ancient Chinese

Language is a system of net work which consists of many conceptual fields distributing in different levels. To study Chinese lexis in the form of conceptual fields has a great significance in the research of Chinese lexis. In recent years, the combination of theory of conceptual fields and ancient Chinese has caused great attention of scholars, which will help to establish the history of Chinese lexis system. Verb is an important part of Chinese which reflects many phenomena and regulations of Chinese lexical evolution.We choose a conceptual field-the meaning of changing-as the target and make scientific research on their diachronic variations. Meanwhile, we will take conceptual elements analysis to dissect every prototype member in the conceptual field, and distinguish their similarities and differences of their meanings.This dissertation divided the ancient times into four stages to describe the evolution.(1)Yin-shang Period, the meaning of changing conceptual field conclude 4 members, among which the verb "Yi" has a high frequency and it became the dominant word of this period.(2)From the West Zhou to Chunqiu Period, the members increased. The verb "Gai" has a great development in the usage and frequency which made it the dominate word of this period.(3)Zhanguo Period. The verb "bian" replaced "gai" and became the dominate word.(4)From Qin to West Han Period, the verb "bian" still owned a high frequency and occupy the dominate status.According to our description of diachronic evolution of the lexical system in different stages, we could summarizes the main characters of diachronic development. Firstly, Chinese lexis inherited a lot from the early stage. Secondly, the members of a conceptual field owned unbalanced development. Thirdly, disyllables appeared from Chunqiu Period. Last, the number of verb in the conceptual field-the meaning of changing--increased gradually. There are many reasons for diachronic development of lexical system in a conceptual field, including some elements inside a language and other elements outside a language such as the development of a society and subjectivity. The competition of languages and concept elaboration and the influences of semantic system make up the internal reasons.Generally speaking, the conceptual field--the meaning of changing-inherited a lot from the early age, the numbers increased gradually, and the verbs "yi" "gai" and "bian" were the dominate word in different stages. Elements inside a language and other elements outside a language caused the change of the conceptual field.