A Diachronic Semantic Map Study On Directional Verb "Qi"

The directional verb is a closed while unique subcategory in Chinese,whose semantic and grammatical features are very distinctive.As a word class with various senses,Chinese directional verbs can express other concepts as well as the concept of direction or path with vivid semantic and grammatical features.In terms of semantics,the basic meaning of directional verb is to express the spatial movement or path of objects.At the same time,directional verb also has a lot of non-spatial meanings,thus it is a part of speech with a number of senses.In terms of grammar,directional verb can not only be used either as predicates or predicates center,but also applied as a complement after verbs or adjectives.As directional verb has various lexical and grammatical meanings,scholars at home and aboard have conducted many researches on the definition,grammaticalization,and polysemy on directional verb since the beginning of the 20th century.However,throughout these studies,there are few detailed corpus investigations on directional verbs.Furthermore,there has been no polysemy study towards directional verb from the diachronic perspective.The semantic map model is an effective analytical tool for characterizing the differences and commonalities between grammatical forms and grammatical meanings in cross-language.The research object of the semantic map,in terms of colloquialism,is the“homomorphism”in the grammar field.The grammatical form with this feature is generally called the"multifunctional grams".In general,semantic map is constructed based on a large amount of linguistic data.The operation method of semantic map guarantees objectivity of study to a certain extent.Thus,the semantic map model,as a powerful analytical tool,can provide new ideas and new perspectives for the study of Chinese historical grammar.On the basis of previous studies,this paper tries to apply the semantic map model to construct the conceptual space of Chinese directional verb "qi" and then to map out semantic maps of the directional verb "qi" in different historical periods.According to the semantic maps of different periods,this paper discusses the semantic evolution path and grammaticalization process of the directional verb "qi".First of all,this paper collects a presentative sample of 2842 occurrences of the directional verb"qi" extracted from ancient Chinese corpus of Center for Chinese Linguistics PKU(the corpus extracted in this paper starts in the Zhou Dynasty and ends in the Tang Dynasty thus spanning more than 2,000 years).Through a detailed analysis of the corpus,this paper summarizes each of the distinctive meanings from the directional verb "qi" as well as explores the semantic connection between different meanings.Besides,the origination and development of the "V+?" construction is also analyzed.Then,under the guidance of the semantic map model,this paper employs quantitative analysis method to analyze the collected corpus so as to speculate the semantic distribution of the directional verb "qi",and eventually to draw the conceptual space for the directional verb.Subsequently,this paper draws semantic maps of "qi" for each historical period and uses qualitative analysis methods to ascertain the influential mechanism contributing to semantic evolution of the directional verb "qi".In the end,this paper also deals with the semantic evolution path and grammatical ization process of the directional verb through a reanalysis of my corpus.Through the analysis of the directional verb "qi",several findings have come to light.1)In ancient Chinese,the conceptual space of the directional verb "qi" spreads out from the core meaning "stand up,get up" to the periphery.The directional verb "qi" developed different functions in different historical periods.2)The degree of grammaticalization of the directional verb "qi" in different historical periods determines the scope of its semantic map formed in the conceptual space.The higher the degree of grammaticalization is,the larger the semantic map will be.3)The semantic evolution of the directional verb"qi" in different historical periods is mainly achieved through metaphorization and metonymization.In other words,conceptual metaphor and metonymy are the main mechanisms for semantic evolution of the directional verb "qi".4)The grammaticalization pattern of the directional verb "qi" is:predicate>direction-meaning directional complement>result-meaning directional complement>state-meaning directional complement>preposition.