A Study On The Cross Domain Semantic Evolution Of Chinese Torso Verbs

As an important part of verbs,body verbs have always received attention from the academic community,but existing research has mainly focused on the perspective of nominalism,and there are relatively few achievements in discussing the evolution of word meanings.In recent years,scholars have paid attention to the semantic evolution of hand action verbs in terms of psychological and verbal meanings,while there has been little discussion on the cross domain phenomenon of verbs in other body parts.The thesis selects the torso verbs in the body verbs,that is,the verbs that change the body or body posture,and examines their development into psychological meaning,state meaning,physical appearance meaning,and related issues.It mainly discusses from the following three aspects.First,Determine the research object of the article.According to the selection criteria:firstly,words with the original meaning of body action;The second is the phenomenon of cross domain semantic evolution of torso verbs;The third is the extended meaning,which refers to social meaning,psychological meaning,physical meaning,verbal meaning,and state meaning;Fourthly,there are literature available to examine the evolution process.the thesis has determined zuo(坐)qi(起)xing(兴)li(立)dao(倒)pu(踣/仆)fen(偾)die(跌)fu(伏)wo(卧)zou(走)chao(超)zhan(展)thirteen cross social domain words;yi(依)yi(倚)ping(凭)kao(靠)qi(企)fu(伏)qu(屈)seven cross psychological domain words;Choose zhan(展)shen(伸)dou(抖)as the speaking domain words;jiang(僵)yan(偃)die(跌)qin(寝)in the physical appearance field;yi(倚)pu(踣/仆)jiang(僵)in the state field.Second,combining historical literature and dictionaries,explore the diachronic evolution process of the meaning of body verbs from social,psychological,verbal,physical,and state meanings,sort out the semantic evolution path,and analyze the reasons for their evolution.Research has found that the evolution characteristics of body verbs across social domains include time dimension extension,similar actions,directions,purposes,semantic features or core sememes,as well as the role of metonymic mechanisms;Words that cross psychological domains can be divided into two categories: one is to manipulate abstract objects through concrete actions,which metaphorically derive psychological meanings;the other is to use significant external actions to refer to internal psychological activities,which metaphorically derive psychological meanings;Words that cross linguistic domains are influenced by metaphorical mechanisms,while words that cross physical and state domains are mainly influenced by metonymic mechanisms.Third,summarizes the commonness and individuality of the cross-domain semantic evolution of torso verbs,and discusses the mechanism and motivation of the evolution.It is found that there are more words in the social domain of torso verbs,and the least in the speech domain and the state domain;The words with the same body action meaning have certain differences in the time period,the number and the degree of cross-domain evolution.The commonness of the cross-domain evolution of torso verbs and other body verbs lies in that both of them cross the epistemic modality domain and the speech domain.The cross-epistemic modality domain embodies the "body to heart",and the cross-speech domain has similarities because of the action meaning and the speech meaning;The difference is shown in that other body verbs mostly span epistemic modality and speech domains,and torso verbs mostly span social domains.The derived speech meanings only have positive and negative semantic tendencies,and lack the phenomenon of both positive and negative semantic tendencies.The mechanism behind the semantic cross-domain evolution of Chinese torso verbs is metaphor,metonymy and analogy,and the evolution of verbs is due to subjectivity and the principle of language economy.The conclusion summarizes the main contents of the full text and points out the deficiencies.