古汉语“屈伸”概念场的词汇构成及历时演变研究（舒、卷、屈、詘、曲、伸、张、弯）

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Reacting to some recent debates on the issue, this article is conceived as a systematic evaluation of the potential contribution of reconstructed morphology of Old Chinese to our understanding and description of word classes in Warring States Chinese. It deals with the the evidence for Old Chinese morphology at our disposal, its essential properties, and its relationship to word classes and word-class flexibility in the language of the Warring States period. It comes to the conclusion that given both the present state of the field and the inherent nature of Old Chinese morphology itself, it is advisable not to overestimate the connection between the two systems and thus the importance of reconstructed morphology for the study of word classes at least in the Warring States era. The article suggests that it might be more appropriate to treat the mix of root words and derived words as a progressively petrified lexical foundation upon which the part-of-speech system of Warring States Chinese is built and on which its syntax operates.

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This study reexamines the etymology and usages of the Chinese graph ‘各’, and reconstructs the derivational relationships within its word family, focusing on both words belonging to the phonetic series of ‘各’ and etymologically related forms outside it. Within the phonetic series, the most solid axis of lexical derivation is *kraːg ‘各 (v.)’ → *g.raːgs ‘路’, which exemplifies a representative word-formation pattern in Old Chinese involving the alternation of voicing in the initial consonant and nominalization through the suffix -s. From *g.raːgs ‘路’ ‘road, path’ was further derived *g.raːg ‘絡’, denoting the channels through which vital energy (氣血) circulates within the human body. From the verbal root *kraːg ‘各 (v.)’ was also derived *kʰraːg ‘客’ ‘guest’, referring to a person who comes toward the speaker. This represents another type of derivation through aspiration alternation, which, though less common than voicing alternation, was a productive word-formation mechanism in Old Chinese. In addition, two other verbs were derived from the same root: *g.rag ‘略’ ‘to patrol, to move along’, and *g.raːg ‘落’ ‘to fall, to descend’. From *g.raːg ‘落’ was subsequently derived *g.raːgs ‘露’ ‘dew’, meaning ‘drops that fall from the sky’. In discussing the word family beyond the phonetic series, the paper also explores the possible derivation of *graːŋ ‘行 (xíng, to walk)’ ‘to go, to move along a path’ and *g.raʔ ‘旅’ ‘army on expedition’ from the root *kraːg ‘各 (v.)’. Furthermore, the study investigates the potential etymological relationship between *kraːg ‘各 (v.)’ and *rɯːg ‘來’ ‘to come’, examining their Old Chinese phonological correspondences. Although this connection remains to be fully established, it is highly probable that *kraːg ‘各 (v.)’ and *rɯːg ‘來’ are cognates, and the precise phonological developments involved are left for future research.

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The translation of philosophical works is a topic that merits our attention both in respect of philosophical understanding and linguistic structure, although it is the former rather than the latter that prevails in discussions in Chinese academia. By drawing upon that branch of modern linguistics known as the lexical field theory, this paper attempts to analyze a host of related problems, including the following: readability as a basic requirement of translation, difficulties in translation caused by the syntactic-typological distance of source and target languages, consistency of translated terms in general, consistency of semantically related terms in translation, consistency of translated terms regarding the syntagmatic axis and the paradigmatic axis, the use of monosyllabic, disyllabic, or polysyllabic Chinese terms in translation, translation of long or rare terms into Chinese, the middle way between ‘under-translation’ and ‘over-translation,’ identification of lexical fields for the systematic treatment of translated terms, and finally the in-depth understanding of original texts in their source languages as a prerequisite of any serious attempt of translation.

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The article is an initial complex study of the lexical field norm in Ancient Chinese with focus on the classical (Warring States) period. It attempts to bring together as many terms with the meaning ‘norm, standard, rule’ as possible, classify them according to their origin and conceptual background and describe them from various perspectives, including the ety-mological and metaphorical one. A brief comparative glimpse on the state of affairs in Ancient Greek and Latin is offered at the end of the text, and further directions of research are suggested.

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This study aims to examine the concept of semantic fields in the thought of Ahmad Mukhtar Umar and its relevance to Arabic language learning. The research employs a qualitative approach with the library study method, which is based on theoretical analysis of relevant scholarly literature. The data consist of primary and secondary sources. The primary data are obtained from Ahmad Mukhtar Umar’s works discussing ‘ilm al-dalālah (semantics), while the secondary data come from books, journal articles, and websites related to semantics and Arabic language learning. The findings show that Ahmad Mukhtar Umar’s linguistic thought is built upon the integration of classical Arabic linguistic traditions and modern linguistic theories, emphasizing language as a dynamic and contextual system of meaning. The concept of the semantic field is understood as a network of semantic relations among vocabulary items, encompassing synonymy, hyponymy, part–whole relations, antonymy, and incompatibility. The study concludes that applying the concept of semantic fields in Arabic language learning enables thematic and conceptual vocabulary development, thereby supporting more meaningful, communicative, and contextual learning.

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Abstract Mandarin differs essentially in colexification from many other languages due to its preference for controlled visual activity verb kan “look” over uncontrolled visual experience verb jian “see.” This triggers inquiries as to whether Mandarin is historically inclined to controlled visual activity. Based on a dynamic behavioral profile analysis, this study traces the semantic change in kan and jian from Archaic Chinese to Contemporary Chinese, with a particular focus on the evidential discourse markers derived from them. Through descriptive statistics and multiple correspondence analysis (MCA), the data reveal that: (1) kan and jian have distinct behavioral profiles, and they primarily convey controlled visual activity and uncontrolled visual experience respectively in history; (2) kan has undergone semantic expansions with more varied usages, while jian has been decreasingly used; and (3) except in the Archaic period, the evidential discourse markers derived from kan exhibit greater semantic and structural diversities compared with those derived from jian. The comparison and contrast between the two basic vision verbs help to reveal Mandarin’s commonalities in semantic change while highlighting its peculiarity in emphasizing controlled visual activity over time.

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The paper focuses on the lexicalization of falling events in Amguema Chukchi, which is a variety of the eastern dialect of Chukchi, spoken by inland reindeer herders in the tundra around the village of Amguema in the Chukotka Peninsula. The data on which the research is based were collected in course of authors’ own fi eldwork. The research is done in the framework developed by the Moscow Lexical Typology Group: the authors investigate diff erent frames pertaining to the conceptual field of falling, checking whether they can or cannot be lexicalized by several verbs that the language possesses. The system has two main verbs, peqetatək, which denotes falling from a higher level to a lower one, and eretək, which is used to describe toppling down of vertically oriented elongated objects. For example, only the former will be used in a sentence describing a cup falling from a table onto the ground, and only the latter describes falling down of a tree during a windstorm or of a person who has slipped up. This semantic opposition is cross-linguistically recurrent, furthermore, it is the major opposition which structures the field of falling from the typological point of view. The system is further furnished by several verbs which lexicalize narrow classes of situations: atsatək ‘topple down (of non-elongated objects that have a prototypical orientation in space and lose this orientation)’, kuwɬitkuk ‘roll down’, pəɬqetək ‘fall into water, drown’ и ŋərepetək ‘fall into a substance’. Another interesting feature of the Chukchi system is the absence of metaphors with falling as source cognitive domain. This fact is cross-linguistically peculiar, as in general falling events are particularly prone to give rise to metaphors. Finally, the verbs ŋətək ‘break free from a leash, separate oneself from something’ и pirqək ‘bend down to earth’ develop secondary meanings that pertain to the semantic domain of falling, ‘fall out (e.g. of teeth or hair)’ and ‘sink in (e. g. of a tent)’ correspondingly

The paper is devoted to the basic principles of verbal colexification defined at the cross-linguistic level. We understand colexification as a non-random association of two or more meanings within one and the same lexical item. We argue that these associations, reproducing in different languages, should follow certain principles and form clear patterns. Drawing on our extensive experience of lexical typological research and our new field data on the semantics of simple and complex verbs in Shughni, we show that verbal meanings colexify due to their partial denotative intersection, hence this process can be described in terms of the phase structure of the situation. As an illustration, we consider the structure of the semantic field of disappearance in Shughni, where the concept ‘disappear’ turns out to be adjacent to motion from the speaker / observer (tidow ‘to go, to flow’, sitow ‘to go’, zibidow ‘to jump’, etc.), processes of destruction (θidow ‘to burn’, virix̌tow ‘to break’, etc.), topological changes (gāx̌tow ‘to turn’, xangi / xāmb δêdow ‘disappear from sight’, lit. ‘a hollow / bend’ + a light verb ‘to fall’, etc.), and frustrating emotions (ayf sitow ‘go to waste’, lit. ‘alas’ + a light verb ‘to go’). We show what meanings constitute the domain of disappearance and how they relate denotatively to the adjacent concepts of directed motion, destruction, topological changes, and frustrating emotions.

I argue for the reconstruction within Proto-Indo-European morpho-syntax of the phenomenon of “Locative Alternation”, i.e. the alternation for the same verb between a locatum-as-object construction (e.g., English spray paint onto the wall) and a location-as-object construction (e.g., English spray the wall with paint). Drawing inspiration from Iwata’s (2008) lexical-constructional approach to the phenomenon, I discuss its possible relevance to the reconstruction of the morpho-syntax and semantics of PIE verbal formations belonging to three PIE polysemous roots, namely *leu̯g- ‘bend, make bent, twisted, not straight; enclose’, *u̯el- ‘roll round, coil; enclose, enfold’, and *pleh1- ‘be abundant, much; be full, filled’.

Lexical Semantic Change Detection (LSCD) aims to detect language change from a di-achronic corpus over time. We can see that over the last two decades there has been a surge in research dealing with the LSC Detection. Recently, a series of methods especially contextualized word embeddings have been widely established to address this task. While several studies have investigated LSCD using large language models (LLMs), an evaluation of prompt engineering techniques, such as few-shot learning with different in-context examples for improving the LSCD performance is required. In this study, we examine the few-shot learning ability of GPT-4 to detect semantic changes in the Chinese language change evaluation dataset ChiWUG. We show that our LLM-based solu-tion improves the GCD evaluation metric on the ChiWUG benchmark compared to the previously top-performing pre-trained system. The result suggests that using GPT-4 with three-shot learning with hand-picked demonstrations achieves the best performance among our different prompts.

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Despite the fact that semantic change studies have intensively argued that intensional readings develop from the literal reading as a whole, diachronic prototype semantics proposes that intensional readings arise from the extensional subsets of the literal reading. This study empirically explored this proposal by carrying out a corpus-based diachronic study. It is proved from the semantic change of Chinese pò that: (1) There exists a corresponding relationship between extensional usages and intensional readings of a lexical item. (2) Extension and intension both converge and diverge on semantic change. Their convergence lies in the fact that extensional usages give rise to intensional readings. Extensional usages, though nuanced, motivate the emergence and development of intensional readings. Their divergence is reflected in the independent development of extensional usages and intensional readings. The subsistence or dying out of extensional usages does not constrain the appearance or disappearance of intensional readings. (3) Semantic change involves three stages, namely the extensional stage, the intensional stage, and the grammaticalization stage. These three stages constitute an interweaving continuum in the process of semantic change.

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Recent studies suggested that language models are efficient tools for measuring lexical semantic change. In our paper, we present the compilation of the first graph-based evaluation dataset for lexical semantic change in the context of the Chinese language, specifically covering the periods of pre- and post- Reform and Opening Up. Exploiting the existing framework DURel, we collect over 61,000 human semantic relatedness judgments for 40 targets. The inferred word usage graphs and semantic change scores provide a basis for visualization and evaluation of semantic change.

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This paper introduces the concept of Semantic Difference Keywords (SDKs). We define SDKs as keywords selected because of a comparatively high semantic difference between their use in two or more corpora. They are extracted by applying methods developed to identify diachronic Lexical Semantic Change. Like statistical keywords, most commonly used in quantitative discourse studies, SDKs capture the distinctiveness of a target corpus. However, they do not do so because they are used significantly more often or more consistently, but because they are used significantly differently. The case study presented in this paper shows that SDKs are successful in identifying concepts which are contested, i.e., sites of “semantic struggles” (CITATION). SDKs are therefore a useful contribution to (computational) discourse studies and text-based Digital Humanities more broadly.

Abstract Identifying lexical semantic differences across closely related language varieties remains methodologically challenging, as traditional approaches often rely on intuition, manual inspection, or researcher-constructed word lists with limited coverage. This study proposes a computational framework that uses word embedding models to automatically detect lexical semantic variation in large comparable corpora. Using Hong Kong written Chinese as the primary case and Mainland China written Chinese as a point of comparison, we show that the approach not only recovers well-documented differences reported in previous research, but also identifies less salient cases that are easily missed by manual methods. The results demonstrate that the proposed framework provides broader empirical coverage, reduces reliance on subjective discovery, and scales effectively to large datasets. More broadly, the study highlights the value of embedding-based methods for investigating lexical semantic variation across language varieties.

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Gyalrongic languages, a subgroup of the Burmo-Qiangic branch of the Sino-Tibetan family, are spoken in the Western Sichuan Province of China. They are polysynthetic languages, and present rich verbal morphology. Although they are not closely related to Chinese, they are of particular interest for Sino-Tibetan/Trans-Himalayan comparative linguistics with regards to their conservative phonology and morphology. Based on previous studies on Old Chinese phonology, combining with recent fieldwork data, this paper aims to show how Gyalrong languages could shed light on Old Chinese morphology and thus contribute to the Old Chinese reconstruction. It also proposes a list of possible cognates between Old Chinese, Gyalrong languages, indicating also Tibetan cognates when available.

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Compounding and derivation are frequent in many language families. As a consequence, words in different languages are often only partially cognate, sharing some but not all morphemes. While partial cognates do not constitute a problem for the phonological reconstruction of individual morphemes, they are problematic for phylogenetic reconstruction based on comparative word lists. We review current practices of preparing cognate-coded word lists and develop new approaches that make the process of cognate annotation more transparent. Comparing four methods by which partial cognate judgments can be converted to cognate judgments for whole words on a newly annotated data set of 19 Chinese dialect varieties, we find that the choice of conversion method has an impact on the inferred tree topologies that cannot be ignored. We conclude that scholars should take great care with cognate judgments in languages in which compounding and derivation are frequent and recommend always assigning cognates transparently.

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