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Diachronic Prototype Semantics of Chinese Characters
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
Promotors: Prof. dr. Dirk Geeraerts Dr. Weiwei Zhang
Danqing Huang
RU Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Linguistics
Overview
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
1. About the topic
2. Chinese and Chinese Characters– Four levels– Semantic functions Categorization of lexical meanings Distinction of meaning clusters
3. Research questions Semasiological pespective Onomasiological perspective
4. Materials
Overview
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
1. About the topic
2. Chinese and Chinese Characters– Four levels– Semantic functions Categorization of lexical meanings Distinction of meaning clusters
3. Research questions Semasiological pespective Onomasiological perspective
4. Materials
About the Topic
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
l Chinese radicals – Ideographic parts of Chinese characters – Semantic elements– Indicate the broad semantic category to which a word
belongs
l Research purpose– To investigate diachronic semantic change of radicals in
Chinese characters
Overview
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
1. About the topic
2. Chinese and Chinese Characters– Four levels– Semantic functions Categorization of lexical meanings Distinction of meaning clusters
3. Research questions Semasiological pespective Onomasiological perspective
4. Materials
Chinese and Chinese Characters
Word
Character
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
Chinese and Chinese Characters
Radical
Stroke
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
Overview
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
1. About the topic
2. Chinese and Chinese Characters– Four levels– Semantic functions Categorization of lexical meanings Distinction of meaning clusters
3. Research questions Semasiological pespective Onomasiological perspective
4. Materials
Chinese and Chinese Characters
1. Radicals, as categorization of lexical meanings
– 540 semantic radicals in ShuoWenJieZi (《说文解字》"Explaining Graphs and Analyzing Characters")
– 540 concepts, i.e. FIRE, WATER, GRASS, etc.– Characters which share the same radical are semantically
linked one way or another to the meaning of that radical.
– To some extent, it seems that meanings of characters are categorized by radicals.
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
Chinese and Chinese Characters
lFor example: Categorization in GRASS radical “艹”
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
Overview
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
1. About the topic
2. Chinese and Chinese Characters– Four levels– Semantic functions Categorization of lexical meanings Distinction of meaning clusters– Research questions Semasiological pespective Onomasiological perspective
3. Materials
Chinese and Chinese Characters
2. Radicals, as distinction of meaning clusters
– A word is not always the minimum free form in Chinese.– In Classic Chinese, a word is one character.– Polysemy and homonymy are wide-spread.– Semantic and graphemic reorganization (i.e. paronym
words)
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
Chinese and Chinese Characters
l Paronym words (or paronym characters)
– It describes the phenomenon that radicals play a role in distinguishing meaning clusters which occur either through homonymic merger or polysemous extension in diachronic changes.
– Sharing same or similar phonetic clues and relating to each other in meanings.
– Semantic and graphemic (radicals) reorganization.
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
Chinese and Chinese Characters
l Two types of paronym words
– Homonymic merger (phonetic borrowing)– Polysemous extension
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
Chinese and Chinese Characters
l Homonymic merger or phonetic borrowing
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
Chinese and Chinese Charactersl Homonymic merger (phonetic borrowing)
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
Stage 2: Radicalization
Stage 1: Homonymic merger
Chinese and Chinese Charactersl Homonymic merger (phonetic borrowing): subtype A 舍 [she]
“house”
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
Chinese and Chinese Charactersl Homonymic merger (phonetic borrowing): subtype A 舍 [she]
“house”
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
Stage 1: Homonymic merger
Stage 2-A: Radicalization on the new meaning.
Chinese and Chinese Charactersl Homonymic merger (phonetic borrowing): subtype B 然 [ran]
“burn”
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
Chinese and Chinese Charactersl Homonymic merger (phonetic borrowing): subtype B 然 [ran]
“burn”
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
Stage 1: Homonymic merger
Stage 2-B: Radicalization on the original meaning.
Chinese and Chinese Charactersl Polysemous extension
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
Stage 1: Semantic extension
Stage 2: Polysemy
Stage 3: Radicalization
Chinese and Chinese Charactersl Polysemous extension: subtype A 坐 [zuo] “sit”
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
Stage 1: Semantic extension
Stage 2: Polysemy
Chinese and Chinese Charactersl Polysemy by semantic extension: subtype A 坐 [zuo] “sit”
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
Stage 2: Polysemy
Stage 3-A: Radicalization on the new meaning.
Chinese and Chinese Charactersl Polysemous extension: subtype B 禽 [qin] “capture”
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
Stage 1: Semantic extension
Stage 2: Polysemy
Chinese and Chinese Charactersl Polysemous extension: subtype B 禽 [qin] “capture”
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
Stage 2: Polysemy
Stage 3-B: Radicalization on the original meaning.
Overview
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
1. About the topic
2. Chinese and Chinese Characters– Four levels– Semantic functions Categorization of lexical meanings Distinction of meaning clusters
3. Research questions Semasiological pespective Onomasiological perspective
4. Materials
Research Questions
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
1. Semasiological pespective
l “艹”GRASS radical– From GRASS to PLANT: semantic extension– Internal semantic change and variation
– As a way of categorization, are there any diachronic structures of the meanings of the radicals?
– If so, what are the possible diachronic changes that radicals go through?
Research Questions
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
2. Onomasiological perspective
l Semantic and graphemic (radicals) reorganization in paronyms.
– Which factors decide which semantic form takes the new radical? That is, which factors decide the direction of radicalization?
– Are there any cases in which the radicalization does not happen, where the word just stays polysemous? If so, are there any criteria or regularities which decide when or whether the radical is added or not ?
Overview
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
1. About the topic
2. Chinese and Chinese Characters– Four levels– Semantic functions Categorization of lexical meanings Distinction of meaning clusters
3. Research questions Semasiological pespective Onomasiological perspective
4. Materials
Materials
• Data: Corpus of Historical Chinese (CHC)
– Size:700 million Chinese Characters– Time periods: the 11th Century B.C. - the early 20th century– Genres: fiction, poems, academic prose, religious scriptures,
to historical works, etc.
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
for further information:danqing.huang@kuleuven.be
Phd Day, Leuven 28.09.2018
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