The Semantic Versatility of Mandarin Morphemes 'Shang' and 'Xia': a Cognitive Linguistic Analysis

• Main Authors: Su, Chen-Hui, 蘇楨惠
• Other Authors: David Wible
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 1997
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/48221627355611007172

碩士 === 靜宜大學 === 外國語文學系 === 85 === 　　'Shang' and 'xia' in Mandarin are a pair of morphemes that cover a wide range of uses. They are used to describe not only vertical spatial orientation but slso abstract relations such as temporal or possessive relations. Besides semantic versatility, 'shang' and 'xia' are also characterized by syntactic complexity: 'shang' canbe used as a localizer (a post-position), a verb, a deetrminative, and an adjective; 'xia', as a localizer (a post-position), a verb, a determinative, an adjective and a measure. The nature of the semantic relationship among the varions senses of 'shang' and amog the various senses of 'xia' is the interest of this thesis. 　　'Shang' and 'xia' are hypothesized to be two polysemous words. Evidence is provided in support of the hypothesis by presenting the core-periphery prototype structures of the two polysemous words. With the help of fesearch in non-objectivist approaches to semantics, the problem of polysem is tackled. Among non-objectivist approaches, the prototype approach and image schemas are the skeleton of the analysis. 　　The results show that systematic relationship among the various senses of 'shang' and 'xia' each constitute a radial category. In the radial category of both 'shang ' and 'xia', the prototypical schema is verticality, which motivates other non-prototypical schemas by metaphorical extension, metonymy, or image schema transformations.