Diachronic source of “Xren” adjectives and its development in Xi’an dialect(PDF)
《长安大学学报（社科版）》[ISSN:1671-6248/CN:61-1391/C]
- Issue:
- 2018年06期
- Page:
- 87-96
- Research Field:
- 长安学
- Publishing date:
Info
- Title:
- Diachronic source of “Xren” adjectives and its development in Xi’an dialect
- Author(s):
- DING Ding
- Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
- Keywords:
- linguistics; “Xren”; history of Chinese language; Xi’an dialect; morphology
- PACS:
- H141
- DOI:
- -
- Abstract:
- This study is about “Xren” adjectives in Chinese through exploring their property, diachronic source, and special expressions in Xi’an dialect. We firstly discuss the property of “Xren” adjectives in Mandarin by conversion, insertion and distribution. Then we search the historical corpus to find out the diachronic source of “Xren” adjectives, and figure out the process of their development by semantic analysis. Finally we discuss “Xren” adjectives in Xi’an dialect, comparing the “Xren2”with a rising tone of “ren” and the “Xren0” with a neutral tone of “ren”. The results are as following: firstly, “Xren” forms in Mandarin are compound words and adjectives, expressing a meaning of “making people feel X”. Secondly, these “Xren” forms evolved from the predicateobject constructions in history, which predicate particular actions at the beginning. Then their semantic meanings change from an action to a kind of quality, and turn out to describe an abstract quality. Thirdly, in Xi’an and some other dialects, “ren” can sometimes be pronounced in a neutral tone, which shows that these “ren” become derivational suffixes，and the semantic meanings of these “Xren” also change from “the subject makes people feel X” to “the subject itself feels X”. In conclusion, historical corpus and dialect materials show that“Xren” forms in Chinese have developed from predicateobject constructions to compound words, and to derivative words in some dialects. In predicateobject constructions and compound words “Xren”,“ren” is pronounced in a rising tone and “Xren” forms express a semantic meaning of “the subject makes people feel X”. While in derivative words “Xren”, “ren” is pronounced in a neutral tone and “Xren” forms express a “semantic” meaning of “the subject itself feels X”.
Last Update: 2019-02-25