Lexical Constructional Account of the Chinese Placement Verb fàng: Convergence of the Diachronic and Synchronic Approaches

Abstract

This thesis explores the lexical semantic development of the commonly used Contemporary Chinese verb, fàng ‘put, release’, in search of a convergence of the diachronic and synchronic findings. It explores the interrelationships of the usage patterns of the verb with a usage-based constructional approach. It proposes a cognitively salient event chain of caused movement by examining the diachronic facts of verb fàng in different stages of Chinese. Historical data show that the morpheme fàng denotes a verb that encompasses three primary senses: release, expel, and put. The seemingly distinct senses exhibit a striking correlation owing to their involvement in the various stages of a salient event chain from caused-motion to caused-placement. This thesis aims to explicate the predominant usage patterns on the semantic distinctions of the verb fàng across different historical periods and provide a comprehensive account of the observed collo-constructional distributions. By undertaking these tasks, the research provides corpus-based historical evidence for the synchronic analysis of the multiple senses associated with the verb fàng, and offers a detailed case study for scholarly inquiries on the diachronic evolution and development of verbal semantics.

The present study first investigates and discusses the constructional distinctions between the three senses of the verb fàng based on textual data from three corpora: the Academia Sinica Ancient Chinese Corpus, the Academia Sinica Tagged Corpus of Middle Chinese, and the Academia Sinica Tagged Corpus of Early Mandarin Chinese. All linguistic constructions containing the verb fàng were extracted for a systematic comparison, which indicates the developmental process of the distinct semantic meanings across different time periods. Among the three senses identified, the ‘expel’ sense appears first and prevails in Old Chinese, representing the prototypical meaning of the verb fàng in the early stages. The ‘release’ sense originated in Old Chinese and subsequently evolved into the predominant usage of the verb fàng during the Middle Chinese period. Finally, the ‘put’ sense also emerged in Old Chinese and gradually developed into the dominant use during the Contemporary Chinese period.

Cognitively, the three senses are interconnected as they manifest the stages of an event chain. The original ‘expel’ sense encompasses a caused-motion event chain implicating the act of releasing someone and the result of being located somewhere. The ‘release’ sense specifically pertains to the initial stage of the event chain, and the ‘put’ sense pertains to the final stage of the event chain. This paper’s research delves into the lexical semantic peculiarities and the correlations among the different uses of fàng concerning the different stages of the event chain.

This thesis is organized into seven chapters. Chapter 1 introduces this research’s theme, issue, motivation and scope. Chapter 2 reviews the relevant literature on put verbs and the verb fàng. Chapter 3 briefly introduces the theoretical frameworks adopted in this thesis and the corpus databases used for the analysis. Chapter 4 examines the collo-constructions associated with the verb fàng in Ancient Chinese, focusing on the various ways the verb fàng is employed within the linguistic framework of Ancient Chinese. Chapter 5 provides an in-depth analysis of the constructional variations with the verb fàng in Middle Chinese, explicating the usage patterns of the verb fàng in Middle Chinese texts. Chapter 6 explores the usage patterns of the verb fàng in Early Modern Chinese with further discussions on the lexicalization patterns of "fàng+X" during the Early Modern Chinese period. Chapter 7 concludes the entire thesis with a summary of the findings, potential contributions, and theoretical implications. This paper also reviews the problems and limitations of the thesis that call for further research.

In sum, this thesis provides stage-by-stage historical evidence for the lexical semantic extensions of a polysemous verb, which ultimately contributes to the research advancement of lexical semantics and Chinese historical linguistics.

Date of Award	21 Dec 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Meichun LIU (Supervisor) & Yancheng ZHANG (External Supervisor)