A Colexficational Analysis of Chū in Modern Chinese

Abstract

Directional verbs in modern Chinese, notably chū, are crucial. Previous studies on chū pay little attention to colexification and its mechanisms; they primarily focus on polysemy, syntactic restriction, and diachronic evolution in Mandarin Chinese. Research on Chinese topolects has also been neglected. Development of the Database of Cross-linguistic Colexifications (CLICS3) facilitates its cross-linguistic and topolectal exploration. This paper first discusses colexified pairs of chū in Modern Chinese, and constructs its colexificational network based on the CLICS3. It also argues for colexificational mechanisms of colexified extensions. Conceptual metaphor and metonymy are considered two core mechanisms accounting for the colexified extensions of chū. Metaphoric colexified extensions map onto the space, time, and state domain, following the order of “space > time > state”. As for the metonymic colexified extensions, the extended concepts result from different substructures of the image schema profiled in the motion event of chū.