Towards a dynamic behavioral profile of the Mandarin Chinese temperature term re: a diachronic semasiological approach

Abstract

Abstract This study adopts a corpus-based behavioral profile approach, combining multifactorial usage-feature analysis with frequency-based quantitative analysis, to investigate the diachronic semasiological variation of the Mandarin Chinese temperature term 热 re ‘hot’. The result shows a dynamic behavioral profile, i.e., both the usage patterns and the semasiological structural weight of senses have been constantly shifting. The semasiology of re has been becoming more and more diversified over time. Methodologically, this study extends the traditional behavioral profile approach—hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis by applying multiple correspondence analysis and corroborating its validity in accounting for and visualizing the multifactorial nature of semasiological change of lexical items. Theoretically, the present study not only corroborates basic assumptions of usage-based cognitive semantics (e.g., non-discreteness, non-equality of senses, and bodily experience) but also complements it by demonstrating that sociocultural factors also play an important role in semasiological boundary variation of a lexical item.