Synchronic Distribution and Diachronic Development of Words Encoding "to smell" in Chinese

Words that encode the notion "to smell with (one's) nose" are cross-linguistically basic words. This paper gives a comprehensive description of this category of words in Chinese, with respect to both synchronic distribution in modern dialects and diachronic evolution in history, and e...

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Published inLanguage and linguistics (Taipei) Vol. 15; no. 5; pp. 699 - 732
Main Authors Wang, Weihui, Akitani, Hiroyuki
Format Journal Article
LanguageChinese
Published Taipei Academia Sinica, Institute of Linguistics 01.07.2014
Subjects
Chinese
Chinese languages
Diachronic Linguistics
Dialects
Lexical Semantics
Philology
Regional dialects
Semantic Change
Tone
Vocabularies & taxonomies
Word Meaning
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Summary:Words that encode the notion "to smell with (one's) nose" are cross-linguistically basic words. This paper gives a comprehensive description of this category of words in Chinese, with respect to both synchronic distribution in modern dialects and diachronic evolution in history, and explanations of their synchronic-diachronic correlation. So far as synchronic distribution is concerned, words meaning "to smell" attested in Modern Chinese dialects are as follows: ... (wen2), ... (xiu4)1-a, ... (xiu4)1-b, ... (xiu4)2-a, ... (xiu4)2-b, ... (bi2), ... (pen1), ... (ting1), ... (suo1), and ... (yinshang tone). Diachronic pattern of their evolution can be reconstructed as follows: ... (xu-jiu qie)[arrow right] ... (xiu4)1... (xiang-zhong qie)[arrow right]... (wen2)[arrow right]... (ting1) ... (also means "to listern")}. The dominant lexical replacement during this diachronic evolution is ... (xiu4)[arrow right]... (wen2)}, where the denotation of ... (wen2) underwent a process of specialization, i.e. it originally denoted both "to hear" and "to smell (with a result meaning)", but then exclusively referred to the latter one, and afterwards "to smell (without a result meaning)" which was earlier expressed by ... (xiu4). ... (wen2) started meaning "to smell (without a result meaning) " around East Jin period (4th century AD), and replaced ... (xiu4) as a dominant word in northern dialects of Yuan dynasty (13th century AD), which is probably motivated by taboo to some extent.
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ISSN:1606-822X
2309-5067
DOI:10.1177/1606822X14528641