The Colexification of Xià in Modern Chinese

Abstract

Xià ‘down’ is a hot topic in the study of directional verbs in modern Chinese. Previous studies mainly focus on its syntactic property, syntax-semantics, and diachronic evolution. Few studies explore the lexical-semantic meanings of xià ‘down’, let alone taking a cross-dialectal or cross-linguistic perspective. This paper discusses the lexical semantics of xià ‘down’ in modern Chinese and builds the colexificational network for xià ‘down’ based on its 21 different meanings. Through analyzing the colexifications for xià ‘down’ in Mandarin Chinese and different languages, it is found that the common colexification between the two networks. This paper also discusses the mechanisms for colexification of xià ‘down’, i.e., similarity and metaphorical rules. The similarity mechanism calls for the Goldilocks principle: meanings are more likely to attach to the same word when they are related to an optimal degree. The metaphorical rules of xià ‘down’ map onto the space domain, time domain, state domain, and quantity domain, following the cline of “SPACE > TIME > STATE> QUANTITY”.