Research on the Semantic Map of Chinese Verbs with the meaning of “Substitution (代替)”
In this paper, the semantic map model is adopted to study the diachronic evolution and synchronic regional characteristics of the Chinese Verbs “Dai (代)” and “Ti (替)” with the meaning of “substitution”. The semantic evolution of the Verbs “Dai (代)” and “Ti (替)” are complicated, including the evolution in both dialects and general language, which can be clearly shown in the semantic map model. In the general language, “Dai (代)” and “Ti” have different lexical semantic functions. “Dai” mainly has the verbs semantic functions of “substitution”, yet the newer word “Ti (替)” mainly has the grammatical function of “substitution”. In the dialect, the evolution of the two verbs in different regions are not consistent. In northern dialects, the newer word “Ti (替)” is mostly used, yet in some southern dialects, more components of the ancient Chinese are retained, such as the prepositional function of “Dai (代)” in ancient Chinese.