Diachronic change of Chinese common words caused by word reduplication and sound change:A case study of the names of dragonfly in Classical Chinese
Semantic change is not the only source of the evolution of Chinese common words.In Classical Chinese,there used to be four words which could express the meaning of"dragonfly":qing(蜻),qingling(蜻蛉),jiling(蝍蛉)and qingting(蜻蜓).Qing was the earliest name of"dragonfly",which then generated qingling and jiling through word reduplication and fission reduplication respectively.The word qingting either came from the mispronunciation of qingling or the progressive reduplication of qing.The diachronic evolution and substitution between these four words could be verified by their counterparts in modern Chinese dialects and their geographic distribution.
"dragonfly"common worddiachronic changereduplicationmispronunciationdialect words
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万方数据
