The Study Of Lexical Diffusion Theory

Sound change is the focus of historical linguistics. Phonetic evolution has attracted language researchers'attention for a long time. This paper introduces and discusses an important theory on sound change, that is lexical diffusion theory by Chinese-American linguist Wang William S-Y. The theory aims' rule hypothesis' and ' gradual in phonetic and abrupt in lexicon' by neogrammarian in the late 19th century. Under the testing and statistical analysis on more than 30 kinds of Chinese dialects, Mr. Wang proposed the view of lexical diffusion. Not only it highlights the process of phonetic evolution and the possibilities in process; but it also uses the thinking of biological evolution to analyze and study phonetic evolution, at the same time, he proposed the mechanism of'competition' and' residue', which made the study on sound change enter the new stage. Through the introduction and research on lexical diffusion theory, we hope that it can give the Chinese linguistics more help.This paper is divided into five parts. Introduction states that linguistics as the component of science, should study in scientific spirit and scientific method. This part is to prepare for the scientific theory. Lexical diffusion is the theory of sound change, so we discuss the sound change and the model of sound change in the first chapter. Not only recalls the tradition that the study of Chinese phonetic evolution, but also shows the study achievements in the west, and takes the example of'Verner's Law' to explain the evolution's development in this part. In the second chapter, we explain and discuss lexical diffusion theory from the background, origin, content, characteristic, impact and value to the issues related to lexical diffusion, theoretical development, which show the essence of lexical diffusion theory. The meaning of theory is to explain the problem, in the third chapter, we introduce the application of lexical diffusion theory. At first, we make the classification and statistics in general, and then show the ability of the theory's explanation through selecting and analyzing papers, including a classical paper'Tone change in Chao-zhou Chinese--a study in lexical diffusion' written by Mr. Cheng Chin-Chuan and Mr. Wang William S-Y, and another papers written by Mr. Zhang Wen-xuan and Mr. Lin Tao. Lexical diffusion's idea can expand, also play a role in the syntactic and semantic evolution. In the fourth chapter, we begin to make presentations and analyze the concrete cases about the syntactic and semantic evolution. Because lexical diffusion theory has huge influence, it have to face questions and challenges, but it has beautiful prospects, therefore, it is necessary to introduce and spread lexical diffusion theory in detail.