A Study On Term "yī Diǎn" And Its Overlapping Forms

“yī diǎn diǎn” and “yī diǎn yī diǎn” are the two overlapping forms derived from theterm “yī diǎn”. Both the term “yī diǎn” and its overlapping forms can collate with nouns,verbs and adjectives. From the syntactic perspective, all the three terms can serve as bothattributives and adverbials, while the two of them “yī diǎn” and “yī diǎn diǎn” can be used ascomplements, objects, and subjects as well.“yī diǎn” means “a few/little” or “to a gentleextent” while “yī diǎn diǎn” means “less than a little/few” or “the degree is less thangentle”,When functions as an attributive, object, subject or complement;“yī diǎn” means“minimum” while “yī diǎn diǎn” means “the gradual change of action and traits” when servesas an adverbial;“yī diǎn yī diǎn” has the similar meaning with “yī diǎn diǎn” when functionsas an adverbial yet with a stronger sense of order and more emphasis on the changing pace;When used as an attributive,“yī diǎn yī diǎn” shows the discrete rendering of the object.When it comes to the collocation with words, both “yī diǎn” and “yī diǎn diǎn” can modifyuncountable nouns and abstract nouns; besides,“yī diǎn yī diǎn” can also modify countablenouns;Serving as an adverbial,“yī diǎn” can modify verbs on psychology and action while itsoverlapping forms modify continuous verbs and verbs which mean changing and growing;when used as complements, both “yī diǎn” and “yī diǎn diǎn” add a supplementaryexplanation to the verbs indicating changes; Meanwhile, all the three terms can modifyadjectives indicating the nature.The evolution of the meaning of both “yī diǎn” and “yī diǎn diǎn” follows the extensionmode from concrete to abstract, quantity to degree, and object to state or action;Thedifferences between “yī diǎn diǎn” and “yī diǎn yī diǎn” is in line with the principle oficonicity;“diǎn” means few or little, the overlapped use of this word means the decrease inquantity. Grammatically, the overlapping forms of“yī diǎn”have many similarities with othernumber overlapping forms,All of them can be used as attributive and adverbial,when used asadverbial, they all mean “one by one”;But there are some differences in syntactic functionand semantic meaning;Number overlapping forms are often used as subject and seldom usedas object and complement. Semantically, many number overlapping forms mean largequantity when used as attributive, subject, object, complement,different from the overlappingforms of“yī diǎn” in the meaning.