A Cognitive Study Of Principled Polysemy Of Chinese Directional Complement Chu

Directional complements are of great interest to linguists both nationally and internationally due to their extensive usage and intricate semantic features in modern Chinese.Traditional approach examines directional complements through structuralism and valency,while cognitive studies draw on cognitive semantics and grammaticalization.Despite being a common directional complement,chu has received little attention from the perspective of principled polysemy model.Building upon the principled polysemy model,this study first identifies the primary sense and other distinct senses of directional complement chu using the English-Chinese Comparable/Parallel Corpus(ECCPC).It then goes to describe the cognitive semantic features and construct a polysemy network.Furthermore,the semantic expansion paths of chu are explored by invoking the viewpoints of cognitive grammar and conceptual metaphor.The research findings are as follows:1)Chu involves nine distinct senses,including outward motion(28.7%),exterior position(19.5%),departing(13.5%),revealing(10.6%),producing(8.8%),reflexivity(5.3%),vacating(4.9%),transferring(4.3%),and resultachieving(4.3%).According to the principled polysemy model,the primary sense of chu is outward motion,and other distinct senses are extended meanings.Six distinct senses are organized in two sense clusters of Direction and Disengagement.Together with the other three distinct senses,they form a radial semantic network.2)The nine distinct senses of chu fall into three categories.First,the Direction cluster includes two senses--exterior position and departing--and when combined with the primary sense,they denote spatial meanings.Secondly,the Disengagement cluster is comprised of four senses: revealing,producing,vacating,and transferring.These four distinct senses signify non-spatial state meanings along with the reflexivity sense.Thirdly,the result-achieving sense expresses an aspectual meaning and functions as an aspectual marker.3)Chu exemplifies a unidirectional process of semantic extension,undergoing respectively spatial extension of TR-LM configuration,metaphorical extension of TR-LM configuration,and eventually aspectual extension.This creates a semantic expansion path that links space-metaphoraspect.This study utilizes the principled polysemy model to delve deeper into the cognitive semantic characteristics of the Chinese directional complement chu,presenting a fresh cognitive outlook on directional complements.Furthermore,the use of cognitive grammar and conceptual metaphor expands research on the semantic expansion path of directional complements and provides valuable reference for studies on semantic extension.