Polysemy and Enantiosemy: Mandarin &i&Dui&/i& and Taiwanese &i&Tui&/i&

摘要

From a cognitive viewpoint, we compare Mandarin Dui and Taiwanese Tui by looking into their sense developments in the Dui /Tui + NOUN Construction. Dui and Tui are usually regarded as lexical equivalents across Mandarin and Taiwanese, two of the major languages spoken in Taiwan. Assuming with Lakoff (1987) that polysemy is a semantic network with radial categories, we adopt a metaphorical approach in our investigation. Through metaphorical extensions, Dui and Tui develop distinct routes to developing differing but related senses, forming differential semantic networks. Both Dui and Tui profile spatial-, eventive-, and communicative-domain senses. However, Taiwanese Tui , but not Mandarin Dui , encodes a temporal sense. Apart from polysemous expansion, we also address the enantiosemy arising in the “to” and “from” senses attached to Taiwanese Tui . The findings of our study offer insight into the nature of polysemy as well as the lexical differentiation across Mandarin and Taiwanese.