新加坡英语借词kiasu的语义发展路径

Semantic Development Path of Singlish Loanword Kiasu

词汇借用是接触引发语义演变的主要类型之一。本文以kiasu的历时语料为基础,借助Google Books Ngram Viewer对新加坡英语借词kiasu的语义发展路径进行探讨。结合Sweetser的历时隐喻模型理论,分析发现,kiasu的语义演变路径为从动词、名词以及代词的行域义>形容词的知域义>感叹词的言域义的单向性演变,kiasu经历了从动词短语到单词的词汇化历程,kiasu出现了屈折变化和名词虚化的趋势。

Word-borrowing is one of the main types of semantic development caused by contact. Based on diachronic corpus of kiasu, the paper discusses the semantic development path of Singlish loanword Kiasu by virtue of Google Books Ngram Viewer. Combined with the diachronic metaphoric model theory of Sweetser, the paper finds out that the semantic development path of kiasu is a unidirectional evolution path from action-domain semantics of verbs, nouns and pronouns to knowledge-domain semantics of adjectives to language-domain semantics of interjection. The paper points out that the word kiasu goes through the lexicalization process from verb phrase to a word, showing the trend of inflection and noun delexicalization.