Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact:
Chinese radicals are the semantic components of Chinese characters that generally indicate major concepts and categories. Characters that share the same radical may be semantically linked in various ways to the broad semantic category that the radical represents, and radicals may thus be considered a categorization mechanism to distinguish lexical meanings. Given the fact that FIRE is an independent character that can also be used as a radical in composite characters, the question arises as to what extent the semantic developments of the FIRE character and the FIRE radical are similar, i.e. does the FIRE radical develop independently of the FIRE character? Against the background of this question, this paper studies the diachronic semantic structure of the FIRE character, which will be compared to the FIRE radical in composite characters in follow-up studies. The analysis shows that the overall diachronic development of the FIRE character exhibits prototypical characteristics and a radial network structure.
Fire has played an essential role in human civilization. FIRE as such is not only a basic but also a crucial concept in human language, including Chinese. In Chinese, FIRE huǒ火 acts as an independent character that is often used as a radical in many composite characters. Considering the fact that Chinese radicals are typically regarded as the semantic components within the composite characters to indicate broader concepts and categories of the characters, the FIRE radical is expected to determine the lexical meaning of composite characters one way or another. Since the independent use of the FIRE character precedes its function as a radical, we hypothesize that the semantic development of the FIRE radical will be influenced by those of the FIRE character. Therefore, we first carried out a semantic analysis of the FIRE character in previous research. The present paper studies the semantic structure of the global extensions of the FIRE radical, i.e. the original senses of the composite characters of the FIRE radical that are expected to have developed from the senses of the FIRE character. This analysis shows that, like the FIRE character, the semantic structure of the FIRE radical is still a radial network with prototypical features. However, the FIRE radical showcases semantic developments that occur independently of the FIRE character.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.