Dynamic categorization and semiosis in Chinese: a case study of “jiē”

4.1 The semantic base of jiē

According to Langacker (1987), the “base” refers to the comprehensive semantic network upon which a linguistic unit depends, encompassing all background knowledge and conceptual structures associated with its meaning. The base constitutes the latent frame for word meaning. Jiē is a pictographic character composed of the “hand” (扌) as the semantic component and the glyph “曷” as the phonetic component. Its original sense is ‘to lift (an object) high (with the hand or with a tool),’ making it a hand-related physical movement. Its semantic base includes elements such as the agent, patient, action, direction, and result, forming a complete dynamic event framework.

The original meaning of jiē profiles a scene in which a person uses the hand or a tool acting as an extension of the hand to lift an object, resulting in a change in the spatial position of the patient. The act of “lifting” involves the tool and direction, which includes source and path. Here, the tool is generally the hand or some implement; the direction includes both the starting point and the trajectory, since the prototypical and profile meanings of jiē involve physical contact followed by a spatial change of the patient, caused by the exertion of force via the tool. The object’s original and final positions differ, thus giving rise to a trajectory, with the endpoint corresponding to the termination of the action. This dynamic event structure for the transitive verb jiē is illustrated in Figure 3.

Figure 3:

The semantic base of jiē.

4.2 The image schema of jiē

Image schemas are recurring perceptual structures that dynamically simulate spatial relations and movement (Gibbs and Colston 1995; Lakoff and Johnson 1980). They are grounded in embodied experience and constitute the fundamental cognitive mechanism that underlies the generation, extension, and metaphorization of semiotic meaning (Li and Jiang 2017; Lu 2007). Consequently, both the construction and interpretation of linguistic sign meaning depend upon the structural support afforded by image schemas.

Building on the semantic base, the participants involved in jiē are typically the hand (or a tool that functions as an extension of the hand) and the patient object that is acted upon. Treating jiē as a sign, because jiē describes a transfer of force, its meaning invokes a force schema. At the same time, the movement of the hand or tool possesses an origin, a trajectory, and a destination, thereby instantiating the source-path-goal schema (path schema). The schemas regulate the logic of cross-domain mappings from the concrete to the abstract, provide systematic motivation for the polysemy and metaphorical import of signs, and thereby serve as the bridge that links bodily experience to abstract conceptualization (Gao 2011: 18).

The path schema is not static. In different contexts, speakers adjust the internally stored schemas to fit the situation at hand. Lakoff (1987: 443) describes the “path-focus-to-end-focus” transformation, in which attention shifts from the trajectory to the endpoint of a moving object. The image schema for jiē is similarly subject to context, functioning as a semiotic mediator, which drives dynamic development of many semantic Interpretants of jiē, which are then solidified as its semantic family members. The core spatial concept encoded in jiē involves the movement of the patient from a source to a goal, with the path schema playing a central role in the category extension of jiē. The formation of new categorical members of jiē is thus closely tied to both the path schema and the direction of movement.

4.3 The lexical senses of jiē

The earliest definition of jiē in the Shuowen Jiezi (说文解字) is “揭, to lift high.” The Tangyun (唐韵) further notes: “揭, pronounced qiè, same meaning; also written as 担 or 拮.” The Rectified interpretation of the Book of Songs (毛诗正义注疏) explains jiē as signifying an upending movement, thus referring to an exposed root. Drawing on the five senses listed in the Modern Chinese dictionary (现代汉语词典) and comparing several authoritative dictionaries such as the Xinhua dictionary (新华字典), the Great dictionary of Chinese characters (汉语大字典), and the Modern Chinese standard dictionary (现代汉语规范词典), we analyzed the entries, eliminated certain loan or obsolete senses, and, where appropriate, merged or subdivided related items. The result is the set of basic senses of jiē illustrated in Table 1.

5.1 The prototypical sense of jiē

As a Representamen, 揭 (jiē) is motivated by “扌,” which originated as a pictogram depicting an outstretched hand and was later conventionalized as a its Chinese character radical (Figure 4). Through diagrammatic iconicity, “扌” evokes a hand-based image schema, thereby constraining jiē’s interpretation as a hand-related action.

Figure 4:

“扌” and jiē’s development.

Accordingly, like many action verbs, jiē initially functioned as a highly dynamic verb, as seen in the following examples:

In Examples (1) and (2), the Object is, respectively, the concrete act of “brandishing a sword aloft” and of “raising a pole high in the air.” When people read or hear “揭” in sentences like these, they first activate the core image of ‘lifting (an object) high’ with the hand, which is the initial Interpretant. As the phrase “jiē gān ér qǐ” is repeatedly used in political or literary contexts, addressees gradually come to associate the phrase with the conventionalized, idiomatic meaning of ‘uprising’ and ‘rebellion.’ This extension retains its abstract meaning in the idiom jiē gān ér qǐ ‘to rise in revolt with raised poles.’

According to the transitivity criteria proposed by Hopper and Thompson (1980), jiē exhibits multiple features of a highly dynamic verb. In jiē qí jiàn ‘raised his sword’ and jiē gān ér qǐ ‘rose in revolt with raised poles,’ the action involves at least two participants, an agent and a patient, fulfilling the requirement of multiple participants. Jiē describes a concrete action, not a state; the action is performed autonomously by the agent, and it is completed instantaneously and decisively within the narrative context. Furthermore, the agent exerts significant force upon the patient (“sword” or “pole”), indicating strong agentivity.

Jiē at this stage is a verb of high transitivity and strong dynamicity. The structure “jiē + noun (patient)” may also be analogically extended to phrases like jiē jù ‘raise a torch’ or jiē fǔ ‘raise an axe,’ in which the dynamic force of the verb is maximized and analogy is strongest. Therefore, the sense ‘to lift (an object) high’ is identified as the prototypical sense of jiē.

5.2 Gradual semantic change in the “jiē + noun (object)” structures

According to the base/profile theory (Langacker 1987), “profile” is the component of a conceptual base that a particular usage foregrounds, and it is the focus of attention during actual communication. By shifting the profile, the same underlying base can yield polysemy; in specific communicative contexts, speakers focus attention on particular elements of the event structure while backgrounding others, which demonstrates the dynamic categorization of word meaning and results from the interplay between linguistic form and cognitive function (Zeng and Wen 2019). The diachronic evolution of word meaning is thus not a simple accumulation of discrete senses, but rather unfolds as extensions within a single base, through shifts in profile.

Words rely on structural context to construct meaning (Li and Meng 2022). The meanings of jiē have changed along with the objects it refers to. For jiē, semantic evolution within its category is mainly realized through the profiling of the patient object. While the earlier, prototypical category referred to light or small objects that could be raised by hand or tool, with increased salience of weight or size, jiē came to describe the lifting or bearing of heavier or larger objects. In the agricultural age, moving heavy objects was commonly done by shouldering them. Meanwhile, the sign jiē, bearing the sense ‘to lift high,’ gradually shifted in function from an icon to an index. Grounded in the causal connection between shouldering a heavy load and its patient, its semantic motivation moved from iconic resemblance to indexical reference to a specific action or resultant state. This transformation was accompanied by the emergence of new Interpretants. And these motivated sense (2) ‘to bear; to carry.’ For example:

In Examples (3) and (4), the collocation jiē qiè ‘bore chests’ denotes the act of shouldering a wicker chest. In this usage, the Object is the motion of lifting the chest off the ground and carrying it away. Even addressees unfamiliar with jiē can arrive at an initial construal by drawing on near-synonymous verbs such as jù dào ‘notorious bandit’ and fù kuì ‘shouldered coffers,’ together with the common sense that a chest, being fairly heavy, must be borne on the shoulder or back. Because the load is substantial, the action of shouldering or bearing is foregrounded, and through repeated occurrences in literary texts the corresponding Interpretant becomes conventionalized as the new lexical sense ‘to bear; to carry.’ This sense maintains a close conceptual relationship with the original meaning, as the verb is still followed by a tangible, physical object (the patient), and the action is highly dynamic. Therefore, the meaning of jiē in these contexts remains proximal to the prototypical sense, representing a shift in the profiled element of the event base. This shift aligns with Bybee’s (2010) semantic proximity principle, whereby semantic extension in lexical categories tends to privilege meanings most similar to the original.

6.1 Interaction and spanning in “noun + jiē (static)” structures

According to cognitive semantics (Lakoff 1987), meanings pole of a verb can be viewed dynamically, involving the transfer of force, space, and time. In its initial meaning, jiē involved an action causing an object’s movement or state change; when the resulting state of the object becomes the focal point, a new meaning emerges. This scenario existed even before medieval Chinese:

In Examples (5) and (6), jiē serves as the Representamen. Its Object is the pathological condition in which the lips are everted upward owing to illness or related causes. In medical treatises, the collocation chún jiē ‘lips curl upward’ functions as a diagnostic sign, with the causal contiguity between the symptom (lip eversion) and the underlying disorder establishing a new sign relation. In this context, the Interpretant of jiē extends from “to lift high” to the state “to turn upward.”

Within the overall behavioral pattern of jiē, the agent ‘lifts up’ the patient. When the resultant state and direction of the patient are highlighted, the patient’s state of ‘flipping upward’ emerges. Therefore, although jiē in Examples (5) and (6) has a static meaning, it also acquires a dynamic connotation through the metonymic mechanism of result for action, based on the adjacency relationship between parts within the adjacent category. This forms a static predicate and yields sense (3), ‘to turn upward (static),’ where the state denoted by the predicate is interpreted as the result of the action (Wu 2011: 61). Additionally, at this stage, jiē shifts from a bivalent verb to a monovalent verb, grammatically forming the structure of “noun + jiē (static).”

6.2 Interaction and spanning in “jiē + noun (natural phenomena)” structures

However, the interaction between categories is not fixedly unidirectional. According to the view of gradual category change (Croft 2001), semantic categories are not isolated or scattered; their boundaries flexibly expand with changes in cognitive salience. When cognitive agents refocus on the action of jiē itself, especially in cognitive domains with obvious dynamic features such as natural phenomena, the dynamic potential of jiē will be activated again, manifesting as dynamic actions and resultant states. At this time, jiē participates in an indexical sign that signals a natural causal relation.

In Examples (7) and (8), jiē in the static sense ‘to turn upward’ serves as the Representamen, while the Object is the dynamic sense of ‘falling water making the wave crest flip’ or ‘a violent wind seemingly turning the whole sky over.’ Jiē establishes its indexical link through these Objects. The cognitive underpinning of this link is a cross-domain mapping of the force schema, recruiting experiential knowledge of how forces produce upward displacement, speakers license a new a new Interpretant that encodes physical phenomena, namely, ‘to cause … to flip.’

Also, within the cognitive agent’s Result-Action ICM (idealized cognitive model), jiē is reconceptualized from denoting a static resultant state to a dynamic action through the principle of proximity, establishing a connection between the action and the resultant state. Through the metonymic mechanism of action for result, the patient object is highlighted, yielding the sense ‘to cause… to flip’ and shifting from a monovalent to a bivalent verb. Grammatically, this forms the structure “jiē + noun (natural phenomenon).”

In Example (9), jiē evolves from the meaning ‘to cause… to flip’ to ‘flipping (dynamic)’ through the metonymic mechanism of result for action, emphasizing the dynamic outcome of the clouds when the wind rises. Through this integration, sense (4) ‘to cause to flip; flipping (dynamic)’ is established.

Though all three examples come from ancient poetry, jiē allows two distinct Interpretants: one static, one dynamic. This is because Chinese poetry’s highly compressed four-, six-, and seven-character lines, constrained by strict prosody, omit explicit grammatical markers and often leave both agent and patient unstated. In such elliptical contexts, jiē can denote either the action or its result. When paired with force-bearing nouns like xuán liú ‘hanging stream’ or fēngshì ‘wind gust,’ readers naturally take it as a dynamic event. When collocated with state-oriented nouns such as fúyún ‘clouds’ or làng ‘waves,’ however, it is more readily interpreted as a completed static state.

6.3 Interaction and spanning in “jiē + noun (sheet-like object)” structures

The original sense of jiē, ‘lift (an object) high,’ can be conceptualized as a complete action sequence where the result stage involves the patient object moving from its initial position to a final position, “breaking away” from the initial position. When the cognitive subject shifts attention from the action’s starting phase (lifting) to the result phase (separation), the entire action process of jiē is reconceptualized as an overall behavior of “causing an object to separate from its attached surface.” This semantic extension is also accompanied by the refinement of the object category.

According to the base/profile theory, when the object of jiē shifts from natural phenomena to artificial objects, the [+sheet-like][-rigid] features in its base become highlighted. Its cognitive schema matches the “separation” action, expanding the semantic boundary of jiē to ‘lift or pull away a sheet-like object.’ Additionally, within the same base, the direction of the patient object’s displacement is not emphasized, leading to generalization. For example, jiē lián ‘lift the curtain’ typically involves objects adjacent left and right, while jiē gài ‘remove the lid’ highlights the vertical (covering) directional relationship, thus emphasizing the “separation” result of jiē.

In Examples (10) and (11), jiē in the sense ‘to lift high’ functions as the Representamen, while the Object is the action of “lifting a curtain” or “removing the cloth.” Phrases jiē lián ‘lift the curtain’ and jiē miànbó ‘remove the face cloth’ both embodying a complete behavioral sequence of ‘cause… to separate from…’ Here, the typical meaning ‘lift (an object) high’ of jiē represents a fragment within this process, reflecting the adjacency between the overall behavioral pattern and its internal sub-actions. Under the influence of base/profile theory, the profile highlights that the object is a thin, lightweight, sheet-like item joined together, forming the grammatical structure “jiē + noun (sheet-like object).” Through the metonymic mechanism of whole for part, jiē extends from its typical meaning to sense (5), and is instantiated as an Interpretant reading ‘to uncover; to lift open; to separate,’ which points to the Object “the action of detaching a sheet-like entity from the surface.”

During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the rise of vernacular novels further propelled the semantic evolution of jiē, with the object category of jiē shifting from general sheet-like objects to adhesive sheet-like objects. Within the Peircean triad, the Representamen jiē explicitly indexes a causal instrumental event, where the Object now emphasizes sheet-like items affixed to surfaces. This further refines the Interpretant to the act of deliberate removal. Examples include:

In Examples (12), (13), and (14), the Objects of jiē are the actions of tearing down pasted bǎngwén ‘notice,’ peeling off gāoyào ‘plaster,’ and removing fúyìn ‘talisman seals.’ The patients of jiē, bǎng, gāoyào, and fúyìn, share a highlighted base feature of [+pasted] compared to lián and miànbó in Examples (10) and (11). The former objects are first affixed to another surface, and the action of jiē serves the purpose of removing these pasted layers. Thus, the object category of jiē shifts from general sheet-like things to pasted layers. Through the metonymic mechanism of action for purpose, jiē now yields an Interpretant as sense (6) ‘to remove pasted layer.’ This evolution also gives rise to modern usages like jiē miànmó ‘peel off a facial mask’ and jiē biànlì tiē ‘remove a sticky note,’ solidifying the stable status of this meaning.

6.4 Interaction and spanning in “jiē + noun (abstract)” structures

Previously discussed objects of jiē have all been concrete, tangible substances. However, the construction of abstract concepts often relies on the structural features of specific actions (Lakoff 1987). As early as the Warring States period, abstract things began to appear as Objects of jiē, generating semantic leaps from physical actions to abstract behaviors through metaphorical mechanisms, mapping from the material domain to abstract domains such as the social and temporal domains.