The Interaction and De-Categorization of Word Meaning Categories—The Radical Stage of Word Meaning Evolution

This paper employs the framework of "dynamic categorization" from cognitive linguistics to examine a more radical phase of word meaning derivation. Specifically, it investigates the interaction between word meaning categories and de-categorization in order to elucidate the principles governing word meaning derivation. Through a comprehensive analysis of extensive Chinese and English corpora, our findings indicate that the interaction between word meaning categories primarily is manifested in two forms: (1) expansion between adjacent categories; (2) expansion between analogous categories. The expansion between adjacent categories encompasses linguistic, conceptual, and factual expansions, whereas expansion between analogous categories involves both objective and psychological similarities. Such interaction between word meaning categories may result in partial grammaticalization, antonymization, and polysemy. De-categorization, on the other hand, is primarily achieved through word conversion, grammaticalization, and subjectivization. These processes contribute to the evolution of word meaning beyond conventional clustering models, transitioning from concrete to abstract and from literal to figurative interpretations.