Abstract:
During the Wei and Jin Dynasty, the meaning of the verb Zhe was enlarged to“screen the light” in the sense of space, which means “cover up an object”, from the original meaning of “block between objects”. In the Tang Dynasty,the meaning of Zhe was extended again from “cover” to “conceal”. The change of context highlights the different conceptual elements of Zhe, because of which, new meanings come into being. During the Song and Yuan Dynasty, the“cover” meaning of Zhe replaced its “block” meaning and took the dominant role in its glosseme system, and this is consistent with the age that Zhe was falling into decline in “Lanjie” conceptual field and all of which can reflect the effect of the glosseme system in the diachronic evolvement of the conceptual field. Comparing the semantic map of“Lanjie” conceptual field between Chinese and others, we can hypothesize that“one word has the meanings of‘block' and‘conceal', it entails the meaning of‘cover'.” In the present studies, the“conceal” meaning of Zhe is explained as “plea with bribery”, which inevitably ignores the semantic features of Zhe.