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Abstract : In Chinese language semantic change, there is a phenomenon called “all paths lead to the same destination”, which refers to the fact that some words have different forms and meanings but the same pronunciations. Their semantic change chains intersect and ultimately generate the same meaning. Gen（根/跟）, meaning “find” is an example of this phenomenon.
Gen（根/跟） meaning “find”, as was properly recognized in the Guide to Officials（《吏学指南》） of the Yuan Dynasty, and in dynastic dictionaries and annotations of ancient books, but some large-scale dictionaries such as The Chinese Dictionary（《汉语大词典》） and the Grand Chinese Characters Dictionary（汉语大字典） do not include these characters, and there is nothing about their source of meaning in the academic world. As for their relationships, most scholars think they are “loan words”. Current research on these two words is not accurate and extensive enough.
Gen（根）, meaning “research” has appeared in the Southern and Northern Dynasties and the specific meaning “find” widely used in the Song and Yuan dynasties. At that time, the verb gen（根）meaning “find” was part of common language, in both spoken and written usage. The objects of this use of “research” could be events, effects, causes, etc., while the objects of “find” are mostly concrete people or things, which can be classified under the semantic category of “find”.
Compared with gen（根）, the verb gen（跟） with the meaning of “find” appeared later. Considering the problem that ancient books would be “modernized” in the process of spreading, the example of gen（跟） with the meaning of “find” may have appeared in the Ming Dynasty.
Gen（根/跟） with the meaning of “find” has different sources. The first Gen（根）meaning “find” is derived from the meaning of “exhaust”, and its semantic change chain can be summarized as follows: root → end → exhaust/research → find. The second gen（跟）meaning “find” is generated by the meaning “follow”, and its semantic change chain can be summarized as follows: heel → follow → find →research. Therefore, the meaning of “find” is the new meaning of the two words in their semantic change-chain, which belongs to the phenomenon “all paths lead to the same destination”. The difference between gen（根） and gen（跟） is that: as a verb, the main semantic meaning of gen（根） is “research”, referring to looking for reasons at the root of things ,which is static, with “find” as the subordinate meaning. The sequence of semantic change in the chain has the abstract meaning first, followed by the specific. In the case of gen（跟）, the meaning “find” is the main meaning, which is dynamic; and “research” is the subordinate meaning, whose specific meaning precedes the abstract in the semantic change. All of these meanings are determined by their original meanings, which is also the main reason why they have different usages in modern Chinese.
In Mandarin Chinese, gen（根/跟） doesn’t have the meaning of “find”, but is still used in modern dialects. Hakka dialect is the most extensively distributed, throughout eastern Guangdong, western Guangdong and eastern Guangxi; Cantonese follows, mainly in western Guangdong and eastern Guangxi; and Wu dialect and the Mandarin are distributed sporadically.
By discussing the example of gen（根/跟） with the meaning of “find”, we can see that the phenomenon of “all paths lead to the same destination” in Chinese language semantic change is worth researching, otherwise it will be confused with the phenomenon of “loan words”.
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Published: 19 April 2022
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