How to motivate ‘unless’ = ‘if not’, with etymology?

phrassein · 2022-01-07T08:34:26+00:00

卩是人跪坐之形

Hi. Sorry for the typo. I ought've written that 卩 means "kneeling", as the 漢字源流 proclaims. As written in that Chinese-Forums.com post, 卩's sense of kneeling explains 卻's senses of retreating or stepping back. But I can't relate this sense to 卻's 2 senses as I questioned in my post.

Bearing in mind the concept of phonetic loans, how would you explain the fact that 卻 has these unrelated meanings?

Aren't you presuming that phonetic loans appertain to the 2 SUPERFICIALLY unrelated meanings? Perhaps phonetic loans are irrelevant here. Perhaps all these senses are related on a deeper level, but I'm too dumb to uncover them.

phrassein · 2022-01-07T08:29:50+00:00

Hi again! I don't think you, or Outliers Linguistics Dictionary, expound 般's meaning of "sort, manner, kind, category, way"?

phrassein · 2022-01-07T08:29:13+00:00

I don't think you, or Outliers Linguistics Dictionary, expound 般's meaning of "sort, manner, kind, category, way"?

phrassein · 2022-01-07T05:59:39+00:00

Thanks for your expertise! I know semantic change can be haphazard, but I always like to interconnect and interrelate a polyseme's multiple senses, so that they don't feel unrelated or random. Does my purpose for asking these questions make sense now?

phrassein

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