“流量”的语义跨域演变与语法功能扩展

The Cross-Domain Semantic Evolution and Syntactic-Functional Expansion of “Liuliang” (Traffic)

摘要: “流量”一词的语义经历了从物理度量到数据量化再到社会隐喻的三阶段跃迁。该演变以概念隐喻、转喻扩展和语义网络重构为认知基础，形成了从物质流动到数据传递再到注意力汇聚的跨域关联，并在语法层面呈现词性扩展、句法功能增强及搭配固化等特征。文章进一步辨析认为，这些语法表现属于词汇功能扩展而非典型语法化，但其搭配固化与构词能产性已显示出向语法化方向发展的潜在趋势。技术革新、平台经济、社会文化和语言系统内部规律四大因素共同推动了流量的语义跨域演变与句法功能扩展，体现出语言对社会结构转型的适应性，为理解数字时代汉语词汇演变提供了典型个案。

Abstract: The Chinese term liuliang has undergone a three-stage semantic shift: from physical measurement to data quantification, and further to social metaphor. This evolution is cognitively grounded in conceptual metaphor, metonymic extension, and semantic network reconstruction, forming cross-domain associations from material flow to data transmission and then to attention aggregation. At the syntactic level, it exhibits part-of-speech expansion, strengthened syntactic functions, and collocational fossilization. The article further argues that these grammatical manifestations represent lexical functional expansion rather than typical grammaticalization; however, its collocational fossilization and word-formation productivity already show a potential tendency toward grammaticalization. Four driving forces—technological innovation, the platform economy, sociocultural factors, and inherent rules of the language system—jointly propel the cross-domain semantic evolution and syntactic-functional expansion of liuliang. This reflects language’s adaptability to social structural transformation and provides a typical case for understanding lexical evolution in Chinese in the digital age.