From a cognitive viewpoint, we compare Mandarin Dui and Taiwanese Tui by looking into their sense developments in the Dui/Tui + NOUN Construction. Dui and Tui are usually regarded as lexical equivalents across Mandarin and Taiwanese, two of the major languages spoken in Taiwan. Assuming with Lakoff (1987) that polysemy is a semantic network with radial categories, we adopt a metaphorical approach in our investigation. Through metaphorical extensions, Dui and Tui develop distinct routes to developing differing but related senses, forming differential semantic networks. Both Dui and Tui profile spatial-, eventive-, and communicative-domain senses. However, Taiwanese Tui, but not Mandarin Dui, encodes a temporal sense. Apart from polysemous expansion, we also address the enantiosemy arising in the “to” and “from” senses attached to Taiwanese Tui. The findings of our study offer insight into the nature of polysemy as well as the lexical differentiation across Mandarin and Taiwanese.
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