From hearing words to obedience
How does “listen” come to mean “obey”?
Verbs of hearing and listening repeatedly grow a sense of obeying. The pattern recurs from Mandarin tīnghuà and Japanese iu koto o kiku to Latin oboedīre, built on audīre “to hear”, behind French obéir and English obey.
- 形式
- 共語彙化
段階
- 1
Auditory reception
HEAR/LISTEN + WORDS/VOICEA listener perceives speech or deliberately attends to a speaker’s words.
- 2
Attentive uptake
HEAR → ACCEPT AS GUIDANCEListening implies that the message is understood, accepted, or treated as advice or instruction.
タイムライン掲載Ancient Greek - 3
Compliant action
HEED → OBEY / COMPLYThe expression conventionally describes acting according to another person’s words or displaying obedience.
タイムライン掲載LatinFrenchEnglishGermanAncient GreekOld EnglishSwedishMandarin ChineseEgyptian (Ancient)AkkadianBiblical Hebrew
通言語的証拠
Each expression retains hearing or listening in its structure while conventionally expressing attention, compliance, or obedience. The Database of Semantic Shifts catalogues the change as shift 34 (hear/listen → obey) with 243 realizations across every macroarea, from Akkadian and Egyptian to Swahili and Hawaiian — among the most widely replicated semantic shifts on record.
Phrases with words or a voice as object
HEAR or LISTEN takes words, speech, or a voice as its object, and the phrase as a whole means heeding or obeying the speaker.
u-itak-nu
- 自然訳
- agree; obey
ǁnâuǃāgu
- 自然訳
- reach consensus; agree
ǁnâu
- 自然訳
- the base verb; with the reciprocal -gu, mutual hearing becomes agreement — the same composition as Ainu u-itak-nu
- 直訳
- to hear
- グロス
- hear
聽話 / 听话
tīnghuà
- 自然訳
- obey; be compliant
言うことを聞く
iu koto o kiku
- 自然訳
- obey; do as one is told
この子は親の言うことをよく聞く
kono ko wa oya no iu koto o yoku kiku
- 自然訳
- this child obeys the parents well
- 直訳
- this child listens well to what the parents say
- グロス
- this child TOP parent GEN say thing ACC well hear
말을 듣다
mal-eul deutda
- 自然訳
- obey; heed
시시는 의심하지 않고 어머니의 말을 들었다
Sissi-neun uisimha-ji anh-ko eomeoni-ui mal-eul deul-eoss-da
- 自然訳
- Cissie obeyed her mother without question
- 直訳
- Cissie heard her mother’s words without doubting
- グロス
- Cissie-TOP doubt-CONN NEG-and mother-GEN word-ACC hear-PST-DECL
söz dinlemek
- 自然訳
- obey; heed advice
حرفشنوی
harf-šenavi
- 自然訳
- obedience; compliance
nghe lời
- 自然訳
- be obedient; obey
שָׁמַע בְּקוֹל
šāmaʿ bə-qōl
- 自然訳
- obey, comply with
וַיִּשְׁמַע יְהוָה בְּקוֹל אֵלִיָּהוּ
wayyišmaʿ YHWH bə-qōl ʾĒliyyāhū
- 自然訳
- YHWH heeded Elijah — read as “obeyed” by Glanz & Leal
- 直訳
- YHWH listened to the voice of Elijah (1 Kings 17:22)
- グロス
- and.hear YHWH in-voice Elijah
地理的分布
各マーカーは一つの言語で、所属する例セットによって色分けされている。マーカーを開くとその言語の表現が表示される。
Marker positions are approximate cultural centres — they are not territorial claims. Tiles: OpenFreeMap · © OpenStreetMap contributors · Dark tiles: © CARTO.
比較歴史タイムライン
各言語で表現がどう重なり、競合し、置き換わるかを示す。帯にカーソルを合わせると期間と注記が表示される。
- Dominant use
- Emerging use
- Declining use
- Approximate range
- Overlap period (two forms coexist)
- 1 Auditory reception
- 2 Attentive uptake
- 3 Compliant action
カタログ上の隣接シフト
意味変化データベース(DatSemShift)に登録された関連するソース→ターゲットの組。注記のないものは承認済みの項目。
- HEAR → AGREE 1×
Khoekhoe ǁnâuǃāgu “hear one another” → “consensus” — reciprocal hearing as agreement, the same composition as Ainu u-itak-nu.
- SEE → OBEY 1× (提案中)
Old Turkic kör- “see”: a visual verb reaching the same target as the hearing verbs here.
- SEE → HEAR 9×
Ancient Greek δέρκομαι, Latin vidēre, Old Turkic kör-, Australian languages — the perception modalities themselves interchange.
参考文献
- Asociația dexonline n.d. 01Asociația dexonline (n.d.).Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române: asculta.
- Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities n.d. 02Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (n.d.).DWDS – Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache: gehorchen.
- Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities n.d. 03Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (n.d.).DWDS – Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache: gehorsam.
- Bilodid 1978 04Bilodid, I. K. (1978).Slovnyk ukraïnsʹkoï movy v 11 tomakh, vol. 9: слухатися.Naukova Dumka, Kyiv. http://sum.in.ua/s/slukhatysja
- Bosworth & Toller 1898 05Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898).An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary: hýrsumian.
- Bugaeva 2016 06Bugaeva, Anna (2016).On the innovative nature of Sakhalin Ainu: Focusing on nominalization.
- Bugaeva & Kobayashi 2022 07Bugaeva, Anna; Kobayashi, Miki (2022).Verbal valency.In Bugaeva, Anna (eds.), Handbook of the Ainu Language. De Gruyter Mouton. 497–544.
- Cambridge University Press n.d. 08Cambridge University Press (n.d.).Cambridge English–Turkish Dictionary: obey.
- CNRS n.d. 09CNRS (n.d.).Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales: obéir.
- Erman & Grapow 1926–1961 11Erman, Adolf; Grapow, Hermann (1926–1961).Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache, vol. 4: s.v. sḏm.Akademie-Verlag, Berlin.
- Glanz & Leal 2022 12Glanz, Oliver; Leal, Jonatas (2022).“God’s obedience”: A linguistic and narrative exploration of the Hebrew idiom in 1 Kings 17:22 and its theological implications.Andrews University Seminary Studies 59(2). 203–226. https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/auss/vol59/iss2/2/
- Haacke & Eiseb 2002 13Haacke, Wilfrid H. G.; Eiseb, Eliphas (2002).A Khoekhoegowab Dictionary with an English-Khoekhoegowab Index.Gamsberg Macmillan.
- HarperCollins Publishers 2021 14HarperCollins Publishers (2021).Collins English–Korean Dictionary: obey.
- Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana n.d. 15Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana (n.d.).Vocabolario Treccani online: obbedire.
- Lewis & Short 1879 16Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879).A Latin Dictionary: ŏboedĭo.
- Liddell et al. 1940 17Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940).A Greek–English Lexicon: ὑπακούω.
- Ministry of Education 2021 18Ministry of Education, Republic of China (Taiwan) (2021).Chongbian Guoyu Cidian Xiudingben: 聽話 tīnghuà.
- Priberam Informática n.d. 19Priberam Informática (n.d.).Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa: obedecer.
- Real Academia Española n.d. 20Real Academia Española (n.d.).Diccionario de la lengua española: obedecer.
- Shogakukan n.d. 21Shogakukan (n.d.).Progressive Japanese–English Dictionary, 4th ed.: 聞く・聴く.
- Tamura 1996 22Tamura, Suzuko (1996).Ainu-go Saru Hōgen Jiten [Dictionary of the Saru Dialect of Ainu].Sōfūkan, Tokyo.
- The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago 1956–2010 23The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (1956–2010).The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), vol. Š/2: s.v. šemû.
- Tran 2022 24Tran, Tri C. (2022).Reading & Writing Vietnamese: A Workbook for Self-Study.Tuttle Publishing. https://www.tuttlepublishing.com/japan/reading-and-writing-vietnamese
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- Zalizniak et al. 2000–2026 38Zalizniak, Anna; Bulakh, Maria; Ganenkov, Dmitry; Gruntov, Ilya; Kaprielova, Viktoria; Kondratieva, Violetta; Maisak, Timur; Mikhailova, Tatiana; Orlova, Maria; Russo, Maksim; Rykov, Elisei; Smirnitskaya, Anna; Bobrik-Fremke, Marina; Dereza, Oksana; Bibaeva, Maria; Voronov, Mikhail (2000–2026).Database of Semantic Shifts (DatSemShift 3.0).Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences. https://datsemshift.ru
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訂正
ここに書かれていることは誤っている可能性がある。記述に異議を出す、抜けている言語を足す、あるいは元になっているファイルを直接編集する。