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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.

语义领域
感知义务
形式结构
共词化

阶段

  1. 1

    Auditory reception

    HEAR/LISTEN + WORDS/VOICE

    A listener perceives speech or deliberately attends to a speaker’s words.

  2. 2

    Attentive uptake

    HEAR → ACCEPT AS GUIDANCE

    Listening implies that the message is understood, accepted, or treated as advice or instruction.

    时间轴收录
    Ancient Greek
  3. 3

    Compliant action

    HEED → OBEY / COMPLY

    The expression conventionally describes acting according to another person’s words or displaying obedience.

    时间轴收录
    LatinFrenchEnglishGermanAncient GreekOld EnglishSwedishMandarin ChineseEgyptian (Ancient)AkkadianBiblical Hebrew

跨语言证据

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.

Japanese · 日本語

言うことを聞く

iu koto o kiku

自然
obey; do as one is told
用例

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
this child obeys the parents well
直译
this child listens well to what the parents say
注释
this child TOP parent GEN say thing ACC well hear
Korean · 한국어

말을 듣다

mal-eul deutda

自然
obey; heed
用例

시시는 의심하지 않고 어머니의 말을 들었다

Sissi-neun uisimha-ji anh-ko eomeoni-ui mal-eul deul-eoss-da

自然
Cissie obeyed her mother without question
直译
Cissie heard her mother’s words without doubting
注释
Cissie-TOP doubt-CONN NEG-and mother-GEN word-ACC hear-PST-DECL
Persian (Farsi) · فارسی

حرف‌شنوی

harf-šenavi

自然
obedience; compliance
Biblical Hebrew

שָׁמַע בְּקוֹל

šāmaʿ bə-qōl

自然
obey, comply with
用例

וַיִּשְׁמַע יְהוָה בְּקוֹל אֵלִיָּהוּ

wayyišmaʿ YHWH bə-qōl ʾĒliyyāhū

自然
YHWH heeded Elijah — read as “obeyed” by Glanz & Leal
直译
YHWH listened to the voice of Elijah (1 Kings 17:22)
注释
and.hear YHWH in-voice Elijah

地理分布

每个标记代表一个已记录的语言,颜色对应其例句组;点开可查看该语言的表达。

Hearing words or a voice Hearing verbs meaning obey 多个例句组

Marker positions are approximate cultural centres — they are not territorial claims. Tiles: OpenFreeMap · © OpenStreetMap contributors · Dark tiles: © CARTO.

历史比较时间轴

展示各语言中表达如何重叠、竞争与更替。悬停色带可查看完整时间范围与注记。

-2600-2400-2200-2000-1800-1600-1400-1200-1000-800-600-400-20002004006008001000120014001600180020002200LatinIndo-European › Italic (historical)oboedīre oboedīre (-200–600) Stage: Compliant action A compound of ob- and audīre “to hear,” attested from Plautus (dicto oboediens) through Late Latin, and the ancestor of the Romance verbs.FrenchIndo-European › Romanceobeïr → obéir obeïr → obéir (1120–2000) Stage: Compliant action First attested in the early twelfth century (Vie de Saint Brandan), from Latin oboedīre.EnglishIndo-European › Germanicobeien → obey obeien → obey (1300–2000) Stage: Compliant action Middle English obeien, taken up through Anglo-Norman obeier from Latin oboedīre.GermanIndo-European › Germanicgihōren → gehorchen gihōren → gehorchen (1100–2000) Stage: Compliant action Middle High German gehorchen, from Old High German gihōren, a prefixed form of hōren “to hear.”Ancient GreekIndo-European › Hellenic (historical)ὑπακούω ὑπακούω (-750–-450) Stage: Attentive uptake In Homer, “hearken, give ear to, answer a call” (Il. 8.4, Od. 4.283) — attentive response, on ἀκούω “to hear.”ὑπακούω “obey” ὑπακούω “obey” (-450–600) Stage: Compliant action From Herodotus (3.101) and Thucydides (1.29) on, the standard prose verb for “obey, submit”; Modern Greek υπακούω continues it.Old EnglishIndo-European › Germanic (historical)hīeran (+ dative) hīeran (+ dative) (750–1100) Stage: Compliant action Old English hīeran with the dative meant “obey, belong to”; the derivatives hīersum “obedient” and hīersumian “to obey” are built on “hear.” Replaced after 1066 by French-derived obey.SwedishIndo-European › Germanichlýða → lyda hlýða → lyda (1225–2000) Stage: Compliant action Old Norse hlýða “listen; obey” (Proto-Germanic *hliuþijaną, PIE *ḱlew- “hear”) continues as Swedish lyda, Danish lyde, Icelandic hlýða — all now primarily “obey.”Mandarin ChineseSino-Tibetan › Sinitic聽 “heed, obey” · 聽命 聽 “heed, obey” · 聽命 (-500–2000) Stage: Compliant action Classical Chinese 聽 “listen” takes the reading “heed, obey” in compounds like 聽命 “obey orders”; colloquial 听话 continues the same move with an overt “words” object.Egyptian (Ancient)Afro-Asiatic › Egyptian (historical)sḏm → ⲥⲱⲧⲙ sḏm → ⲥⲱⲧⲙ (-2000–1000) Stage: Compliant action Egyptian sḏm “hear; obey (someone)” runs through Demotic stm into Coptic ⲥⲱⲧⲙ, whose noun means both “hearing” and “obedience.”AkkadianAfro-Asiatic › Semitic (historical)šemû šemû (-1900–-500) Stage: Compliant action “To hear; to listen; to obey a word or command” throughout the corpus (CAD Š/2).Biblical HebrewAfro-Asiatic › Semitic (historical)šāmaʿ bə-qōl šāmaʿ bə-qōl (-1000–-150) Stage: Compliant action “Hear the voice of” as the Biblical Hebrew idiom for obeying, across the Hebrew Bible.
How to read this timeline
  • Dominant use
  • Emerging use
  • Declining use
  • Approximate range
  • Overlap period (two forms coexist)
Stages
  • 1 Auditory reception
  • 2 Attentive uptake
  • 3 Compliant action

语义演变目录中的相邻演变

语义演变数据库(DatSemShift)中收录的相关源—目标配对。未标注者为已接受的条目。

  • HEAR → AGREE

    Khoekhoe ǁnâuǃāgu “hear one another” → “consensus” — reciprocal hearing as agreement, the same composition as Ainu u-itak-nu.

  • SEE → OBEY (拟议)

    Old Turkic kör- “see”: a visual verb reaching the same target as the hearing verbs here.

  • SEE → HEAR

    Ancient Greek δέρκομαι, Latin vidēre, Old Turkic kör-, Australian languages — the perception modalities themselves interchange.

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