Abstract
This paper explores the polyfunctionality of kio 3 in Niri 7 kiann 3 ki 3 'Lì Jìng Jì' (1522-1566 AD), a Ming script of play written in Southern Min. Based on FrameNet (Fillmore, Johnson, and Petruck 2003) it establishes a set of frames to capture the related senses of kio 3 . Communication frame featuring kio 3 constitutes the core in a family of related frames with inheritance relationship such as counterfactive frame, name conferral frame and causation frame. It encompasses a list of roles such as speaker, addressee, message, topic, medium, and code in the framework of frame semantics (Johnson and Fillmore 2000). The paper aims at fleshing out interrelated semantic aspects of kio 3 induced by patterns of constructions. A cross-linguistic comparison of kio 3 in Southern Min and call in English yields the finding that synonyms in these two languages share partial common grounds, but there are also divergences that can only be explained on historical grounds.