“順著” and “沿著” are two prepositions about path of action.The minor semantic differences between them are difficult tomaster in Chinese learning. Based on the large-scale corpus, thisarticle tries to compare and contrast the two wordssynchronically and dychronically from the semantic andpragmatical percetives. It also compare the schemata of theirtypical images.
The preposition “順著” appeared before “沿著”，thus it wasused more frequently than “沿著”. The meaning of “順著”as averb was consistent with the meaning as a prepostion; On thecontrary, “沿著”appeared later than 順著，mainly used aspreposition. From the synchronic perspective, “沿著” has higheruse frequency than “順著”，which is evident in scientific worksand news writing.
The prominent image of “順著” is the real displacement ofobjects, moving in a certain direction with the aid of externalforce. The prominent image of “沿著” highlights the process andconcomitant of motion, usually in different directions, whether ina straight line or in zigzag motion. When describing the virtualmovement, “順著” is less abstract than “沿著”, and the sentencewith “沿著” often has a lot of metaphoric meanings.