本文藉由歷時語料的呈現，觀察現代漢語程度副詞「分外」由方位詞組發展成程度副詞的歷時演變過程。「分」、「外」連用的詞組形式共現首見於魏晉南北朝時期，表示「在職分之外」義，在唐代發展出詞彙義「超過一般範圍、特別」，進而發展成為程度副詞，用以形容程度量非比尋常地大。上述詞彙內部結構的演變過程與漢語詞彙歷時的雙音化趨勢及詞彙化（lexicalization）理論有關，語法功能的演變則與語法化（grammaticalization）理論相關。另外，本文以Lyons（1977）、Heine et al.（1991）提出的主觀（subjectivisation）為基礎，採用Lakoff & Johnson（1980）所提出的概念隱喻理論（Conceptual Metaphor Theory），為「分外」的歷時演變提供心理認知層面的詮釋。最後，藉由跨語言材料的比對印證，本文提出“ABNORMAL > intensifier”，認為該路徑是世界上諸多語言形容「程度大」語義的詞彙的共同發展路徑之一。

This study firstly probes into a diachronic survey of degree adverb fen-wai in Mandarin Chinese and examine its language change. Fen and wai coordination had originated before Tang Dynasty, denoting the meaning ‘beyond the duty’. In Tang Dynasty, the lexical meaning
had extended to ‘exceeding the general range, particular’. Later, this coordinate had further developed as degree adverb with the meaning ‘extraordinarily large amount’. As the semantic change of fen–wai shows, the grammaticalization and lexicalization are the major causes for the lexica l and syntactic change of fen-wai. To prove our claim, the diachronic data is applied to Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson 1980) and provides cognitive explanation.The result confirms that, the development of fen-wai supports our proposal of intensifier —
“ABNORMAL > intensifier”, which is also considered as one of the general process in the development of world languages.