KJC Korea
Journal Central

The purpose of this paper is to explore the significance and limitation of the definition of ‘meaning’ and to survey a desirable direction of the study of meaning. The major details of the argument are as follows: First, both a word in Chinese characters, ‘의미(意味)’ and a Korean native word ‘뜻맛’ are compound words. ‘의(意)․뜻’ displays mental intention, and is close to ‘meaning’. ‘미(味)․맛’ expresses the understanding of external feeling, and is close to ‘sense’. Second, ‘meaning’ is classified as seven kinds according to its perspectives: (a) ‘reference’ and ‘truth-condition’ are based on the prospective that meaning exists in the external world. (b) ‘sense relation’ is based on the prospective that meaning exists in language. (c) ‘use’ is based on the prospective that meaning is not fixed and operational. (d) ‘thought․concept’, ‘compound of component’, and ‘conceptualization’ are based on the prospective that meaning exists in our mind. Third, structural semantics and formal semantics in modern linguistics did not directly treat meaning itself by the former exploring ‘sense relation’ and the latter ‘truth-condition’. On the other hand, cognitive linguistics is recognized as being one step closer to the nature of meaning because it conceives the importance of ‘meaning’ and ‘semantics’ properly, and regards ‘meaning’ as based on embodied experience and as conceptualization of a dynamic process. Fourth, what we try to seek in our study of meaning is (a) to capture the phenomena of meaning properly, naturally and flexibly, (b) to make the study of meaning contribute to understanding humans and their life. This is closely related to our exploring the definition and nature of ‘meaning’.

The purpose of this study is to suggest that the frequency of use of emotion evaluation vocabulary and the evaluation attitude information can be applied to automatic classification of movie review. To this end, I analyzed the emotion evaluation vocabulary in the movie review and measured the word usage frequency according to the polarity of the evaluation attitude. In this process, the natural logarithm is used for the evaluation index score of each word. The results were as follows: First, as a result of automatic classification, the success rate was 55% and the failure rate was 30%. The success probability of automatic classification increased as the movie rating was higher or the length of the movie was longer. Second, it was found that weights should be given according to the semantic domain in the emotion evaluation vocabulary. If the evaluation index is increased for words that have the meaning of polarity, the accuracy of automatic classification will be improved. Based on this research, I would like to apply it to 'opinion classification' of news comment or product review.

The purpose of this study is to investigate Korean speaking proficiency development(Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency; CAF) and examine the effects of individual variables of learners on the Korean speaking proficiency. The study analyzed the correlation between learner’s language proficiency before studying abroad, intercultural sensitivity, personality, language use, learner’s social network, and Korean speaking proficiency development for 15 study-abroad participants. The data revealed that learner’s language proficiency before studying abroad doesn't affect on Korean speaking proficiency development. Also, the analysis indicated that there are positive correlations in three aspects: (a) between openness of learners and development of speaking accuracy; (b) between time spent speaking with native Korean speakers and development of speaking accuracy; (c) between durability(i.e., frequency of contact with native Korean speakers) in social networks and development of speaking complexity. And the factor singled out by most participants as interrupting Korean speaking proficiency development was time spent speaking in English with native Korean speakers.

This study aims to evaluate the relationship between the four different assessment types and constructs of each assessment in the speaking fluency of L2 Korean learners. This study classified the concept of fluency into two categories and set assessment types and constructs based on the previous studies Four different types of assessment are HA(Holistic Assessment), AA(Analytic Assessment), NA(Narrow meaning of fluency Assessment), and IA(Individual assessment of raters). Sixty-one intermediate-level Korean learners participated the study and they were asked to summarize the 10-minute maim comedy, ’Mr. Bean’. The recorded summaries were evaluated by five Korean lectures who had over three years teaching experience. Results revealed that all assessment types have relationship each other, but NA has slightly lower relationship than the other assessment types. There is no significant correlation between the number of speaking syllables and the frequency of pause and interjection. Also, the frequency of incorrect start, repetition, and reconstruction has no significant correlation with other factors except for the number of speaking syllables. Except for the factors mentioned above, the other assessment constructs has a significant correlation with each other.

This study is about contrastive analysis of sentence-ending forms in Korean and Chinese languages, based on sentence final endings in Korean and mood words in Chinese. Through a comparison of sentence-ending forms in different sentence types in Korean classified into a declarative sentence, an interrogative sentence, an imperative sentence, a sentence of suggestion, an exclamatory sentence, a promissory sentence and a permission sentence with certain sentence types of Chinese such as a declarative sentence, an interrogative sentence, an imperative sentence, an exclamatory sentence, an expression of promise and an expression of permission, this study introduces the concept of sentence-ending forms, the usage of typical sentence-final endings and mood words and its subclassifications and finds common ground and similarities in both languages.

The purpose of this paper is a case study on the forms that the Deaf people temporarily create to express objects that do not exist in lexicalized signs in Korean Sign Language. Classifiers claimed to belong to the productive lexicon are sign formation devices that produce not only lexicalized signs but also new signs. Productive lexicon is a sign formation component that uses a classifier to make visual characteristics of objects a language symbol. In order to support this proposal, we first examined lexicalized signs listed the Korean Sign Language Dictionary. We have confirmed that three types of classifier handshape are used in formation of lexicalized signs. Next, we looked at the signs that the Deaf people made instantly to express objects and situations that did not have lexicalized signs. As with lexicalized signs, we observed that the visual characteristics of objects that do not exist in lexicalized signs are used to make new signs by using classifiers. Therefore, the classifier is the device forming the signs, and the productive lexicon is the sign formation component.

In this paper, we analyze the semantics of Korean conditionals which are interpreted counterfactually (hereafter Korean counterfactual conditionals), focusing on the past tense -ess-. First we show that the presence or absence of the past tense -ess- in the antecedent of Korean conditionals is closely related to whether the presupposition introduced by the antecedent of conditionals is satisfied in the utterance context or not. Given this, we introduce Ippolito’s (2013) analysis on English counterfactual conditionals, which assumes that there can be three different layers of past tenses in English counterfactual conditionals, and different realizations of upper two layers of past tenses are related to whether the presupposition introduced by the antecedent is satisfied or not, and whether the conditional is interpreted as a counterfactual or not, respectively. Then, to apply her analysis to Korean, we classify Korean –(u)l kes- conditionals in terms of the following criteria: i) whether the presupposition introduced by the antecedent is satisfied or not; ii) whether the past tense -ess- is realized only in the consequent or both in the antecedent and in the consequent, and; iii) whether the past tense -ess- in the consequent appears before or after the modal –(u)l kes-. Then we discuss the structure and meaning of each type of Korean counterfactual conditionals, in comparison with various constructions of English conditionals discussed in Ippolito (2013).