KJC Korea
Journal Central

This study aims to: first, understand the current learning status of idiomatic expressions in Korean Sign Language(KSL) through the analysis of KSL textbooks published up till now by KSL Professional Institute, and secondly, propose a list of KSL educational idiomatic expressions. Accordingly we examined past literature and analysed KSL textbooks. As a result of the literature review, we identified that idiomatic expressions in KSL are not distinguished from modification of sign and polysemy. This is seen in the criteria of narrow sense of idiomatic expressions, that asserts more than one linguistic signs are not employed as a mere sum of meanings. This means that the modifications of signs and polysemy, both of which do not comply with the formal criteria of idiomatic expressions, are considered as idiomatic expressions. Next, as a conclusion of analysis of KSL textbooks, there were only three books which explicitly covered idiomatic expressions. Even the textbooks that introduced idiomatic expressions manifestly presented one word as idiomatic expressions, thereby violating the formal criteria for idiomatic expressions, defined as "phrases of two or more words." As per the time period when KSL idiomatic expressions were taught, they were introduced in basic level KSL textbooks, unlike the awareness that the idiomatic expressions were to be educated in advanced level; in few numbers though. We have also identified the phenomenon that the KSL idiomatic expression were few in narrow sense and more in the broad sense. Thus, we propose a list of KSL educational idiomatic expressions that includes both narrow and broad senses.

In this study, we focused on the metaphors of animal body parts, explained characteristics and principles of the conceptualization, and discussed how these metaphorical expressions can be expanded. In chapter 2, we dealt with the correlation between animal metaphors and the metaphors of animal body parts and pointed out that the latter show more complex aspects than the former in the conceptualization. In chapter 3, we divided the metaphorical expressions of animal body parts into two types according to their constructions to examine how they are conceptualized. The metaphorical expressions consisting of solely an animal body part are mainly associated with the negative valuation if it correspond to a human body part. Otherwise they are mostly influenced by the frame of UP-DOWN metaphor. The metaphorical expressions consisting of an animal plus an animal body part are usually associated with the low valuation if the focus of their source domain is figure but they are affected by the symbol of the animal and the function of the animal body part if the focus of their source domain is function. In chapter 4, we captured the networks from the metaphors of animal body parts and revealed how the metaphorical expressions be expanded through these networks. This study emphasized that one can explain and predict the expandability of metaphorical expressions if they examine aspects of the expansion by the networks from the metaphors of animal body parts and the target domains mapping them in discourse contexts.

This study investigates the semantic characteristics of path expression through path verbs in fictive motion. In the previous research, the fictive motion was examined the definition, classification, and experimental studies on such recognition. This study examined the way of the path expression realized through the path verbs and its semantic characteristics. The results of this study are as follows. First of all, motion perception in fictive motion appears through specific paths and motion, and path perception precedes. In addition, there are an postposition or a path verb in the way of representing the path in Korean. This indicates that fictive motion perception is closely related to the PATH scheme. Next, in fictive motion, the path markers appear as adverbs with postposition ‘을(를)’, which indicates the whole event, as well as postposition such as ‘에서’ and ‘까지’. The types are divided into ‘linear’, ‘curved’ and ‘accompaniment’, and the schematic is presented. First, ‘linear’ is a motion perception through a point on the motion path, second, ‘curved’ is a motion perception through a curved motion path, and third, ‘accompaniment’ is a motion perception through a accompaniment object. Various path perception in fictive motion show the diversity of the range of paths that can be fictively recognized, and also the diversity and delicacy of human thinking.

The aim of this paper is to consider the strategic selection of Korean hear-honorific level in the translation of western novels, especially focusing on ‘hao’ style in the three versions of translation of 『The Great Gatsby』. Even though ‘hao’ style doesn’t have a normal position in the hear-honorific system of contemporary Korean, it is still used in the translation text and some inadequacies are found. This paper suggests ‘hao’ style should be strategically selected if the age and the gender factors of discourse participants are satisfied, and if translator has obvious intention to express the archaistic style or the psychological distance between speaker and hearer.

This paper aims to discuss comprehensively how the habitual, a kind of grammatical category, is realized in Korean. In Chapter 2, reviewed the prior studies and confirmed that ‘habitual’ can be defined as expressing some characteristic situations, via some actions appearing repeatedly over a long, different periods of time. In Chapter 3, after revealing that there are ‘-곤 하-’ and ‘-어 버릇하-’ as mark of Korean habitual, observed the characteristics of the constructions which they form each. The results showed that the constructions by ‘-곤 하-‘ could not represent the situation that can not be repeated, the truth and the general situation, such as permanent attribute. Also they could not co-occur with the expressions that specified a particular short time point or how many times the situations was repeated. Furthermore, although the constructions by ‘-어 버릇하-’ are similar in many ways to the constructions by ‘-곤 하-’, there are some differences that the subject should be animate and it mainly represents a situation in which the subject actively performs an action in that it is a relatively less grammaticalizated expression.

The purpose of this study is to establish basic emotions and to understand the categories and characteristics of emotional words in order to construction a Korean emotion ontology. As artificial intelligence technology has developed, many studies have been conducted to understand human emotions using artificial intelligence technology. It was used to understand the consumer’s intentions through exploring emotions in movie reviews and product reviews. However, most of prior research has focused on two types of emotions (i.e., positive and negative emotions) and the roles of discrete emotions have yet been explored. Constructing an emotional ontology is one of the first steps to investigate discrete emotions using artificial intelligence technology. In this study, data for developing a discrete emotion ontology were collected. First, 24 basic emotions were set, and then emotions were tagged for all words in the Korean dictionary “Urimalsaem”. The set of this data is meaningful as basic data for Korean emotion recognition. In addition, it can be used as basic data for consideration of the emotional vocabulary of Korean.

Based on the discourse functional approach, this paper examined from the driving force of the backchannel of ‘geureonikka(그러니까)’ to the appearance of the discourse of it. The summary of this paper is as follows. First, the driving force of the backchannel of ‘geureonikka(그러니까)’ is the conjunctive ending ‘-nikka(-니까)’ that constitutes ‘geureonikka(그러니까)’. The ‘-nikka(-니까)’ puts the preceding clause in a premise position, which makes ‘geureonikka(그러니까)’ what the conversation participants already know about the information of the interlocutor’s utterance. In addition, due to the characteristic of ‘-nikka(-니까)’ giving a justification to the following clause, ‘geureonikka(그러니까)’ gives a justification to the preceding utterances interlocutor was speaking just before. This shows that the conjunctive ending ‘-nikka(-니까)’ is the driving force of the backchannel of ‘geureonikka(그러니까)’. Second, in the process of discourse markers, ‘geureonikka(그러니까)’ was dedicated to the meaning of the entire phrase ‘geureonikka(그러니까)’ that expresses consent and sympathy with the interlocutor’s utterances. The following utterances of the entire phrase ‘geureonikka(그러니까)’ to agree with the other person’s utterance is usually something that the speaker and listener can guess. As a result, following utterances were frequently omitted, and ultimately, only ‘geureonikka(그러니까)’ was enough to express consent and sympathy for the interlocutor’s utterances. This made ‘geureonikka(그러니까)’ to be used as a marker of backchannel in the discourse dimension. Third, ‘geureonikka(그러니까)’ was appearing in the discourse due to the interactive requirements of ‘-jan-(-잖-)’ and the rhetorical question. The ‘-jan-(-잖-)’ and the rhetorical question have assumed that the content and the answer of the utterance are already shared by the speaker and the listener. In other words, the speaker’s belief that the listener will sympathize with his thoughts in the utterance or utterance itself is revealed in the sentence of the ‘-jan-(-잖-)’ and the rhetorical question. ‘geureonikka(그러니까)’, as mentioned before, ‘-nikka(-니까)’ makes the preceding interlocutor’s utterances already known. Therefore, ‘geureonikka(그러니까)’ is a suitable marker to satisfy the speaker’s beliefs and expectations in the ‘-jan-(-잖-)’ and the rhetorical question.

The purpose of this study is to prove that the meaning difference between intention expressions ‘-gess-’ and ‘-eulgeosi-’ is revealed not only in relation of the scene of utterance but also in consideration of the listeners. To prove this point, this study divided the context of the speaker‘s intention into two categories: ‘In case of accepting or rejecting the listener’s intention’ and ‘In case of listener’s intention is not specified’, and look through the aspect of use in each case. This study finds that ‘-gess-’ is often used when the speaker accepts the listener’s request or receive permission from the listener for his intention, while ‘-eulgeosi-’ is used more frequently when the speaker rejects the listener’s request or does not care about the intention of the listener. And if the speaker determines that the listener has a neutral attitude toward his or her intentions, then the use of ‘-gess-’ and ‘-eulgeosi-’ will be decided by relation of the scene of utterance rather than consideration of the listener.

This paper presents the current research trends in neologisms and discusses issues regarding the use of frequency criteria for the analysis of Korean neologisms from the perspective of corpus linguistics and lexicography. The literature on neologisms usually agrees that frequency plays a central role in the inclusion of neologisms in the dictionary; however, frequency is more complex than it appears as it entails a number of factors such as the time span of a word’s use as well as the variety of registers and aspects of frequency. The use of Web data to extract neologisms – instead of a balanced corpus – has brought about a new range of more complex issues that call for new ways to be tackled. This study investigates the issues raised by the application of frequency criteria to the neologism analysis when using Web corpus methodology. Chapter 2 reviews previous research trends related to neologism frequency from the point of view of linguistics and neologism studies. Chapter 3 examines and discusses frequency issues in terms of the unit and object of neologisms (3.1), Web register variations (3.2), and the relationship between frequency and users’ perception (3.3).