KJCKorea
Journal Central

Humans are born into the world, live their lives, and event ually die. The vocabulary related to this ‘death’ is more diverse compared to other words. These words are interconnected in an organic relationship. This paper aims to analyze the semantic differences of words related to ‘death’. The vocabulary related to ‘death’ forms various semantic fields, which can be broadly divided into three categories. The related vocabulary of ‘death’ is first divided into three subcategories: <Method>, <Subject>, and <Expression>. These are further subdivided into <Method> as <Action>, <Cause>, <Punishment>; <Subject> as <Age>, <Number of People>, <Religion>, <Family>, <Status>, <Living Beings>; and <Expression> as <Treatment>, <Metaphor>. The semantic features of the words included in these 11 subcategories were analyzed. This paper studied a total of 409 words related to <death> by classifying them into subcategories, and most of the words are formed with Chinese characters. These words are gradually being forgotten over time, and multiple synonyms are used for the same meaning. This indicates a change in our mental world regarding the linguistic world. It is important to identify the changes in the words of the semantic fields through such research and to create new words.

Death, Semantic Field, Semantic features, Semantics, Lexicology