KJCKorea
Journal Central

The purpose of this article is to analyse Korean taste adjectives, especially sweet and sour terms. By adopting componential analysis of meaning, I analyse the lexical field of Korean taste adjectives. In early study the analysis was very rough. But in this study I try to analyse them systematically. Here I analyse two problems, the semantic components and the lexical field of Korean taste adjectives. For solving the problems I analyse the semantic components of separate Korean taste adjective firstly. And secondly I suggest the lexical field of Korean taste adjectives on this semantic analysis. As a result the taste adjectives which belong to the same lexical field are systematized by the degree of semantic component <satisfaction> or <dissatisfaction> and the meanings of them are described clearly. In addition to this result I show the fact that in Korean taste adjectives the adjectives for sour and sweet taste are abundant compared to the adjectives for bitter and salt taste. In particular the adjectives for sour taste are the most abundant in Korean and this is because the Korean food culture abounds in fermented food like Kimchi.

semantic component, componential analysis, lexical field, taste adjectives, adjectives for sour, adjectives for sweet고 창 운건국대학교 문과대학 국문과 교수143－701 서울시 광진구 화양동 1 건국대학교 문과대학 국어국문학과 전자우편：ccuuko@naver.com