KJCKorea
Journal Central

This study conducts a contrastive analysis of the modal meanings expressed by the Korean auxiliary verb '버리다' and the Chinese resultative complement '掉' within a shared cognitive-semantic framework of emotional intensification. Through a critical review of preceding studies, it identifies the limitations of conventional neutral interpretations and binary (affirmative/negative) approaches that have not fully accounted for their affect-related functions. From a cognitive-semantic perspective, the modal meaning of '버리다' is redefined as a device that emphasizes the speaker’s affective stance, foregrounding the intensity of emotion rather than directly encoding its polarity. Building on this perspective, the study analyzes '掉', which shares structural and functional similarities with '버리다', in terms of a common underlying cognitive mechanism observed in both Korean and Chinese. The findings reveal that while both expressions function as resources of emotional intensification, '버리다' exhibits a higher degree of grammaticalization and a more salient, relatively less context-dependent expression of the speaker’s subjective attitude, whereas '掉' shows stronger dependence on surrounding discourse and realizes emotional intensification in a comparatively weaker manner. By situating both forms within a unified cognitive-semantic mechanism rather than treating them merely as markers of completion, removal, or negative emotion, the study illuminates both the universal and language-specific aspects of emotional expression in Korean and Chinese.

This study aims to examine how modern Chinese speakers perceive, evaluate, and linguistically express food texture. To this end, restaurant review texts from various Chinese platforms were collected and analyzed. Texture-related expressions were categorized into six physical dimensions—surface, firmness, elasticity, viscosity, moisture, and temperature—as well as their composite forms. The analysis reveals that expressions of food texture in Chinese extend beyond sensory description and function as evaluative tools that reflect judgments about food quality and value. Particularly, lexical items such as 嫩 (tender), 脆 (crisp), and Q弹 (chewy and elastic) serve not only to describe tactile sensations but also to convey cultural and aesthetic evaluations. These findings suggest that food texture constitutes a significant dimension of Chinese culinary aesthetics and taste culture. This study contributes to the broader understanding of sensory language and demonstrates the potential of vocabulary research grounded in real-life discourse.

This paper aims to systematically grasp the diverse meanings of the Complex Directional Complements ‘guolai(過來)/guoqu(過去)’. To achieve this, we categorize and analyze various types of ‘V+guolai(過來)/guoqu(過去)’ featuring non-motional high-frequency verbs into three main Macro Event types based on Talmy(2000)’s theory: the Motion Event, the Event of Realization, and the Event of State Change. In the process, we observe an interactive relationship between the passage path meaning of ‘guo(過)’ and the deictic components ‘lai(來)/qu(去)’, leading to a pattern of progressive subjectification and development. As ‘guo(過)’ is abstracted from a concrete spatial path to a passage path meaning in the temporal and qualitative domain, ‘lai(來)/qu(去)’ evolve from simple proximity/distance relative to the speaker to meanings reflecting the speaker’s subjective perceptions, such as desire/undesire and affirmation/negation. Such highly abstract meanings of ‘guolai(過來)/guoqu(過去)’ often lack direct counterparts in Korean or English, demonstrating a unique linguistic typological characteristic of Chinese while highlighting the difficulty for learners in acquiring these expressions. Therefore, this paper proposes a method to enhance learners’ usage ability of ‘guolai(過來)/guoqu(過去)’ by presenting it as a relevant PBL(Problem-Based Learning) ‘problem’ for learners to solve and internalize through self-directed learning.