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The Principle of Reciprocity and Semantic of Adjectives Properties ─ Understand the adjective property in the context of the activities

GUO YI BIN 1

1수원대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Previous studies have generally conceived adjectives to denote a “property” or “state” of an entity. However, this conception does not take the interpretation of adjectives such as heavy/light and hard/fragile into sufficient consideration; the meanings of these words are best characterized in terms of some activity involving the relevant entity. Lakoff(1987) uses the term “interactional property” in this regard. Our analysis assumes that an interactional property is equivalent to an “affordance”, i.e. the opportunity to carry out a certain activity. For instance, the sentence “The trunk is heave” does not merely describe the objective state of the trunk but also implies the resistance against carrying the trunk. In this paper, we provide a descriptive devise, i.e. an action frame to represent the meaning of interactional properties.

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