배수 표현의 의미 혼동에 대한 분석과 제언

Abstract

The meaning denoted by the multiplicational expressions in Korean is soconfusing that the amount or quantity may be interpreted in two ways evenunder normal conditions. The problematic multiplicational expressions are thosephrases that have the increment predicates(of the meaning of ‘increase’)concatenated with the noun ‘bae’(배, meaning ‘time’ or ‘multiple’) and itspostposition ‘-ga’(-가, subject case-marker), or its deleted form of null-marker,or ‘-na’(-나, non case-marker used for emotional focus). In this paper, thosemultiplicational expressions are argued to arouse meaning confusion throughsome structural comparisons. Contrary to the increment phrases with numericamount, the multiplicational expressions show the grammatical mismatchbetween the case-marker and its corresponding meaning, and thus the meaningconfusion. The same phenomenon is observed by the comparison between theincrement phrases with percent units and the multiplicational expressions,confirming the meaning confusion hypothesis. On the basis of thisargumentation, the need for the correction of the usages is held and somesolutions are suggested that may help to avoid the meaning confusions.