日本語「マエ」と韓国語「앞」の認知意味論的分析

Abstract

There are nouns in Japan and Korean language that have both meanings related to space and time. These nouns start out from its basic meanings to distinguish space, and can expand from thesimilarities to distinguish time as well. As it will be discussed in this study, Japanese 「マエ」andKorean 「앞」are based on physical human experience, of its prototype meaning ‘the direction of thespace an organism confronts to’ to polysemy of expanded meanings caused from metaphor andmetonymy. First of all, actual examples were collected for 「マエ」and 「앞」to analyze each of itsmeanings and were categorized from the prototype category １ and sub-categorized from how themeaning is expanded. As a result, 「マエ」was categorized into 8 sections and 「앞」was categorizedinto 9 sections. Looking at the aspects of meaning expansions of「マエ」and 「앞」, it is verydescriptive and can be told that the meaning expands by metonymy if it is about invisible space, andshows abstract and invisible time if metaphor causes meaning expansion. Another category shows notonly one expansion of meaning but expansion caused by both metaphor and metonymy. This isbecause first, direction is provided to an object that is not human but based on human experience, andfrom then second comparison is made. According to the comparison between meanings of 「マエ」and「앞」, it shows that 「앞」hasbroader meanings than 「マエ」. More specifically, 「マエ」and「앞」correspond to each other inmeanings “direction of space an organism confronts,” “action existing in front of the space anorganism confronts,” space of direction a nonorganism confronts,“ ”situation within an incident,“and”previous actions based on a certain incident.“ However,the two meanings ”direction of positivity“ and”existing in front of a nonorganism, the person or the action related to nonorganism“ of 「マエ」doesnot exist in 「앞」. Also, 「앞」has meanings of ”eyes or organs that can see the direction organismconfronts or the space,“ ”direction of progress,“ ”future from present standard,“ and ”space orownership of something organisms affect“ do not exist in the meanings of 「マエ」. Lastly, from looking at the meaning of anology, if the meaning changes from space to time, 「マエ」only extends its meaning in one direction related to previous and past aspects, while Korean「앞」shows extension of both ways toward future.