한중 한자어 사용에 대한 통시적 연구 - 시각동사를 중심으로 -

Abstract

Most Chinese and Korean visual verbs originated from one specific character “目”, which refer to eyes. These visual verbs include:“看”、“見”、“望”、“視”、“觀”. This paper does a diachronic study on the most frequently used visual verbs such as “看”、“見”、“望”、“ 視”、“觀” together with their usage in Chinese and Korean literature. At the end of this study it concludes that most of these visual verbs have experienced dramatic changes through time in the aspects of their meaning and also how they are to be used. On the other hand, despite the fact that these visual verbs have lots of common meanings and usages in China and Korea, sometimes they have their different meanings and usages in the two countries. Although the developments of the semantic and word structures of these visual verbs are quite similar in the two countries, there are a great deal of differences among their usage frequency and grammar structure. An obvious example is that word “看”has evolved greatly and become the most frequently used visual verb in Chinese whereas it has not evolved at all and still is the least used visual verb in Korean. In addiction although there have been increasing usages of new grammatical structure in the Chinese literature since the Tang and Song Dynasty, there have been little change on this aspect in Korean literature. In recent years the culture exchange between China and Korea has grown very quickly and it is to go without saying that the present day is a very important new era for the Chinese Character education in both countries, especially its practical application in all aspects of the contemporary society. I hope this paper will provide useful contribution to the current Chinese Character education.