한중 공간형용사의 의미 확장 대조 연구 - “宽넓다, 窄좁다”를 중심으로

Abstract

This study investigated the semantic expansion patterns of Korean and Chinese spatial adjectives, “넓은/宽 (meaning “wide” in Korean/Chinese, respectively) and 좁은/窄 (narrow),” and analyzed the mechanism based on the theory of cognitive linguistics. To this end, this study established the concept of basic and expanded meaning by examining semantic descriptions in dictionaries, presented various examples used in real life by analyzing corpora, and categorized the usage. The results are as follows: First, the basic meaning of both “넓은/宽 and 좁은/窄” represents “width” in three aspects of wideness, area, and hole and gap, depending on the spatial characteristics. Second, “넓은/宽 and 좁은/窄” have semantic expansion in a range of areas; in particular, semantic expansion representing the categories of abstract areas was most active. In addition, more diverse patterns of semantic expansion appeared in Chinese since 宽/窄 cause semantic expansion in the form of compound words with component morphemes. In terms of parts of speech, the words are used only as adjectives in Korean, while they act as adjectives, verbs, and nouns as well in Chinese. Third, conceptual metaphors and image schemas serve as the main mechanisms for semantic expansion, which are closely related to repeated physical experiences. Fourth, both Korean and Chinese showed a difference in the semantic opposition of “넓은/좁은and 宽/窄,” which is because the first components of the opposite words, 넓은 and 宽, are selected as positive factors.