‘很不A’의 의미와 제약 조건 ― 공손 원리를 중심으로

Abstract

Through the corpus search, this paper examined that the adjectives in ‘Hen Bu A’ generally have a positive meaning because they intentionally adopt and use the form of ‘Hen Bu A’ instead of directly using negative adjectives based on the Principle of Politeness. Since the denial of the antonym A refers to ‘neutral area + B’, the speaker can reduce the burden of utterance compared to the situation in which the negative word B is directly directed, and the listener also has room to take the negative evaluation more comfortably. Although the expression does not directly indicate the negative word B, since it contains the speaker's intention based on the Principle of Politeness, the listener infers that what the speaker implies is B. ‘Bu A’ can receive the modification of ‘Hen’ because ‘Bu + positive adjective’ is interpreted as a negative adjective through the Principle of Politeness, so ‘Bu A’ refers not simply to the negative meaning of A, but to an attribute meaning equivalent to B, so it has degree. ‘Hen Bu A’ is an intentional choice that puts the ‘Principle of Politeness’ ahead of the ‘Principle of Cooperation’ and corresponds to a kind of politeness scheme.