역사 말뭉치에 기반한 국어 재귀사 ‘자기’의 분포와 기능

Abstract

This study investigates the diachronic distribution and functions of the Korean reflexive ‘caki’ using historical corpora from the fifteenth to early twentieth centuries. Previous research has largely treated reflexives either within syntactic binding theory or pragmatic functions of empathy and point of view, often separating these domains. Our corpus analysis shows that ‘caki’ emerged in religious texts, spread through new fiction, and sharply increased with Bible translations in the nineteenth century, while shifting from subject/modifier to object and adverbial functions with complex pragmatic properties. A diachronic corpus-based approach thus provides a broad foundation for reexamining reflexive distribution in modern Korean and clarifying the linguistic constraints that regulate their interpretation.