다의어 동사 ‘eat’과 ‘먹다’에 대한 어휘유형론적 연구

Abstract

This study is to analyze the English verb ‘eat’ and its corresponding Korean verb ‘mekta’ in the framework of Lexical Typology proposed by François (2008). It shows the semantic network of EAT based on the ontological and functional properties of each sense and the empirical observations, and presents the comparative analysis of the semantic maps of the two verbs. In English ‘eat’ colexifies all the senses related to ‘to have less’ and some parts of ‘to put something into the body’, but in Korean ‘mekta’ only colexifies parts of the senses related to ‘to gain’ and some of ‘to put something into the body.’ That means the senses of Korean ‘mekta’ and English ‘eat’ are different. This study is designed to see how similar and different the two languages are with respect to the senses of the verbs. This study also suggests two things. One is that it is more effective in the description of the transitive verbs to make the semantic maps of the verbs using the central sense rather than using the specific sense. The other is that the central sense of the verb is very important to study something common as well as different in languages. This result could help the language learners better understand the meanings of the verb ‘eat.’