한·중 신체어 ‘혀/舌’의 의미 확장 양상 대조 연구

초록

In everyday language, human body terms not only possess literal and referential meanings, as concrete physical objects but also have meanings that extend into various other domains, thus referring to non-physical realms as well. This study analyzes the Korean and Chinese body term ‘tongue’ as the object of analysis, investigating from a cognitive linguistics perspective how the semantic expansion of ‘tongue’ is realized in Korean and Chinese, as well as the categorization direction of this semantic expansion, clarifying the similarities and differences in semantics between the two languages. The conclusions of the study are as follows: First, the area where the original meaning of ‘tongue’ in Korean and Chinese expands most vigorously is the domains of form and function, extending from the tongue as a part of the body to the meaning of it as a speech organ, crucially expanding the meaning through its role as a means of communication ‘language’ and extending the conceptual network to abstraction areas from ‘person’ > ‘animal’ > ‘plant’ > ‘object’ > ‘activity’ > ‘abstraction’. Second, although both languages conceptualize ‘tongue’ as a source domain, there are certain differences in the form of conceptualization. In the realm of objects, Korean refers to ‘rafters of a building’, while Chinese relates it to ‘hats’ and ‘shoes’. Third, the semantic expansion of ‘tongue’ in Korean and Chinese exhibits both homogeneity and heterogeneity between the two languages. The former is related to human bodily experiences, while the latter originates from the cultural backgrounds and characteristics of specific language communities.

키워드