국어 문어 말뭉치에 나타난 ‘혀’의 의미와 용법 분석

초록

This study attempts to characterize the meanings of hye ‘tongue’ through an examination of a written Korean corpus in line with the research on body-part terms. First, this research, after pointing out problems of dictionary definitions of the body-term hye, shows that the meanings and uses of hye can better be understood when the lexical item is examined in the context where it occurs. Second, this study shows the function-based meanings of hye and their frequency rates, which can be summarized as in the following: (i) literal, referential use 15.2%, (ii) displaying emotional, psychological attitudes 41.5%, (iii) uttering/ articulating functions 17.2%, (iv) tactile sense 16.9%, (v) sense of taste/taking in food 9.2%. These statistics show that hye is used to display emotional/psychological attitudes most frequently, contrary to the common belief that the tongue functions as an articulating and tasting organ. Third, examination of the present corpus shows that hye is dominantly used to display literal meanings and that the rate of the figurative use amounts to 2.6% (10 cases), showing the need for empirical evidence in the study of figurative meanings of lexical items. The figurative meanings are derived from the similarity between the source and the target, as shown in the metaphors such as TONGUES ARE FIRE FLAMES and TONGUES ARE FLOWER PETALS/TONGUES ARE STAMENS. Finally, this research suggests that a corpus-based analysis of body-part terms can better explain specific lexical items than traditional approaches to lexical semantics in the study of lexical items.

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