문어 말뭉치에 나타나는 '예쁘다'와 '아름답다'의 의미와 용법 비교 연구

Abstract

This research attempts to characterize two synonymous adjectives yeypputa ‘pretty’ and alumtapta ‘beautiful’ through an examination of a Korean written corpus. This study first examines the frequency of these two adjectives in the database, showing that alumtapta is far more frequently used than any other synonymous words in the database. Second, it examines the frequency of grammatical functions of yeypputa and alumtapta, showing that they are used both attributively and predicatively, and that about one fifth of the alumtapta examples take a nominalized form. Third, this work, after pointing out inadequacy of definitions of the two adjectives in Korean dictionaries, examines meanings of yeypputa vs. alumtapta in the database. Fourth, it explores collocation patterns of the two adjectives, showing that most of the yepputa examples are used to modify or predicate nouns which refer to human beings or concrete objects, while alumtapta co-occurs with nouns of diverse semantic categories of concrete objects and abstract entities. Finally, this research suggests that a corpus-based analysis of synonymous lexical items is a useful tool in characterizing uses and meanings of many synonymous words in Korean.