Semantic Structures of Polysemous Psych-adjectives in Korean: A Conceptual Semantics Approach

Semantic Structures of Polysemous Psych-adjectives in Korean: A Conceptual Semantics Approach Ilkyu Kim Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Imun-dong, Seoul, South Korea onefinedayjazz@hufs.ac.kr Abstract. Although researches have been conducted on the polysemous nature of some Korean psych-adjectives, no consensus has been made on the criteria used for evaluating the polysemy. Furthermore, few formalizations (semantic structures) have been proposed for the polysemous phenomena. The purpose of this paper is twofold: 1) to propose new criteria for distinguishing polysemous psych-adjectives from monosemous ones, and 2) to provide exact semantic structures for the polysemous psych-adjectives. For the second goal in particular, I will work under the framework of Jackendoff’s Conceptual Semantics. Keywords: Korean psych-adjectives, Conceptual Semantics, polysemy. 1. Introduction The idiosyncratic syntactic behaviors of psych-predicates in many languages have attracted linguists around the world since 1960s. Korean psych-adjectives, however, are also interesting from the semantic perspective; that is, some of them seem to be polysemous between the meanings of one’s purely psychological state and the objective property of an entity. Contrary to the arguments for the polysemy (e.g. S Kim 1994, H-K Yoo, J-N Kim 2005), it has not been recognized by many syntacticians and all the psych-adjectives have been treated as monosemous with the meaning of psychological state (e.g. Y-J Kim 1990, J-H Han 1999, Gerdts & Yoon 2001). Although researches have been conducted on the polysemous nature of some Korean psych- adjectives, no consensus has been made on the criteria used for evaluating the polysemy. Furthermore, few formalizations (semantic structures) have been proposed for the polysemous phenomena. The purpose of this paper is twofold: 1) to propose new criteria for distinguishing polysemous psych-adjectives from monosemous ones, and 2) to provide exact semantic structures for the polysemous psych-adjectives. For the second goal in particular, I will work under the framework of Jackendoff’s Conceptual Semantics. 2. Polysemous Korean Psych-adjectives Although most studies that deal with the syntactic phenomena of psych-adjectives consider them as monosemous, some researchers who focus on the semantics of Korean adjectives have shown that the meanings of psych-adjectives are not just all monosemous (e.g. C Lee 1976, S Kim, H-K Yoo 1998, J-N Kim 2005). In this section, I will examine some of their arguments and show that they are problematic in one way or another. 428 22nd Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation, pages 428–437 2.1. S Kim (1994) Among the researches that deal with the polysemy of Korean psych-adjectives, S Kim (1994) was the first to try to formalize the polysemy. Working under the framework of Conceptual Semantics, S Kim divides Korean adjectives into three groups: property adjectives, psych- adjectives, and quasi-psych-adjectives. According to him, property adjectives and psych- adjectives can be distinguished by whether the predicate requires experiencer as its argument. Quasi-psych-adjectives are adjectives that show characteristics of both property adjectives and psych-adjectives. S Kim (1994) defines quasi-psych-adjectives as adjectives that basically describe the objective property of an entity but still needs experiencer as its argument. (1) shows predicates …

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