earticle

영어

Seemingly synonymous pairs in different languages are exchangeable in their core senses but not in their extended meanings, especially in abstract domains. The purpose of the paper is to reveal how and why this is so, from the perspective of cognitive semantics, with the comparison of English kill and Korean cwukita. It has been found that perspectivization is the main factor which causes the meaning distinction between the verbs, disallowing direct translation. The process of killing includes the force exertion stage, the pain stage, the weakening stage, the worsening stage, the death stage, and afterwards, the disappearance stage. Among them, English kill perspectivizes the pain, worsening, death, and disappearance stages and Korean cwukita perspectivizes the weakening stage as well. Furthermore, with the complements sound and speed, the two languages perspectivize different stages. English kill perspectivizes the disappearance stage and Korean cwukita, the weakening stage.