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영어

The purpose of this study is to analyze the semantic bleaching of the Chinese prefix “老” and the semantic attributes of “老+X,” which represents a person by combining 老 with a root (title, occupation, number, etc.), from a cognitive linguistic perspective. The main results of this study are summarized as follows: 　First, various combinations with “老” were suggested by analyzing dictionaries and corpora. Specifically, X was found to be a person, elderly, family, relative, friend, colleague, occupation, identity, job, class, generation name, body, animal, object, action, space, nature, state, and gender. Second, it was found that “老,” which is considered a complete affix, also contains a semantic element. In other words, although there are differences in the degree of semantic bleaching, it is semantically similar to the main meaning and appears in various ways due to the implied semantic qualities. Such aspect is derived from one of the semantic qualities of “老,” aging, and expressed as the semantic qualities of a long time, an honorific address, closeness, and skillfulness. This is because the meaning of “老” has been expanded through the metaphorical system based on the similarity in the process of semantic bleaching.