Language expresses the interior of human beings filled with every kind of emotions most clearly and exquisitely. Emotive expressions through language, which goes over the reflective response, concretize the feeling and allow its re-experience, and thr...
Language expresses the interior of human beings filled with every kind of emotions most clearly and exquisitely. Emotive expressions through language, which goes over the reflective response, concretize the feeling and allow its re-experience, and through this form man's sensitive faculty and enable him to make a social communication. This study attempted to make a vocabulary list of 'emotive declinable words' used as a predicate, among vocabulary for expressing emotions, and look into the characteristics according to their form and semantic classification with the intention of considering the usage modality of 'emotive declinable words' appearing in the Korean language textbooks for elementary, middle and high school students.
Emotion is defined as a subjective inner experience related to pleasure or displeasure, which is felt toward a stimulus or an object by an organism in a certain situation. Therefore, a sentence including an emotive declinable word consists of an experiential subject, causative stimulus and object, internal or external emotion expressive predicate. An emotive expression, which is psychologically related to sense, cognition and evaluation and which, semantically, is an unintentional instantaneous experience or inner psychological experience not expressed by volitional movement or act, exhibits the characteristics of non-intention, vulgarity and inaction. It also takes on the character modality of opposition in 'pleasure-displeasure', process in 'stimulus-response' and degree in 'weak emotion-strong emotion.' Based on this, emotive declinable words are distinguished from other declinable words in, first, their centric meaning belonging to emotional matter, being unable to be paraphrased into 'intend to~' or 'be inclined to~,' and not referring to a conscious act or movement.
Vocabulary of emotive declinable words in application of the presented method of distinction was 524 in total, 246 proper words (46.9%) and 278 Chinese origin words (53.1%), with numerical predominance of Chinese origin emotive declinable words. However, in frequency of usage shown in elementary, middle and high school Korean language textbooks, proper words were used 2533 times, 71.3%, out of the times of usage 3555 in total, Chinese origin words 1022times, 28.7%, which shows proper words are more used than Chinese origin words as emotive declinable words. Emotive expressions are, above all, direct and subjective and this seems to explain the more suitability in expressing by proper words, which are friendly and frank.
Out of the list of emotive declinable words, unitary words in proper word alone were 65 (12.4%), combined words 118 (22.5%) and derivative words 341 (65.1%), with a copious number of derivatives. In frequency of appearing in elementary, middle and high school Korean language textbooks, unitary word was 1616 times(45.5%), combined word 467 times(13.1%) and derivative 1472 times(41.4%). Derivative word was 538 times(15.1%) in proper words and 934 times(26.3%) in Chinese origin words, both being rather high in usage rate, and unitary words, compared to only 12.4% in vocabulary numbers, had a comparatively high rate of usage 45.5%.
The numbers by parts of speech for list of emotive declinable words are 369(70.4%) adjectives, 141(26.9%) intransitive verbs and 14(2.7%) transitive verbs. Emotive adjectives near half of the total number of vocabulary, which proves the fact that vocabulary has been more developed for expression of 'emotive state' than for 'emotional change' or 'emotional exhibition toward the object.' Emotive adjective with a large number of vocabularies also showed the most times of usage 77.0%. Next was the intransitive verb 15.9% and transitive verb 7.1%.
Though words for displeasure appeared in such a large number as to approach 68.1% of the total emotive declinable words, the times of usage shown in the textbooks were the frequency around 52.8%, lower than the number of words. Especially, compared to middle and high school, positive emotive expression was more used in elementary school textbook.
Next, if the sentence patterns for emotive declinable words used in elementary, middle and high school textbooks are arranged in grammatical cases by argument, emotive adjective structure appears N0-이 A’, ‘N0-의 N1-이 A’, ‘N0-이 N1-이 A’, ‘N0-이 N1-에 대해서 A’, ‘N0-이 N1-에/로 A’, ‘N0-에게 N1-이 A’, ‘N0-이 N1-에게 A’. Structures of emotive verbs are used in the grammatical cases ‘N0-이 V’, ‘N0-의 N1-이 V’, ‘N0-이 N1-이 V’, N0-이 N1-에 대해 V’, ‘N0-이 N1-에/로 V’, ‘N0-이 N1-에게 V’, ‘N0-이 N1-을 V’, ‘N0-의 N1-이 N2-을 V’, ‘N0-이 N1-에/로 N2-을 V’, ‘N0-이 N1-을 N2-에게 V’. This time, N0 is the experiencing subject, N1 the experiencing subject's part, cause or object, and N2 is the object as to or in place of. A and V are emotive adjective and verb, respectively, which demand an essential argument and compose a sentence.
True, this study was insufficient to establish the concrete objective of preparing a list of emotive declinable words and to provide clear criteria for classifying their meanings, but better studies are expected to follow based on the prepared list of vocabulary in emotive declinable words and the consideration of their usage modalities in elementary, middle and high school textbooks, which were both attempted in this study.