This thesis deals with systematic polysemy in Korean nouns. We are concerned with the contextual variation in the meaning of a word.
Systematic polysemy is characterized by regularity and predictability. We can group words into classes based on the c...
This thesis deals with systematic polysemy in Korean nouns. We are concerned with the contextual variation in the meaning of a word.
Systematic polysemy is characterized by regularity and predictability. We can group words into classes based on the common regular semantic property. Where a new word occurs in a context, we could predict the contextual meaning by the regular property of semantic class, which the word belongs to. The possible contextual meaning is undespecified in the lexical semantic structure and the specific contextual meaning could occur by the contextual effect especially combining adjectives and verbs.
In this thesis, we describe systematic polysemy in Korean nouns by the EuroWordNet top ontology and represent lexical semantic structure by generative lexicon theory. We take the form of linguistic classification where words are categorized by the shared meaning component and concerned with the representation of lexical semantic information.
First, we classify Korean nouns into several types: entity, event, state and concept. Entity type is divided into Person, Plant, Animal and Artifact with origin. Person can be referred to formal, constructional, and functional property. Animal and Plant can be used to refer to based on the part-whole relation. Artifact is divided to several classes with functional perspectives. Containers can be extended to their contents, vehicle can be interpreted to the agent of vehicle and the place where person get in and off. Name of the place can be referred to place, people, building and institution. Abstract contents can be represented as concrete artifact in the representation class, which include 'text, money and image'.
Second, we are concerned with the event noun. Especially with semantic type shift that occur from the event to entity type. We classify them as agent event, result event, theme event, instrument event, time and place event. These are participants of the event structure and can be highlight in a context on the basis of the semantic property of event noun. Especially with Sino Korean event noun, it can be shifted to entity type without morphological change.
Third, we are concerned that state noun can be shifted to entity type. They are classified as human property, artifact property, event property, place and time property. State noun can be referred to object that is modified by the property. These phenomena happen to when the relationship of property and object is associated or fixed. The formal property of object can be associated with the object.
In this thesis, we dealt with entity, event and state noun, which can be interpreted as an entity type. Systematic polysemy of nouns cannot just occur to entity nouns, but also event and state nouns. This kind of polysemy can be described to semantic class and predicts possible contextual meaning based on the regularity.