A Comparative Study on the Meanings of Korean ‘말하다, 말씀하다’ and Chinese ‘說’

Verbs like 'say,' 'talk,' and 'speak' in Korean and Chinese correspond to the single words ‘말하다,’ ‘말씀하다,’ and ‘說.’ This paper aims to analyze the semantic realization conditions of these verbs and elucidate the semantic correspondences between Korean and Chinese speech verbs. There are few prior studies on speech verbs, and there appears to be no discussion on the contrastive analysis of the semantic realization conditions of Korean and Chinese speech verbs. The act of speech involves the speaker expressing intentions and attitudes through language, which includes speaking out loud, providing or seeking interpretations, making or requesting suggestions, criticizing, warning, threatening, etc. In this paper, speech verbs are defined as “verbs that express a person's thoughts in a vocal form by making sounds with their mouth.” Speech verbs have semantic attributes such as [+vocal linguistic act], [+human], and [+thought]. Among the many speech verbs that fit this concept, ‘말하다’ has the most individual meanings compared to other speech verbs and exhibits a variety of meanings depending on its combination with noun phrases, complements, adverbial phrases, etc. Therefore, due to its complex semantic characteristics, ‘말하다’ is most suitable for this comparative study. By elucidating the correspondences of each meaning of Korean '말하다' and its honorific form '말씀하다,' and Chinese '說,' this study will reveal the subtle differences between Korean and Chinese speech verbs. This will help Chinese learners of Korean to reduce errors caused by mother tongue interference in the process of using Korean speech verbs and contribute to the compilation of Korean-Chinese bilingual dictionaries and translation projects. In this paper, the semantic analysis and contrast were conducted based on the semantic analysis theories presented by Choi Ho-cheol (1993, 1996), Nam Kyung-hwan (2005), and Kim Hye-ryeong (2015). Based on the definitions of Korean '말하다,' '말씀하다,' and Chinese '說' in dictionaries, we conducted semantic evaluation to identify the commonalities and differences in lexical meanings, analyzed the semantic realization conditions, and compared the correspondences. For meanings not listed in dictionaries, we verified their actual usage in real language environments using corpora. Through this process, we investigated the meanings and examples that are not included in dictionaries but are used in reality, and identified the actual semantic correspondences of '말하다,' '말씀하다,' and '說' through tables. The contrastive analysis results show that Korean '말씀하다' and '말하다' correspond only in the dimensions of conveying information and making requests. Korean '말하다' and Chinese '說' do not correspond in the dimensions of making requests, evaluations, introducing marriage matters, and indicating related phenomena, but they correspond in various other dimensions. From this, it is concluded that '말씀하다' and '說' only correspond in the meaning of conveying factual information.