A Study on the Trends and Current Status of Research on Korean Lexical Semantics.

This study aims to examine recent trends in lexical semantics and to explore how the subject matter and methodologies of lexical semantic research have evolved over time. To this end, a key word analysis was conducted on articles published in Korean Semantics, with the goal of identifying the predominant themes in contemporary lexical semantic research. A comparison of 412 articles from 1997-2011 and 430 articles from 2012-2024 revealed a decline in the frequency of key words associated with structuralist and cognitive semantics, while key words related to corpus linguistics and discourse have become increasingly prominent. Furthermore, the emergence of new key words pertaining to computer-assisted linguistic research suggests a growing interest in computational approaches. Subsequently, the study examined topics in lexical semantics that have recently seen active research. In terms of research topics, interest in neologisms has increased markedly with related studies being conducted across various fields. Moreover, researchers are increasingly utilizing diverse data and large-scale language resources from the new media era, moving beyond traditional texts. In terms of methodology, the study confirms that the trend of expanding semantic research methods―from corpus linguistics to current large language models (LLMs)―through various computer-based tools is accelerating.