A Study on the Characteristics of Korean-Chinese Shell Noun Constructions According to Newspaper Topics

This study aims to identify commonalities and differences by comparing and analyzing the characteristics of Korean and Chinese shell noun constructions across different newspaper topics, from the perspective of cognitive strategy.The main findings are summarized as follows.First, regarding the frequency and reliance on high-frequency shell nouns across newspaper topics, Chinese shell nouns appeared most frequently in the social domain and least frequently in the economic domain.In both languages, shell nouns were frequently used in the social domain, showing a clear contrast between the social and economic domains.The reliance on shell nouns was generally higher in Korean than in Chinese.In particular, across all domains, Chinese showed a lower proportion of shell noun constructions involving the '-da' form compared to Korean.Second, in the classification of specific Chinese shell nouns, limited shell noun constructions were more common than corresponding shell noun constructions in all domains, indicating a distinct difference.Among limited shell noun constructions, the following patterns appeared in order of frequency: '-da is N+V' > '-is N+V' > 'np/cl (of) N' > '-da is N (of)-'.In the case of corresponding shell noun constructions, only backward corresponding forms were observed.At the textual level, only adjacent types of Chinese quotation marks and shell noun referents were found.In forward citation, original expressions or formulas were mainly cited, whereas in reverse citation, content was typically quoted verbatim.Third, from the perspective of cognitive strategy, the shell noun meaning in Chinese functioned as a way to objectify the speaker's subjectivity in the social domain.In contrast, in the economic domain, it was more directly used to express the speaker's subjectivity.The shell noun assertion employed a specialization strategy across the social and economic domains, allowing the speaker to conceptualize objective facts under a single term, assertion.In the cultural domain, a similar strategy was employed, allowing the listener to interpret the assertion as having the semantic quality of [-factuality].