A Comparative Study Of Korean And Chinese Physical Vocabulary Idioms

Locution is the hyponym conception of idiom. It has fixed format and is widely used in everyday conversations. Be different from other idioms, it reserves the original meanings and is flexibly used in articles. Most of the locutions have rhetorical functions and characterized by spoken language form. It can express people' s social and life experience and it can be considered as a kind of product of ethnic spirit and culture.Human beings' organizations are similar. So we can find out that people all around the world use body locutions. This thesis aims for further understanding of two languages and thoughts in different cultural backgrounds through comparing the use of body locutions by Korean and Chinese.Briefly introduce the aim, general situation, content and methods of this research. Firstly, give the definitions of locution and body locution. Then specify the cultural connotations of body locution and limit its category. On the base of Korean and Chinese lexicographic meaning of body, compare and research the characteristics of lexical meaning of the target words—'eye, ear, nose, mouth and hand' . The characteristics of lexical meaning can be classified into three aspects: sense functional meaning, feeling expression and action·condition.Compare and analyze the characteristics of sentence structures of Korean and Chinese body locutions.Make a conclusion through the results of the above research, propose self-questioning for this research as well as the remaining issues.The common characteristics of two languages in lexical meaning: 1) In all kinds of meanings, locutions with negative meaning are more than the ones with positive meaning; 2) When expressing their sense functional meaning, both Korean and Chinese have no locutions of nose expression; 3) When they express their feelings, they use more locutions of eyes; 4) When expressing actions and conditions, locutions of "mouth" and "hands" are mostly used; 5) There are a lot of exaggerative expressions.The different characteristics of two languages in lexical meaning: 1) When expressing feelings, Korean use more body locutions than Chinese do; 2) The Chinese action and condition expressions are more than feeling expressions. More locutions of "mouth" and "hands" are adopted by Chinese.The structural characteristics of Korean body locutions: 1) Substitution is permitted; 2) The limit of its syntax structure is relatively less than others; 3) There are more narrative verbs than nouns. It' s difficult to give independent locution meaning to noun; 4) In the form of sentence structure "S+V" , there are more adjectives than verbs.The structural characteristics of Chinese body locutions: 1) most of them are composed by three syllables; 2) mainly adopt the "V+0" and prejudiced constructions; 3) Flexible application is not fixed.Through this comparison research, we can explore the characteristics of two languages in different background and understand the culture differences between the two nations. Locutions expressed through metaphor instead of explicitly expressing through body can make the two languages more vivid and interesting. We hope the research of this thesis is helpful for the foreign language learners to master the usage of locutions.