Comparative Research On Chinese And Korean Quasi-affixes Based On Dynamic Circulation Corpus

We can say that it is inevitable for whatever language to have direct or indirect connections with a foreign one, and, at the same time, be influenced by a foreign language. Although the influence power of a language varies with distinct national strength of each country, ties do exist between different languages. Normally, a language is easy to be influenced by another who is close to it in geographic position. China and South Korea are neighboring countries. We’ve established close relations in term of politics, economy, and culture and so on a long time ago. One of the most obvious influence from China in culture exchange, are Sino-Korean Words.Sino-Korean Words (Korean Hanja) have a special position in Korean’s lexical system. Korean is composed of pure Korean, Sino-Korean Words and foreign words. Sino-Korean Words, also known as Korean Hanja, are Chinese characters which were brought to Korea long time ago and whose pronunciations were assimilated by Korean phonological system. That is to say, they are Chinese characters with Korean pronunciations. Although they are borrowed from China, we normally don not consider them to be borrowed words but just Sino-Korean Words of a single category.Chinese characters were so influenced by language background and social conditions of South Korea that their meanings, patterns and usage started-to vary from Chinese language since the characters were introduced into South Korea. There are even newly created and used characters in Korea combining all the Chinese attainment of Korean people. Also, with the influence of the third Chinese character using country, Japan, the change of Sino-Korean Words is more obvious. Meanwhile, as time goes by, China, the birthplace of Chinese characters, also continuously creates new words with the meanings and patterns of the current words keeping changing all the time.Affixes exist in both Chinese and Korean languages. There are Sino-Korean affixes as well as affixes of pure Korean in Korean language system. As a crucial part of affixes of Korean language, the affixes of Chinese characters play an important role in Korean lexical system for the strong functions of word-building. Although many similarities appear between Sino-Korean affixes and Chinese characters, there are actually differences. So to some foreigners, there must be something intricate during the learning process of Korean.By analyzing a great number of data from dynamic Korean news corpus and comparing usage conditions of Sino-Korean affixes, the thesis is trying to figure out the most commonly used Sino-Korean Words in Korean news and similarities and differences between affixes of Chinese characters and Sino-Korean Words. The thesis will divide Sino-Korean affixes into tow categories, namely, prefixes and suffixes and conduct comprehensive analysis to the meanings and usages, on the basis of which conduct a comparison study between Sino-Korean Words and Chinese characters.The study, in this way, can help Chinese learners get a better understanding of Sino-Korean Words, minimize the mistakes caused by inaccurate mastering of the similarities and differences between Chinese characters and Sino-Korean Words and increase the efficiency of language learning. The research findings of this thesis have reference and application value towards Chinese and Korean bilingual education and natural language understanding.The thesis is consisted of five parts.In the first chapter, the author first elaborates on the significance of the topic, the research value, and the current research situations and research scope as well as the methodologies. Then, the author moves to discuss the Sino-Korean Words and affixes of both Korean and Chinese languages in details. The discussion about Sino-Korean Words is divided into three perspectives, namely, the scope, part of speech and structure and features, while in the discussion about features of affixes in both Chinese and Korean languages, the author focus on the feature analysis of both affixes of Chinese characters and of Sino-Korean Words.In the second chapter, the affixes of Chinese characters and of Sino-Korean Words are divided into prefixes and suffixes. The author analyzes some latest research related to the topic in both China and South Korea, discusses about the relevant terms, the determination criterion of affix from different scholars and affix lists. Then the thesis summarizes the affixes in some frequently-used dictionaries in both China and South Korea.Chapter III is a dynamic research, which research on the establishment of dynamic corpus, including the disciplines and methods of sampling as well as the organization and classification of data in corpus, with a focus on statistical analysis. According to frequency, frequentness and examples of each entry, the author summarizes both the prefixes and suffixes of Sino-Korean Words into tables and lists in the appendixes every entry’s frequency and frequentness.Chapter IV is about the comparative study of quasi-affixes of both in Chinese and Korean languages, including negative prefixes and negative suffixes. The study of suffixes is further divided into research on noun suffixes and research on predicative suffixes, such as the comparative study of "化"("-ize"), where the research of noun suffixes is studied from tow perspectives, namely, research on personal suffixes such as“家”、“者”、“员”、“师”、“手”(similar to "-er") and comparative research of "的"、"性"(adjective suffixes, similar to "-ed" or "-ied"). Comparative analysis will proceed from tow perspectives:meaning and grammar by asking questions such as whether the meaning of the above mentioned affixes in both Chinese and Sino-Korean Words have obvious distinctions; do those affixes have other functions except for being affixes; what kind of root and part of speech can be used before or after those affixes. By comparative analysis, the author will finally come to a conclusion.In the conclusion part, the author summarizes the overall information of the study, the actual usage of Sino-Korean affixes, as well as the research findings of comparative analysis of the affixes in both Chinese and Korean languages.