A Contrastive Study Of Derivational Noun With [+Human] In English And Korean

There are nominal suffixes with [+HUMAN] in both English and Korean. This paper compares the nominal suffixes with [+HUMAN] in English and Korean from the morpheme and semantic layers, and then explains their similarities and differences and the angle of etymology, sociolinguistics, lexical morphology and lexical semantics.From the contrastive study of nominal suffix with semantic features of [+ HUMAN], the paper gets the conclusions as below:1) Korean nominal suffixes with [+HUMAN] are more frequent than English nominal suffixes with [+HUMAN] in quantity and productivity.2) Both English and Korean nominal suffixes with [+HUMAN] can be added to the roots of noun, verb, adjective, numeral. The difference is that Korean nominal suffixes with [+HUMAN] also can be added to root of adverb, pronoun and onomatopoetic word.3) In the process of combination with roots, both English and Korean nominal suffixes with [+HUMAN] have morphological changes, such as dropping, increasing and changing. However, Harding phenomenon can be found in the process of combination with roots and Korean nominal suffixes with [+HUMAN].4)"OCCUPATION", "BACKGROUND", "CHARACTER", "PERSONALITY", "APPEARENCE", "BEHAVIOUR", "NICKNAME", "DEROGATORY SENSE"are common semantic content of English and Korean derivational noun with [+HUMAN]; "BELIEF", "HONORIFIC", "GROUP" and "QUALIFACATION"are uncommon semantic features in English and Korean derivational Noun with [+HUMAN]. The analysis shows that "OCCUPATION", "BACKGROUND", "CHARACTER" "PERSONALITY","APPEARENCE","BEHAVIOUR","NICKNAME","DEROGAT-ORY SENSE" are realized by the semantic features with [+HUMAN] both in English and Korean. But the "NICKNAME" is realized differently in English and Korean, in English it is realized by the roots with [+HUMAN], while in Korean by the suffixes with [+HUMAN]. For the uncommon semantic content, in English "BELIEF" is realized by the suffixes with [+HUMAN], while"HONORIFIC", "GROUP", "QUALIFACATION" are realized by the roots with [+HUMAN].