A Semantic Analysis Of English And Korean Adjectives On Taste

This paper makes a semantic analysis of English and Korean adjectives on taste, such as "sour","sweet","bitter","spicy/hot","salty" and "(?)","(?)","(?)","(?)","(?)" with the theories of comparative linguistics, lexical semantics, cognitive linguistics.From the semantic analysis of English and Korean adjectives on taste, this paper draws the conclusions as below:1) Taste is an instinct response of human. Human has the same taste sensation about the five tastes:"sour","sweet","bitter","spicy/hot","salty".Because of the same taste sensation, in English and Korean, both "sour" and "(?)(?),"sweet" and "(?)"bitter" and "(?)","spicy" and "(?)","salty" and "(?)(?)" have the same basic meaning.2) Compared with English, Korean adjectives on taste express taste in more details, i.e. Korean "(?),(?)" and English "sour", Korean "(?)" and English "sweet".3) On the basis of the same physical and psychological feelings, English and Korean adjectives on taste have the same extended meanings. Both English and Korean adjectives on taste are extended to mean other senses (Synaesthesia), such as sense of smell, sense of hearing, sense of touch, and are also extended to mean temper, emotion, etc.English and Korean differ in food culture, cognitive thinking, and language usages; therefore, English and Korean adjectives on taste also have different extended meanings. Different from Korean "(?)"(?)", English "sweet" also means temper. Compared with English "sour", Korean "(?)" also means sense of pain.