A Comparative Study Of The Composition Of English And Korean Compound Verbs

Compounds refer to a new single word that are formed by two or more words.There are compound nouns,compound adjectives and compound verbs.This thesis compares English and Korean compound verbs,and tries to answer the following three questions;1)What are the inner features of English and Korean compound verbs?2)What kind of changes take place in the process of combing two components into a compound verb?3)What features do these changes have in terms of morphology,category and meaning?This thesis summarizes the following findings.Firstly,English and Korean compound verbs have five the same inner structures,which are "object-action","manner-action","degree-action","location-action" and "direction-action".From the aspect of inner structures,both components of English and Korean compound verbs refer to "action",but it only can be seen in the second component of English compound verbs,whose first component has the features of "object,material,instrument,time,location,source,manner,image,quantity,degree and direction".Secondly,in the processes of compounding,English and Korean compound verbs both experience category changes,and those changes take place at the first component.For example,from a verb to an adverb,or from an adjective to an adverb.These changes take place in inner structure of "manner-action" in both English and Korean compound verbs,while inner structure of "position-action" of Korean compound verbs also change.Thirdly,Korean compound verbs not only have category changes but also have morphological changes,and those changes also take place at the first component.For instance,an addition and a deletion of case markers.In the process of compounding of an adverb and a verb,an adverbial case marker-(?) is deleted,and then combined to a verb.When a verb and a verb is combined,the end of first component-(?) is deleted and then added case markers-(?)/-(?)/-(?).Fourthly,in the processes of compounding,both English and Korean compound verbs have meaning transformations,either meaning of the first word transforms(A’+B=C),or meaning of the second word transforms(A+B+=C),or meaning of both first and second words transform(A++B+=C).Among them,A++B=C and A+B+=C take place in both English and Korean compound verbs.However,A++B+=C can be only found in English compound verbs.What’s more,in the processes of compounding,the meaning of the first and second components of some Korean compound verbs do not change.The meaning transformations take place after compounding,such as A+B=C+ and A+B=A/B.