A Contrastive Analysis on Agency in English and Korean

초록

This study examines some differences between English and Korean with respect to the questions of how far and in what ways the linguistic realization of 'agency' notion can be varied in terms of semantic extensions. As for the language-specific factors that characterize the difference in the notion of agency between English and Korean, it is proposed that the concept of agency in English can be more easily extended to include inanimate entities than it can be in Korean. Thus, English extends the notion of agent to a wider range of situations than Korean, hence allowing non-prototypical agents to be construed as agents (or expressed as subjects). A general typological difference between English and Korean in relation to the notion of agency is that English is more permissive than Korean in the way in which non-prototypical agents are realized as agentive subjects through a wider range of the semantic extension of agentivity. Finally it is suggested that different language coding system and structural variations between English and Korean lead to different linguistic manifestations in the notion of agency.

키워드