Semantic Structures of Polysemous Psych-adjectives in Korean: A Conceptual Semantics Approach

Although researches have been conducted on the polysemous nature of some Korean psych-adjectives, no consensus has been made on the criteria used for evaluating the polysemy. Furthermore, few formalizations (semantic structures) have been proposed for the polysemous phenomena. The purpose of this paper is twofold: 1) to propose new criteria for distinguishing polysemous psych-adjectives from monosemous ones, and 2) to provide exact semantic structures for the polysemous psych-adjectives. For the second goal in particular, I will work under the framework of Jackendoff’s Conceptual Semantics.