A Comparative Analysis of Chinese ‘玩, English ‘play’ and Korean ‘놀다’ from the Perspective of Lexical Typology

Abstract

Different languages have the same way of cognition of the same concept, but also have many differences. There are also ambiguities for words with the same conceptual meaning. The similarities will help people understand this language faster and easier, and the existence of differences and ambiguities also brings many barriers to understanding. Therefore, it is very necessary for people to understand the language to compare words in different languages under the same concept and find the similarities and differences between them.<BR> Regarding the similarities and differences between the cognitive existence of languages, this article chooses to analyze the semantic map. This paper sorts out and analyzes the data of dictionaries, corpora and related dictionary websites, and sums up 36 different meanings in three languages. After comparing and analyzing these 36 different sense items, 28 sense items were determined as the base points of the semantic map, and the semantic map was drawn on this basis. Through the comparison of semantic maps, it can be seen that in the three languages, the meaning of ‘玩耍’ diverges outwards, thus forming numerous meanings. Among the three languages, Korean has the strongest divergence and produces the most meanings. The semantic divergence of the three languages also has completely different expansion paths.<BR> Through this article, you can have a preliminary understanding of the commonalities and differences between languages. For learners of English, Chinese and Korean, they can also have a deeper understanding of the three languages, and they can use more accurate vocabulary when choosing words and making sentences.