Semantic map and hbv in english, chinese and korean—a case study of hand, 手 and 손

Abstract

Semantic map is often used for semantic analysis in the research of grammatical forms and structures than lexical forms and meanings in linguistic typology. This paper, by means of Semantic Map Model, conducts the typological analysis of the lexical meanings of [+HAND] in English, Chinese and Korean, which typologically belong to three different types of languages, that is, English is inflectional, Chinese is isolating and Korean is agglutinative. From the conceptual space and the semantic map of hand, 手 and 손, we can find that their meanings are extended on the basis of their basic meanings of [+part of body], [+holding things] and [+doing things] from holding something with hands to controlling something or somebody with power, from a person who does something with hands to a person in general, from actions which are done with hands to actions in general, from skills done with hands to methods in general. The semantic map of [+HAND] also conveys the relationship and distance among the lexical meanings, and concludes and predicts the dynamic evolution of the lexical meanings.