TTLA: Idioms for evaluating people in Korean and Vietnamese

Author name:CHOI HAE HYOUNG

Thesis title:Idioms for judging people in Korean and Vietnamese

Dissertation field:Linguistics

Specialized:Comparative linguisticsCode: 62 22 02 41

Name of postgraduate training unit:University of Social Sciences and Humanities – Vietnam National University, Hanoi

1. Purpose and research objects of the thesis

The purpose of the thesis is to contribute to clarifying the similarities and differences in language and culture between Korea and Vietnam, helping to deepen understanding of language and culture, and promoting exchange activities between the people of the two countries.

The research object of the thesis is the structural and semantic characteristics of idioms evaluating people in Korean and Vietnamese.

2. Research methods used

- Descriptive method, with many different analytical techniques to describe the structure and semantics of idioms evaluating people in Korean and Vietnamese: sentence component analysis, direct component analysis, lexical meaning analysis (literal meaning) and idiomatic meaning (figurative meaning), etc.

- The comparative method is used to analyze and compare the structural and semantic characteristics of idioms in Korean and Vietnamese.

3. Main results and conclusions

3.1. Main results:

- The thesis compared and contrasted the concepts of idioms including terms, categories, etc. in Korean and Vietnamese and then built a theoretical basis.

- The thesis has described, analyzed and compared the structural types and structural expression forms (short phrases and short sentences) of idioms evaluating people in Korean and Vietnamese according to morphology and syntax, then analyzed and compared from the perspective of national thinking.

- The thesis also describes, analyzes and contrasts the semantics of human evaluation in Korean and Vietnamese from symbolic and cultural perspectives.

3.2. Main conclusions:

- Idioms evaluating people in Korean and Vietnamese have similarities in terms of concepts, structural features (structural types), idiomatic meaning features, corpus (word groups used) to create idiomatic meanings, symbolic motifs, etc. These similarities are related to general linguistic concepts and the universal characteristics of idioms in particular.

- Idioms evaluating people in Korean and Vietnamese have differences in terminology, structural features (how to use structural types, structural expression forms), semantic features (types of meaning and ways of creating meaning), etc. These differences originate from differences in Korean and Vietnamese language and culture.

- The thesis research shows that in the process of evolution, language is affected by the 'complementarity principle' (the development of grammar supplements the deficiencies of the language structure). The structure, semantics and culture of language are organically related to each other, and the similarities and differences in language are closely related to the similarities and differences in culture and thinking.

SUMMARY OF DOCTORAL THESIS

The author's name:CHOI HAE HYOUNG

Thesis title:The idioms which evaluate human characters in Korean and VietnameseScientific branch of the thesis:Linguistics

Major:Contrastive LinguisticsCode:62 22 02 41

The name of postgraduate training institution:University of Social Sciences and Humanities – VNU-Hanoi.

1. Thesis purpose and objectives

The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to clarifying the same and different features related to language and culture in Korean and Vietnamese, to deepen more understandings on language, culture and to promote exchanging activities between two people.

An object of the study is the special features of structure and semantics in idioms that evaluate human characters in Korean and Vietnamese.

2. Research methods

- The descriptive methods with many analytic methods, which are different each other, to describe structure, semantics of the idioms that evaluate human characters in Korean and Vietnamese: the analysis of sentence-components, the analysis of immediate formation, the analysis of vocabulary-semantics (sentence meaning) and idiomatic semantics (metaphorical meaning), etc.

- The comparative and contrastive methods are used in order to analyze and contrast the special features of structure and semantics of the idioms that evaluate human characters in Koean and Vietnamese.

3. Major results and conclusions

3.1. Major results

- This dissertion has compared and contrasted the concepts of idioms in Korean and Vietnamese which include terminology, categories, etc, and constructed theoretical bases.

- This dissertion has described, analyzed, and contrasted the patterns of structure and the formalities expressing structure (phrase or clause) of the idioms which evaluate human characters in Korean and Vietnamese in morpho-syntactic way, later this dissertion has analyzed, and contrasted them from the perspective of people's thinking way.

- The thesis also has described, analyzed, and contrasted semantics of the idioms that evaluate human characters in Korean and Vietnamese from the viewpoint of symbolizing vocabularies and culture.

3.2. Major conclusions

- The idioms that evaluate human characters in Korean and Vietnamese share the same features related to the concepts, the special features of structure (the patterns of structure), the special features of idiomatic semantics, the lingual materials (the groups of vocabulaies used) to compose the idiomatic semantics, the motives of symbolization, etc. These same features have relationship with the common concepts of general language, and the inclusively special features of individual idioms.

- The idioms that evaluate human characters in Korean and Vietnamese have the different features in terms of the terminology, the special features of structure (how to use the patterns of structure, the formalities of expressing structure), the special feature of semantics (the semantic patterns, and how to compose semantics), etc. These different features have their roots from the different features of language types and cultures of Korea and Vietnam.

- The study of thesis shows that in the process of evolution, language is effected by 'the principle of subsidiarity' (grammer develops into the way to supplement the weak points of language structure). Structure, semantics, and culture of the language have the organically close and mutual relationsip with the same and different features of culture and thought.