Verbs with the meaning of falling in Korean

The article discusses the semantic field of the verbs of falling in Korean language. Semantics of the field of falling is investigated by using frame-based methodology of Moscow Lexical Typology group that is widely used for analysis of different semantic fields. In the article theoretical background is shortly discussed, necessary terms are presented (frame, domain etc.), and then semantic field of falling in Korean is investigated. It is shown that the choice of the verb of falling depends on several features of the falling object and situation on the whole (type of falling: falling from above vs. loss of vertical orientation vs. crashing down vs. detachment, starting and ending point, reason of falling etc.). In Korean there is one dominant verb tteleci-ta that can be used in the majority of situations with some exceptions. However, we have found eleven other specific lexemes — their usage is limited by the type of falling. The wideness of the usage differs from verb to verb, but there is no verb that would cross the frame borders: every lexeme covers a whole frame, its part, or a combination of frames, but not a set of parts related to different frames. We describe the meaning of each verb in terms of frames (or subframes) that they cover and provide examples. In our analysis, we rely on the set of frames that was developed beforehand by Moscow Lexical Typology group based on cross-linguistic data. Our Korean data were collected with the help of a context-based questionnaire: native Korean speakers were asked to translate sentences representing various situations of falling from Russian or English to Korean using the verb that suits the best the situation and providing synonyms for the verb in this context. In conclusive remarks we present an overview of metaphorical usages of the verbs of falling, and compare the semantic shifts to those found in other languages.