코퍼스 분석을 통한 fate와 destiny의 맥락적 용법 비교

Abstract

Non-native speakers of English are often confused about the use of a Korean word, ‘unmyeong’ (운명), which corresponds to fate and destiny in English. In fact, fate and destiny are terms that are often used as synonyms as if there were no differences between the two words. Ordinary dictionaries just show the differences between these words along with the shared meanings but are not able to show the clear distinctions between them. The purpose of this study is to distinguish between the uses of the two confusingly similar words fate and destiny in context by means of the ‘Binary Opposition Strategy’. This is based on the concept Binary Opposition (BO) found in deciding the distinctive features in structural phonology and semantics, a strategy that is involved in distinguishing a pair of related, similar lexical or grammatical items. The study, through the COCA, demonstrates that these two confusingly similar words are well distinguished by a BO such as [±devine], [±changable], [±future], [±negative connotation], and [±final aspects of life]. Fate is distinguished by [+devine], [-changable], [-future], [+negative connotation] and [+final aspects of life], whereas destiny is distinguished by [-devine], [+changable], [+future], [-negative connotation] and [-final aspects of life].