Translating Korean Negation: Based on the Lexically Layered Model

Abstract

This study explores the hierarchy of negative prefixes in English and Korean. English prefixes could be divided into class Ⅰ affixes and class Ⅱ affixes. Korean short-form negation has five limitations of prefixes, and Korean short-form negation has broader productivity, precedes negative prefixes, works in post-lexical boundary, and has word boundary. However, Korean negative prefixes have few applications and cannot transgress short-form negation, work in lexical boundary, and has syllable boundary. We could consider Korean short-form negation as a class Ⅱ affixes and Korean negative prefixes as a class Ⅰ affix. We also could apply this hierarchy to Korean-English translation&interpretation. With regards to long-form negation working in sentence boundary as class Ⅲ negation, the model matches each language’s negation to other language’s negation. If there are no appropriate expressions in one category, we move to a higher boundary. However, in spoken text, we return to class Ⅱ affixes when translating English to Korean because short-form negations are used more commonly in spoken text than long-form negations.