Semantic Relationships and Cognitive Semantics Models of Japanese “nomu,” Korean “masida,” and Chinese “he”

This paper reorganized the dictionary meanings of Japanese "nomu," Korean "masida," and Chinese "he," which exhibit corresponding meanings, and based on this, examines the semantic relationships among these verbs.Specifically, the 11 meanings of Japanese "nomu" listed in the dictionary were reorganized into 10 meanings: (1) to put something in the mouth and swallow, (2) to inhale, (3) to accept, (4) to belittle, (5) to endure, (6) to take in, (7) to embezzle, (8) to hide and keep, (9) to transact on behalf of someone, and (10) to bet (especially on horse racing).The semantic scope of the Chinese "he" was reorganized from two meanings to one.Based on these semantic ranges, the semantic relationships among "nomu," "masida," and "he" were diagrammed as shown in [Fig.1].In addition, from a cognitive semantics perspective, the cognitive ranges used by native speakers of Japanese "nomu," Korean "masida," and Chinese "he" diagrammed for comparison.The results indicated that the cognitive scope of "masida" and "he" was similar.In contrast, the scope of "nomu" was considerably broader than that of "masida" in Korea or "he" in Chinese.Further, cognitive semantic models for these lexical items were presented in [Fig.4], [Fig.5 and 6], and [Fig.7 and 8], respectively.