A CLOSER LOOK ON THE VERB MOKTA ‘TO EAT’ IN KOREAN : IMPLICATIONS FOR KOREAN LANGUAGE LEARNERS FROM INDONESIA

Abstract

Learning Korean has recently gained popularity in Indonesia. One of the most frequently used words is mokta ‘to eat’. This paper looks into the semantic configuration of mokta as its configuration slightly differs than that of Indonesian. I obtained the data from online Korean language resources supplied by both private and government institutions. The observation of the data has indicated that the verb can be used to indicate denotative and metaphorical meanings. As for the denotative meaning, the verb mokta seems to be more fluid than that of Indonesian equivalent as it can take collocates within the semantic class of [+LIQUID] to some extent. This makes the acquisition is relatively more difficult than metaphorical meanings. Learners seemed to store the metaphorical meaning in different slot as lexicogrammar chunks. When accessing denotative meaning, the use of L1 semantic configuration of <makan> (Indonesian in this case) seems to be frequent as they considered it as a regular process that is similar to L1. I suggest that it is tolerated to some extent, but when they are going to advanced level, the configuration must be understood very well to achieve native-like acquisition.