Usage of Human Nouns for Inanimate/Non-human Referents: A Quantitative Analysis Focusing on Its Usage from YouTube Video Clips

This paper is a quantitative follow-up study of Lee’s (2017) qualitative examination on the usage of Korean human nouns for inanimate/non-human referents. It investigated the usage of “demonstrative + human noun” construct (e.g., yay ‘this child,’ i-chinkwu ‘this friend’) referring to inanimate referents by examining various factors that were chosen based on findings and discussions from Lee (2017) and Kim (2018, 2021). Statistical results conformed to the findings of these earlier studies, showing that human nouns referring to inanimate referents were favored when referents were compared to other things or had concrete concept. In addition, it was also revealed that formality conditioned the realization of human noun usage as human nouns for inanimate/non-human referents were favored in less formal contexts. These results provided a quantitative verification of Lee’s (2017) findings and additional insights to Kim (2018, 2021) along with the usefulness of interdisciplinary approaches to understanding sociolinguistic variables.