This study argues that the degree complement ‘死’ not only expresses an extreme degree but also conveys strong emotion. To substantiate this claim, adjectives occurring in the ‘X死’ construction were extracted from the BCC corpus and analyzed. The results show that “X死” occurs with emotion adjectives at a high token frequency of 48.8%, suggesting that the construction is particularly well suited to conveying the speaker’s emotion. In addition, sentiment intensity was compared across a total of 51 minimal pairs consisting of sentences containing ‘X死’ and propositionally equivalent sentences in which the degree complement was replaced by degree adverbs. BERT-based sentiment analysis and the SHAP XAI framework were employed for this analysis. However, an important limitation was identified: the degree complement ‘死’ was consistently interpreted as a token contributing to negative sentiment. To address this negative bias, the BERT sentiment analysis model was fine-tuned. The negative bias associated with ‘X死’ was corrected for 13 adjectives that occur frequently in the construction. Sentiment analysis was then conducted using the fine-tuned model. The results of a paired-samples t-test showed a statistically significant difference, t(50) = 18.778, p<.001. These findings indicate that sentences containing the degree complement ‘死’ encode a greater intensification of either negative or positive emotion than their corresponding sentences containing degree adverbs. The study therefore concludes that the degree complement ‘死’ functions not merely as a marker of extreme degree, but also as a linguistic device for intensifying and conveying affect.

본고는 정도보어 ‘死’가 정도의 극단화뿐만 아니라 강한 감정을 나타낸다고 보았다. 이를 증명하기 위해 ‘X死’의 결합 형용사를 BCC에서 추출하여 분석하였고, ‘X死’는 사례빈도 48.8%의 고빈도로 감정형용사와 결합하여 화자의 감정 전달에 적합함을 알 수 있었다. 또한 정도보어 ‘死’가 포함된 문장과 정도보어를 정도부사로 대체한 명제적 동의의 문장 총 51개 최소대립쌍을 감정 분석하여 강도를 비교하였다. 이때 BERT 감정 분석 모델과 SHAP XAI 모델을 사용하였는데, 정도보어 ‘死’가 일괄적 으로 부정 기여 토큰으로 분석되는 맹점이 있어 BERT를 파인튜닝 하였다. ‘X死’가 고빈도로 결합하는 13개 형용사에 대해 ‘X死’의 부정 편향을 교정하고 튜닝 모델로 데이터를 감정 분석한 결과, 대응표본 t검정 값 t(50)=18.778에 p<.001로서 정도보어 ‘死’ 예문은 정도부사 예문에 비해 부정 혹은 긍정적 감정의 심화를 유의미하게 내재 한다는 결론을 내릴 수 있었다.