A Study of Sino-Korean Phonology

Its Origin, Adaptation and Layers

Youyong Qian

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315279794
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The term Sino-Korean may refer to either the phonological system or vocabulary in Korean that is of Chinese origin. Along with the borrowing of Chinese characters, the Chinese readings of characters must also have been transmitted into Korean. A Study of Sino-Korean Phonology aims to contribute to the field of Sino-Korean phonology by re-examining the origin and layers of Sino-Korean pronunciations from a loanword phonology perspective. The central issues of this book include an ongoing discussion on the questions of which Chinese dialect Sino-Korean is based on and how the source form in Chinese was adapted into Korean. Last is an in-depth analysis of the layers of Sino-Korean.

1 Introduction

1.1 Statement of purpose

The main topic of investigation in this book is “the origin and layers of Sino-Korean.” In a broad sense, the term Sino-Korean refers to the phonological system and large body of vocabulary in Korean that are Sinoxenic — of Chinese origin. In this study, we will apply this term in its narrower sense to refer to the Korean reading of Chinese characters — which can be considered an important piece of the phonological and orthographical interface of Korean’s Sinoxenic vocabulary. The importance of understanding Sino-Korean phonology in the study of Chinese historical phonology was first addressed in Karlgren’s work Etudes sur la phonologie chinoise (1926), in which Karlgren utilized Sino-Korean as the one of the language sources, in addition to Chinese dialects, for the reconstruction of the Middle Chinese phonological system. Since the pioneering work of Karlgren, Sino-Korean has been used as an important source of evidence in the study of some outstanding issues in the field of Chinese historical phonological research. Such issues include problems of chongniu 重紐 “rime doublets,” the phonetic value of the zhi 止 rhyme group, and other major questions. Before invention of the Korean alphabet Hangul in AD 1443, Chinese characters served as the primary orthographic system for writing Korean language. A thorough understanding of Sino-Korean is a prerequisite for the interpretation of Korean materials represented in Chinese characters — such as idu 吏讀 “clerk readings”; hyangchal 鄉札 “vernacular letters”; or gugyeol 口訣 “oral embellishment” — which are important data sources in the study of Korean historical phonology.

In spite of the importance of Sino-Korean in Chinese and Korean historical phonology research, our current understanding of the nature of Sino-Korean is far from complete. Various hypotheses have been proposed regarding the origin of Sino-Korean, including Maspero (1920), Karlgren (1926), Arisaka (1936), Pak (1971), Kōno (1979), Lee (1994), Ito (2007), Zhang (2008) and Eom (2008, 2015), among other studies. However, despite a relatively large body of research, no consensus has been achieved, with the origin of Sino-Korean being an outstanding issue in the field of Chinese and Korean historical linguistic research. In this book, we will reexamine the origin and layers of Sino-Korean from a loanword phonology approach, with special attention given to the following questions: (1) What is the exact origin of Sino-Korean? (2) How were Chinese source forms adapted into Korean? (3) How many layers exist in Sino-Korean?

1.2 Periodization of Chinese, Korean and Sino-Korean

1.2.1 Periodization of Chinese

In order to facilitate a deeper discussion concerning the language contact between the Chinese languages and Korean language, this section will briefly address the periodization of Chinese, Korean and Sino-Korean. There are many different perspectives regarding periodization of Chinese. Given that our main concern is the phonological change in Chinese, we will discuss a periodization of Chinese proposal namely based on phonological criteria. Historically, building on major phonological changes in Chinese linguistic history, Karlgren (1926[1940]: 20–21)¹ divided the history of Chinese into the six major periods, as shown in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1 Periodization of Chinese proposed by Karlgren (1926)

Proto-Chinese	The period preceding earliest known literary documents
Archaic Chinese	The language of the Shijing 詩經 [Book of Odes] (c. 1000 BC)
Ancient Chinese	The language of the rhyme dictionary Qieyun 切韻 (AD 601)
Middle Chinese	The language of the Song 宋 (960–1279) Dynasty rhyme tables
Old Mandarin	The language of the Hongwu zhengyun 洪武正韻 (AD 1375)
Modern Chinese	Present-day Mandarin

According to Norman (1988: 23), later scholars generally replaced the terms “Archaic Chinese” and “Ancient Chinese” with “Old Chinese” and “Middle Chinese,” respectively. In this book, we will adopt the updated terms “Old Chinese” and “Middle Chinese.” Next, in order to maintain the distinction of the earlier period of Ancient Chinese and Middle Chinese, Pulleyblank (1984) and Baxter (1992) divided the updated Middle Chinese into Early Middle Chinese (hereafter referred to as EMC) and Late Middle Chinese (hereafter LMC). They argued that such a distinction was still important given that the sound system reflected in Qieyun was significantly different to the language that would develop later, that is, the language reflected in the sound glosses represented in Yan Shigu’s 顏師古 commentary to Hanshu 漢書 [Book of Han], Buddhist transcription practices in Huilin’s 慧琳 Yiqie jing yinyi 一切經音義 [The sound and the meaning of all scriptures], and poetic rhyming by unconventional poets. According to Pulleyblank (1984: 3, 60–63), EMC corresponds to the literary language in the sixth century, as reflected in Qieyun (601), and LMC corresponds to the Chang’an 長安 dialect between the seventh and eighth centuries, as reflected in the Song Dynasty rhyme tables, such as Yunjing 韻鏡 [Mirror of rhymes], Qiyinlue 七音略 [Summary of the seven sounds], among others. In order to observe the chronological differences between EMC and LMC, this study will follow Pulleyblank’s observations and refer to the period of Ancient Chinese in Karlgren’s periodization as EMC, and the period of Middle Chinese in Karlgren’s periodization as LMC. The revised periodization of Chinese is shown in Table 1.2.

Table 1.2 Revised periodization of Chinese

Proto-Chinese	The period preceding earliest known literary documents
Old Chinese	The language of the Shijing (c. 1000 BC)
EMC	The language of the rhyme dictionary Qieyun (AD 601)
LMC	The language of the Song (960–1279) Dynasty rhyme tables
Old Mandarin	The language of the Hongwu zhengyun (AD 1375)
Modern Chinese	Present-day Mandarin

1.2.2 Periodization of Korean

The Korean language is generally considered to be part of the Ural-Altaic language family, although there still remains much disagreement on its genealogy. Table 1.3 is a periodization of Korean proposed by Lee (1972).

Table 1.3 Periodization of Korean

Old Korean	Korean up to the end of Unified Silla (935)
Early Middle Korean	The language of Goryeo 高麗 Dynasty (918–1392)
Late Middle Korean	From the beginning of the Joseon 朝鮮 Dynasty (1392) to the end of the 16th century
Recent Korean	From the beginning of the 17th century to the end of the 19th century
Modern Korean	From the beginning of the 20th century to the present day

In Lee’s proposal, Old Korean is a particularly long period because no clear evidence is available to divide the period any further. The primary materials used by linguists in the reconstruction of Old Korean include place names, personal names and titles of official positions as recorded in history books, idu 吏讀 “clerk readings,” hyangchal 鄉札 “vernacular letters” and Old Korean loanwords in Japanese. Due to the scarcity of Old Korean data and the difficulty in the interpretation of these data, reconstructing a homogeneous Old ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Illustrations
• Abbreviations
• Conventions
• Timeline of Chinese and Korean history
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Mandarin loanwords in Modern Korean
• 3 Initial system of Middle Sino-Korean
• 4 Final system of Middle Sino-Korean
• 5 Tonal system of Middle Sino-Korean
• 6 Investigation into the origin of Sino-Korean
• 7 Conclusion
• References
• Index