Social:Proto-Koreanic language

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Short description: Reconstructed language

Proto-Koreanic is the proto-form of the Koreanic languages that was spoken in the Bronze and Iron Ages. Proto-Koreanic evolved into Old Korean by the 1st century, which was when the Three Kingdoms of Korea were formed.[1][2][3]

There are no written samples of Proto-Koreanic, which is the main reason of why the classification of the Korean language is disputed. The most popular alternative theory regarding the origins of the Korean language states that Korean is a member of the discredited Altaic language family.[4] Alexander Vovin notes that Koreanic shares some typological features with the four Paleosiberian language families (e.g. lack of phonemic voiced stops, verb compounding, earlier ergativity), and suggests that it actually has more in common with the Paleosiberian language family (which is a geographical and areal grouping rather a genetic one) than with the putative Altaic group.[5]

Origin and homeland

According to several linguists the linguistic homeland of proto-Korean is located somewhere in Manchuria. Later, Koreanic-speakers already present in northern Korea started to expand further south, replacing or assimilating Japonic-speakers and likely causing the Yayoi migration.[6][7] Whitman suggests that the proto-Koreans arrived in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula at around 300 BC and coexisted with the descendants of the Japonic Mumun cultivators (or assimilated them). Both had influence on each other and a later founder effect diminished the internal variety of both language families.[8]

References

  1. 최기호 (2004). "국어사 서설". 제8회 국외 한국어교사 연수회 8th Research Conference of Korean Language Teachers Abroad. 
  2. Robbeets, Martine; Savelyev, Alexander (2017-12-21) (in en). Language Dispersal Beyond Farming. John Benjamins. ISBN 9789027264640. https://books.google.com/books?id=5Z5BDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA317&pg=PA100#v=onepage&f=false. 
  3. Janhunen, Juha (2010). "Reconstructing the language map of prehistorical northeast Asia". Studia Orientalia (108): 281–303. https://journal.fi/store/article/download/52395/16245. Retrieved 2019-01-03. 
  4. "About World Languages: Altaic Language Family". Must Go. 2014–19. http://aboutworldlanguages.com/altaic-language-family. 
  5. Vovin, Alexander (2015). "Korean as a Paleosiberian Language". 알타이할시리즈 2. ISBN 978-8-955-56053-4. https://www.academia.edu/18764127. Retrieved 2016-11-06. 
  6. Janhunen, Juha (2010). "Reconstructing the Language Map of Prehistorical Northeast Asia". Studia Orientalia (108). "... there are strong indications that the neighbouring Baekje state (in the southwest) was predominantly Japonic-speaking until it was linguistically Koreanized.". 
  7. Vovin, Alexander (2013). "From Koguryo to Tamna: Slowly riding to the South with speakers of Proto-Korean". Korean Linguistics 15 (2): 222–240. 
  8. Whitman, John (2011-12-01). "Northeast Asian Linguistic Ecology and the Advent of Rice Agriculture in Korea and Japan" (in en). Rice 4 (3): 149–158. doi:10.1007/s12284-011-9080-0. ISSN 1939-8433.