上只
Old Korean
Etymology
*/-k/ may be an ancient place-related suffix; see Appendix:Middle Korean h-final nouns.
Noun
上只 (*WUk)
- (hapax) top; above
Reconstruction notes
This word is attested once in thirteenth-century interpretive gugyeol glosses to the Yogācārabhūmi-Śāstra. Whether it is a noun or an adverb is not clear from the context because the word does not take noun case markers, but it is conventionally given as a noun to fit its Middle Korean reflex.
In Old Korean orthography, native terms with clear Chinese equivalents are usually written with an initial Chinese character glossing the meaning of the word, followed by one or more Chinese characters that transcribe the final syllable or coda consonant of the term. In the case of 上只, the first character shows that this is the native Old Korean word for "top; above", and the subsequent character shows that the coda consonant of this word involves *-k. Because the semantics and the final syllable match, the word is conventionally reconstructed as *WUk, the ancestor of 웋 (Yale: wùh, “top; above”). It is generally believed that Middle Korean final -h arises from lenition of Old Korean final *-k.
Descendants
- Middle Korean: 웋 (wùh)
- Jeju: 우 (u)
- Korean: 우 (u)
- Korean: 위 (wi)
- ⇒ Korean: 지붕 (jibung, “roof”)
References
- 황선엽 (Hwang Seon-yeop) (2009) Seokdok Gugyeol Sajeon [Dictionary of interpretive gugyeol], Taehaksa, →ISBN
- 이병기 (Yi Byeong-gi) (2014), “Gugyeol jaryo-ui eohwi [Vocabulary in the gugyeol sources]”, in Gugyeol Yeon'gu, volume 33, pages 23–61