International Journal of

Eurasian Linguistics 2 (2020) 94–107 JEAL

brill.com/jeal

Old Korean and Proto-Korean *r and *l Revisited

Alexander Vovin
EHESS/CRLAO, Paris, France
sashavovin@gmail.com

Abstract

This article argues for new internal evidence for the existence of the contrast between
*r and *l in Old Korean and Proto-Korean on the basis of the Hyangchal data and Old
Japanese transcriptional glosses as well as Korean loanwords in Manchu and Jurchen
that were not analyzed in this way before. Namely, I will argue that combined Old
Korean and Middle Korean data call for the reconstruction of two different types of
liquids in the position before *i: both stay intact in Old Korean, but in Middle Korean
the first type undergoes elision, whereas the second type stays intact. I then attempt to
identify these two types on the basis of the internal evidence and parallel phenomena
attested in the Greater Manchuria linguistic area and elsewhere.

Keywords

Old Korean – Middle Korean – Tungusic – Neghidal – liquids – internal reconstruction

1 Introduction

The existence of a possible phonemic contrast between *r and *l in Old Korean

was first suggested by Yi Ki-mun, who noticed that the Chinese characters 尸
‘corpse’ and 乙 ‘second heavenly stem’ in Hyangchal were used in specific words
and/or grammatical forms without overlapping in their usage (1972: 69–71).
Unfortunately, Yi Ki-mun mistakenly assigned the phonetic values of *r to 尸
and *l to 乙, relying on his comparisons with “Altaic” languages (1987: 95–96).
This is methodologically unacceptable, because the internal reconstruction
cannot be done on the basis of the external data from related languages,

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/25898833-12340025

Old Korean and Proto-Korean *r and *l Revisited 95

especially when their genetic relationship remains hypothetical and unproven.

Like all other Sinoxenic scripts, Hyangchal includes multiple temporal layers.
From this point of view, it is important that 尸 had the OC (and probably also
LHC) reading *hli > EMC śi (thus having nothing in common with /r/), while
乙 had the OC reading *Ɂret > EMC Ɂjet > LMC jir (in the Chang’an dialect).1
Much later Ramsey argued for the existence of a contrast between two dif-
ferent liquids on the basis of different accent patterns in MK that he labeled
as l₁ and l₂ respectively (2004). Following his usual careful manner, Ramsey
abstained from assigning the exact phonetic values to his l₁ and l₂, but he made
a note that l₁ patterned like an obstruent, and l₂ like a sonorant (2004: 345).2
Translating this phonological formulation into a phonetic one would imply
that l₁ = [l] and l₂ = [r]. In their co-authored A History of the Korean Language,
Yi Ki-mun and Ramsey avoid exact phonetic labels for 尸 and 乙, probably due
to the difference in their opinions (Lee & Ramsey 2011: 66–67). Quite recently,
Vovin added two more words that should have had *l and not *r in OK or PK:
OK Sela ~ Selo ‘Silla’ borrowed as MM solaŋqa-s ‘Koreans’ (MNT §274) (2013:
202) and PK *kal- or *kʌl- > MK kʌ̀l-3 ‘change, exchange’ on the basis of the fact
that it was borrowed to pre-Jurchen as *kala- > Jurchen xala- ‘to alter’, Manchu
xala- ‘change, exchange’ (2014: 155–158). In the first of these publications Vovin
remarked that regarding the problem of the possible contrast between *l and
*r, “the line of investigation of internal Korean materials has probably run its
course” (2013: 202). In the lines below I intend to demonstrate that this conclu-
sion was premature.

2 The Data and the Discussion

Unfortunately for illuminating the linguistic history of Korean with the help
of Chinese data, EMC, unlike OC and LHC, no longer had a distinction of
*r and *l. Although in the history of Chinese, it was not a merger, with OC *r-
becoming EMC l-, and OC *l- giving a variety of different reflexes, it does not
help to reconstruct the original distinction of *r and *l in Old Korean, where

1 This observation was first made by Yu (1956), and then repeated in Yu & Hashimoto (1973).
I replaced his/their Chinese transcription with more up-to-date reconstructions.
2 The verbal stems in -l₁ belonged the same low tone accent class as verbal stems ending in an
obstruent or obstruent cluster, while the verbal stems in -l₂ belonged to the same high accent
class as verbal stems with a final sonorant or vowel.
3 O K form is not attested in the phonographic script.

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96 Vovin

the contrast in Hyangchal writing was kept only at the end of word forms, and
where the majority of syllabic graphs were based on their EMC or LMC (for
LOK) values.
However, there is an interesting phenomenon that, as I think, might help
to shed additional light on this thorny issue. Namely, what appears to be a
uniform sequence /li/ or /ri/ in OK, has two different reflexes in MK: in some
words the liquid is kept, and in others it is lost. Vovin has tried to deal with this
problem by explaining OK ri > MK -y as a palatalization of /r/ before /i/, and OK
ri > MK ri as going back to PK *rʌy4 or *ruy (2010: 103), which certainly would
not palatalize. This explanation is not impossible, but it faces two problems.
First, although MK /rʌy/ and /ruy/ are rare, they do exist, and second, and more
importantly, although the process of contraction of ʌy, uy > i is known in MK,
there are also different (and more frequent) contractions especially for ʌy, and
no rules so far have been formulated under which circumstances what type of
contraction takes place. This makes me think of a much neater explanation
that I am going to propose below. Let us start with the list of words where OK -r-
would result in MK -∅- before-i.5 In a sense, the list is heterogenic, because
it includes the data from Silla Old Korean (further: SOK) and Koryŏ Late Old
Korean (further LOK) reflected by Silla Hyangka and Kyunyŏ Hyangka respec-
tively, as well as Paekche Old Korean (further: POK) represented by glosses in
the Nihonshoki. But the reflexes are virtually identical (for more details see the
commentary to Table 1 below), and given the general paucity of sources on
Old Korean there is not much choice. Although MK monosyllabic words that
result from the contraction of disyllabic structures in Old Korean seem to have
uniformly the rising pitch (R), which reflects an earlier low-high pattern,
there appears to be no such rule for longer sequences. Therefore, it is highly
unlikely that the OK loss of -r- before -i has any connection to accent patterns.
Let us look at the Table 1 below.6

4 I use a modified version of Yale Romanization for Middle Korean. The differences are as fol-
lows: o = Yale wo, u = Yale wu, ʌ = Yale o, ï = Yale u, r = Yale l, Ɂ = Yale q, ɣ = Yale G, β = Yale W.
Low pitch is marked as accent grave, high pitch as accent aigüe, and rising pitch as double
period preceding the syllable.
5 Nam Phwung-hyen provided a list of five such words in a recent article (2012: 63), but as the
reader will see below it is actually twice as long.
6 Logographically written parts of Old Korean words are given in capitals, and phonograms are
in small letters.

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Old Korean and Proto-Korean *r and *l Revisited 97

table 1 The correspondence of OK -r- to MK -∅-

Gloss Old Korean OK attestations Middle Korean

belt sitoro シトロ NS 15.412a stḯy

Japanese YEri 倭理 SHK 12.3 :yey
lord nirim(u) ニリン, ­ NS 6.177, 14.368, 16.7, :nim
nerimu ネリム, 19.75, 20.109
nirimu ニリム,
nirim(u) 二林, 爾林
moon TɅrari 月羅理 SHK 4.2, 13.5 tʌ̀r
mountain mure ムレ, mura ムラ, NS 9.262, 19.92 mòló (YP IV;
mora モラ 21b), :moy
old NYEri 舊理, 古理 SHK 12.1, 13.5 :nyey
stream NAri 川理, nare 那禮, ナレ,
SHK 4.6, NS 9.247, NS :nay
nari ナリ 17.28–29, NS 14.388
verbal form -ARAri 下呂, 下里 KHK 19.4, 21.10, 22.7, àláy ‘bottom’
24.10
world NUri 世理, 世呂 SHK 13.8, KHK 21.4, :nuy
KHK 22.2
worship (v.) MɅri-SɅRP- 邀里白, 邀呂白 KHK 15.6, KHK 16.5 :mʌy-zʌ́p-

a The first number in the Nihonshoki refers to a book, and the second number to a page number
in the Kokushi taikei edition (Kokushi taikei henshūkai 1974). The first number in Hyangka
refers to a number of a poem and the second number to a line according to Kim Wancin’s
edition (1980).

Commentary to Table 1
1. POK sitoro (シトロ) ‘belt’ comes very close to being a hapax legomenon,
although it is attested in at least three different manuscripts of the Nihonshoki.
Unfortunately, all three surviving glosses are rather late, preserved only in
katakana, and we have no man’yōgana transcription to support it. The final
syllable -ro is aberrant, because it represents a deviation from the otherwise
almost universal rule that OK -r- is deleted only in front of -i. I think that there
are two possible explanations of this anomaly. First, since we know close to
nothing about the phonology of POK, it is not inconceivable that sitoro rep-
resents a progressive assimilation from *sitori.7 Second, it is easy to imagine

7 An interesting parallel may be found in another hapax legomenon, MK mòró ‘mountain’ (YP
IV: 21b), cf. MK :moy ‘id.’ and various similar POK forms in Table 1 above and discussed in the
commentary below.

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98 Vovin

that the katakana gloss シトロ sitoro represents a mechanical rendition of an

earlier man’yōgana *志止呂 sitöri,8 which in its turn would be a copy of LOK
*situri ‘belt’, where the last syllable would be written with the character 呂,
which had in LOK the phonetic value of [ri] (Nam 2009: 302–303), while any
Japanese scribe during the Heian period (there are no extant manuscripts of
the Nihonshoki dating back to the Nara period) would still interpret the char-
acter 呂 as ro. I am personally more inclined towards the second explanation.
2. SOK YEri (倭理) ‘Japanese’ is also a hapax legomenon in OK, but it is well
attested as :yey in MK. It could be also YɅri in SOK, because the SOK *yʌ and *ye
merged in MK as ye. The etymology of this word in Korean is obscure. This word
is glossed as ‘comet’ in Nam (2012: 63), but this should be a mistake, because
the logographic spelling is with 倭 ‘Japan, Japanese’, alongside with the fact
that ‘comet’ is written in the same poem as 彗星 ‘comet’ (SHK 12.8), whatever
its actual OK reading might be, as well as the context: 倭理叱軍置來叱多
YEri-tsï KUN to W-A-[i]s-ta Japan-gen army fp come-conv.cont-exist-conv.
inter ‘the Japanese army has also come, but …’ (SHK 12.3). A comet army cer-
tainly would be an oxymoron.
3. SOK nirim ‘lord’ is also attested in TCK (26.1), but unfortunately only
in logographic spelling as 主. Thus, we have to use POK data preserved in
OJ glosses. Given the Japanese katakana spelling nerimu (ネリム) it might be
tempting to reconstruct the OK word as *nerim. However, this is a singular
attestation with ne- vs. ni- in four other cases. In addition, the process of raising
of POJ *e to OJ *i was no longer active in the Heian period, when the katakana
glosses were added. Finally, much earlier glosses in man’yōgana also point to
ni- and not ne-. Consequently, it is easier to view nerimu vs. nirim(u) as a mis-
take. Alternatively, this -e- might represent an attempt by a Japanese scribe to
transcribe a vowel absent in OJ or MJ. It could have been either [ï] or [ɪ], but
overall this hypothesis seems to be less likely.
4. SOK TɅrari (月羅理) ‘moon’ > MK tʌr represents an irregular develop-
ment, because in the case of a regular development we would expect MK
*tʌray, and not tʌr. Still, it is quite clear that it is the same word. One can imag-
ine the complete loss of the second syllable after the trisyllabic OK word was
reduced to a disyllabic word through the process of -r- > -∅- /_i: OK TɅrari >
*tʌray > MK tʌr.

8 There was no /ï/ in OJ like in OK and MK, so OJ ö [ǝ] would be one of the two possible approx-
imations. I do not subscribe to the old point of view that there was a “vowel shift” in the
history of Korean (Kim 1971: 221–222, Yi 1972: 98–99, Janhunen 1981). See the excellent dis-
sertation by Ko (2012) that disproved this point of view regarding Korean.

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Old Korean and Proto-Korean *r and *l Revisited 99

5. POK mure ムレ, mura ムラ, mora モラ ‘mountain’ and MK :moy ‘id.’ It is
unlikely that we have any direct line of development here, although POK and
MK forms must be cognates. It is worth noting POK -e in mure, which might
be quite a similar case to -e- in nerimu ‘lord’ discussed above in 3. A MK hapax
legomenon that was mentioned before, mòró mountain’ (YP IV: 21b) seems
to complicate the matter even further, as well as WOJ murô (室) or pre-WOJ
*môrô (諸)9 ‘mountain’ occurring in the place name mî môrô ‘three [sacred]
mountains [of Yamatö]’. Given the fact that POK shows the same vowel raising
*o > u as WOJ, e.g. WOJ kuma ‘bear’, and POK kuma ~ kumu vs. MK :kom, I take
POK mure as the ‘basic’ form that can explain MK :moy. Cf. also the word for
‘stream’ in the table above and in the commentary below.
6. SOK NYEri (舊理, 古理) ‘old’ > MK :nyey ‘id.’ One of the rare examples of
a true adjective in Korean that is likely used only as an adnominal form and
has no verbal-like paradigm: 古理因 in 古理因淵 NYEri i-n MOS ‘old pond’
probably should be analyzed as NYEri ‘old’ + i-n ‘cop-part.real’ rather than
NYEri-n ‘be old- part.real’.
7. SOK and POK nari (NAri 川理, nare 那禮, ナレ, nari ナリ) ‘stream’. There
is variation between -e and -i in POK forms that we have already observed
above in the words for ‘lord’ and ‘mountain’. In this particular case -i forms
are present in both SOK and POK, confirming that -i form is the original one,
and that the exclusive POK form in -e is either an innovation or an attempt to
transcribe some Paekche vowel through the Japanese glass darkly. Incidentally,
this OK form puts to rest the dilettante comparisons of MK :nay ‘stream’ with
Ainu nay ‘stream, river’.
8. At the present point of our knowledge the LOK verbal form -arari (下
呂, 下里) is difficult to explain with certainty: it looks like some kind of a
tentative. There are alternative ways of reading 下呂 or 下里 as hʌ-r-i, a nomi-
nalization of an irrealis participle of the verb hʌ- ‘to do’, but it is highly unlikely
for phonological and morphological reasons. The reading arari I use here is a
combination of a hwuntok reading ara for 下 ‘bottom, below’10 and an umtok
reading ri for 呂 or 里.
9. SOK and LOK NUri (世理, 世呂) ‘world’ is uncontroversial, further sup-
ported by MdK nuri ‘id.’, which represents either an inheritance from earlier
dialect mixing, or an artificial elegant form. One of the ambassadors from
Paekche to Yamatö court was also called Nuri (努理). There is no evidence

9 Pre-WOJ *môrô is a reconstruction since the sequence CôCô does not occur in WOJ due to
the fact that the first ô > u, as in murô. The kungana 諸 mörö is highly unprecise, replacing
mid-back vowels ô with two mid-central vowels ö [ǝ].
10 Cf. the hapax legomenon MK àrá ‘below’ found in MP 21a.

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100 Vovin

that this personal name means ‘world’, although we cannot exclude this
possibility, either.
10. LOK MɅri-SɅRP- (邀里白, 邀呂白) ‘to worship’ is not attested in SOK
or POK. The semantic shift ‘to meet’ (邀) > ‘to worship’ is quite interesting. OK
MɅri- ‘to worship’ is attested only with the following humble auxiliary sʌrp-,
which developed in MK to the humility suffix -zʌ́p- (with allomorphs -sʌ́p-,
-cʌ́p-, etc., depending on the preceding consonant of the stem).
Now let us survey the cases where -r- stays intact in both Old and Middle
Korean. These data are presented in Table 2 below.

table 2 The correspondence of OK -r- to MK -r-

Gloss Old Korean OK attestations Middle Korean

long for KÏri 慕理-, 慕呂- SHK 1.7, KHK 15.2 kḯrí-
we Uri 吾里 KHK 21.9 úrí
star PYEri 星利 SHK 12.7 :pyer
irrealis participle + -r-i 理 KHK 19.8 -r-í
nominalizer

Commentary to Table 2
General notes: There are much fewer examples of the correspondence OK -r- :
MK -r- than of OK -r- : MK -∅-, but this is just a trick played on us by the paucity
of OK materials. Actually, many of MK -ri- reflect this type of correspondence,
e.g. MK kìrí ‘length’, tàrì ‘leg’, tʌ̀rì ‘bridge, ladder’, phírì ‘flute’, although some may
reflect earlier *-ti-, like MK màrí ‘head’ < LOK mati (Kyeyrim #163). However,
the same is not true regarding MK -∅-, because elided consonants in MdK and
only partially preserved in MK may correspond to different OK and PK conso-
nants, e.g. MdK kay [kɛ] ‘dog’ < MK kàhí < OK *kaki, MdK seys [set], sek- [sǝk]
< MK :seyh ‘three’ < OK *seki,11 MdK sai ‘interval’ < MK sʌ̀zí < OK *sʌsi, MdK key
[ke] ‘crab’ < MK kèy < OK *keŋi,12 etc.
1. SOK/LOK KÏri- and MK kḯrí- ‘to long for’ is an unproblematic example that
does not require any special commentary.

11 Borrowed into WOJ as sakî.

12 Cf. Jeju keŋi ~ kǝŋi, Phyŏngan kǝŋi ~ kwǝŋi, Chŏlla kkeŋi ‘crab’ (Choy 1978: 946–947). WOJ
kani ‘crab’ may also be relevant, no matter what the direction of borrowing was.

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Old Korean and Proto-Korean *r and *l Revisited 101

2. LOK úrí ‘we’ is a hapax legomenon in LOK13 that is nevertheless interesting,

because, as we will see below, after the identity of -r- in OK -r- : MK -r- corre-
spondence is established it provides some further evidence against the “Altaic”
hypothesis.
3. SOK PYEri and MK :pyer ‘star’ shows an irregular pattern of development
with a loss of SOK second syllable vowel in MK. However, the MK rising pitch
is likely to be compensatory in nature, reflecting SOK low-high pattern in the
tentatively reconstructed SOK *pyèrí. If so, similar to the correspondence of
OK -r- : MK -∅-, the correspondence of OK -r- : MK -r- seems have no correlation
with the pitch accent. As the reader will see below, after the identity of -r- in
OK -r- : MK -r- correspondence is established, this example may offer partial
credence to the comparison of MK :pyer ‘star’ with OJ posi ‘id.’ (Martin 1966
#220, Whitman 1985: 212).
4. LOK -r-í, irrealis participle + nominalizer is the most important exam-
ple, as it allows us to establish internally the identity of the liquid in OK -r- :
MK -r- correspondence beyond any reasonable doubt. We already know that
the irrealis participle in OK was -l, and not -r. Therefore, -r-í must also be -l-í,
and the liquid that stays intact in MK must be OK *l. Consequently, the OK
liquid -r- disappearing in MK must be OK *r.
This makes sense both from the view point of areal linguistics and cross-
linguistically. Let us start from the areal linguistics. To the East of Korean we
find two language families that have no r/l distinction either diachronically
or synchronically: Japonic and Ainu.14 In the South-East we have Chinese
that historically had the distinction r/l, but it was lost quite early, probably by
the third century AD at the latest. Most likely, the interaction of Korean with
Japonic and Chinese is responsible for the loss of the contrast. However, to the
West and North of Korean we have languages that maintain this contrast, and
since Korean has arrived to the peninsula from the area of Greater Manchuria,
we should look for the similar areal phenomena in earlier Korean as compared
to areal phenomena in these languages. In particular, the North Tungusic
Neghidal language spoken in the estuary of Amur river exhibits a phenomenon
very close to Korean: the elimination of PT *-r-, e.g. PT *gara ‘branch’ > Ewenki
gara, Neghidal gaya; PT *beri ‘bow’ (weapon) > Ewenki ber, Ewen berken ‘cross-
bow used as a trap for animals’ (Russian самострел), Neghidal bey;15 PT *ǰȫr

13 But with abundant attestations in MK.

14 Alonso de la Fuente proposed in his PhD dissertation that there was *l in Proto-Ainu
(2012: 14–19), but I am not convinced by his arguments. However, the critical discussion of
those falls outside of the scope of this paper.
15 Cf. also Manchu beri ‘bow’ that Pevnov does not cite.

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102 Vovin

‘two’ > Ewenki ǰūr, Ewen ǰȫr, Neghidal ǰūl (Pevnov 1994: 126). The strategy of the
elimination of PT *-r- is not the same as in Korean, but it is quite clear that PT
*-r- is replaced in Neghidal either by /y/, /∅/, or /l/.
Apart from Chinese that was already mentioned above, the shift of r > l
in East Asia also occurs in Modern Thai, especially among speakers from the
working class. Thus, e.g., Standard Thai ร้อย rɔ́ ɔy ‘100’ becomes lɔ́ ɔy, and ร้ก rák
‘to love’ is pronounced as lák. In a wider cross-linguistic perspective, Tongan is
the only Polynesian language that kept the contrast between Proto-Polynesian
*l and *r, but Proto-Polynesian *r is essentially eliminated being replaced by
/Ɂ/ in both initial and medial positions.16 It is only from the closely related lan-
guages like Samoan, Hawaiian, Tahitian, Maori, etc. we know that historically
this /Ɂ/ in Tongan must have been a liquid (Walsh & Biggs 1966: VI).
Following the earlier initiative by Vovin (2013, 2014) reconstructing an ear-
lier OK *-l- on the basis of the evidence from Middle Mongolian and Manchu,
the additional *l and *r can be established in the following words that are Old
Korean loans in Manchu,17 listed by Vovin in an earlier publication (2005:
112–113), but without any reference to the reconstruction of *r/*l in Old and/or
Proto-Korean:
(a) Manchu fulehe ‘root’, not attested in other Tungusic languages, coexists
with Manchu da ‘root’ that is amply attested in other Tungusic languages:
Ewenki daɣačaan, Solon dagasã, Orok daha, Ulcha daača(n), Nanai
daačã (Cincius 1975: 188–189). Cf. MK pùlhúy ‘root’. Since Manchu has
r/l contrast, PK (OK is not attested) must have had *-l-, and not *-r- in
this word.
(b) Manchu biyoran [b’oran] ‘cliff, precipitous bank’.18 Apart from Manchu,
the word is attested only in Solon as biraxan ‘mountain’ (Cincius 1975:
84). Given the fact that Solon is inundated with Manchu loanwords, this
must be one of them borrowed in the period before Manchu was reduced
to writing. Cf. MK pìrèy ~ pìryèy ‘cliff, precipice’. Since Manchu and Solon
have r/l contrast, PK (OK is not attested) must have had *-r-, and not *-l-
in this word.
(c) Manchu cecere- ‘to press tightly’, ‘to embrace tightly’ does not have paral-
lels in other Tungusic languages. Cf. MK cìcúr-, MdK ciciru- ‘to press down’,
‘to weigh on’. Since Manchu has r/l contrast, PK (OK is not attested) must
have had *-r-, and not *-l- in this word.

16 There are no Auslaut consonants in Polynesian.

17 These words are not attested in Jurchen.
18 The vowel /o/ in Manchu might be difficult to explain (Alonso de la Fuente 2019, p.c.).

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Old Korean and Proto-Korean *r and *l Revisited 103

3 Conclusion

The discovery of additional words having either -l- or -r- in OK and/or PK is

significant in two respects, First, typologically (and I cannot stress enough
that typology is meaningless in terms of the genetic affiliation, but it might be
significant in terms of determining the Urheimat of a proto-language) Korean
starts to look even more like a Central Asian, and not an East Asian language.
Second, the establishing of *r and *l in certain words might have far-reaching
consequences for the external comparisons of Korean. Namely, reconstructing
PK *uli ‘we’ > OK Uli with -l- effectively puts to rest the famous comparison of
this Korean pronoun with Old Turkic biz < Proto-Turkic *bir₂ ‘id.’ On the other
hand, establishing -l- in OK pyeli ‘star’ provides more credence to its compari-
son with OJ posi ‘id.’, although the problem of the vocalism of the first syllable
still remains as pointed out in Vovin (2010: 107).
There are two cases of -r/l- in Hyangka which remain obscure because there
are no corresponding words in MK. Since there is no external information on
these words in the form of loanwords in languages that have the -r- vs. -l- con-
trast, these two words are most likely to remain a perennial mystery forever.

table 3 -r- or -l-?

Gloss Old Korean OK attestations Middle Korean

return motʌri- 皆理- SHK 1.1 —

river bank Xri 汀理 SHK 4.4 —

Commentary to Table 3
1. OK 皆 is probably a hwuntok reading of the character 皆 corresponding to
MK mòtʌ́n, mòtá ‘all’ and in the given context it seems that 皆理 means
‘to return, to come back’:

去隱春皆理米

KA-n POM motʌri-may

go-past.attr spring return-conv
The spring that is gone has come back, and … (SHK 1.1)

OK motʌri < PK *montʌri- ‘to return’ can be compared with MJ modor- ‘id.’,
which for phonetic reasons can only be a loan from the former. OJ mötöpor- ‘to

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104 Vovin

go around, to circle’ is unlikely to be an ancestor form for MJ modor- ‘to return’,

attested only once in the Genji monogatari (Miyajima et al. 2014: 1030–1031). In
any case, Japanese would not be indicative for -r- vs. -l- contrast.
2. Although OK 汀理 ‘river bank’ represents some native Korean word, we
have no evidence for its reading, since MK uses a periphrastic construction
mïr-kʌs ‘water’s edge’.
The future research on the recovering of -r- ~ -l- distinction in OK and PK
should be based mostly on uncovering Old Korean loans in Jurchen and
Manchu, as it seems that the present article pretty much exhausted the internal
Hyangka sources in that respect. It is not inconceivable, though, that kwukyel
materials will yield new information on this contrast in suffixes and auxiliaries.

Language Abbreviations

EMC Early Middle Chinese

LHC Late Han Chinese
LMC Late Middle Chinese
LOK Late Old Korean
MdK Modern Korean
MK Middle Korean
MM Middle Mongolian
OC Old Chinese
OJ Old Japanese
OK Old Korean
PK Proto-Korean
POK Paekche Old Korean
PT Proto-Tungusic
SOK Silla Old Korean
WOJ Western Old Japanese

Linguistic Terms

attr Attributive
cont Contemporary
conv Converb
cop Copula
fp Focus particle
gen Genitive

International Journal of Eurasian Linguistics 2 (2020) 94–107

Old Korean and Proto-Korean *r and *l Revisited 105

inter Interruptive
part Participle
real Realis

Primary Sources

Japanese
NS Nihonshoki, 720 AD

Korean
KHK Kyunyŏ Hyangka, 10th century AD19
Kyeyrim Kyeyrim yusa Koryŏ pangen, 1103 AD
MP Mongsang hwasang pepe yakrok enhay, 1468 AD
SHK Silla Hyangka, 6–9th centuries AD
TCK To i cang ka, 10th century AD
YP Yongpi echenka, 1445 AD

Mongolian
MNT Mongɣol Niuča Tobča’an, 1240 AD

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