Talk:가락
Distant possible connection[edit]
@Karaeng Matoaya -- I note a similarity to Japanese 柄 (kara), particularly the counter sense. Given that the Japanese term is attested as kara as far back as the 700s, and considering the reconstructed Proto-Koreanic *katoL, these wouldn't seem to be cognates. However, might the Middle Korean have influenced Japanese usage? Or might the Proto-Korean /t/ → /l/ shift have happened earlier than the 700s? Or might the Proto-Korean reconstruction of the medial /-t-/ be incorrect?
I am intrigued by the potential here. While there is no corresponding Japonic verb "to split" of similar phonetics to Proto-Koreanic *katoL or even kara (the only verb roots that come to mind are wak-, war-, or noun 又 (mata, “crotch; again”); a distant "maybe" might be 片 (kata, “one side of something”)), the semantics for Old Japanese 柄 (kara) could imply that the core meaning isn't "intrinsic qualities" so much as "branch", which would more closely align to the sense currently given for Proto-Koreanic *katoL.
‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 22:01, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
- @Eirikr, the */-t-/ reconstruction is strong here because there is no evidence of fortition of *[-ɾ-] to */-t-/ ever having happened in Korean. The lenition of */-t-/ was not complete in the twelfth century, since the Jilin leishi has 麻帝 for 마리 (mali, “head”). There is also no evidence of the Middle Korean 라 (-la) allomorph of the suffix 다 (-ta, declarative sentence ender) in any Old Korean glosses to the Buddhist canon, all the way up to the end of the Old Korean glossing tradition around 1300.
- So I think it's just coincidence—there was probably not much Korean influence on Japanese after the thirteenth century, and if Wiktionary is correct the semantics don't seem to match very well. 가락 (garak) is more for noodles, certain types of rice cakes (see left), rubber bands, etc. Songs are also counted with 가락.--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 00:44, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
- @Karaeng Matoaya: Excellent, thank you again!
- That detail about the apparent lateness of /t/ lenition is quite useful in other contexts as well. Japanese has many ancient nouns that exhibit a kind of ablaut of sorts, where compounding forms have more open vowels and standalone forms have more closed vowels. Examples include 口 (“mouth”, kutsu- in compounds vs. kuchi standalone), 手 (“hand”, ta- vs. te), 木 (“tree”, ko- vs. ki), 目 (“eye”, ma- vs. me). One author, J. Marshall Unger, hypothesized that these might point towards an ancient bi- or trisyllabic form ending in /ri/ where the last syllable was omitted in compounds, but when used as standalone nouns, the initial consonant of the last syllable lenited out and the two vowels then fused. He thus reconstructed "eye" as mari and suggested cognacy with Korean 마리 (mari). The semantic shift struck me as odd, but not insurmountable (consider English town and German Zaun (“fence, palisade”)). However, if the Korean term was actually *mat in ancient times, that seems to shoot this theory in the foot: while Japanese seems to dislike the /r/ phoneme in its historical development, making lenition plausible, /t/ has been preserved.
- Regarding the Korean term, any chance it's a nativization + sense shift from Chinese 末? As in, "the [upper or front] end [of the body]"? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 01:38, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
- @Eirikr, I'm not sure I agree with the semantics of the Chinese 末 etymology myself. The conventional comparison is MK ᄆᆞᆮ (mot, “eldest child”) > Modern 맏이 (maji) (probably fused diminutive), with both "head" and "oldest child" being primary or highest in some sense, but this also strikes me as a bit strange semantically.--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 02:12, 4 November 2020 (UTC)