國語漢字音의 母胎論攷

A Study on the Origins of Sino-Korean

Among the main studies and research works treating of the origins of Sino-Korean in view of their inner structures, there are three note-worthy ones: a theory of the maternity of 10th century K’aifeng sounds(開封音) by Professor Hideyo Arisaka(有坂秀世), of Japan; a theory of the origination in 6th-7th century northern Chinese (The Phonetic Systems of Northern Chinese) by Professor Bernhard Karlgren; and a theory of the origin ation in the Ch’ang-an sounds of T’ang Dynasty(唐代長安音設) by Professor Rokuro Kono (河野六郞), of Japan. This writer has tried in this writing to offer criticism upon their arguments, while presenting them in a summary. Professor Arisaka was, in the opinion of this writer, inclined more than necessarily towards a preoccupied deduction, based on some limited facts of the sounds of the Chinese characters in the Korean language, and thus, it is feared, he somewhat neglected the more comprehensive aspects. On the other hand, Professor Karlgren set forth inferences from his observations of the inner structures of the sounds of the Chinese characters in Korean as a result of his studies with emphasis upon the transcriptions of ancient Chinese sounds preserved in other languages within the Chinese cultural sphere, in an effort to reconstruct the ancient Chinese, but his theory was never free from viewing the Sino-Korean as derived from some particular sounds of a single period. In short, it is feared to be an oversimplification of the complex matter. And finally, Professor Kono’.s, unlike those of the other two scholars, is a faithful observation and more comprehensive and systematic analysis of the Sino-Korean, yet it has its shortcomings, that is, he seems to have been unduly obsessed with the fan-ch’ieh of Hui-lin’s(慧琳音) from T’ang Chinese. Despite these shortcomings, the studies of these scholars, especially the latter two, are almost near factual and so are worthy of specific attention. But they are a little different from the view of this writer arrived at by his own research. According to the reflection of the results of analysis made by this writer of the inner structures of the sounds of the Chinese characters in Korean upon the original sounds of Chinese, it is found that what did play the utmost role at the foundational stratum in forming the sounds of the Chinese characters in the Korean language as their true ancestry is the northern Chinese belonging to the Ch’iehyün sounds(切韻音) of early Sui(隋) and T’ang(唐), although a little of Wu(吳) dialects of the southern dynasty is also traced at the very bottom of them. The conclusions drawn from such inner structures of Sino-Korean can be explained, without much difficulty, also by the steps that the Chinese characters and the language, which made the physical and historical background of Korea, were accepted and did develop in Korea.