상고중국어에 보이는 **miːg(피⋅핏줄)을 어근으로 갖는 단어가족과 한국어 ‘피’의 상고중국어 차용어 가능성에 대한 논의

Abstract

It is presumed that in the Old Chinese, words meaning ‘blood’ and ‘vein’ had the common root **miːg, from which the word *hmiːg meaning ‘blood’ was derived by adding the prefix *h-. To write that word during the Shang dynasty, people created and used the word 血xue by adding a hieroglyphic sign representing blood of a sacrifice to the hieroglyph 皿mǐn meaning a ‘bowl.’ Afterwards, in the Han dynasty, the dropout of ‘m’ led to the generation of ‘w,’ and under the influence of the front vowel /i/, the ending changed to an alveolar plosive. The sound of the word 血xue changed to *hʷiːd in the late Han dynasty and to hʷet in the period of Middle Chinese. Meanwhile, *hmiːg was borrowed into the ancient Korean language in the early period of Nakranggun and went through changes (hm- 〉pʰ- and -g 〉-h 〉-O) to have the word form pʰi(‘피’ in Korean) at least before the 15th century. In addition, the word *mriːg, meaning ‘vein,’ was derived from the root **miː g by adding the infix ‘-r-.’ To write that word, 永yǒng, meaning a ‘flow of water,’ and its reversed form pai were used as components, which were combined with 皮pi, 肉rou, and 血xue and other words to form various combinations, such as ‘□,’ ‘脉,’ ‘脈,’ ‘□,’ and ‘衇.’ As for *mriːg, the ending did not change to an alveolar plosive because the vowel changed to /e/ before the change from *-ig to *-id occurred in the period of Old Chinese. *mreːg changed to mЩεk in the period of Middle Chinese. As for 脈mai, the prefix *h- was added to *mriːg and thus *hmrig, meaning ditches spreading like thread veins, was derived from it. Afterwards, in the *mreːg stage, the initial was turned voiceless and the suffix *-s was added and thus *m˳ʰreːgs, meaning ‘tributary,’ was derived from it. To write down the former, 水shuǐ and 血xue were combined into 洫xu, while 肉rou in 脈mai was changed to 水shuǐ to create 派pai. With respect to *hmrig, the vowel also changed in the period of Old Chinese and the velar plosive ending was kept. *hmrЩg changed to hʷɨk in the period of Middle Chinese, while *m˳ʰreːgs went through the change from -gs to -h and became pʰЩε(departing tone).