LIU Jiayou (The Chinese University of Hong Kong) Phonological Bridge: Sino-Korean Evidence in the Transeurasian Linguistic Debate

07.07.2026

29.07.2026
MB 3/126
15:00 bis 16:00

The genealogical relationship between the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Koreanic, and Japonic languages—collectively known as the Transeurasian (or Altaic) family—remains one of the most contentious issues in historical linguistics. Central to this debate is the difficulty of distinguishing between shared features resulting from a common ancestor (divergence) versus those arising from intensive long-term contact (convergence). We propose that Sino-Korean (SK), the phonological system of Chinese character readings in the Korean language, provides a vital methodological bridge to resolving this stalemate.

This talk introduces the adjustment strategy of Sino-Korean while confronting the so-called "light labial consonants (輕唇音)" in Chinese that did not have the exact phoneme in Korean. The systematic "failed matching" of Chinese labiodental fricatives, which were filtered back into bilabial stops in SK, serves as a structural fingerprint of the early Koreanic phonological DNA.

Furthermore, this talk introduces a "stratigraphic subtraction method". By precisely identifying and "peeling back" the multiple layers of Chinese borrowing—from Old Chinese remnants to Middle Chinese matrices—we can isolate a purified native Koreanic core for more accurate comparison with other Transeurasian branches.