Chapter published in:
Language Dispersal Beyond Farming
Edited by Martine Robbeets and Alexander Savelyev
[Not in series 215] 2017
► pp. 75–92

Lexical recycling as a lens onto shared Japano-Koreanic agriculture

| Furman University
Despite the existence of strong cognates in other realms of basic vocabulary, it remains unclear why Korean and Japanese share so few words for grain and agriculture. This paper proposes that pre-rice vocabulary has undergone a process of lexical recycling in Korean to refer to later rice-related practices. The observation that Korean words for ‘rice’ contain initial p suggests common derivations from pre-MK *po ‘rice(?)’ that is relatable to Old Japanese po ‘a grain’. This paper uncovers important Japano-Koreanic cognates, including ‘buckwheat,’ ‘millet,’ and ‘rice plant’. This analysis also shows how linguists may retrieve early agricultural terminology that has been replaced by more advanced practices.
Keywords: Japano-Koreanic, proto-Korean-Japanese, rice, lexical recycling, historical linguistics
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 21 December 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.215.04fra
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