‘머리’, ‘마리’, ‘바리’의 의미론

Abstract

This article examines the historical change of korean words and the motivation to change by tracking the diachronic semantic change of ‘məri’, ‘mari’ and ‘pari’. While ‘məri’ has maintained its own meaning since the 15 th century, ‘mari’ has continuously experienced meaning change, holding a minor position in the semantic domain about ‘head’. Since the 16 th century, ‘mari’ has acquired and enlarged the meaning of ‘measure nouns of animal’. From 19 th century ‘mari’ and ‘pari’ are competing within the semantic domain about ‘measure nouns of animal’. But ‘pari’ is recently losing its influence according to the dialects distribution. This paper argues that the reason is because cows or horses ceased to play an important role in farming society any longer.