Reconstruction:Proto-Koreanic/hol

Alternative reconstructions

 * *hul, *ol, *ul

Reconstruction notes
This term has been reconstructed since the 1930s, based on the fact that the Middle Korean words for "one day", "two days", "three days", "four days", "how many days", "ten days", and "today" all seem to share an identical morpheme which was no longer productive by Middle Korean. Both *oL/*uL and *hoL/*huL have been reconstructed, but the latter is more likely because the Middle Korean word for "two days" is, and the numerical morpheme in this word appears as a non-aspirated in other words such as. The arguments for hinge on the fact that  and   are attested earlier and more commonly than  and, but this may be because of a common process in which intervocalic  was dropped; compare  and.

It has also been debated whether the morpheme was a noun or a suffix, but a noun is more likely because Middle Korean contains the adnominal suffix  before, which marks the following morpheme as a noun. At some later point, it appears to have become grammaticalized and became subject to word-internal vowel harmony, which has obscured the original vowel beyond recovery.

See also 🇨🇬.

Noun

 * 1) day