조선 시대 고문서에 나타난 ‘等’의 범주화 기능 — 한자의 구조적 인접성에 기인한 의미 확장 = Categorization Functions of Deung (等) in Joseon-period Archival Documents:Semantic Extensions Based on Structural Contiguity in Chinese Characters

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study examines the semantic functions of deung (等) in Joseon-period archival documents from both diachronic and philological perspectives. The character 等 originally meant “to cut and trim bamboo slips to uniform sizes.” It serves as a representative example of metonymic semantic extension that arises from a strong structural contiguity among a character’s components. The notions of “boundary” (established by the cutting process) and the ensuing “group” or “set” (formed within those boundaries) together function as the core mechanisms that have allowed 等 to broaden its meanings across a variety of domains.
Initially, 等 was used to denote entities of the same rank or category. Over time, however, its usage broadened to encompass much wider contexts—most notably referencing administrators and the temporal periods of their governance. For instance, the expressions deung-nae (等內) and jeon-deung (前等) refer to specific administrative time frames (such as “during an official’s tenure” or “the period overseen by a previous local magistrate”). These examples demonstrate that when 等 is combined with official titles or administrative terms, it can signify both a particular span of time and the administrative agent associated with that period.
This development demonstrates that the core semantic properties of 等 — particularly its roles in category formation and boundary setting — have extended into social and administrative realms under the influence of the unique textual and historical conditions of the Korean written tradition. Thus, the study sheds new light on the interplay between character structure and semantic change in Korean historical documents. It also offers a fresh perspective on the metonymic evolution of the Sino-Korean lexicon.