A phonestheme (; phonaestheme in British English) is a pattern of sounds systematically paired with a certain meaning in a

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

. The concept was proposed in 1930 by British linguist

J. R. Firth John Rupert Firth (June 17, 1890 in Keighley, Yorkshire – December 14, 1960 in Lindfield, West Sussex), commonly known as J. R. Firth, was an English linguist and a leading figure in British linguistics during the 1950s. Education and career F ...

, who coined the term from the Greek ''phone'', "sound", and ''aisthema'', "perception" (from ''aisthanomai'', "I perceive"). For example, sequence "sl-" appears in English words denoting low-friction motion, like "slide", "slick" and "sled". A phonestheme is different from a

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

(a basic unit of word-differentiating sound) or a

morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone are ...

(a basic unit of meaning) because it does not meet the normal criterion of

compositionality In semantics, mathematical logic and related disciplines, the principle of compositionality is the principle that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its constituent expressions and the rules used to combine them. ...

. Within C.S. Peirce's "theory of signs" the phonestheme is considered to be an "

icon An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Catholic churches. They are not simply artworks; "an icon is a sacred image used in religious devotion". The most ...

" rather than a " symbol" or an " index".

Identification

Phonesthemes are of critical interest to students of the internal structure of words because they appear to be a case where the internal structure of the word is non-compositional; i.e., a word with a phonestheme in it has other material in it that is not itself a morpheme. Phonesthemes "fascinate some linguists", as

Ben Zimmer Benjamin Zimmer (born 1971) is an American linguist, lexicographer, and language commentator. He is a language columnist for ''The Wall Street Journal'' and contributing editor for ''The Atlantic''. He was formerly a language columnist for ''The ...

has phrased it, in a process that can become "mystical" or "unscientific". For example, the English phonestheme "gl-" occurs in a large number of words relating to light or vision, like "glitter", "glisten", "glow", "gleam", "glare", "glint", "glimmer", "gloss", and so on; yet, despite this, the remainder of each word is not itself a phonestheme (i.e., a pairing of form and meaning); i.e., "-isten", "-ow", and "-eam" do not make meaningful contributions to "glisten", "glow", and "gleam". There are three main ways in which phonesthemes are empirically identified.

Corpus studies

The first is through corpus studies, where the words of a language are subjected to statistical analysis, and the particular form-meaning pairing, or phonestheme, is shown to constitute a statistically unexpected distribution in the lexicon or not. Corpus studies can inform a researcher about the current state of the lexicon, a critical first step, but importantly are completely uninformative when it comes to questions of whether and how phonesthemes are represented in the minds of language users.

Study of patterns in neologisms

The second type of approach makes use of the tendency for phonesthemes to participate in the coinage and interpretation of

neologisms A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...

(i.e., new words in a language). Various studies have demonstrated that, when asked to invent or interpret new words, subjects tend to follow the patterns that are predicted by the phonesthemes in their language. It is known, for example, that the word ''bangle'' is a Loanword, loan from

Hindi Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...

but speakers tend to associate it with English

onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', '' ...

like ''bang''. While this approach demonstrates the vitality of phonesthemic patterns, it does not provide any evidence about whether (or how) phonesthemes are represented in the minds of speaker-hearers.

Study of linguistic processing patterns

The final type of evidence uses the methods of psycholinguistics to study exactly how phonesthemes participate in language processing. One such method is phonesthemic priming — akin to morphological priming — which demonstrates that people represent phonesthemes much as they do typical morphemes, despite the fact that phonesthemes are non-compositional. Discussions of phonesthesia are often grouped with other phenomena under the rubric of

sound symbolism In linguistics, sound symbolism is the resemblance between sound and meaning. It is a form of linguistic iconicity. For example, the English word ''ding'' may sound similar to the actual sound of a bell. Linguistic sound may be perceived as simi ...

Cross-linguistic similarities

While phonaesthemes may be language-specific, it has been pointed out that people may be sensitive to some phonaesthemes (e.g. /fl-/, or /tr-/) irrespective of where sound-meaning correspondences are exemplified in the lexicon of their mother tongue (e.g. English, French, Spanish or Macedonian).

Distribution

Phonesthemes have been documented in numerous languages from diverse language families, among them English, Swedish, and other

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...

, Austronesian languages, and Japanese. While phonesthemes have mostly been identified in the onsets of words and syllables, they can have other forms. There has been some argument that sequences like "-ash" and "-ack" in English also serve as phonesthemes, due to their patterning in words that denote forceful, destructive contact ("smash", "crash", "bash", etc.) and abrupt contact ("smack", "whack", "crack", etc.), respectively. In addition to the distribution of phonesthemes, linguists consider their ''motivation''. In some cases, there may appear to be good sound-symbolic reasons why phonesthemes would have the form they have. In the case of "-ack", for example, we might imagine that the words sharing this phonestheme do so because they denote events that would produce a similar sound. But critically, there are many phonesthemes for which there can be no sound-symbolic basis, such as "gl-", for the simple reason that their meanings (such as 'pertaining to light or vision') entail no sound. While there are numerous studies on living languages, research is lacking about ancient languages, although the first documented example of phonesthemes dates back to at least the fourth century B.C.: Plato's Cratylus clearly mentioned a gl- phonestheme (a different one from that discussed previously, as those words are not of Greek origin) as well as an st- one and gave an explanation in terms of phonosemantics.

Examples

Examples of phonesthemes in English include: ;"cl-": related to a closing motion of a single object, such as "clam", "clamp", "clap", "clasp", "clench", "cling", "clip", "clop", "clutch". ;"gl-": related to light, as in "glance", "glare", "glass", "gleam", "glimmer", "glint", "glisten", "glitter", "gloaming", "gloom", "gloss", "glow". ;"sl-": appears in words denoting frictionless motion, like "slide", "slick", "sled", and so on. These are themselves a subset of a larger set of words beginning with “sl-“ that are pejorative behaviours, traits, or events: slab, slack, slang, slant, slap, slash, slate, slattern, slaver, slay, sleek, sleepy, sleet, slime, slip, slipshod, slit, slither, slobber, slog, slope, sloppy, slosh, sloth, slouch, slough, slovenly, slow, sludge, slug, sluggard, slum, slump, slur, slut, sly. ;"sn-": related to the nose or mouth, as in "snack", "snarl", "sneer", "sneeze", "snicker", "sniff", "sniffle", "snivel", "snoot", "snore", "snorkel", "snort", "snot", "snout", "snub" (as an adjective), "snuff", "snuffle". ;"st-": appears in three families of meanings: * a family of words referring to stability, as in "stable", "stadium", "standard", "stage", "staid", "stake", "stalk", "stall", "stance", "stanchion", "stand", "stare", "stasis", "state", "static", "station", "stationary", "stator", "statue", "stature", "status", "stay", "stay", "steady", "stet", "still", "stoll", "store", etc. * a family of words referring to the idea of strength, of rigidity, as "stout", "steel", "staff", "stave", "staple", etc. * another family referring to the idea of something pointed or sharp, as in "stab", "staple", "stiletto", "sting", "stitch", "Stylet", "stylo", etc. ;"str-": denoting something long and thin, as in "straight", "strand", "strap", "straw", "streak", "stream", "string", "stripe". ;"sw-": related to a long movement, as in "sway", "sweep", "swerve", "swing", "swipe", "swirl", "swish", "swoop". ;"-ump": related to a hemispherical shape or pile, as in "bump", "clump", "dump", "jump", "hump", "lump", "mump", "rump".

Notes

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References

* Marchand, Hans (1959), "Phonetic Symbolism in English Word-Formation", ''Indogermanische Forschungen'', Volume 64, pp.146-168, 256-27

* Marchand, Hans, ''The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word Formation: A Synchronic-Diachronic Approach'', 2nd ed, C.H.Beck'she Verlagsbuchhandlung, (München), 1969. Chapter 7 ("Phonetic symbolism") and chapter 8 ("Motivation by linguistic form: Ablaut and rime combinations"), pp. 397–439. * Leonardi, Filippo Maria (2015), "Phonesthemes in Latin language

* Poncet, Danièle, ''A Study on the ST-Phonaestheme'', Mémoire de maîtrise, Université de Grenoble III, France, University year 1980–1981, directed by Mr. Chevillet.

External links

English phonesthemes

Linguist List discussion of phonesthesia

Phonetics Pragmatics Semantics Semiotics Phonaesthetics 1930s neologisms