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Title: | The sound symbolism of food : the frequency of initial /PA-/ in words for (staple) food | Authors: | Joo, I | Issue Date: | 2023 | Source: | Linguistics, 2023, v. 61, no. 1, p. 33-46 | Abstract: | In different languages around the world, morphemes representing the (cooked form of) staple food or food in general tend to begin with a [+labial] phoneme followed by a [+low] phoneme (/pa-/, /ma-/, /fa-/, /wa-/, etc.). This article provides evidence for this phonological similarity by analyzing 66 sample languages’ morphemes representing the staple food within the society where each language is spoken. About a fourth of the morphemes referring to staple food begin with a [+labial] first phoneme followed by a [+low] second phoneme, which is a much higher proportion compared to another list of basic morphemes in the same 66 languages. I further argue that the motivation for this crosslinguistic tendency is the iconic association between the mouth-opening gesture and the concept of eating. | Keywords: | Food Iconicity Sound symbolism |
Publisher: | De Gruyter Mouton | Journal: | Linguistics | ISSN: | 0024-3949 | EISSN: | 1613-396X | DOI: | 10.1515/ling-2021-0127 | Rights: | © 2022 Ian Joo, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The following publication Joo, Ian. "The sound symbolism of food: the frequency of initial /PA-/ in words for (staple) food" Linguistics, vol. 61, no. 1, 2023, pp. 33-46 is available at https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2021-0127. |
Appears in Collections: | Journal/Magazine Article |
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