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 that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

. The concept was proposed in 1930 by British linguist J. R. Firth, 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 A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...

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

morpheme A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...

(a basic unit of meaning) because it does not meet the normal criterion of compositionality. 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, Catholic Church, Catholic, and Lutheranism, Lutheran churches. The most common subjects include Jesus, Mary, mother of ...

" rather than a "

symbol A symbol is a mark, Sign (semiotics), sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, physical object, object, or wikt:relationship, relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by cr ...

" or an "

index Index (: indexes or indices) may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Index (''A Certain Magical Index''), a character in the light novel series ''A Certain Magical Index'' * The Index, an item on the Halo Array in the ...

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 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 multiple 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 In linguistics, a neologism (; also known as a coinage) is any newly formed word, term, or phrase that has achieved popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered ...

(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

loan In finance, a loan is the tender of money by one party to another with an agreement to pay it back. The recipient, or borrower, incurs a debt and is usually required to pay interest for the use of the money. The document evidencing the deb ...

from

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

but speakers tend to associate it with English

onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia (or rarely echoism) is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetics, phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as Oin ...

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 Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind ...

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.

Cross-linguistic similarities

While phonesthemes may be language-specific, it has been pointed out that people may be sensitive to some phonesthemes (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 northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

Austronesian languages The Austronesian languages ( ) are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan (by Taiwanese indigenous peoples). They are spoken ...

, 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". "fl-": related to movement, such as "flap", "flare", "flee", "flick", "flicker", "fling", "flip", "flit", "flitter", "flow", "flutter", "fly", "flurry". "gl-": related to light, as in "glade", "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/snigger", "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", "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", "strip", "stripe". "sw-": related to a long movement, as in "sway", "sweep", "swerve", "swing", "swipe", "swirl", "swish", "swoop". "tw-": connotes a twisting motion, as in "twist", "twirl", "tweak", "twill", "tweed", "tweezer", "twiddle", "twine", "twinge". "-ow(e)l": connotes something sinister, as in "owl", "prowl", "scowl", "growl", "howl", "rowel", "bowel", "jowl". "-ump": related to a hemispherical shape or pile, as in "bump", "clump", "dump", "jump", "hump", "lump", "mump", "rump", "stump".

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 Phonaesthetics 1930s neologisms