Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T16:54:17.618Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Phonesthetics and the etymologies of blood and bone

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2020

JOSEPH PENTANGELO Open the ORCID record for JOSEPH PENTANGELO [Opens in a new window]
JOSEPH PENTANGELO*
Affiliation:
Linguistics MA/PhD Program, The Graduate Center, CUNY Room 7407 (mailbox 78) 365 Fifth Ave New York, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The etymologies of English blood and bone are obscure. Although their cognates are well represented in the Germanic family, both lack clear cognates in other Indo-European languages. Various explanations for their origins have been proposed, including that they may be non-Indo-European (e.g. Hawkins 1987). Blood and bone, and their cognates, share an initial /b/ with numerous body-related words (e.g. beard, breast, bosom) throughout Germanic. This initial /b/ constitutes a phonestheme. Phonesthemes – ‘recurring sound-meaning pairings that are not clearly contrastive morphemes’ (Bergen 2004: 290) – are present in many Germanic languages, but their role in lexicogenesis is little understood. I suggest that blood and bone were formed by blending the initial /b/ phonestheme with two pre-existing lexemes: Proto-Germanic *flōda- ‘something that flows’ and *staina- ‘stone’. Phonesthetic blending may be a fruitful avenue for future etymological research.

Keywords

Germanicphonesthemeetymologyword formationblends
Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , June 2021 , pp. 225 - 255
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Many thanks to Juliette Blevins. Thanks also to Michael Sargent, Bill Haddican, Patrick Honeybone and this article's two anonymous reviewers, all of whom gave me valuable advice. In 2018, I presented an earlier version of this article at the Word-Formation Theories III conference in Košice, Slovakia. An earlier version of this article won the 2018 Richard M. Hogg Prize from the International Society for the Linguistics of English. Dedicated to my wife, Rebecca.

References

Abelin, Åsa. 1999. Studies in sound symbolism (Gothenburg Monographs in Linguistics 17). PhD dissertation, University of Gothenburg.Google Scholar
Abelin, Åsa. 2015. Phonaesthemes and sound symbolism in Swedish brand names. Ampersand 2, 19–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alderete, John & Kochetov, Alexei. 2017. Integrating sound symbolism with core grammar: The case of expressive palatalization. Language 93(4), 731–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Algeo, John. 1977. Blends, a structural and systemic view. American Speech 52(1/2), 47–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arthur, Ross G. 2002. English–Old Norse dictionary. Cambridge, ON: In Parentheses Publications.Google Scholar
Baldi, Philip & Page, B. Richard. 2006. Review of Europa Vasconica–Europa Semitica by Theo Vennemann. Lingua 116, 2183–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bat-El, Outi. 2013. Blends. In Khan, Geoffrey (ed.), Encyclopedia of Hebrew language and linguistics, vol. 1, 371–3. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Bauer, Laurie. 2006. Compounds and minor word-formation types. In Aarts, Bas & McMahon, April (eds.), The handbook of English linguistics, 483–506. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benczes, Réka. 2019. Rhyme over reason: Phonological motivation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bergen, Benjamin K. 2004. The psychological reality of phonaesthemes. Language 80(2), 290–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloomfield, Leonard. 1933. Language. New York: Henry Holt.Google Scholar
Blust, Robert. 2003. The phonestheme ŋ- in Austronesian languages. Oceanic Linguistics 42(1), 187–212.Google Scholar
Blust, Robert. 2011. The problem of doubleting in Austronesian languages. Oceanic Linguistics 50(2), 399–457.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1940. Word affinities. American Speech 15(1), 62–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1953. The life and death of words. The American Scholar 22(3), 323–35.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1965. Forms of English: Accent, morpheme, order. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1975. Aspects of language, 2nd edn. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Boussidan, Armelle, Sagi, Eyal & Ploux, Sabine. 2009. Phonaesthemic and etymological effects on the distribution of senses in statistical models of semantics. Proceedings of the 34th Cognitive Science Annual Meeting, 36–40.Google Scholar
Boutkan, D. F. H. 1998. On the form of North European substratum words in Germanic. Historische Sprachforschung / Historical Linguistics, 111(1), 102–33.Google Scholar
Boutkan, Dirk & Siebenga, Sjoerd Michiel. 2005. Old Frisian etymological dictionary. http://dictionaries.brillonline.com/frisian (accessed 18 August 2019).Google Scholar
Burridge, Kate & Stebbins, Tonya N.. 2015. For the love of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, Angus, Amos, Ashley Crandell & Healey, Antonette diPaolo (eds.). 2018. Dictionary of Old English: A to I online. http://tapor.library.utoronto.ca/doe/index.html (accessed 18 August 2019).Google Scholar
Carling, Gerd & Johansson, Niklas. 2014. Motivated language change: Processes involved in the growth and conventionalization of onomatopoeia and sound symbolism. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 46(2), 199–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cate-Silfwerbrand, Ragnhild Birgitta ten. 1958. Vlees, bloed en been: Synoniemvergelijkend onderzoek van drie Germaanse woordformaties. Assen: Van Gorcum.Google Scholar
Cleasby, Richard & Vigfusson, Gudbrand. 1874. An Icelandic–English dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dingemanse, Mark. 2018. Redrawing the margins of language: Lessons from research on ideophones. Glossa: A journal of general linguistics 3(1), 4.1–30. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.444CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DOE. See Cameron et al. (2018) above.Google Scholar
Elsen, Hilke. 2017. The two meanings of sound symbolism. Open Linguistics 3(1), 491–99. https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2017-0024CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feist, Sigmund. 1914. Indogermanen und Germanen: Ein Beitrag zur Europäschen Urgeschichtsforschung. Halle: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Feist, Sigmund. 1932. The origin of the Germanic languages and the Indo-Europeanising of North Europe. Language 8(4), 245–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fick, August, Falk, Hjalmar & Torp, Alf. 1909. Wörterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen: Dritter Teil: Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht.Google Scholar
Findell, Martin. 2012. Phonological evidence from the continental Runic inscriptions. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Firth, J. R. 1930. Speech. London: Benn's Sixpenny Library. Reprinted in Strevens, Peter (ed.), 1964, The tongues of men and speech, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Firth, J. R. 1957. Papers in linguistics, 1934–1951. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fortson, Benjamin W. 2010. Indo-European language and culture. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Francis, W. Nelson & Kucera, Henry. 1982. Frequency analysis of English usage: Lexicon and grammar. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Gąsiorowski, Piotr. 2006. The etymology of Old English *docga. Indogermanische Forschungen 111, 275–84.Google Scholar
Gollancz, Israel (ed.). 1895. The Exeter Book, an anthology of Anglo-Saxon poetry. London: Early English Text Society.Google Scholar
Gries, Stefan. 2004. Shouldn't it be breakfunch? A quantitative analysis of blend structure in English. Linguistics 42(3), 639–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, J. R. Clark. 1960. A concise Anglo-Saxon dictionary. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Hawkins, John A. 1987. Germanic languages. In Comrie, Bernard (ed.), The world's major languages, 69–76. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hogg, Richard M. 1982. Two geminate consonants in Old English? In Anderson, John A. (ed.), Language form and linguistic variation: Papers dedicated to Angus McIntosh, 187–202. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hough, Carole & Kay, Christian (eds). 2017. Thesaurus of Old English (TOE) online. https://oldenglishteaching.arts.gla.ac.uk/ (accessed 29 October 2019).Google Scholar
Jones, Sir William. 1798. Third anniversary discourse: On the Hindus. Asiatick Researches 1, 415–31.Google Scholar
Joseph, Brian D. 1997. On the linguistics of marginality: The centrality of the periphery. www.asc.ohio-state.edu/joseph.1/publications/1997 onth.pdf (accessed 18 August 2019).Google Scholar
Kroonen, Guus. 2011. The Proto-Germanic n-stems: A study in diachronic morphology. Amsterdam: Rodopi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroonen, Guus. 2012. Non-Indo-European root nouns in Germanic: Evidence in support of the agricultural substrate hypothesis. In Grünthal, Riho & Kallio, Petri (eds.), A linguistic map of prehistoric Northern Europe, 239–60. Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Toimituksia.Google Scholar
Kroonen, Guus. 2013. Etymological dictionary of Proto-Germanic. http://dictionaries.brillonline.com/proto-germanic (accessed 16 August 2019).Google Scholar
Kwon, Nahyun & Round, Erich R.. 2015. Phonaesthemes in morphological theory. Morphology 25, 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawler, John. 2006. The data fetishist's guide to rime coherence. www.umich.edu/~jlawler/rimecoherence.pdf (accessed 19 August 2019).Google Scholar
Lehmann, Winfred P. 1971. The development of Germanic verse form. New York: Gordian Press.Google Scholar
Liberman, Anatoly. 2006. Review of Dirk Boutkan and Sjoerd Michiel Siebinga, Old Frisian Etymological Dictionary. Trefwoord. https://ivdnt.org/images/stories/onderzoek_en_onderwijs/publicaties/trefwoord/oefd-review.pdf (accessed 18 August 2019).Google Scholar
Liberman, Anatoly. 2008. An analytic dictionary of English etymology: An introduction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Lloyd, Albert L. & Springer, Otto. 1988. Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, vol. 1. Göttingen and Zurich: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.Google Scholar
Lloyd, Albert L., Lühr, Rosemarie & Springer, Otto. 1998. Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, vol. 2. Göttingen and Zurich: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.Google Scholar
Magnus, Margaret. 1998. Phonosemantic dictionary. www.trismegistos.com/Dictionary.html (accessed 18 August 2019).Google Scholar
Magnus, Margaret. 2013. A history of sound symbolism. In Allen, Keith (ed.), The Oxford handbook of the history of linguistics, 191–208. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Messinger, Heinz, Türck, Gisela & Willmann, Helmut. 1993. Langenscheidt's standard German dictionary. New York, Berlin, Munich, Vienna and Zurich: Langenscheidt.Google Scholar
OED = Oxford English dictionary online (2018). www.oed.com (accessed 18 August 2019).Google Scholar
Orel, Vladimir. 2003. A handbook of Germanic etymology. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Owen, Francis. 1928. Alliteration in the runic inscriptions. Modern Philology 25(4), 397–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peeters, Christian. 1977. Notes on Germanic etymologies. Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung 91(1), 166–9.Google Scholar
Pereltsvaig, Asya. 2010. Blending in. Languages of the world. www.languagesoftheworld.info/morphology/blending-in.html (accessed 18 August 2019).Google Scholar
Pereltsvaig, Asya & Lewis, Martin. 2015. The Indo-European controversy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Philps, Dennis. 2011. Reconsidering phonæsthemes: Submorphemic invariance in English ‘sn- words’. Lingua 121, 1121–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prokosch, Eduard. 1939. A comparative Germanic grammar. Baltimore, MD: Linguistic Society of America.Google Scholar
Roberge, Paul. 2010. Contact and the history of Germanic languages. In Hickey, Raymond (ed.), The handbook of language contact, 406–31. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sadowski, Piotr. 2001. The sound-symbolic quality of word-initial ‘gr- cluster’ in Middle English alliterative verse. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 102(1), 37–47.Google Scholar
Schuhmann, Roland. 2012. Where is the substrate in the Germanic lexicon? www.academia.edu/1928440/Where_is_the_Substrate_in_the_Germanic_Lexicon (accessed 18 August 2019).Google Scholar
Seebold, Elmar. 2001. Vergleichendes und etymologisches Wörtbuch der germanischen starken Verben. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Skeat, Rev. Walter, W. 1887. Principles of English etymology, vol. I: The native element. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Chris. 2014. The phonesthetics of blends: A lexicographic study of cognitive blends in the OED. Explorations in English Language and Linguistics 2(1), 12–45.Google Scholar
Smith, Chris A. 2016. Tracking semantic change in fl- monomorphemes in the Oxford English Dictionary. Journal of Historical Linguistics 6(2), 165–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sǒrgo, Aljoša. 2015. Pre-Germanic: A tentative description of the substratum language in Proto-Germanic based on Guus Kroonen's etymological dictionary of Proto-Germanic. PhD dissertation, University of Ljubljana.Google Scholar
Szymanek, Bogdan. 2005. The latest trends in English word formation. In Štekauer, Pavol & Lieber, Rochelle (eds.), Handbook of word-formation, 429–48. Dordrecht: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tappenden, Graham. 2009. Teuro. ww.allthingsgerman.net/blog/podcasts/teuro/ (accessed 18 August 2019).Google Scholar
Urban, Matthias. 2015. Lexical semantic change and semantic reconstruction. In Bowern, Claire & Evans, Bethwyn (eds.), The Routledge handbook of historical linguistics, 374–92. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Vennemann, Theo. 2003. Europa Vasconica – Europa Semitica (Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 138). Berlin and New York: De Gruyter Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vennemann, Theo. 2012. Germania Semitica (Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 259). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wallis, John. 1653. Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae. Oxford: Leon Lichfield.Google Scholar
Watkins, Calvert. 2011. The American heritage dictionary of Indo-European roots, 3rd edn. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.Google Scholar
Williams, Graham. 2013. Glossing over the lamb: Phonaesthetic gl- in Middle English and aural scepticism in Pearl. The Review of English Studies 65(271), 596–618.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, David. 2012. Scrunch, growze, or chobble? Investigating regional variation in sound symbolism in the Survey of English Dialects. Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics 17.Google Scholar