Phono-semantic matching
Encyclopedia
Phono-semantic matching is a linguistic term referring to camouflaged borrowing in which a foreign word
is matched with a phonetically
and semantically similar pre-existent native word/root.
It may alternatively be defined as the entry of a multisourced neologism that preserves both the meaning and the approximate sound
of the parallel expression in the source language
, using pre-existent words/roots of the target language.
Phono-semantic matching is distinct from calquing. While calquing includes (semantic) translation
, it does not consist of phonetic matching (i.e. retaining the approximate sound
of the borrowed
word
through matching it with a similar-sounding pre-existent word
/morpheme
in the target language
). Phono-semantic matching is also distinct from homophonic translation
, which retains only the sound, and not the semantics.
i linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann
. It challenged Einar Haugen
's classic typology
of lexical borrowing. While Haugen categorized borrowing
into either substitution or importation, camouflaged borrowing in the form of PSM is a case of "simultaneous substitution and importation." Zuckermann proposed a new classification of multisourced neologisms, words deriving from two or more sources at the same time. Examples of such mechanisms are phonetic matching, semanticized phonetic matching and phono-semantic matching.
Zuckermann concludes that language planners
, for example members of the Academy of the Hebrew Language
, employ the very same techniques used in folk etymology by laymen, as well as by religious leaders. He urges lexicographers and etymologists to recognize the widespread phenomena of camouflaged borrowing and multisourced neologization and not to force one source on multi-parental lexical item
s.
not only dictates the choice of root, but also the choice of noun-pattern, thus constituting a camouflaged influence on the target-language
morphology
. For example, the phono-semantic matcher of English
dock with Israeli
מבדוק mivdók could have used — after deliberately choosing the phonetically and semantically suitable root בדק √bdq 'check' (Rabbinic), 'repair' (Biblical) — the noun-patterns mi⌂⌂a⌂á, ma⌂⌂e⌂á, mi⌂⌂é⌂et, mi⌂⌂a⌂áim etc. (each ⌂ represents a slot where a radical is inserted). Instead, mi⌂⌂ó⌂, which was not highly productive, was chosen because its [o] makes the final syllable of מבדוק mivdók sound like English dock."
An example is the Taiwanese Mandarin
word 威而剛 wēiérgāng (weiergang), which literally means "powerful and hard" and refers to Viagra, the drug for treating impotence in men, manufactured by Pfizer
.
Another example is the Mandarin form of World Wide Web
, which is wàn wéi wǎng , which satisfies "www" and literally means “myriad dimensional net”.
"Modern Standard Chinese 声纳 shēngnà "sonar", which uses the characters 声 shēng "sound" and 纳 nà "receive, accept". 声 shēng is a phonetically imperfect rendering of the English initial syllable (although peng, for instance, would have been much worse). Chinese has a large number of homo/heterotonal homophonous morphemes, which would have been much better phonetically (but not nearly as good semantically) – consider SONG (cf. 送 sòng ‘deliver, carry, give (as a present)’, 松 sōng ‘pine; loose, slack’, 耸 sǒng ‘tower; alarm, attract’ etc.), SOU (cf. 搜 sōu ‘search’, 叟 sŏu ‘old man’, 馊 sōu ‘sour, spoiled’ and many others) or SHOU (cf. 收 shōu ‘receive, accept’, 受 shòu ‘receive, accept’, 手 shǒu ‘hand’, 首 shǒu ‘head’, 兽 shòu ‘beast’, 瘦 shòu ‘thin’ and so forth)."
According to Zuckermann, PSM in Mandarin is common in (1) brand names, (2) computer jargon, (3) technological terms, and (4) toponyms. From a monolingual Chinese view, Mandarin PSM is the ‘lesser evil’ compared with roman orthography (in writing) or code switching (in speech). Zuckermann’s exploration of PSM in Standard Chinese
and Meiji period
Japanese
concludes that the Chinese writing system is multifunctional: pleremic ("full" of meaning, e.g. logographic), cenemic ("empty" of meaning
, e.g. phonographic - like a syllabary
) and simultaneously cenemic and pleremic (phono-logographic). Zuckermann argues that Leonard Bloomfield
’s assertion that "a language is the same no matter what system of writing may be used" is inaccurate. “If Chinese
had been written using roman letters, thousands of Chinese
words would not have been coined, or would have been coined with completely different forms”.
. However, previously loan words were often represented by Chinese characters, a process called ateji
(when used for sound, or jukujikun, when used for meaning), and some of these continue to be used. The characters chosen may correspond to the sound, the meaning, or both.
In many cases the characters used were used only for sound or only for meaning. For example, in the word 寿司 (sushi), the two characters are respectively read as su and shi, but the character 寿 means "one's natural life span" and 司 means "to administer", neither of which has anything to do with the food – this is ateji. Conversely, in the word 煙草 (tabako) for "tobacco", the individual kanji respectively mean "smoke" and "herb", which corresponds to the meaning, but they have no phonetic relationship to the word tabako – this is 熟字訓 (jukujikun).
In some cases, however, the kanji are sometimes chosen for both their semantic and phonetic values, a form of phono-semantic matching. A stock example is 倶楽部 (kurabu) for "club
", where the characters can be interpreted loosely in sequence as "together", "fun" and "place". Another example is 合羽 (kappa) for the Portuguese
capa, a kind of raincoat
. The characters can mean "wings coming together", as the pointed capa resembles a bird with wings folded together.
PSM is the one whose current form is okul "school". It was created to replace Ottoman Turkish mektep, an old loanword from Arabic. Turkish okul was obviously based on French école "school" and might have been influenced by Latin schola "school" (cf. the original Turkish coinage okula(ğ)). On the other hand, the autochthonous co-etymon of okul is Turkish oku- "(to) read", cf. okumak ‘to read, study’, okuma ‘reading’, okur ‘reader’. Note the semantic affinity with Arabic كتب kataba ‘wrote (masculine, singular)’, the ultimate origin of Ottoman Turkish mektep. However, synchronically, Turkish okul cannot be regarded as öztürkçe (pure Turkish) since the final -l is not a Turkish suffix and was imported ad hoc from French. One might claim that the -l is the result of analogy to Turkish words ending in l, e.g. kızıl "red, ruddy", from kızmak "to get angry/hot". There was also a suggestion that the suffix is in fact the Turkic -ul. However, adding the suffix -ul to oku would have yielded *okuyul (cf. Lewis 1999: 118). Diachronically, however, the original form of okul was allegedly okula, in which -la might be explained by analogy to (Ottoman) Turkish kışla "barracks, winter quarters" (cf. kış "winter") and yayla "summer pasture" (cf. yaz "summer"), although these two are not verb-based (ibid.: 117). Refet, the Deputy for the city of Urfa, falsely suggested that okula already existed in the Urfa dialect (ibid.: 118, cf. Heyd 1954: 91). Indeed, purists are likely to apply the method of revitalizing and standardizing dialectal words. However, in the case of okul, such an explanation seems to be no more than a folk etymology. Turkish okul constitutes a successful creational PSM. As Lewis (1982: vi, reprint of 1953) puts it: "Nothing is to be gained by adopting the ostrich-attitude and saying: ‘Okul (‘school’) is a ridiculous hybrid, out of the Turkish oku- ‘to read’, by the French école. We shall ignore it and continue to use the good old Ottoman word mektep.’ Turkish children nowadays don’t go to mektep; they go to okul."
alcarcioffo, North Italian arcicioffo > arciciocco > articiocco, then as the internationalism
phonetically realised in English as artichoke. The word was eventually phono-semantically matched back into Arabic (for example in Syria
, Lebanon
and Israel) as أرضي شوكي arḍī shōkī, consisting of أرضي arḍī "earthly" and شوكي shawkī "thorny".
व्याघ्र vyāghráh "tiger" but enhanced by the words vigour (i.e. strength) and Niagara (i.e. free/forceful flow).
Other motivations for PSM include the following:
Word
In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...
is matched with a phonetically
Phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...
and semantically similar pre-existent native word/root.
It may alternatively be defined as the entry of a multisourced neologism that preserves both the meaning and the approximate sound
Sound
Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...
of the parallel expression in the source language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
, using pre-existent words/roots of the target language.
Phono-semantic matching is distinct from calquing. While calquing includes (semantic) translation
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
, it does not consist of phonetic matching (i.e. retaining the approximate sound
Sound
Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...
of the borrowed
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
word
Word
In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...
through matching it with a similar-sounding pre-existent word
Word
In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...
/morpheme
Morpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
in the target language
Target language
Target language may refer to:*Target language, in applied linguistics and language education, the language which a person is learning, also called second language*Target language, in translation, the language to which a source text is translated...
). Phono-semantic matching is also distinct from homophonic translation
Homophonic translation
Homophonic translation renders a text in one language into a near-homophonic text in another language, usually with no attempt to preserve the original meaning of the text. In one homophonic translation, for example, English "sat on a wall" is rendered as French "s'étonne aux Halles" 'is...
, which retains only the sound, and not the semantics.
History
The term "phono-semantic matching" was introduced by IsraelIsrael
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann
Ghil'ad Zuckermann
Ghil'ad Zuckermann is an Israeli-Italian-British-Australian linguist, expert of language revival, contact linguistics, lexicology and the study of language, culture and identity...
. It challenged Einar Haugen
Einar Haugen
Einar Ingvald Haugen was an American linguist, author and Professor at University of Wisconsin–Madison and Harvard University.-Biography:Haugen was born in Sioux City, Iowa to Norwegians from the town of Oppdal in Norway. When he was a young child, the family moved back to Oppdal for a few years,...
's classic typology
Typology
Typology is the study of types. More specifically, it may refer to:*Typology , division of culture by races*Typology , classification of things according to their characteristics...
of lexical borrowing. While Haugen categorized borrowing
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
into either substitution or importation, camouflaged borrowing in the form of PSM is a case of "simultaneous substitution and importation." Zuckermann proposed a new classification of multisourced neologisms, words deriving from two or more sources at the same time. Examples of such mechanisms are phonetic matching, semanticized phonetic matching and phono-semantic matching.
Zuckermann concludes that language planners
Language planning
Language planning is a deliberate effort to influence the function, structure, or acquisition of languages or language variety within a speech community. It is often associated with government planning, but is also used by a variety of non-governmental organizations, such as grass-roots...
, for example members of the Academy of the Hebrew Language
Academy of the Hebrew Language
The Academy of the Hebrew Language was established by the Israeli government in 1953 as the "supreme institution for scholarship on the Hebrew language."-History:...
, employ the very same techniques used in folk etymology by laymen, as well as by religious leaders. He urges lexicographers and etymologists to recognize the widespread phenomena of camouflaged borrowing and multisourced neologization and not to force one source on multi-parental lexical item
Lexical item
A Lexical item is a single word or chain of words that forms the basic elements of a language's lexicon . Examples are "cat", "traffic light", "take care of", "by-the-way", and "it's raining cats and dogs"...
s.
Modern Hebrew
Often in phono-semantic matching, "the source-languageTranslation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
not only dictates the choice of root, but also the choice of noun-pattern, thus constituting a camouflaged influence on the target-language
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
morphology
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
. For example, the phono-semantic matcher of English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
dock with Israeli
Modern Hebrew
Modern Hebrew , also known as Israeli Hebrew or Modern Israeli Hebrew, is the language spoken in Israel and in some Jewish communities worldwide, from the early 20th century to the present....
מבדוק mivdók could have used — after deliberately choosing the phonetically and semantically suitable root בדק √bdq 'check' (Rabbinic), 'repair' (Biblical) — the noun-patterns mi⌂⌂a⌂á, ma⌂⌂e⌂á, mi⌂⌂é⌂et, mi⌂⌂a⌂áim etc. (each ⌂ represents a slot where a radical is inserted). Instead, mi⌂⌂ó⌂, which was not highly productive, was chosen because its [o] makes the final syllable of מבדוק mivdók sound like English dock."
Mandarin Chinese
PSM is frequently used in Mandarin borrowings.An example is the Taiwanese Mandarin
Taiwanese Mandarin
Taiwanese Mandarin is a variant of Mandarin derived from the official Standard Mandarin spoken in Taiwan Area of the Republic of China . The latter's standard lect is known in Taiwan as 國語 , based on the phonology of the Beijing dialect together with the grammar of Vernacular Chinese...
word 威而剛 wēiérgāng (weiergang), which literally means "powerful and hard" and refers to Viagra, the drug for treating impotence in men, manufactured by Pfizer
Pfizer
Pfizer, Inc. is an American multinational pharmaceutical corporation. The company is based in New York City, New York with its research headquarters in Groton, Connecticut, United States...
.
Another example is the Mandarin form of World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
, which is wàn wéi wǎng , which satisfies "www" and literally means “myriad dimensional net”.
"Modern Standard Chinese 声纳 shēngnà "sonar", which uses the characters 声 shēng "sound" and 纳 nà "receive, accept". 声 shēng is a phonetically imperfect rendering of the English initial syllable (although peng, for instance, would have been much worse). Chinese has a large number of homo/heterotonal homophonous morphemes, which would have been much better phonetically (but not nearly as good semantically) – consider SONG (cf. 送 sòng ‘deliver, carry, give (as a present)’, 松 sōng ‘pine; loose, slack’, 耸 sǒng ‘tower; alarm, attract’ etc.), SOU (cf. 搜 sōu ‘search’, 叟 sŏu ‘old man’, 馊 sōu ‘sour, spoiled’ and many others) or SHOU (cf. 收 shōu ‘receive, accept’, 受 shòu ‘receive, accept’, 手 shǒu ‘hand’, 首 shǒu ‘head’, 兽 shòu ‘beast’, 瘦 shòu ‘thin’ and so forth)."
According to Zuckermann, PSM in Mandarin is common in (1) brand names, (2) computer jargon, (3) technological terms, and (4) toponyms. From a monolingual Chinese view, Mandarin PSM is the ‘lesser evil’ compared with roman orthography (in writing) or code switching (in speech). Zuckermann’s exploration of PSM in Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese, or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
and Meiji period
Meiji period
The , also known as the Meiji era, is a Japanese era which extended from September 1868 through July 1912. This period represents the first half of the Empire of Japan.- Meiji Restoration and the emperor :...
Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
concludes that the Chinese writing system is multifunctional: pleremic ("full" of meaning, e.g. logographic), cenemic ("empty" of meaning
Meaning (linguistics)
In linguistics, meaning is what is expressed by the writer or speaker, and what is conveyed to the reader or listener, provided that they talk about the same thing . In other words if the object and the name of the object and the concepts in their head are the same...
, e.g. phonographic - like a syllabary
Syllabary
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. In a syllabary, there is no systematic similarity between the symbols which represent syllables with the same consonant or vowel...
) and simultaneously cenemic and pleremic (phono-logographic). Zuckermann argues that Leonard Bloomfield
Leonard Bloomfield
Leonard Bloomfield was an American linguist who led the development of structural linguistics in the United States during the 1930s and the 1940s. His influential textbook Language, published in 1933, presented a comprehensive description of American structural linguistics...
’s assertion that "a language is the same no matter what system of writing may be used" is inaccurate. “If Chinese
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese, or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
had been written using roman letters, thousands of Chinese
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese, or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
words would not have been coined, or would have been coined with completely different forms”.
Japanese
In modern Japanese, loan words are generally represented phonetically via katakanaKatakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
. However, previously loan words were often represented by Chinese characters, a process called ateji
Ateji
In modern Japanese, primarily refers to kanji used phonetically to represent native or borrowed words, without regard to the meaning of the underlying characters. This is analogous to man'yōgana in pre-modern Japanese...
(when used for sound, or jukujikun, when used for meaning), and some of these continue to be used. The characters chosen may correspond to the sound, the meaning, or both.
In many cases the characters used were used only for sound or only for meaning. For example, in the word 寿司 (sushi), the two characters are respectively read as su and shi, but the character 寿 means "one's natural life span" and 司 means "to administer", neither of which has anything to do with the food – this is ateji. Conversely, in the word 煙草 (tabako) for "tobacco", the individual kanji respectively mean "smoke" and "herb", which corresponds to the meaning, but they have no phonetic relationship to the word tabako – this is 熟字訓 (jukujikun).
In some cases, however, the kanji are sometimes chosen for both their semantic and phonetic values, a form of phono-semantic matching. A stock example is 倶楽部 (kurabu) for "club
Club
A club is an association of two or more people united by a common interest or goal. A service club, for example, exists for voluntary or charitable activities; there are clubs devoted to hobbies and sports, social activities clubs, political and religious clubs, and so forth.- History...
", where the characters can be interpreted loosely in sequence as "together", "fun" and "place". Another example is 合羽 (kappa) for the Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
capa, a kind of raincoat
Raincoat
A raincoat is a waterproof or water-resistant coat worn to protect the body from rain. The term rain jacket is sometimes used to refer to raincoats that are waist length. A rain jacket may be combined with a pair of rain pants to make a rain suit.Modern raincoats are often constructed of...
. The characters can mean "wings coming together", as the pointed capa resembles a bird with wings folded together.
Icelandic
Sapir and Zuckermann (2008) demonstrate how Icelandic camouflages many English words by means of phono-semantic matching. For example, the Icelandic-looking word eyðni, meaning "AIDS", is a PSM of the English acronym AIDS, using the pre-existent Icelandic verb eyða, meaning "to destroy", and the Icelandic nominal suffix -ni. Similarly, the Icelandic word tækni, meaning "technology, technique", derives from tæki, meaning "tool", combined with the nominal suffix -ni, but is, in fact, a PSM of the Danish (or international) teknik, meaning "technology, technique". This neologism was coined in 1912 by Dr Björn Bjarnarson from Viðfjörður in the East of Iceland. It had been little in use until the 1940s, but has ever since become highly common, as a lexeme and as an element in new formations, such as raftækni, lit. "electrical technics", i.e. "electronics", tæknilegur "technical" and tæknir "technician". Other PSMs discussed in the article are beygla, bifra – bifrari, brokkál, dapur – dapurleiki - depurð, fjárfesta - fjárfesting, heila, guðspjall, ímynd, júgurð, korréttur, Létt og laggott, musl, pallborð – pallborðsumræður, páfagaukur, ratsjá, setur, staða, staðall – staðla - stöðlun, toga – togari, uppi and veira.Turkish
"Perhaps the most famous TurkishTurkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
PSM is the one whose current form is okul "school". It was created to replace Ottoman Turkish mektep, an old loanword from Arabic. Turkish okul was obviously based on French école "school" and might have been influenced by Latin schola "school" (cf. the original Turkish coinage okula(ğ)). On the other hand, the autochthonous co-etymon of okul is Turkish oku- "(to) read", cf. okumak ‘to read, study’, okuma ‘reading’, okur ‘reader’. Note the semantic affinity with Arabic كتب kataba ‘wrote (masculine, singular)’, the ultimate origin of Ottoman Turkish mektep. However, synchronically, Turkish okul cannot be regarded as öztürkçe (pure Turkish) since the final -l is not a Turkish suffix and was imported ad hoc from French. One might claim that the -l is the result of analogy to Turkish words ending in l, e.g. kızıl "red, ruddy", from kızmak "to get angry/hot". There was also a suggestion that the suffix is in fact the Turkic -ul. However, adding the suffix -ul to oku would have yielded *okuyul (cf. Lewis 1999: 118). Diachronically, however, the original form of okul was allegedly okula, in which -la might be explained by analogy to (Ottoman) Turkish kışla "barracks, winter quarters" (cf. kış "winter") and yayla "summer pasture" (cf. yaz "summer"), although these two are not verb-based (ibid.: 117). Refet, the Deputy for the city of Urfa, falsely suggested that okula already existed in the Urfa dialect (ibid.: 118, cf. Heyd 1954: 91). Indeed, purists are likely to apply the method of revitalizing and standardizing dialectal words. However, in the case of okul, such an explanation seems to be no more than a folk etymology. Turkish okul constitutes a successful creational PSM. As Lewis (1982: vi, reprint of 1953) puts it: "Nothing is to be gained by adopting the ostrich-attitude and saying: ‘Okul (‘school’) is a ridiculous hybrid, out of the Turkish oku- ‘to read’, by the French école. We shall ignore it and continue to use the good old Ottoman word mektep.’ Turkish children nowadays don’t go to mektep; they go to okul."
German
Mailhammer (2008) "applies the concepts of multisourced neologisation and, more generally, camouflaged borrowing, as established by Zuckermann (2003) to Modern German, pursuing a twofold aim, namely to underline the significance of multisourced neologisation for language contact theory and secondly to demonstrate that together with other forms of camouflaged borrowing it remains an important borrowing mechanism in contemporary German."Arabic
Zuckermann (2009) analyses the evolution of the word artichoke. Beginning in Arabic الخرشوف ('al-xarshūf) "the artichoke", it was adapted into Spanish Arabic alxarshofa, then Old Spanish alcarchofa, then ItalianItalian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
alcarcioffo, North Italian arcicioffo > arciciocco > articiocco, then as the internationalism
Internationalism (linguistics)
In linguistics, an internationalism or international word is a loanword that occurs in several languages with the same or at least similar meaning and etymology. These words exist in "several different languages as a result of simultaneous or successive borrowings from the ultimate source"...
phonetically realised in English as artichoke. The word was eventually phono-semantically matched back into Arabic (for example in Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
, Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
and Israel) as أرضي شوكي arḍī shōkī, consisting of أرضي arḍī "earthly" and شوكي shawkī "thorny".
Brand names
Viagra, which was suggested by Interbrand Wood (the consultancy firm hired by Pfizer), is itself a multisourced neologism, based on SanskritSanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
व्याघ्र vyāghráh "tiger" but enhanced by the words vigour (i.e. strength) and Niagara (i.e. free/forceful flow).
Motivations for phono-semantic matching
According to Zuckermann, PSM has various advantages from the point of view of the puristic language planner:- Recycling obsolete lexical items
- Camouflaging foreign influence (for the native speaker in the future)
- Facilitating initial learning (mnemonicsMnemonicA mnemonic , or mnemonic device, is any learning technique that aids memory. To improve long term memory, mnemonic systems are used to make memorization easier. Commonly encountered mnemonics are often verbal, such as a very short poem or a special word used to help a person remember something,...
) (for the contemporary learner/speaker)
Other motivations for PSM include the following:
- Playfulness (cf. midrashic tradition of homiletic commentary, cf. the Jewish pilpulPilpulPilpul refers to a method of studying the Talmud through intense textual analysis in attempts to either explain conceptual differences between various halakhic rulings or to reconcile any apparent contradictions presented from various readings of different texts.Pilpul has entered English as a...
) - Apollonianism (the wish to create order/meaningfulness, cf. folk etymology, etymythology, paronymic attractionParonymic attractionIn etymology, generally in onomastics, a paronymic attraction is the alteration of a word on its paronym.- See also :* Barbarism * Lemma * Morphology * False etymology...
) - IconicityIconicityIn functional-cognitive linguistics, as well as in semiotics, iconicity is the conceived similarity or analogy between the form of a sign and its meaning, as opposed to arbitrariness.Iconic principles:...
(the belief that there is something intrinsic about the sound of names) - Political correctnessPolitical correctnessPolitical correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...
/ rejective lexical engineering - attracting customers (in the case of brand names)
See also
- Hybrid wordHybrid wordA hybrid word is a word which etymologically has one part derived from one language and another part derived from a different language.-Common hybrids:The most common form of hybrid word in English is one which combines etymologically Latin and Greek parts...
- CalqueCalqueIn linguistics, a calque or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word or root-for-root translation.-Calque:...
- Neologism
- Portmanteau
- Historical linguisticsHistorical linguisticsHistorical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...
- Mixed languageMixed languageA mixed language is a language that arises through the fusion of two source languages, normally in situations of thorough bilingualism, so that it is not possible to classify the resulting language as belonging to either of the language families that were its source...
- TranslationTranslationTranslation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
- LexicologyLexicologyLexicology is the part of linguistics which studies words, their nature and meaning, words' elements, relations between words , word groups and the whole lexicon....
- LexicographyLexicographyLexicography is divided into two related disciplines:*Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries....
- Language contactLanguage contactLanguage contact occurs when two or more languages or varieties interact. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics.Multilingualism has likely been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world are multilingual...
- Creole languageCreole languageA creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...
- Code mixingCode mixingCode-mixing refers to the mixing of two or more languages or language varieties in speech.Some scholars use the terms "code-mixing" and "code-switching" interchangeably, especially in studies of syntax, morphology, and other formal aspects of language...
- MalapropismMalapropismA malapropism is an act of misusing or the habitual misuse of similar sounding words, especially with humorous results. An example is Yogi Berra's statement: "Texas has a lot of electrical votes," rather than "electoral votes".-Etymology:...
- InternationalismInternationalism (linguistics)In linguistics, an internationalism or international word is a loanword that occurs in several languages with the same or at least similar meaning and etymology. These words exist in "several different languages as a result of simultaneous or successive borrowings from the ultimate source"...
- Word formationWord formationIn linguistics, word formation is the creation of a new word. Word formation is sometimes contrasted with semantic change, which is a change in a single word's meaning...
- Comparative linguisticsComparative linguisticsComparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness....
- Language transfer
- False friendFalse friendFalse friends are pairs of words or phrases in two languages or dialects that look or sound similar, but differ in meaning....
- Linguistic purismLinguistic purismLinguistic purism or linguistic protectionism is the practice of defining one variety of a language as being purer than other varieties. The ideal of purity is often opposed in reference to a perceived decline from an "ideal past" or an unwanted similarity with other languages, but sometimes simply...