Areal extent of Indian-type phonosemantics

[Sanford Steever]

Dear Jess,

The possible linguistic influence of Indo-Aryan
ideophones on these other languages would have had to
follow the lines of religious and, then, commercial
proselytization, with one often paving the way for the
other. Buddhist monks are known to have traveled from
Northeast India northwards and and to the east. Also,
you shouldn't discount the historic lines of
communication from Sri Lanka to Southeast Asia (when
there weren't enough monks to perform the higher
ordination in Thailand, they invited monks from Sri
Lanka to assist).

The languages involved would be Pali, Sinhala and some
varieties of Maghadan. The only place I would see
ideophones being used would be in the use of mantras,
e.g., om, hring, etc., but I am best acquainted with
Theravada Buddhism (influence in Sri Lanka,Thailand,
Kampuchea), not the Mahayana variety (Nepal, China)
which with its elaboration of tantric tendencies could
have something of this nature.

Monastic disciplines would include lots of
memorization through chanting, e.g. the three
precepts, buddham saranam gacchami 'I go to the Buddha
for refuge', dhammam sarama, gacchami 'I go to the
doctrine for refuge', sangham saranam gacchami 'I go
to the community of monks for refuge'. I don't recall
much in the way of sound symbolism when I was reading
the Milindapanho, but then I wasn't looking for it.
You might consult Nick Masica's book on the Indo-Aryan
languages in the Cambridge series.

Whether ideophones and other sound symbolic forms
could cross linguistic boundaries, I can't say. The
only clear case I can think of is the borrowing of
echo-word formations from (I believe) Yiddish, e.g.
fancy-shmancy.

Hope this helps,

Sandy Steever

--- Jess Tauber <phonosemantics at EARTHLINK.NET> wrote:

> After looking closely at my Indian data sets
> something clicked in my head
> and I started to reexamine forms various Central
> Asian languages. So far
> I've taken another look at Mongolian and Manchu (the
> latter in Tungusic).
>
> The overall phonosemantic layout appears to be very,
> very similar (though
> the details vary). Is this possibly the result of
> contact? Even the tight
> grouping of terms for "bright, shining" in the
> palatals and alveopalatal
> articulatory zones (for initial consonants) is
> shared.
>
> Does anyone know whether ideophones/expressives were
> borrowed as part of
> religious training? This might help explain also
> some of the things I've
> seen in Southeast Asian languages (for instance Tai
> and Mon-Khmer
> families), and also in some Austronesian.
>
> I had never considered long-range arealism before as
> affecting a
> language's expressive terminology.
>
> Best,
> Jess Tauber
> phonosemantics at earthlink.net
>




		
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