[Lingtyp] Pronominal nasality and the areality of iconicity

[JOO Ian]

Dear fellow members of the mailing list,

Gordon (1995) and Nichols & Peterson (1996) confirm that nasals are frequent in 1st and 2nd person pronouns around the world, but different continent prefer different nasals for each pronoun: Eurasian languages prefer /m/ for the 1st pronoun, whereas the “Pacific Rim” prefers /m/ for the 2nd pronoun, and the initial /ŋ-/ is prevalent in Australian languages.

Nichols and Peterson conjectured that this may be the cause of "areal relatedness due to diffusion of phonosymbolic canons”. That is, iconic patterns may be diffused throughout languages, not just independently emerge from each language. The example they add is the system of /mama/ and /papa/:

In personal pronoun systems, n and m can be said to mark different dimensions of a minimal deictic space. They do so as well in 'mama-papa' systems (which are deictic but not shifters). Both the pronouns and the child-language kin terms use consonants phonosymbolically to structure deictic space; the phonosymbolic principles are macroareal (mama and papa, for instance, being distinctly western Eurasian forms); but the actual pronouns and kin terms themselves are not commonly borrowed. (p. 358)
I wonder if you have any other examples of iconic patterns areally spreading throughout specific regions, other than pronominal nasality and kinship terms. I would greatly appreciate your help, as this is relevant for my thesis.

From Daejeon, Korea,
Ian Joo
http://ianjoo.academia.edu

References
Gordon, Matthew J. "The phonological composition of personal pronouns: implications for genetic hypotheses." Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Vol. 21. No. 1. 1995.

Nichols, Johanna, and David A. Peterson. "The Amerind personal pronouns." Language (1996): 336-371.
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