[Lingtyp] Mapping /l/ to 'tongue'

[Timur Maisak]

Dear Ian,
thank you for an interesting question!
I would like to add an example of an opposite development, namely the loss
of /l/ in a word for 'tongue'.
Starostin & Nikolaev (1994)
<https://starlingdb.org/cgi-bin/response.cgi?single=1&basename=%2fdata%2fcauc%2fcaucet&text_number=102&root=config>,
among others, reconstruct a root for 'tongue' in the Lezgic branch of
Nakh-Daghestanian as *melc: based on the evidence from one of the nine
languages of this branch, namely Tabasaran /melz/. In the other languages,
the reflexes are /mez, miz, muz, mac/.

/l/ in the root 'tongue' is also reconstructed for the Nakh-Daghestanian
family, based both on the Lezgic and Dargwa evidence: in the Dargwa branch,
some languages have a root like /mec/, whereas the majority have something
like /lezmi, lizmi, limzi/ etc. with a metathesis.
Thus, it turns out that /l/, as part of a consonant cluster, was lost in
most Nakh-Daghestanian branches (Nakh, Avar-Andic, Tsezic, Lak, Khinalug)
and also in all but one language of the Lezgic branch.

Very best,
Timur Maisak

пн, 29 апр. 2024 г. в 05:29, JOO Ian via Lingtyp <
lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>:

> Dear typologists,
>
> I have noticed two interesting parallel phenomena:
>
> 1. Latin *dingua* 'tongue' replaced by *lingua*, for unknown reason;
> 2. Middle Chinese *zyet* 舌 'tongue' replaced by *lei* 脷 in Cantonese (and
> other southern Sinitic lects), which is apparently for euphemistic reason -
> Cantonese *sit3* 舌 sounds similar to *sik6* 蝕 ’to corrode’ - but still
> unclear why it had to be *lei* among all other sounds.
>
> There seems to be diachronic pressure to map /l/ into ’tongue’. This is in
> line with the fact several typological studies confirming that /l/ is
> abnormally common in words for ’tongue’ in world’s languages (Blast et al.
> 2016, Joo 2020, Erben Johansson et al. 2020).
>
> I would thus like to ask (historical) typologists whether you are aware of
> similar phenomena where the common term for ’tongue’ has unexpectedly
> acquired /l/, either via irregular sound change (like Latin) or lexical
> replacement (like Cantonese).
>
> From Otaru,
> Ian
>
> *References*
>
> Blasi, Damián E et al. “Sound-meaning association biases evidenced across
> thousands of languages.” *Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
> of the United States of America* vol. 113,39 (2016): 10818-23.
> doi:10.1073/pnas.1605782113
>
> Joo, Ian. "Phonosemantic biases found in Leipzig-Jakarta lists of 66
> languages" Linguistic Typology, vol. 24, no. 1, 2020, pp. 1-12.
> doi:10.1515/lingty-2019-0030
>
> Erben Johansson et al. "The typology of sound symbolism: Defining
> macro-concepts via their semantic and phonetic features" Linguistic
> Typology, vol. 24, no. 2, 2020, pp. 253-310. doi:10.1515/lingty-2020-2034
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> 朱 易安
> JOO, IAN
> 准教授
> Associate Professor
> 小樽商科大学
> Otaru University of Commerce
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> 🌐 ianjoo.github.io
> 📞 +81 (0)134-27-5422
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>
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