海角大神

Language is arbitrary. There鈥檚 no reason human鈥檚 best friend should be called 鈥渄og,鈥� 鈥渉und,鈥� or 鈥渃hien.鈥� The sounds that make up these words do not in themselves have meaning.聽

And yet there are parts of language that are less abstract and arbitrary. My first word for canines was 鈥渨auwau,鈥� which is onomatopoeic, mimicking how dogs sound. Onomatopoeia is common enough. We can describe children frolicking in the pool as 鈥渟plish-splashing.鈥� The state bird of Massachusetts is called the 鈥渃hickadee鈥� after its characteristic song.聽

But words can do more than depict the sound something makes. For example, stars don鈥檛 make sounds we can hear, but saying that they 鈥渢winkle鈥� at night is a way of painting a picture with sound, perhaps grounded in synesthetic connections. German researcher Wilhelm Wundt in 1900 coined the term Lautbilder (鈥渟ound pictures鈥�) for such words and phrases. A more science-sounding term is ideophones.

The African language Ewe has two dialects with different words for ducks, one using the onomatopoeic kpakpa mimicking the duck鈥檚 quacking, the other one using the word 蓶补产辞蓶abo. About the latter, a speaker of Ewe was asked why that word was used and he imitated the waddle of a duck. There are languages with hundreds and thousands of such ideophones.

English displays another kind of association of vivid meanings with particular sounds. Consider the large set of words that begin with 鈥渟n鈥�: sniff, snort, snore, sneeze, snicker, snout, sniffle, snoop, and so on. These all have to do with the nose. But 鈥渟n鈥� doesn鈥檛 mean 鈥渘ose,鈥� and the meaning of 鈥渟niff鈥� isn鈥檛 the combination of 鈥渟n鈥� (nose) and 鈥渋ff鈥� (whatever that could be). Nevertheless, the presence of 鈥渟n鈥� reliably evokes an association with the nose.聽

An intriguing idea is that sound pictures are a remnant of what was even more pervasive at the dawn of language, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Perhaps language started as a collection of vivid sound pictures and became more arbitrary over time. Support for this idea may come from the study of a nascent sign language that is emerging among a community of both hearing and deaf individuals in the Negev Desert in Israel. This language, called Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language, has a strong iconic component, vastly more so than established sign languages such as American Sign Language or the more local Israeli Sign Language. Perhaps history is repeating itself.

Guest columnist Kai von Fintel is a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.聽In a Word columnist聽Melissa Mohr is on sabbatical.