Phonosemantic analysis

Phonosemantics is a discipline within the broader field of linguistics that involves the study of sounds in an effort to determine if they convey inherent meaning and, if so, to what extent and how. As its name would suggest, it represents a fusion of the classical linguistic disciplines of phonology and semantics.

Phonology is the study of how sound encodes meaning in a particular language while semantics is the study of the interpretation of signs or symbols as used in a particular context.

Phono-semantic matching (PSM) 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 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.

Turkish "Perhaps the most famous Turkish 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 from French.

English A few PSMs exist in English, based on French loanwords; the mispronunciation of Chaise longue as "chase-lounge" is a familiar example. The French word "choupique," itself an adaptation of the Choctaw name for the bowfin, has likewise been Anglicized as "shoepike," although it is unrelated to the pikes. The French name for the Osage orange, "bois d'arc" (bow-wood), is sometimes rendered as "bowdark."

Sapir suggests the following taxonomy of the sources used to form new words in the language. It will help us in tracing the position of PSM in the system: 1.ZERO SOURCE - Lexemes reproduced from this source are denoted by the established term ex nihilo (Latin ‘from nothing’), implying that they are not based on any preexistent lexical material. 2. SOUND SOURCE - Lexemes reproduced from this source are denoted by the new term ex sono (Latin ‘from sound’) and are reproductions of sounds or sound symbolism.

3.THE FOREIGN VOCABULARY - Lexemes reproduced from this source are denoted by the new term ex externo (Latin ‘from the outside’). 4.THE NATIVE VOCABULARY - Lexemes reproduced from this source are denoted by the new term ex interno (Latin ‘from the inside’).