Tracking Linguistic Primitives: The Phonosemantic Realization of Fundamental Oppositional

Pairs

Niklas Johansson
Lund University
Abstract

This paper investigates how cross-linguistic phoneme distributions of 56 fundamental

oppositional concepts can reveal semantic relationships by looking into the linguistic forms of
75 genetically and areally distributed languages. Based on proposals of semantic primes
(Goddard 2002), reduced Swadesh lists (Holman et al. 2008), presumed ultraconservative
words (Pagel et.al. 2013), attested basic antonyms (Paradis, Willners and Jones 2009) and
sense perception words, semantic oppositional pairs were selected. Phonemes were divided
according to: the frequency of vowels' second formant and consonants' energy accumulation,
sonority, a combination of the aforementioned two, and general phonetic traits, e.g. voicing.
Using a biplot, the phonological relatedness between the investigated concepts was illustrated
graphically, and the phoneme distributions' over- and underrepresentation from the average
was calculated for each concept.Salient semantic groupings and relations based solely on
phonological contrasts were found for most investigated concepts, including the semantic
domains; Small, Intense Vision-Touch, Large, Organic, Horizontal-Vertical Distance, Deictic,
Containment, Gender, Parent and Diurnal, and the sole concept OLD. The most notable
relations found were; MOTHER/I vs. FATHER, a three-way deictic distinction and a dimensional
tripartite oppositional relationship. Embodiment, oppositional thinking and evidence for more
general concepts to precede complex concepts were proposed as explanations for the results.

1. Introduction

The phenomenon of phonosemantics, also called sound symbolism, non-arbitrariness,

iconicity etc., has been a subject of debate for more than two thousand years, both regarding
its existence and in what domains it operates. As noticed already by Jespersen (1922),
semantic domains connected to sensory perception are more likely to be phonosemantically
motivated than others.

The vast majority of phonosemantic studies have focused on one single semantic domain,
incorporating only a few speech sounds and overlooking the essential oppositional relation
that seems to be included in many sound-meaning associations. Thus, the primary goal of this
investigation was to tie together many of the previous studies of phonosemantics by cross-
linguistically analyzing phoneme distributions in oppositional word pairs of basic vocabulary
to search for semantically related meanings solely based on their phonetic makeup. The
secondary goal was to investigate possible over- and underrepresentaions of phonemes and
possible relations between concepts and semantic domains. Finding cross-linguistic
phonosemantic relationships could in turn allow us to get a glimpse of which semantic
domains could constitute potential linguistic primitives and hence tell us something about the
course of the evolution of language as a whole.

1.1 Lexical Universals

Basic vocabulary has to be considered the same as lexical universals (at least universal
tendencies), and color terms are probably some of the first concepts that come to mind.
However, while color terms vary between languages, from two up to eleven, the systems are
also hierarchally built: certain colors are only lexemic as long as a specific, different color
already is lexemic (Berlin and Kay 1969). Thus, our conceptualization of at least the two most
basic color terms (WHITE and BLACK) seems to be affected by physiological rather than
linguistic constraints, which supports the notion of lexical universals and also illustrates the
difficulty of sifting them out from the freedom of lexicalization that languages have.

There have been several attempts to establish large lists of basic vocabulary, and the Swadesh
lists are perhaps the most famous and widely used set of possible ‘universal’ words. These
words were meant to be relevant for all languages of the world and exclude community-
specific concepts. There are however a great many problems with this methodology, one of
the first being that 100 or 200 words might be too few in order to attain reliable statistics and
avoid effects of chance. Swadesh (1971: 271-284), however, stressed that including more
elements simply for the sake of statistics would be more hazardous, since the presumed
universal aspect of these words is paramount.

In recent years, adaptations of the Swadesh lists (usually shorter lists) have been proposed,
supposedly yielding more accurate results when used in lexicostatistics and glottochronology.
Among these, we find Holman’s et al. (2008) 40-item list which was supposed to yield
equally good classificatory results as larger lists and contain items more resistant to
borrowing.
 But also other types of studies are relevant when searching for universal
lexemes, e.g. Pagel et al. (2013), who aimed at linking the major Eurasian language families
(normally classed as independent) together genetically while overcoming issues such as
semantic and phonetic erosion over time. By using a core set of stable everyday speech, they
showed that the most frequently used words had a very slow lexical replacement rate and
thereby a high chance of being found to be cognates in more than two of the language
families. Cognates shared by four language families or more were considered reliable,
resulting in 23 words, mainly numerals, pronouns, and special adverbs.
Goddard and Wierzbicka (2002) had a rather different approach for determining
words’ possible universality; they claimed that, if it is possible to perform a semantic analysis
using reductive paraphrasing without circularity, what is left is the semantic core of language.
This core then consists of a lexicon of indefinable expressions (Semantic Primes), i.e.
concepts that cannot be paraphrased in any simpler terms and from which all other
expressions are derived. At present the list of concepts includes 60 items, with the possibility
of extension; it includes categories such as determiners, quantifiers, space, time and so forth,
based on in-depth analyses of 26 genetically and areally diverse languages.

1.2 The Oppositional Relation

Clearly, the field of basic vocabulary has been researched from several perspectives but an
often neglected factor is the oppositional relation. Firstly, a single concept can be associated
with various notions (often dependent on culture). ‘Red’ can be connected to both love and
danger, and white is the color of mourning in some cultures while black is used for this
purpose in other cultures. Secondly, contrasts can be created depending on the entities
involved. If a penguin is grouped with a pigeon, an eagle and a hawk, it would probably be
considered the odd one out as it does not possess the ability to fly. However, if the hawk is
substituted for a cat, most people would group the penguin together with the pigeon and the
eagle on the ground that the cat possesses no bird-like characteristics whatsoever.

This is further supported by studies on speech errors showing that antonyms are frequently
uttered when the desired word fails to come through (Söderpalm 1979; Linell 1982).
Antonyms come to mind when one part of oppositional pairs is presented as stimulus (Deese
1965), and antonymous concepts occur in the same sentence more frequently than chance
(Justeson and Katz’s 1991; Willners 2001). Furthermore, Paradis, Willners and Jones (2009)
found that ‘canonical antonyms’ (a small set of words with special lexico-semantic attraction,
entrenched in memory) were significantly faster to process than the non-canonical antonyms.
Thus, co-occurrence takes place via substitution, substitution yields antonyms alignment, and
alignment leads to association, which is crucial to recall when reasoning about lexical
universals.

1.3 Phonosemantics

Many of the world's languages have complete word classes, ‘ideophones’, which have a direct
relationship between sound and meaning. While these types of words are rare in the larger
Indo-European languages, ‘phonesthemes’, analogical associations of phoneme-clusters
within words of a specific semantic domain, are common. This indicates that phonosemantics
is at least a universal tendency of human languages. Despite this, Saussure’s (1916) dogma of
total arbitrariness, stipulating that there is no meaningful association between the form of
words and their meaning, has been dominant for most of the 20th century.

Saussure’s claims were, however, contested only a few years after the publication of his ideas
by his students. Jespersen (1922) pointed that onomatopoeic words resist sound change, Sapir
(1929) found connections between size and vowel quality, and Köhler (1930), whose work
was later continued by Ramachandran and Hubbard (2001), found connections between shape
and sound in their well-known takete-maluma/kiki-bouba experiments. From this point
onward a myriad of experimental studies, both synchronic and diachronic (cf. Johansson and
Carling 2015), on a wide variety of phonosemantic associations have been carried out. The
semantic domains found to be affected by phonosemantics are rather diverse, including
notions of acoustic sound, form, luminosity, wetness, weight, thickness, size, distance, events
and movements, evaluative attitudes, deixis, surface, softness, sharpness and so forth. These
yield the domains of hearing, vision, touch, movement, form, mind, attitude, size, number and
deixis, which usually consist of binary and contrasting ends of scales, e.g. large-small, hard-
soft (Abelin 1999). But the connection between a sound and a meaning is by no means
exclusive, i.e. a sound can denote several different meanings, often depending on contrast; an
[e] can be perceived as smaller than [a] while it can be perceived as larger than [i]. A sound's
different associations do not have to be restricted to a single semantic domain either, a sound
can act as one of the poles of many basic oppositional pairs (cf. English light meaning both
pale in color and low in weight).

Going beyond single sound-meaning experiments, Wichmann et al. (2010) took

phonosemantic studies one step further by investigating a list of 40 basic vocabulary items in
approximately 3,000 of the world's living languages. Through cluster analyses, they showed
that BREAST, I, KNEE, YOU, NOSE, NAME and WE had phonologically distinctive word shapes.
From these results they created so-called "Ninatic" words, i.e. the average relative frequencies
of each sound in the words for each concept were calculated separately for each position in
the word and was then used for creating four-phoneme words. For the phonologically
distinctive words, they made the following suggestions: BREAST (muma) contained sounds
articulated with the lips, perhaps reflecting the suckling of a child. I (naa) and YOU (nin) both
contained n but differed in vowels, which could represent a phonological contrast associated
with different gestures of the tongue (cf. Johansson and Zlatev 2013) and WE (nina) combined
the sounds of YOU and I, which is interesting since only the inclusive form was used in the
study. The form of KNEE (kokaau, cf. BONE kaka) could be explained by the qualities hard and
round associated with k, a and o, u, and NOSE (nani) contained two nasals. Additionally, the
similarity of I (naa), NAME (nani), and perhaps PERSON (nanaa) could indicate ancient
homophony.

Many of the sound-meaning associations that have been studied can be attributed to one of the
most important theories for actually understanding how phonosemantic relations operate, the
so called ‘frequency code’ by Ohala (1994), which puts phonosemantics in a larger
ethological context. Threatening sounds of most animals, such as a dog's growl, are low in
frequency while a dog's whine is high-pitched and denotes submissiveness. The explanation
for this correlation between sound and meaning probably has many intertwined layers and
levels, but it is likely that functional reasons mainly account for this. In many cases, it is in the
animals’ interests to appear large, since this means that they will be perceived to have the
upper hand in potential confrontations. This can be achieved visually by erecting hair or
feathers, or using lower than normal vocalizations, based on the fact that larger animals have
larger resonance chambers which produce lower frequency sounds.

According to this theory, a high and/or rising F0 (easily mapped onto the other three most
important formants) is associated with smallness as well as with related concepts such as
deference, politeness, submission, lack of confidence, questions, familiarity, dependence and
narrowness, nearness, while a low and/or falling F0 is associated with largeness but also
assertiveness, authority, aggression, confidence, threat, dominance, statements and large
distance.

Related to the frequency code is the ‘sonority hierarchy’. Cross-linguistically, there are
restrictions on how onsets and codas are built up by segments. The positions of actual types of
speech sounds also follow certain patterns cross-linguistically in terms of sonority, i.e. the
grade of intensity different segments produce depending on the resonance of the speaking
tube, which is dependent on the degree of obstruction of the airstream (Hogg and McCully
1987). Hence, an optimal syllable ought to have a nucleus consisting of a vowel, with
gradually less sonorous segments towards the edges of the onset and the coda. Being a rather
significant phonotactic tendency, the sonority hierarchy could also have major implications on
phonosemantics since the grade of obstruction could possibly be correlated with some
meanings, e.g. the roughness-smoothness dimension.

2. Method

2.1 Language Sampling

For this paper, 75 genetically and areally sampled languages were used (see Table 1). Based
on the classification made by Ethnologue Online (http://www.ethnologue.com/), the language
families’ numbers of languages were converted into percentages and then modified to yield 75
languages in total. The numbers for some of the larger families were reduced in favor of
featuring more, smaller language families for greater diversity. Families not large enough to
be represented by one language in the sample were divided into five larger groups, based on
how many languages the families contained (cf. Bybee, Perkins and Pagiuca 1994) and
geographically spread (cf. Nichols 1992).

Table 1. Languages featured in this study, including replacement languages.

Final sample
Language family Percent Languages in the sample
(adjustment)
Hausa, Hebrew, Iraqw, Tarifiyt
Afro-Asiatic 5.1 4
Berber
 Australian 2.2 2 Gurindji, Warlpiri
Austro-Asiatic 2.5 2 Vietnamese, Cheq Wong
Hawaiian, Tongan, Rotuman,
Malagasy, Takia, Cebuano, South
Austronesian 17.8 12 (-1)
Efate, Tetum, Malay, Thao, Kavalan,
Seediq
Czech, German, Breton, Armenian,
Indo-European 6.2 5
Persian
Swahili, Sesotho, Zulu, Nyanja,
Niger-Congo 21.9 12 (-4) C'Lela, Akan, Ewe, Kinyarwanda,
Yoruba, Bambara, Wolof, Mandinka
Nilo-Saharan 2.9 2 Ghulfan, Kanuri
Oto-Manguean 2.5 2 Otomi, Chatino
Mandarin, Manange, Tibetan, Mikir,
Sino-Tibetan 6.4 5
Akha
Trans-New Guinea 6.9 1 (-4) Fataluku
<7 languages/family,
2.2 3 Ayoreo, Basque, Korean
Isolates, Unclassified
7-20 languages/family 3.7 3 Epena, Karok, Scando-Romani
Yaminahua, Estonian, Tlingit, White
21-44 languages/family 3.5 5
Hmong, Nama
Aché, Nahuatl, Wapishana, Imbabura
45-67 languages/family 6.5 5
Quechua, Turkish
68-92 languages/family 6.5 2 (-1) Seychelles Creole, Thai
Catuquina, Ket, Japanese, Archi, Tok
Replacement languages - 10 (+10) Pisin, Ainu, Inuktitut, Cheyenne,
Zinacantán Tzotzil, Georgian
Total 100 % 75

2.2 Concept Sampling

Concepts chosen for this study had to be present in the majority of the world's languages, to
consist of binary pairs (in contrast to Wichmann et al. 2010) and not differ too much in scope
of meaning between languages. Fundamental concepts belonging to more complex systems
than binary pairs were excluded. The selection of concepts was ultimately based on five
studies (Swadesh 1971; Holman et al. 2008; Pagel et al. 2013; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002;
Willners 2001). In cases where single concepts were present in these studies (e.g. THIS but not
THAT), their counterparts were added into the sample in order to complete the pairs.

The final selection of suitable word pairs resulted in 28 pairs; I-YOU, BIG-SMALL, GOOD-BAD,

THIS-THAT and MUCH/MANY-FEW were represented by at least one of the contrasting concepts
in the 100-item Swadesh list and in the Semantic Primes list. BEFORE-AFTER, ABOVE-BELOW,

FAR-NEAR, MAN-WOMAN, BLACK-WHITE, HOT-COLD, HERE-THERE, LONG-SHORT, NIGHT-DAY,

FULL-EMPTY, NEW-OLD, ROUND-FLAT and DRY-WET were represented by at least one of the
contrasting concepts in the 100-item Swadesh list or in the Semantic Primes list.
WIDE/BROAD-NARROW, THICK-THIN, SMOOTH-ROUGH, HEAVY-LIGHT (not HEAVY), DARK-LIGHT
(not DARK), FAST-SLOW, HARD-SOFT, DEEP-SHALLOW, HIGH-LOW were added due to being
used to explain the world around us connected to the senses (usually and primarily sight) and
were represented by at least one of the contrasting concepts in the studies presented by
Willners (2001). Lastly, MOTHER-FATHER were added due to them probably existing in all of
the world's languages, as well as MOTHER being present in Pagel et al. (2013). The most
unmarked case/gender/number forms possible were used, which in practice often boiled down
to results in the use of nominative/absolutive, masculine, singular forms.

2.3 Sound Classification and Quantification

The linguistic forms were converted into IPA but also simplified in some cases, similar to the
ASJP transcription used by Brown et al. (2008). Aspiration, various forms of co-articulation,
tone and phoneme quantity, were not taken into consideration (partly due to shortcomings in
representation in orthographies). Ejectives were treated as voiceless plosives, implosives as
voiced plosives, nasal vowels as oral vowels, consonant clusters, affricates and diphthongs
were divided into their segments; the labio-velar approximant [w] was counted as a labial
sound rather than velar. Because it is plausible to assume that the mind is not as detailed as
theoretical phonetics when it comes to the categorization of phonemes, together with the
unreliability of orthographies and transcriptions, phonemes were divided into four larger
groupings, based on findings such as Ohala's frequency code and the sonority hierarchy.

The Frequency-grouping was based on the average frequency (Hz) of the second formant (F2)
of the vowels − this being the most varying formant − and the average frequency of energy
accumulation of the consonants (Ladefoged 2005:40-62). Consonants were divided into
bilabial and labiodental (here: Labials); dental and alveolar (here: Alveolars); post-alveolar,
retroflex, alveolo-palatal and palatal (here: Palatals); velar, uvular, pharyngeal, epiglottal and
glottal (here: Velars). The cardinal vowels were grouped into /i/-like, /e/-like, /a/-like, /ə/-like,
/o/-like and /u/-like.

The Sonority-grouping was constructed as an attempt to capture possible sound-meaning

correlations incorporating sonority, e.g. texture-related concepts, and based on Hogg and
McCully (1987: 32-33). The vowel groups from Frequency were kept the same. Consonants
were divided into; Approximants, Trills/Tap/Flap, Laterals, Nasals, Fricatives and Plosives.
Fricatives and Plosives were not divided into voiced and voiceless since the difference in
sonority is rather small.

The Combination-grouping was based on the Frequency-grouping but also included the
aspects of continuousness and abruptness, i.e. the sonority hierarchy, in order to capture e.g.
phonesthemes. Thus, phonemes were also divided into four additional groups; /i/-like, /e/-like,
/a/-like, /ə/-like, /o/-like and /u/-like (V); semi-vowels, approximants, nasals and laterals (A);
fricatives, dorsal trills and voiceless sonorants (F); plosive, apical trills, taps and flap (P).

Lastly, in the General-grouping the sounds were divided into very general groups; total
voiceless and voiced sounds, and total consonants and vowels, in order to see potential
differences on a very general phonetic level. All groupings are summarized in Table 2.

Table 2. Sound groups divided according to the Frequency-, Sonority-, Combination- and General-grouping.

Freq. Son. Comb. Gen.

/i/-like 1
/e/-like 2
/a/-like 3
Vowels 1
/ə/-like 4
/o/-like 5
/u/-like 6
A 7
Pal. F 7 8
P 9
+voice 3
A 10
Alv. F 8 11
P 12
A 13
Vel. F 9 14
P 15
A 16
Lab. F 10 17
P 18
F 19
Consonants Pal. 11 2
P 20
F 21
Alv. 12
P 22
-voice 4
F 23
Vel. 13
P 24
F 25
Lab. 14
P 26
Approximant 7
Trill/Tap/Flap 8
Lateral 9
Nasal 10
Fricative 11
Plosive 12
2.4 Analyses

All occurrences for each sound group in each grouping and each concept were examined in
two analyses.

The first was a cluster analysis (Related Phoneme Distribution) creating a biplot using the
statistical computing and graphics software R (see Johnson 2008) by measuring how similar
the phoneme-distribution was among the investigated concepts. All phonemic parameters
were then projected onto a two-dimensional biplot, indicating relative closeness in sound
composition between all concepts. Concepts that were located closely together indicated
similar phoneme-distributions, while occurrences far away from each other indicated the
usage of different phonemes. This shows whether semantically related concepts also correlate
sound-wise.

The second analysis (Deviation from Average Phoneme Distribution) calculated the phoneme
distributions' deviation from the average distributions described in Brown et al. (2008). 100 %
overrepresentation and 75 % underrepresentation (since 100 % underrepresentation would
only apply to phonemes with no occurrence at all) were used. These values were then used as
guidelines for which phonemes represented each concept, but also for which phonemes were
lacking to a higher degree, another important factor for the makeup of the concepts.

3. Results

3.1 Related Phoneme Distribution

The biplot’s content and makeup is presented in Figure 1. Concepts with diverging phoneme
distributions causing them to occur outside the 0.05/-0.05-radius from the center of the biplot,
a boundry also used by Wichmann et al. (2010) when using a similar dataset, were judged to
be salient (i.e. judged as non-random phoneme distribution). This radius is also the boundary
of the non-salient concepts used by Wichmann et al. (2010).
Figure 1. Concept positions. 1 BIG, 2 SMALL, 3 MUCH/MANY, 4 BEFORE, 5 AFTER, 6 BELOW, 7 NEAR, 8 WHITE, 9 HOT, 10 HERE,
11 THERE, 12 SHORT, 13 NIGHT, 14 FULL, 15 EMPTY, 16 WET, 17 WIDE/BROAD, 18 NARROW, 19 THICK, 20 THIN, 21 HEAVY, 22
LIGHT (not HEAVY), 23 LIGHT (not DARK), 24 SOFT, 25 HIGH, 26 LOW.

18 of the 56 featured concepts occurred inside of the 0.05-radius, while 38 occurred outside of
the 0.05-radius, making them salient. Even more interesting are the clusters forming outside
of the 0.05-radius, and especially those which contain concepts with similar semantic content.
If the salient concepts are classified and summarized according to semantic domain, 10
domains, and one lone concept were found (see Table 3).

Table 3. Salient and non-salient concepts divided according to semantic domain.

Domain Salient concepts Non-salient concepts

Small SMALL, FEW, NEAR, SHORT, NARROW THIN
Intense Vision- BLACK, WHITE, HOT, COLD, WET, DRY, LIGHT (not HEAVY)
Touch ROUGH, DARK, HARD
Large FAR, LONG, DEEP BIG, MUCH/MANY
Organic ROUND, SMOOTH, SLOW, SOFT THICK, HEAVY
Horizontal- ABOVE, BELOW, FLAT, WIDE/BROAD, HIGH, LOW
Vertical Distance SHALLOW
Deictic I, YOU, THIS, THAT, THERE HERE
Containment FULL, EMPTY
Gender MAN, WOMAN
Parent MOTHER, FATHER
Diurnal DAY LIGHT (not DARK)
OLD OLD
GOOD, BAD, BEFORE,
Other
AFTER, NIGHT, NEW, FAST

Additionally, out of the 38 salient concepts, only eight did not have salient antipodes, while
the remaining 30 concepts were all included in some kind of semantic oppositional
relationship. Nine pairs had their oppositional pairs located in separate clusters while six pairs
appeared within the same cluster, summarized in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Simplified positions of the salient concepts (according to semantic domain) and their relations in the biplot.

3.2 Deviation from Average

Below, the phoneme distributions for the investigated concepts are presented, which allows
for interpretation of which sound groups are responsible for the results in the biplots. Some
sound groups were found to be unreliable, including types of sounds that have generally low
average occurrences, e.g. Voiceless Palatal and /ə/-like. Additionally, there were a lot of over-
and under-representations diverging more than 50 % from the expected distributions.
However, Table 4 only presents the absolute strongest results.

Table 4. Deviation of phoneme distribution compared to average of reliable sound groups. 100 % overrepresentation in light
grey (+) and 75 % underrepresentation in dark grey (-).
Voiceless Alveolar
Voiceless Labial
Voiced Palatal

Trill/Tap/Flap
Voiced Velar

Fricative
/a/-like

Lateral
Nasal

I - + -
YOU - -
SMALL +
THIS +
THAT -
FEW +
 WHITE +
COLD +
LONG + +
SHORT +
DAY +
FULL + +
OLD +
ROUND +
FLAT + +
WET +
WIDE/BROAD +
NARROW +
SMOOTH + +
ROUGH + + +
LIGHT (NOT DARK) +
HARD + +
DEEP + +
MOTHER +
FATHER + + -

4. Discussion

4.1 Embodiment and Phonosemantics

The overwhelmingly clear results raise the question about what factors are responsible for
each semantically related concepts cluster, based purely on sound correspondences.

The increasing evidence for phonosemantics playing an important role in human language,
together with the very closely related notion of embodiment, the shaping of the human mind
by the human body, are probably the main strategies for concretization and grounding of more
abstract and/or unknown concepts.

In addition, gestures are built upon similar neural systems as used for vocal language
(Premack and Premack 1983), and functional categories emerge in the interface between
syntax and the lexicon, which suggests that concepts are ultimately built upon words with
real-world referents (Muysken 2009).

Pulvermüller (1999) showed neuroanatomical evidence from monkeys for the perisylvian
cortex to have long-range connections between areas anterior to motor and adjacent to
primary auditory, and posterior to primary somatosensory cortex, which on a psychological
level could connect sound to meaning through embodiment during language acquisition.
Agreeing with these results is the connection to the limbic system during subjects' synesthetic
experiences found by Cytowic (1989), which suggests that in some individuals the limbic
system sometimes overrides the cortex, causing the boundaries between the senses to
disappear. Likewise, Zlatev’s (2005) ‘mimetic schemas’ (departing from Lakoff's 1987
‘image schemas’) suggest that preverbal representations such as JUMP would precede e.g.
VERTICALITY, based on cross-modal mappings between body together with its actions and
conceptualization of the subject, object, or event directed at an addressee. Furthermore, Kita,
Kantartzis and Imai (2010) found that Japanese and English children performed better in
memorizing novel actions when phonosemantic conditions were introduced.

4.2 The Oppositional Relationship

Several of the salient concepts of the study were found to be in different kinds of oppositional
relationships, indicating that this is an important factor for phonosemantics and perhaps even
cognition. In many languages the names of spatial dimensions are based on the unmarked pole
of oppositional adjectives (length from long) and the unmarked pole can be used neutrally in
questions, without presumption, e.g. how long is this table?. De Villiers and de Villiers (1978:
139-141) propose that the unmarked pole (perhaps the more rudimentary pole) is understood
earlier than the marked by children, possibly due to higher frequency in usage, and the fact
that it takes longer to make a comparison between objects using the marked pole for adults.
Still, Cinque (2013) showed that morphological encodings such as diminutive and
augmentative usually come in oppositional pairs. Consequently, opposites have to be acquired
to reach a deeper understanding of the actual frames of semantic domains, which leads to
quicker comprehension and correct usage of each concept. Even though the world is far too
complex to be described purely in binary terms, pairs might be used for creating larger
networks (cf. Carling and Johansson 2015) which in many ways simplify relationships
between concepts, but also makes them more understandable.

4.3 Semantic Origins

The fact that meanings appear to be grounded in the body and the surrounding world opens up
the possibility for certain, perhaps more general, meanings to presuppose more specific
meanings. From the more basic meaning, new meanings can be created, grounded in various
ways, e.g. English light can refer both to luminosity, color, weight, movement (light, swift)
and consistency (light, thin).

Dixon (1982: 1-62) writes that all lexical items could fall into a number of (possibly
universal) semantic types. In a later study, Dixon (2010: 73-76) found that adjective types fall
into three sets, the smallest adjective classes contain four semantic types, the medium-size
classes contain an additional three types and the largest classes contain a total of 13 types,
illustrated by the Sango word kótá which corresponds to English big, wide, and thick.
Therefore, it does not seem too farfetched to assume that there are fundamental oppositional
pairs more basic than others, similar to Wierzbicka and Goddard's Semantic Primes.

Indeed, a considerable amount of studies have proposed semantic hierarchies which place
concrete concepts as preceding abstract and specific concepts. De Villiers and de Villiers
(1978: 121-150) write that the first words understood by children are proper names, which
only have one referent for each word such as mommy, daddy, favorite toy's names etc., and
that children create semantic categories based on similarities in perceptual or functional
attributes, e.g. using dog for horses and cats as well.

Wienold and Rohmer (1997) and Clark (1973) showed, through lexicalization and usage
frequency studies, that dimensional expressions occur in a fixed order, from the general
meanings with fewer features (SIZE) to the more specific meanings (cf. Figure 3).

SIZE → LENGTH → DISTANCE → DEPTH → HEIGHT

↓
THICKNESS
↓
WIDTH
Figure 3. Lexicalization of dimensional expressions based on Wienold and Rohmer (1997).

More general terms describing overall size are also acquired prior to those which describe
length and width since they require only knowledge of general physical extent (Barlett 1976;
de Villiers and de Villiers 1978). Furthermore, children often treat SMALL as the opposite of
TALL, LONG, WIDE and THICK, and LARGE as the opposites of SHORT, NARROW and THIN, but
seldom the other way around.

Similar hierarchies have also been proposed for perception verbs, going from higher
modalities 'see' to lower modalities 'smell' (Viberg 2001); Dingemanse (2012) proposed an
implicational hierarchy for ideophones placing sound (onomatopoeia) as the most
fundamental and ending with inner feelings and psychological states.

4.4 Explanatory Suggestions for the Semantic Relations

Applying to both humans and animals, the life world powerfully affects our behavior, what
actions are possible, and how the world is perceived, connecting the organism to the
environment (Gibson 1977). It is not our modern society which has provided our associations
between various concepts; it is the surrounding world in which we have evolved. We
constantly try to classify the elements of nature but, even so, we are not capable of accurate
physical descriptions, since all of our input is filtered through our cross-modal sensory
perception, existing knowledge gained from life experience, culture, as well as what is
imprinted on us as infants. From this point of departure, I propose explanatory suggestions for
the semantic connections found, based solely on phonetic makeup.

4.4.1 Parent and Deictic

The most clearly defined concepts in terms of oppositional pairs were MOTHER and FATHER.

Both were located far away from the center but also far away from each other, which, together
with their close semantic relationship, makes them very interesting.

The fact that MOTHER was associated with voiced continuous sonorants, while FATHER with
voiceless abrupt obstruents, is also very interesting, since the most relaxed form of human
vocalization is nasal and according to Swadesh (1971: 191-199), aside from 'mother', nasals
are common in words for 'aunt', 'grandmother', 'old person', 'baby' etc., as well as for 'female
'breast', 'teat', 'nipple'. Also, babies usually produce nasal sounds while breastfeeding as a
consequence of the double closure of the mouth and lips and tongue in the back, which is also
reflected in that contentment-sounds, [m:], often are expressed when eating (cf. Wichmann’s
et al. (2010) Niantic form for BREAST, muma). The father, on the other hand, who does not
breastfeed, does not get associated with these sensations and could then, perhaps, be
connected to more tensed sounds such as oral occlusives instead.

A second striking connection to MOTHER is I, which shared the high overrepresention of nasals
and was located very close to MOTHER in the biplot. Breastfeeding during the early stages of
postnatal life could account for this by associating the mother with safety, relaxedness,
contentment, ego and non-other (cf. Traunmüller 1994).

The deictic indicatory concepts all occurred together, though, interestingly, I was also acutely
separated from the other deictic concepts, as was THERE. YOU and THAT are logically
connected, both being non-first person and also detached from the speaker in terms of
distance; and while THIS could be associated with the speaker, it is actually indicatory of
something which is not the actual speaker. The concepts might also relate to Large-Organic
concepts occurring nearby through the notion of 'large distance'.

The separation between I and the indicatory concepts coincides with the fact that the one point
of reference which is always included, regardless of type of system, is the speaker. Using
oneself as a frame of reference is probably imperative in order to understand others' frames of
reference, derived from having a so-called ‘Theory of Mind’, the ability to represent,
conceptualize, and reason about mental states (Malle 2002). The ability to understand that
others apart from ourselves experience psychological states which may differ from our own is
not developed until the second year of life, which suggests that in the egocentric world of
infants, a division between self and others (perhaps excluding the mother), both
phonosemantic and purely conceptual, is probable. Furthermore, the majority of the world’s
languages use spatial deictic two-way and three-way systems (Diessel 2014); Kemmerer
(1999) showed evidence from both human neuropsychology and primate neurophysiology,
which suggests that the visual system creates a basic distinction between the area within a
perimeter of an arm's reach, and the region outside of it.

4.4.2 Small-Intense Vision-Touch, and Large-Organic and Horizontal-Vertical Distance

SMALL and SHORT are very closely related semantically, basically denoting the same thing
except for the number of dimensions involved. The traits of these concepts are easily mapped
onto the adjacent distance-dimension (NARROW, NEAR) and quantity-dimension (FEW).
Closely located to these concepts were the internally connected sense-rated concepts BLACK,
WHITE, DARK, HOT, COLD and WET. Color and light (or lack thereof) are obviously connected
and temperature is probably connected by association (sun and fire), while dampness might be
connected to lack of light and lack of heat. On the one hand, Intense Vision-Touch concepts
could simply utilize the same kinds of sounds as the Small concepts, but they could also be
connected via the perception of texture, (also including ROUGH, HARD and perhaps OLD).

Whorf (1956) presents similar associations between bright, cold, sharp, hard, high, light (in
weight), quick, high-pitched, narrow and between dark, warm, yielding, soft, blunt, low,
heavy, slow, low-pitched, wide respectively.

LONG, DEEP and FAR are related in the same manner as their counterparts SMALL, SHORT and
NEAR. Their close connection to the organic concepts ROUND, SOFT, SMOOTH and SLOW could
be explained by the fact that in the surrounding world large things of note are either animals,
typically rather soft and round looking, or hills and mountains which, at a distance, can be
perceived as having smoother shapes than they really have, e.g. a craggy mountain ridge
mistaken for a cloud. This also reinforces the connections between Small and Intense Vision-
Touch, since things examined at a short distance allow imperfections (ruggedness, roughness)
to become visible and, at a large distance, small things are simply not detectable.

DAY was found located between the Large and indicatory Deictic concepts and did not have
any obvious connection to anything else except the non-salient concept LIGHT (not DARK)

(creating the Diurnal cluster), probably as a result of having a common lexical origin in many
languages.

FLAT, SHALLOW and WIDE/BROAD all belong to the Horizontal-Vertical Distance cluster which
denotes a shape extended in one dimension, and with a very thin surface in the other
dimension. Aside from being the vertical counterpart of the three mentioned concepts, ABOVE

and BELOW could fit into this domain by being seen as something located over/under, on top
of/underneath something else and thus reliant on another entity in order to be defined. This
could then be seen as something running along something else, yielding the connection to the
extended dimension (cf. Lakoff's (1987) image schemas). THERE also belongs in this cluster as
it was detached from the other deictic concepts; this is perhaps not so surprising, since it is
used for pointing things out at a distance by following a horizontal or vertical line towards the
referent.
Small and Intense Vision-Touch (representing mountains, clouds, larger animals etc.), Large-
Organic (representing stones, stars, smaller animals (insects), etc.) and Horizontal-Vertical
Distance clusters (representing plains, oceans, lakes, the horizon etc.) further form a three-
way oppositional relationship in the spatial dimension. The shapes which these components
represent might constitute basic dimensions necessary for humans to be able to conceptualize
and describe most elements of the surrounding world. Hence, if combined, these various
semantic properties could further yield small, round things (berries, eggs, flowers), big, hard
things (cliffs, icebergs), small, flat things (puddles, leaves) and so on. This assumption is
supported by a number of findings which include the idea that spatial categorization for visual
or semantic similarities could be needed in order for linguistic counterparts to emerge
(Bowerman 1996); that prelinguistic children have highly constrained learning mechanisms
which enable them to construct generalizations about objects (Needham and Baillargeon
1993); and that children's spatial knowledge is reflected in semantics constrained by biology
and physical environment (Clark 1973).

4.4.3 Conjoined Components

Some of the semantically oppositional pairs were unexpectedly situated close together in the
biplot. The underlying reason for this could be that the pairs are not perceived as being two
poles, but rather two types of the same domain.

Thus, there might be two ways of creating a phonosemantic contrast within the same semantic
domain, either by using completely contrasting phonemes (cf. maluma-takete), or by sharing a
common core of sounds with only one or a couple of phonemes as contrast, acting like some
kind of phonosemantic inflection, e.g. Hebrew [ʔiʃa] and [ʔiʃ] for MAN-WOMAN and Akha [hə]
and [tə] for THIS-THAT (cf. Johansson and Carling 2015). This yields a small, but perhaps,
relatively speaking, larger difference between the concepts.

The co-occurrence of HOT-COLD could be explained by that the feeling of extreme heat and
cold can initially be hard to keep apart. Similarly, BLACK-WHITE could be hard to differentiate
since too bright light can certainly make one briefly go blind. Likewise, ABOVE-BELOW are
very similar semantically, both being defined through something else. However, FULL-EMPTY

are more difficult to explain, since their semantic contrast is not analogous to the other
conjoined pairs.
5. Conclusion

This exploratory paper investigated how cross-linguistic phoneme distributions of

fundamental oppositional concepts can reveal semantic relationships. The results revealed that
38 out of the 56 concepts were judged salient (having divering phoneme distributions), which
formed 10 semantic domains; Small, Intense Vision-Touch, Large, Organic, Horizontal-
Vertical Distance, Deictic, Containment, Gender, Parent, Diurnal, and one lone concept,
OLD.

Embodiment and phonosemantics were considered the primary explanations for the results,
more specifically mimetic schemas and neurological evidence for long-range connections
between different areas of the brain, yielding not only connections between different
meanings, but also between meanings and sounds. The actual clustering of these semantically
related words was attributed to possible common semantic origins, i.e. more general and
concrete concepts preceding complex and abstract concepts. The oppositional relationships
displayed between the concepts and clusters could be credited to the benefits of oppositional
thinking in learning and language acquisition.

The semantic clusters here presented and the relationships discussed can be summarized
through a set of potential linguistic primitives and relations. From a conservative perspective,
this could include MOTHER-FATHER, the three degrees of deictic distinction (THERE being
located in the Horizontal-Vertical Distance cluster), the Large-Organic and Small and Intense
Vision-Touch (with OLD) clusters, and the tripartite relation between the shape-related clusters
(see Figure 5). MOTHER and I, Small and Intense Vision-Touch, and Deictic and Large-
Organic respectively could be related, though they could also simply utilize the same
phonological resources, while MAN-WOMAN (Gender-domain), FULL-EMPTY (Containment-
domain) and DAY (Diurnal-domain) do not have any external relations.
Figure 5. Conservative suggestions for potential linguistic primitives and relations. Full lines indicate certain relations and
dashed lines indicate utilization of the same phonological resources between domains.

If a more generous and speculative approach is adopted, a more simplified schema can be
proposed (see Figure 6). MOTHER and I are then considered to be one concept contrasted with
FATHER in one direction, and constituting one of the extremes of the three deictic distinctions
which are intertwined with two of the shape-related concepts. Deictic are grouped with Large-
Organic (via ‘large distance’), contrasted with Horizontal-Vertical Distance (including THERE)
and Small (including Intense Vision-Touch).

Figure 6. Relatively liberal suggestions for potential linguistic primitives and relations.

What can be said with certainty is that obvious semantic connections and relevant, often
binary, relationships between different semantic domains crystallized solely based on the
phonemes of the linguistic forms of 75 well-sampled languages. Hence, this study illustrates
the important role that meaning-meaning and sound-meaning associations, as well as
oppositional thinking which constructs larger concept-networks, play in human language.

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