Phono-semantic matching (PSM) is the incorporation of a word into one language from another, often creating a neologism, where the word's non-native quality is hidden by replacing it with phonetically and semantically similar words or roots from the adopting language. Thus the approximate sound and meaning of the original expression in the source language are preserved, though the new expression (the PSM – the phono-semantic match) in the target language may sound native.
Phono-semantic matching is distinct from calquing, which includes (semantic) translation but does not include phonetic matching (i.e., retention of the approximate sound of the borrowed word through matching it with a similar-sounding pre-existent word or morpheme in the target language).
Phono-semantic matching is also distinct from homophonic translation, which retains the sound of a word but not the meaning.
History
The term "phono-semantic matching" was introduced by linguist and revivalist Ghil'ad Zuckermann.[1] It challenged Einar Haugen's classic typology of lexical borrowing (loanwords).[2] While Haugen categorized borrowing into either substitution or importation, camouflaged borrowing in the form of PSM is a case of "simultaneous substitution and importation." Zuckermann proposed a new classification of multisourced neologisms, words deriving from two or more sources at the same time. Examples of such mechanisms are phonetic matching, semanticized phonetic matching and phono-semantic matching.
Zuckermann analyses the evolution of the word artichoke.[4] Beginning in Arabic الخرشوف ('al-khurshūf) "the artichoke", it was adapted into Andalusian Arabicalxarshofa, then Old Spanishalcarchofa, then Italianalcarcioffo, then Northern Italianarcicioffo > arciciocco > articiocco, then phonetically realised in English as artichoke. The word was eventually phono-semantically matched back into colloquial Levantine Arabic (for example in Syria, Lebanon and Israel) as أرضي شوكي (arḍī shawkī), consisting of أرضي (arḍī) "earthly" and شوكي (shawkī) "thorny".
Arabic has made use of phono-semantic matching to replace blatantly imported new terminology with a word derived from an existing triliteral root. Examples are:
Word
English meaning
Unarabicised import
Arabicised word
Pre-existing root (meaning)
technologie (French)
technology
تكنولوجيا (teknolōjyā)
تقانة (taqānah)
t-q-n (skill)
mitochondrie (French)
mitochondria
ميتوكندريا (mītōkondriyah)
متقدرة (mutaqaddirah)
q-d-r (power)
macchina (Italian)
machine
مكينة (makīnah)
مكنة (makanah)
m-k-n (capacity)
Dutch
A number of PSMs exist in Dutch as well. One notable example is hangmat ("hammock"), which is a modification of Spanish hamaca, also the source of the English word. Natively, the word is transparently analysed as a "hang-mat", which aptly describes the object. Similarly:
In ansjovis ("anchovy"), the second part was modified to resemble vis ("fish"), although the word originates in Spanish anchova;
In scheurbuik ("scurvy"), the word parts were modified to resemble scheur- (stem of scheuren, tear open) and buik ("belly, stomach"), although the word originates in Middle Low German schorbuck;
In sprokkelmaand (an alternative name for februari, "February"), the first part was modified to resemble sprokkelen ("gather wood"), although the word originates in Latin spurcalia;
In zijdenhemdje (a variety of apple with a very soft, thin, yellow skin), the word parts were modified to resemble zijden ("silken") and hemdje ("shirt; small shirt; vest"), although the word actually denotes the place Sydenham where the apple originates.[5]
Dutch dictionary Van Dale describes balkenbrij as a particularly notable example.
Other examples are angstvallig,[6]dukdalf, geeuwhonger,[6]hagedis, hondsdraf,[6]penthouse, rederijker, rendier and zondvloed.
English
A few PSMs exist in English. The French word chartreuse ("Carthusianmonastery") was translated to the English charterhouse. The French word choupique, itself an adaptation of the Choctaw name for the bowfin, has likewise been Anglicized as shoepike,[7] although it is unrelated to the pikes. The French name for the Osage orange, bois d'arc (lit. "bow-wood"), is sometimes rendered as "bowdark".[8] In Canada, the cloudberry is called "bakeapple" after the French phrase baie qu'appelle 'the what-do-you-call-it berry'.
The second part of the word muskrat was altered to match rat, replacing the original form musquash, which derives from an Algonquian (possibly Powhatan[9]) word, muscascus (literally "it is red"), or from the Abenaki native word mòskwas.
The Finnish compound word for "jealous" mustasukkainen literally means "black-socked" (musta "black" and sukka "sock"). However, the word is a case of a misunderstood loan translation from Swedish svartsjuk "black-sick". The Finnish word sukka fit with a close phonological equivalent to the Swedish sjuk. Similar cases are työmyyrä "hardworking person", literally "work mole", from arbetsmyra "work ant", matching myra "ant" to myyrä "mole"; and liikavarvas "clavus", literally "extra toe", from liktå < liktorn "dead thorn", matching liika "extra" to lik "dead (archaic)" and varvas "toe" to tå < torn "thorn".[10][11]
German
Mailhammer (2008) "applies the concepts of multisourced neologisation and, more generally, camouflaged borrowing, as established by Zuckermann (2003a) to Modern German, pursuing a twofold aim, namely to underline the significance of multisourced neologisation for language contact theory and secondly to demonstrate that together with other forms of camouflaged borrowing it remains an important borrowing mechanism in contemporary German."[12]
Icelandic
Sapir & Zuckermann (2008) demonstrate how Icelandic camouflages many English words by means of phono-semantic matching. For example, the Icelandic-looking word eyðni, meaning "AIDS", is a PSM of the English acronym AIDS, using the pre-existent Icelandic verb eyða, meaning "to destroy", and the Icelandic nominal suffix -ni.[13] Similarly, the Icelandic word tækni, meaning "technology, technique", derives from tæki, meaning "tool", combined with the nominal suffix -ni, but is, in fact, a PSM of the Danish teknik (or of another derivative of Greek τεχνικόςtekhnikós), meaning "technology, technique". Tækni was coined in 1912 by Dr Björn Bjarnarson from Viðfjörður in the East of Iceland. It had been in little use until the 1940s, but has since become common, as a lexeme and as an element in new formations, such as raftækni, lit. "electrical technics", i.e. "electronics", tæknilegur "technical" and tæknir "technician".[14] Other PSMs discussed in the article are beygla, bifra–bifrari, brokkál, dapur–dapurleiki - depurð, fjárfesta - fjárfesting, heila, guðspjall, ímynd, júgurð, korréttur, Létt og laggott, musl, pallborð–pallborðsumræður, páfagaukur, ratsjá, setur, staða, staðall–staðla–stöðlun, toga–togari, uppi and veira.[15]
In modern Japanese, loanwords are generally represented phonetically via katakana. However, in earlier times loanwords were often represented by kanji (Chinese characters), a process called ateji when used for phonetic matching, or jukujikun when used for semantic matching. Some of these continue to be used; the characters chosen may correspond to the sound, the meaning, or both.
In most cases the characters used were chosen only for their matching sound or only for their matching meaning. For example, in the word 寿司 (sushi), the two characters are respectively read as su and shi, but the character 寿 means "one's natural life span" and 司 means "to administer", neither of which has anything to do with the food– this is ateji. Conversely, in the word 煙草 (tabako) for "tobacco", the individual kanji respectively mean "smoke" and "herb", which corresponds to the meaning, while none of their possible readings have a phonetic relationship to the word tabako– this is jukujikun.
In some cases, however, the kanji were chosen for both their semantic and phonetic values, a form of phono-semantic matching. A stock example is 倶楽部 (kurabu) for "club", where the characters can be interpreted loosely in sequence as "together-fun-place" (which has since been borrowed into Chinese during the early 20th century with the same meaning, including the individual characters, but with a pronunciation that differs considerably from the original English and the Japanese, jùlèbù). Another example is 合羽 (kappa) for the Portuguesecapa, a kind of raincoat. The characters can mean "wings coming together", as the pointed capa resembles a bird with wings folded together.
Another example is the Mandarin form of World Wide Web, which is wàn wéi wǎng (simplified Chinese:万维网; traditional Chinese:萬維網), which satisfies "www" and literally means "myriad dimensional net".[19] The English word hacker has been borrowed into Mandarin as 黑客 (hēikè, "dark/wicked visitor").[20]
Modern Standard Chinese声纳/聲納shēngnà "sonar" uses the characters 声/聲shēng "sound" and 纳/納nà "receive, accept". The pronunciations shēng and nà are phonetically somewhat similar to the two syllables of the English word. Chinese has a large number of homo/heterotonal homophonous morphemes, which would have been a better phonetic fit than shēng, but not nearly as good semantically– consider the syllable song (cf. 送sòng 'deliver, carry, give (as a present)', 松sōng 'pine; loose, slack', 耸/聳sǒng 'tower; alarm, attract' etc.), sou (cf. 搜sōu 'search', 叟sŏu 'old man', 馊/餿sōu 'sour, spoiled' and many others) or shou (cf. 收shōu 'receive, accept', 受shòu 'receive, accept', 手shǒu 'hand', 首shǒu 'head', 兽/獸shòu 'beast', 瘦shòu 'thin' and so forth).[21]
According to Zuckermann, PSM in Mandarin is common in:
brand names, e.g., 可口可乐/可口可樂Kěkǒu kělè, "Coca-Cola" translates to "tasty [and] entertaining",[22]可乐/可樂 itself genericised to refer to any cola.[23]
computer jargon, e.g., the aforementioned word for "World Wide Web"
technological terms, e.g., the aforementioned word for "sonar".
toponyms, e.g., the name 白俄罗斯/白俄羅斯Bái'èluósī, "Belarus" combines the word 白Bái, "White" with the name 俄罗斯/俄羅斯Èluósī, "Russia", therefore meaning "White Russia" just like the endonym "Белару́сь".
From a monolingual Chinese view, Mandarin PSM is the 'lesser evil' compared with Latin script (in digraphic writing) or code-switching (in speech). Zuckermann's exploration of PSM in Standard Chinese and Meiji-periodJapanese concludes that the Chinese writing system is multifunctional: pleremic ("full" of meaning, e.g., logographic), cenemic ("empty" of meaning, e.g., phonographic - like a syllabary) and simultaneously cenemic and pleremic (phono-logographic). Zuckermann argues that Leonard Bloomfield's assertion that "a language is the same no matter what system of writing may be used"[24] is inaccurate. "If Chinese had been written using roman letters, thousands of Chinese words would not have been coined, or would have been coined with completely different forms".[25] Evidence of this can be seen in the Dungan language, a Chinese language that is closely related to Mandarin, but written phonetically in Cyrillic, where words are borrowed, often from Russian, directly without PSM.[26]
Often in phono-semantic matching, the source language determines both the root word and the noun-pattern. This makes it difficult to determine the source language's influence on the target language morphology. For example, "the phono-semantic matcher of Englishdock with Israeli Hebrewמבדוקmivdók could have used–after deliberately choosing the phonetically and semantically suitable rootb-d-qבדק meaning 'check' (Rabbinic) or 'repair' (Biblical)– the noun-patterns mi⌂⌂a⌂á, ma⌂⌂e⌂á, mi⌂⌂é⌂et, mi⌂⌂a⌂áim etc. (each ⌂ represents a slot where a radical is inserted). Instead, mi⌂⌂ó⌂, which was not highly productive, was chosen because its [o] makes the final syllable of מבדוקmivdók sound like English dock."[27]
Miscellaneous
The Hebrew name יְרוּשָׁלַיִם (Yərūšālayim) for Jerusalem is rendered as Ἱεροσόλυμα (Hierosóluma) in, e.g. Matthew 2:1. The first part corresponds to the Ancient Greek prefix ἱερo- (hiero-), meaning "sacred, holy".
Old High Germanwidarlōn ("repayment of a loan") was rendered as widerdonum ("reward") in Medieval Latin. The last part corresponds to the Latin donum ("gift").[28][29]:157
Viagra, a brand name which was suggested by Interbrand Wood (the consultancy firm hired by Pfizer), is itself a multisourced neologism, based on Sanskritव्याघ्रvyāghráh ("tiger") but enhanced by the words vigour (i.e. strength) and Niagara (i.e. free/forceful flow).[18]
Other than through Sinoxenic borrowings, Vietnamese employs phono-semantic matching less commonly than Chinese. Examples include ma trận ("matrix", from the words for "magic" and "battle array"), áp dụng ("apply", from the words for "press down" and "use"), and Huỳnh Phi Long (Huey P. Long, from "yellow flying dragon", evoking the Huey P. Long Bridge).
Motivations
According to Zuckermann, PSM has various advantages from the point of view of a puristiclanguage planner:[1]
recycling obsolete lexical items
camouflaging foreign influence (for the native speaker in the future)
facilitating initial learning (mnemonics) (for the contemporary learner/speaker)
Other motivations for PSM include the following:
playfulness (cf. midrashic tradition of homiletic commentary, cf. the Jewish pilpul)
An expressive loan is a loanword incorporated into the expressive system of the borrowing language, making it resemble native words or onomatopoeia. Expressive loanwords are hard to identify, and by definition, they follow the common phonetic sound change patterns poorly. [30] Likewise, there is a continuum between "pure" loanwords and "expressive" loanwords. The difference to a folk etymology (or an eggcorn) is that a folk etymology is based on misunderstanding, whereas an expressive loan is changed on purpose, the speaker taking the loanword knowing full well that the descriptive quality is different from the original sound and meaning.
South-eastern Finnish, for example, has many expressive loans. The main source language, Russian, does not use the vowels 'y', 'ä' or 'ö' [y æ ø]. Thus, it is common to add these to redescriptivized loans to remove the degree of foreignness that the loanword would otherwise have. For example, tytinä "brawn" means "wobblyness",[clarification needed] and superficially it looks like a native construction, originating from the verb tutista "to wobble" added with a front vowel sound in the vowel harmony. However, it is expressivized from tyyteni (which is a confusing word as -ni is a possessive suffix), which in turn is a loanword from Russian stúden'.[31] A somewhat more obvious example is tökötti "sticky, tarry goo", which could be mistaken as a derivation from the onomatopoetic word tök (cf. the verb tökkiä "to poke"). However, it is an expressive loan of Russian d'ogot' "tar".[32]
In linguistics, a false friend is a word in a different language that looks or sounds similar to a word in a given language, but differs significantly in meaning. Examples of false friends include English embarrassed and Spanish embarazada 'pregnant'; English parents versus Portuguese parentes and Italian parenti ; English demand and French demander 'ask'; and English gift, German Gift 'poison', and Norwegian gift 'married'.
False cognates are pairs of words that seem to be cognates because of similar sounds and meaning, but have different etymologies; they can be within the same language or from different languages, even within the same family. For example, the English word dog and the Mbabaram word dog have exactly the same meaning and very similar pronunciations, but by complete coincidence. Likewise, English much and Spanish mucho came by their similar meanings via completely different Proto-Indo-European roots, and same for English have and Spanish haber. This is different from false friends, which are similar-sounding words with different meanings, and may or may not be cognates.
A false etymology is a false theory about the origin or derivation of a specific word or phrase. When a false etymology becomes a popular belief in a cultural/linguistic community, it is a folk etymology. Nevertheless, folk/popular etymology may also refer to the process by which a word or phrase is changed because of a popular false etymology. To disambiguate the usage of the term "folk/popular etymology", Ghil'ad Zuckermann proposes a clear-cut distinction between the derivational-only popular etymology (DOPE) and the generative popular etymology (GPE): the DOPE refers to a popular false etymology involving no neologization, and the GPE refers to neologization generated by a popular false etymology.
A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge. In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word lexicon derives from Greek word λεξικόν, neuter of λεξικός meaning 'of or for words'.
A loanword is a word at least partly assimilated from one language into another language, through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term that is well established in the linguistic field despite its acknowledged descriptive flaws: nothing is taken away from the donor language and there is no expectation of returning anything.
In linguistics, a calque or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, “to calque” means to borrow a word or phrase from another language while translating its components, so as to create a new lexeme in the target language. For instance, the English word "skyscraper" has been calqued in dozens of other languages, combining words for "sky" and "scrape" in each language, as for example, German: Wolkenkratzer, Portuguese: Arranha-céu, Turkish: Gökdelen. Another notable example is the Latin weekday names, which came to be associated by ancient Germanic speakers with their own gods following a practice known as interpretatio germanica: the Latin "Day of Mercury", Mercurii dies, was borrowed into Late Proto-Germanic as the "Day of Wōđanaz" (Wodanesdag), which became Wōdnesdæg in Old English, then "Wednesday" in Modern English.
A root is the core of a word that is irreducible into more meaningful elements. In morphology, a root is a morphologically simple unit which can be left bare or to which a prefix or a suffix can attach. The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family, which carries aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. Content words in nearly all languages contain, and may consist only of, root morphemes. However, sometimes the term "root" is also used to describe the word without its inflectional endings, but with its lexical endings in place. For example, chatters has the inflectional root or lemma chatter, but the lexical root chat. Inflectional roots are often called stems. A root, or a root morpheme, in the stricter sense, may be thought of as a monomorphemic stem.
Etymology is the scientific study of the origin and evolution of a word's semantic meaning across time, including its constituent morphemes and phonemes. It is a subfield of historical linguistics, philology, and semiotics, and draws upon comparative semantics, morphology, pragmatics, and phonetics in order to construct a comprehensive and chronological catalogue of all meanings that a morpheme, phoneme, word, or sign has carried across time.
Folk etymology – also known as (generative) popular etymology, analogical reformation, (morphological)reanalysis and etymological reinterpretation – is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more familiar one through popular usage. The form or the meaning of an archaic, foreign, or otherwise unfamiliar word is reinterpreted as resembling more familiar words or morphemes.
Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact with and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum languages, or as the result of migration, with an intrusive language acting as either a superstratum or a substratum.
In linguistics, an internationalism or international word is a loanword that occurs in several languages with the same or at least similar meaning and etymology. These words exist in "several different languages as a result of simultaneous or successive borrowings from the ultimate source". Pronunciation and orthography are similar so that the word is understandable between the different languages.
In modern Japanese, ateji principally refers to kanji used to phonetically represent native or borrowed words with less regard to the underlying meaning of the characters. This is similar to man'yōgana in Old Japanese. Conversely, ateji also refers to kanji used semantically without regard to the readings.
Transcription into Chinese characters is the use of traditional or simplified Chinese characters to phonetically transcribe the sound of terms and names of foreign words to the Chinese language. Transcription is distinct from translation into Chinese whereby the meaning of a foreign word is communicated in Chinese. Since English classes are now standard in most secondary schools, it is increasingly common to see foreign names and terms left in their original form in Chinese texts. However, for mass media and marketing within China and for non-European languages, particularly those of the Chinese minorities, transcription into characters remains very common.
Estonian vocabulary, i.e., the vocabulary of the Estonian language, was influenced by many other language groups.
Linguistic purism in Icelandic is the policy of discouraging new loanwords from entering the language, by creating new words from Old Icelandic and Old Norse roots. In Iceland, linguistic purism is archaising, trying to resuscitate the language of a golden age of Icelandic literature. The effort began in the early 19th century, at the dawn of the Icelandic national movement, aiming at replacing older loanwords, especially from Danish, and it continues today, targeting English words. It is widely upheld in Iceland and it is the dominant language ideology. It is fully supported by the Icelandic government through the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, the Icelandic Language Council, the Icelandic Language Fund and an Icelandic Language Day.
A semantic loan is a process of borrowing semantic meaning from another language, very similar to the formation of calques. In this case, however, the complete word in the borrowing language already exists; the change is that its meaning is extended to include another meaning its existing translation has in the lending language. Calques, loanwords and semantic loans are often grouped roughly under the phrase "borrowing". Semantic loans often occur when two languages are in close contact, and they take various forms. The source and target word may be cognates, which may or may not share any contemporary meaning in common; they may be an existing loan translation or parallel construction ; or they may be unrelated words that share an existing meaning.
Homophonic translation renders a text in one language into a near-homophonic text in another language, usually with no attempt to preserve the original meaning of the text. In one homophonic translation, for example, the English "sat on a wall" is rendered as French "s'étonne aux Halles". More generally, homophonic transformation renders a text into a near-homophonic text in the same or another language: e.g., "recognize speech" could become "wreck a nice beach".
Ghil'ad Zuckermann is an Israeli-born language revivalist and linguist who works in contact linguistics, lexicology and the study of language, culture and identity.
Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew is a scholarly book written in the English language by linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann, published in 2003 by Palgrave Macmillan. The book proposes a socio-philological framework for the analysis of "camouflaged borrowing" such as phono-semantic matching. It introduces for the first time a classification for "multisourced neologisms", new words that are based on two or more sources at the same time.
In linguistics, an etymological calque is a lexical item calqued from another language by replicating the etymology of the borrowed lexical item although this etymology is irrelevant for the meaning being borrowed.
↑ Sapir & Zuckermann (2008, pp.37–38), cf. تقنيّ taqni/tiqani (lit. "of perfection, related to mastering and improving"), another PSM of technical, in this case in Modern Arabic.
↑ Smythe Palmer, Abram (1882). Folk-etymology: A Dictionary of Verbal Corruptions Or Words Perverted in Form Or Meaning, by False Derivation Or Mistaken Analogy. Johnson Reprint.
Gao, Liwei (2008). Language change in progress: evidence from computer-mediated communication (Speech). 20th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics. Ohio State University.
Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2003). "Language Contact and Globalisation: The Camouflaged Influence of English on the World's Languages – with special attention to Israeli (sic) and Mandarin". Cambridge Review of International Affairs. 16 (2): 287–307. CiteSeerX10.1.1.195.9748. doi:10.1080/09557570302045. S2CID11791518.
Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2006). "'Etymythological Othering' and the Power of 'Lexical Engineering' in Judaism, Islam and Christianity. A Socio-Philo(sopho)logical Perspective". In Omoniyi, Tope; Fishman, Joshua A. (eds.). Explorations in the Sociology of Language and Religion. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp.237–258.
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