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Phonesthetics and the etymologies of blood and bone

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2020

JOSEPH PENTANGELO Open the ORCID record for JOSEPH PENTANGELO [Opens in a new window]
JOSEPH PENTANGELO*
Affiliation:
Linguistics MA/PhD Program, The Graduate Center, CUNY Room 7407 (mailbox 78) 365 Fifth Ave New York, NY10016USAjoseph.pentangelo@gmail.com
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Abstract

The etymologies of English blood and bone are obscure. Although their cognates are well represented in the Germanic family, both lack clear cognates in other Indo-European languages. Various explanations for their origins have been proposed, including that they may be non-Indo-European (e.g. Hawkins 1987). Blood and bone, and their cognates, share an initial /b/ with numerous body-related words (e.g. beard, breast, bosom) throughout Germanic. This initial /b/ constitutes a phonestheme. Phonesthemes – ‘recurring sound-meaning pairings that are not clearly contrastive morphemes’ (Bergen 2004: 290) – are present in many Germanic languages, but their role in lexicogenesis is little understood. I suggest that blood and bone were formed by blending the initial /b/ phonestheme with two pre-existing lexemes: Proto-Germanic *flōda- ‘something that flows’ and *staina- ‘stone’. Phonesthetic blending may be a fruitful avenue for future etymological research.

Keywords

Germanicphonesthemeetymologyword formationblends
Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , June 2021 , pp. 225 - 255
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Many thanks to Juliette Blevins. Thanks also to Michael Sargent, Bill Haddican, Patrick Honeybone and this article's two anonymous reviewers, all of whom gave me valuable advice. In 2018, I presented an earlier version of this article at the Word-Formation Theories III conference in Košice, Slovakia. An earlier version of this article won the 2018 Richard M. Hogg Prize from the International Society for the Linguistics of English. Dedicated to my wife, Rebecca.

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