In search of language's missing link

[Still Waters]

Before reading this article, you might like to try our test: Which of these words sounds bigger?

Through the looking glass, Lewis Carroll's Alice stumbles upon an enormous egg-shaped figure celebrating his un-birthday. She tries to introduce herself:

"It's a stupid name enough!" Humpty Dumpty interrupted impatiently."What does it mean?"

"Must a name mean something?" Alice asked doubtfully.

"Of course it must," Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: "My name means the shape I am - and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost."

PURE whimsy, you might think. Nearly 100 years of linguistics research has been based on the assumption that words are just collections of sounds - an agreed acoustic representation that has little to do with their actual meaning. There should be nothing in nonsense words such as "Humpty Dumpty" that would give away the character's egg-like figure, any more than someone with no knowledge of English could be expected to infer that the word "rose" represents a sweet-smelling flower.

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[encouraged]

Some words from my linguistic training have easy associations because the sound looks like or sounds like the thing they stand for.

If you say, "Gurrr..." like a pirate, the vibrating action of the ending sound of the broken up "r" can be applied to the Mixtec (a Mexican Indian language) word Boa which means "she grinds" as in grinding up corn with a pedestal and bowl. As does our word grinds associates well with the sound and gravel texture of granules that were ground.

Another word of Talpan (a Mexican Indian language) has the same texture as a person's laugh. The word means "don't laugh".

I would have thought the question had been answered by now a sound like "kiki" being couple with something as irregular as the sound. And that a sound that is smooth or liquid would relate to an object that is smoothly crossed. But I can't agree with the reasoning of it being because of the mouth being round like the object, especially when the the smooth sound to smooth surface is a corollary.

Perhaps someone should find an irregular sounding word with rounded vowels to test my theory.