A study in de-iconization : phonological and morphological adaptations of Indo-European bird names

Bird names are very important and interesting when it comes to studying iconicity. In particular, words naming birds with a distinct call, such as crow, raven, cuckoo, owl, and eagle, typically emerge by direct imitation. Initially, the name of the bird in languages mimic the sound of the bird’s call (Marttila 2011). However, over time, the sound structure of the name of the bird often becomes subdued to phonological change, leading to an interesting dichotomy: previous iconic forms of the bird’s name may exist in a language parallel to a renewed form, more similar to the bird’s call. This is an interesting example of de-iconization (Flaksman 2017), which has interested linguists for a long time (Carling and Johansson 2014; Jespersen 1922). Another aspect of the de-iconization is the morphological adaptation of the lexemes: the more they de-iconize, the more they become adapted to the morphological system of the language. We will look more carefully at bird names for crow, raven, cuckoo, owl, goose, and eagle in several Indo-European branches, including Germanic, Italic, Indo-Aryan, and Tocharian, compiling a dataset of (IPA-coded) sound structures, sound changes and morphological adaptations, demonstrating how these birds’ names in languages may follow or deviate from phonological conditions synchronically and in the prehistory of the branches. The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate that iconicity has a capacity, with certain meanings, to alter the regular conditions for sound change. Besides dealing with the theoretical preconditions for iconicity in relation to regular sound change, we will measure how the different forms variate phonologically and morphologically with respect to the different birds. Carling, Gerd and Johansson, Niklas (2014), 'Motivated language change: processes involved in the growth and conventionalization of onomatopoeia and sound symbolism', Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, 46 (2), 199-217.Flaksman, Maria (2017), 'Iconic treadmill hypothesis', in Matthias Bauer Angelika Zirker, Olga Fischer, Christina Ljungberg (ed.), Dimensions of Iconicity. Iconicity in Language and Literature 15 (Amsterdam: John Benjamins), 15-38.Jespersen, Otto (1922), Language: its nature, development and origin (London: Allen & Unwin).Marttila, Annu (2011), A cross-linguistic study of lexical iconicity and its manifestation in bird names (Muenchen: LINCOM Europa)