The sound symbolism of food: The frequency of initial /PA-/ in words for (staple) food

Abstract

In different languages around the world, morphemes representing the (cooked form of) staple food or food in general tend to begin with a [+labial] phoneme followed by a [+low] phoneme (/pa-/, /ma-/, /fa-/, /wa-/, etc.). This article provides evidence for this phonological similarity by analyzing 66 sample languages' morphemes representing the staple food within the society where each language is spoken. About a fourth of the morphemes referring to staple food begin with a [+labial] first phoneme followed by a [+low] second phoneme, which is a much higher proportion compared to another list of basic morphemes in the same 66 languages. I further argue that the motivation for this crosslinguistic tendency is the iconic association between the mouth-opening gesture and the concept of eating.