Index
Gods of the Word: Archetypes in the Consonants (Magnus, Margaret)
Jakobson, Jespersen, Bloomfield, Sapir, Firth – have written beautifully insightful articles on the relationship between sound and meaning, it has never reached the mainstream, and as far as I know, only Keith McCune and Amanuma have gone through all the major sound facts in any language.1 This very marginal field is called sound symbolism (though I prefer to call it phonosemantics, because I find the word ‘symbolism’ confusing).
Each word has an aspect of meaning which lies deeper than any of its senses, and it is fundamentally on this meaning that all the senses depend.
That problem arises because we are posing a question on the wrong level of abstraction – a question which therefore is meaningless.
The essential nature of a symbol is that it is first of all itself, and only secondarily is it its function.
With the word as the mechanism of creation, everything that did not yet exist was named and all appeared.”
Velar phonemes pronounced at the back of the mouth (/g/, /k/, /h/, /G/) are generally receptive. Labial phonemes pronounced at the lips (/b/, /p/, /v/, /f/, /m/, /w/) are rarely receptive and are often directed outward.
Socrates’ Hypothesis 1. That each phoneme has a meaning which it passes on to every word that contains it.
“In truth language does not reside in man but man stands in language and speaks out of it.” We wander the earth, as the instruments of these peculiar sound beings.
I too am a true believer in the autonomy of the archetype. A /t/ or an /h/ is no less than a Zeus. The consonants are not essentially physical, but they live, evolve and influence human affairs. We overlook something essential if we deny that they can get up and walk around. This is not to say that their existence is independent of the human psyche. But then everything depends on everything.
We are, so to speak, blinded to content by form. Reference does this by taking a possible context for a word very seriously, and freezing the word within a specific context into a ‘thing’ unto itself. It makes static what was fluid by limiting it to a context and claiming it to be a different thing in this context than in the next. The transition from process to thing is part and parcel to limitation within context.
The Tao of Physics
If we are correct about the usefulness of drawing the distinction between inherent and referential semantics, then the mouth can be viewed as a system whose physics in part determines the meanings of words. Imagine that each phoneme has inherent physical properties.
deduce the very general physical properties of the phonemes by how they interact in words, and this may or may not prove to correlate with muscle tension, air pressure in the mouth, etc. during articulation. Unfortunately there is probably no very reliable way to measure this muscle tension or air pressure. If there were a real physiological basis to this ‘wild idea’, one could imagine using word semantics to make educated guesses about muscle tension. This in turn could perhaps be used to make predictions about syllable structure and other phonological processes, as well as word semantics.
When an idea gets repeated often enough, it becomes common knowledge. When it becomes really convincing, then it starts sinking deeper and deeper into the unconscious recesses of the language. The sound meanings we are discussing and also metaphors are examples of this subconscious language - this background of invisible assumptions that we all share as speakers of English. The history of human thought lies buried in the phoneme meanings and other unconscious aspects of language.
Emerson says that the corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language.
“The whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.”
The mystic must first be an extremely good scientist, for science is the starting point and prerequisite of all higher endeavors. It is the discipline of stating truthfully and non-judgmentally what was observed – no more and no less.
mystical and scientific thought systems are reconciled in the realization that mind gives rise to matter, and not the other way around. The material universe is a thought.
Language, as it turns out, is not dead, but a living being on whose health all of us depend. The fact that each consonant is an archetype is significant not because of what it can be used for, but because when one meets each god face to face, one cannot but realize that it is conscious, present, and alive. It looks upon the child who wanders into its dominion with a steady eye, and tolerates her only as long as her intentions are pure. One leaves with no doubt that this force, though patient, is silently recording every thought, and will have its way in the end. We may as well deal with the gods now, face to face, rather than be forced to eat our own garbage at some future period of time. There is linguistic ecology just as surely as there is planetary ecology.
All that matters is the act of speaking itself, the manner in which my relationship with him plays itself out. I dance with English, and our tale is only just beginning. Everything depends on my recognition of this.
as children busy in our happy task, and with the door left ajar.