| This is fringe science. It says there are certain intrinsic sounds which are universal to all languages, and these are present in many modern words. For example, it argues that "cop" is understandable through the following decomposition: > cop /kɒp/ [police] - /p/ protection /kɒ/ acceptability of consciousness; protection with acceptability of consciousness; However, the etymology of "cop" is nothing to do with that. First, "cop" is short for "copper", which come from "to cop", meaning "to take, capture". Quoting http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=cop : > 1704, northern British dialect, "to seize, to catch," perhaps ultimately from Middle French caper "seize, to take," from Latin capere "to take" (see capable); or from Dutch kapen "to take," from Old Frisian capia "to buy," which is related to Old English ceapian (see cheap). Related: Copped; copping. The term "cop" is used for things besides police, such as "to steal", and used in phrases like "to cop an attitude" and "to cop a feel." These are much more closely related to "to take" than anything to do with protection. Also, "bobby" is the UK equivalent of "cop", from the name Robert Peel. This cannot be traced back to some fundamental concept of "protection", etc. Or consider the decomposition of "ink" from this document: > ink /ɪ ŋk/ [a fluid for writing] - /ŋk/ lively consciousness /ɪ/ visibility; lively consciousness invisibility; /ɪ/ दृश्यत /ŋk/ जीवंत चेतना; दृश्यत म�जीवतं चेतना. The normal etymology for that word, at http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=ink&allowed_in_fram... , goes back to the Greek "enkaiein" - "to burn in". This has nothing to do with visibility, but rather from "the name of the purple-red ink, the sacrum encaustum, used by the Roman emperors to sign their documents; this was said to have been obtained from the ground remains of certain shellfish, formed into writing fluid by the application of fire or heat, which explained the name." Now, there may be some sounds which trace back to a proto-human language. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Human_language . But this paper comes across as a big hammer used to force everything to fit into its pattern, or at least to only pick out those words which happen to be explainable by its scheme. Also, various African languages use click consonants. Yet this pseudo-scientific book says nothing about clicks. Either there is no phonosemantics to clicks, in which case why are they used?, or there is phonosemantics, in which case what is missing from all the languages which don't have them? I am reminded of the line from "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" - "Give me a word, any word, and I show you that the root of that word is Greek." |