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John Milbury-Steen, in Linguistics, page 1

Front and Back Vowels in Linguistics

Sound Symbolism: Contrast Studies Based on Nonsense Words

This article discusses findings about front and back symbolism in linguistic research.

One tradition of research on this subject is to show someone an object (often a novel object) and ask the person to choose which of two words differing only in backness of vowels would be the better name for that object.

The best researched duality is little-large. As far as I know, this research began with Sapir in 1929. He showed subjects pictures of two tables that differed only in size, and asked them to choose which one was mil and which was mal (pronounced like "mahl” with the “a” of “father”). They tended to think that the larger table should be called mal. Needless to say, but has been said (Thompson 2011), this kind of experiment suffers from “strong demand characteristics:” in other words, you are asking the subject to confirm a hypothesis too overtly presented. The two things differ in size; the two words differ in vowel. Duh! Leading the witness. However, it does generate useful data, in my opinion, because it does reveal to what extent the witness is willing to be led. Most subjects will give the larger object a name containing a back vowel.

More reliable experiments give the subjects a large number of word pairs to compensate for the fact that a single pair may have associations that bias the subject one way or another. It has been observed (Thompson 2011) that mil sounds a lot like the prefix in “millimeter,” so it denotes smallness already, which spoils what it is supposed to connote. And mal might remind the subject of “evil,” which is A Big Thing. Sapir investigated only one word pair, but his study was a pioneering one.

The typical experiment is to present a subject many pairs of nonsense words differing only in one vowel phoneme and ask which word refers to a larger thing. For example, in one early experiment (Newman 1933), about 600 subjects of different ages were given pairs of nonsense words for horses. The researcher pronounced the word pairs. The subjects did not have to figure out the pronunciation by reading. Then the subjects checked a box to indicate which one referred to the bigger horse, for example, gleppa or gloapa. (By the way, overwhelmingly, the subjects thought that a gloapa was a big horse, but a gleppa was a small one.) The results, the averages, if we translate them into “gl_pa” values (but there were many contrasting nonsense pairs), arranged from the smallest to the largest horse: glippa, gleighpa, gleppa, glaepa, | glahpa, glewpa, glawpa, gloapa

(In my phonetic spelling, “eigh” as in “weigh,” “ae” as in “cat,” “ah” as in “father,” “ew” as in “dew,” “aw” as in “raw.”) The extra spacing shows relatively wide gaps in the subjects’ perception of size. I have inserted the vertical line character to show the separation between front and back vowels as Aei- our defines them. The front-vowel horses on the left are Shetland-pony horses in a petting zoo; the back-vowel horses on the right are Clydesdales that pull the Budweiser beer wagon. The vowels in the latter group require a larger oral cavity, the researchers note. This supports my characterization of the mouth as a microcosm: the size of the mouth when pronouncing the vowel of the nonsense word suggests the size of the referent. The mouth solipsistically projects its size on whatever it is naming. John Milbury-Steen, Front and Back Vowels in Linguistics, page 2

Contrast in size symbolism in regard to front and back vowels in nonsense words has been widely reported. For example, in another experiment (Thompson 2011), the subject was shown a weird looking figure called a “greeble.” It looks like a stack of three globs with a few protuberances. Each greeble, always the same shape, was shown in a pastoral setting: in a pasture beside a cow. (Wow. “A greeble in a pastoral setting.” These experiments often have a quirky winsomeness.) The cow was there for scale because the greebles varied in size, from half as tall as the cow’s back leg, to three times the height of the cow. There were five different sizes. The subject had to read (not hear) five possible names for each greeble and choose which one he thought was the best. These names were all of the form CVCVCV, where C is a and V is a vowel – for example, “wodolo,” which turns out to be a huge greeble, or “kitete” (three syllables), which is a very small one. Counting both and vowels, each of which can be little or big, with a value of 0 or 1 respectively, each greeble name implicitly had a bigness score between 0 and 6. The letters a, u, and o, which correspond to the phonemes ah, oo and oh, were considered “large sounding,” while i and e, which, are the vowels of sit and set, were considered “small sounding”. Of course, the researchers knew the score for each vowel, but the subjects did not. When forty-seven subjects assigned a name to each of 20 greebles, the results were as predicted. The bigness score of the chosen names varied with the size of the greeble, thus demonstrating that size symbolism applies not just to the two extremes of the scale, but to intermediate positions on it, as well. (The symbolism is “graded.”) These results apply to both vowels and consonants, but, considering vowels separately, the researchers state that their results agree with former studies where, as the size of a “novel object” increases, subjects choose more and more back vowels. In short, the bigger the object, the backer the vowels.

Advertisers have caught on to this. One study (Coulter and Coulter 2010) used size symbolism of front and back vowels to trick customers into choosing the more expensive ice cream cone. The setup is this. The normal price of the ice cream cone is $10.00, which I personally think is rather pricey. You show the subject two ads, identical in format, graphics and font, except that ad A gives a discounted price of $7.66 and ad B gives a discounted price of $7.22. You have to get the subject to repeat these prices out loud so that he processes them in an auditory way. Then you distract him a while, then you ask him later which ice cream cone he wants to buy. He will more likely tell you the first! Why? Because in ad A, the price ends in “sixty-six”, and the i’s are front vowels, connoting smallness (here, smallness of price), whereas in ad B, the price end in “two” which has a back vowel, connoting bigness (of price). Ironically, of the ten non-zero digits, the smallest ones, “one” and “two,” (also “four”) have bigness-connoting back vowels, whereas the bigger ones have littleness-connoting front vowels. The trick is to get the consumer to process the price acoustically, not visually or conceptually. The ice cream cone isn’t cheaper, but it sounds cheaper. (In this experiment, consonants also played a role.)

Frankly, I am not sure how to apply size symbolism to Aei-our. Would this mean that the verse line gets increasingly weighty, heavier, heftier as it falls to its end? After all, big, heavy things fall with the biggest thump or clunk! Increase of size might suggest increase in weight: a fall towards the sluggish and torpid. Big, heavy things fall better than light things, so if your verse is going to fall, you might as well use “heavy” vowels at the end of the line.

In regard to size symbolism, I cannot help mentioning some real English words. I take birds as an indicative example, because the sound they make in English is roughly correlated with their size. Little birds cheep, peep and squeak, middle sized birds squawk, while big birds caw and go tu-wit-to-woo or hoo-hoo. Likewise, little dogs go yip-yip, but big, ferocious animals roar, snarl, growl, and snort. Studies of bird and fish names in certain of the Amazon show that small birds and fish tend to have John Milbury-Steen, Front and Back Vowels in Linguistics, page 3 names using front vowels; big birds and fish, back vowels (Berlin), even when you control for onomatopoeic effects for the sounds they make.

The other contrast that comes up often in the nonsense word studies is that between bright and dark. The methodology is the same: this was the second part of Newman’s experiment. The researcher read two nonsense words, such as “laebi” or “lewbi,” and asked the subjects to choose which one was darker (as well as which one was bigger). There were 226 pairs of two-syllable words, quite a lengthy list for a poor subject to work through, requiring 452 decisions! The difference in vowel could occur in the first or the second syllable. This variety was intended “to prevent, as far as possible, a deadening of the [subjects’] attention,” as the researcher delightfully says. I guess it was pretty boring. I suppose, however, that a large sampling of words was needed in order to compensate for extraneous associations. For example, in the pair “laebi-lewbie,” I would suppose that the diminutive ending is definitely an interference, as well as association with labs (depending on your attitude towards chemistry or medical testing) and lube in various contexts, erotic and automotive.

The results for size, ranked from little to large, are similar to those of the earlier experiment: libbi, leebi leighbi, lighbi, laebi, | lyubi, loobi lahbi (lobby), lawbi again, with the spacing indicating relatively large gaps. The results in order from bright to dark: leebi, libby, lighbi, leighbi, laebi, | lyubi, lahbi, lawbi, loobi

I have added the vertical line character in each progression to show the boundary between front and back vowels as Aei-our defines them. As far as size is concerned, the researcher concluded that three factors explain the ranking: articulatory position (front vs back), the frequency of the sound (high to low) and the size of the oral cavity (small to large.) However, the ranking from bright to dark, it turned out, has nothing to do with the size of the oral cavity. It depends only on articulatory position and frequency. Perhaps people subliminally believe that the back of the mouth is a dark place (which it actually is) or that back vowel sounds are dark like spooky sounds heard in the night.

In reference to back vowels being regarded as dark, I am gratified to discover that there an experimental basis for this connotation. This accords beautifully with Aei-our’s falling cadence – the downward drift of things.

Other nonsense-word studies have found qualities in addition to size and brightness by which front and back vowels can produce a contrast. One study (Ahlner and Zlatev 2010) looked at the correlation between phonemes and shape. The researchers featured two objects. One was pointed or spikey like a star, with a periphery consisting of a lot of sharp acute triangles. The other had a lot of rounded protuberances like a highly conflicted amoeba. It was not sure where it wanted to go. The pseudopods disagreed. Researchers in Sweden asked (in Swedish) twenty students to participate. They were “compensated with a small sum, corresponding to a lunch ticket.” They were repeatedly shown the star or the amoeba, at random, and were asked to choose one of two nonsense names for it. The names were all of the form CVCV (where C is a consonant; V, a vowel). One way in which the names differed was in the vowel, either a Swedish ‘i’ (which in English would be like the vowel phoneme of see) or a ‘u’ (like the vowel phoneme of zoo). For example, they had to choose between “lili” and “lulu” or between “nini” and “nunu.” John Milbury-Steen, Front and Back Vowels in Linguistics, page 4

When the vote was tallied, it was a landslide for the researchers’ hypothesis that ‘i’ was iconic for sharpness and ‘u’ for . Ninety per cent of the students chose the ‘i’ words for the star figure and the same percentage chose the ‘u’ words for the amoeba figure. At first, I thought that the basis for this could have been visual: after all, the letter ‘i’ is a straight line and the letter ‘u’ is rounded. However, when I read the fine print, I discovered that the cue was purely auditory: the subjects heard, but did not read, the two nonsense names. However, the phoneme [u] is rounded in another way: the lips are rounded when you say it and the air passes out easily-- one might say “softly.” The researchers note that the phoneme [i] requires the vocal tract to be narrower, so this might be perceived as “hard” or “edgy.” The subjects in the experiment may have repeated or subvocalized the nonsense word.

In the canon of research on this issue, similar figures, rounded and pointed, have been known as bouba and kiki respectively. (Also, maluma and takete. These figures, along with the greebles, all play together in the Sound Symbolism Theme Park, one of my favorite retreats.)

Of course, the main objection to these studies using choose-the-nonsense-word format is that the subject is practically being coerced into confirming an obvious hypothesis. These experiments almost beg the subject to agree that back vowels are good for big, dark or rounded things and front vowels are good for little, bright or jagged things. However, this leading-the-witness flaw is partially overcome if you allow the subject to generate his own nonsense word for a thing. In one experiment (Berlin 2006), 22 students had to name two figures in Droidese, a to be used in an animated Steven Spielberg movie, Return of the Droids. Words in Droidese always have the form CVCVCV. The results were predictable. Thirty out of 43 student-generated names for the jagged object using front vowels (such as kidise or keteni); whereas 35 out of 51 names for the rounded object used back vowels (such as buromu or suhoya).

Studies of the bouba-kiki effect are hard to apply to Aei-our. However, in a way, the findings are consistent with my trope of back vowel as entropic: the jagged shape of the melts into the roundedness of the back vowel. You could see the rounding as a loss of organization or an abrasion of definition. On the other hand, you could also see the roundedness as a relaxation. I intuit that there is a sort of edgy effort needed in producing the front vowels, and a certain laid-backness to the back ones. Think of it as the difference in energy between a star and an amoeba.

These studies also confirm my notion that there is a certain negotiation between eye and mouth in naming something. You look at the thing and you intuit what shape of the mouth would correspond to the shape of the thing, so you give the thing a name that would cause the mouth to have a perceived similar shape. In effect, you are thinking with your mouth. If I were being scholarly, I might call it “the proprioceptive perception of a name.” That makes it sound real sophisticated. Perhaps it just belongs to a regressive oral phase, as the Freudians would say. Nevertheless, puerile Aei-our looks at the world and “names” it according to what similar shape it would give the mouth. To do this it has to postulate the front of the mouth as bright and trivial (light or lite), the back as dark and ponderous -- broody. It makes the world something you have to swallow, something to get down.

So far, I have given the impression that nonsense word studies have investigated only three semantic connotations by which front and back vowels differ: size, brightness, and shape. Specifically, front vowels reportedly suggest things that are smaller, brighter and pointier; back vowels, things that are bigger, darker and more rounded. Other studies demonstrate that there is a wide variety of features by which front and back vowels discriminate objects. John Milbury-Steen, Front and Back Vowels in Linguistics, page 5

Back to the world of advertising: Let us consider the dilemma of choosing a brand name that will work in various languages. Some researchers have proposed that companies in foreign markets be aware of the effect of front and back vowels in brand names. (They draw marketers’ attention to consonants, too.) Since there is a wide range of products on the market (that’s an understatement) there is a wide range of qualities by which you might want to show that your product is better than that of the competition. This monetizes front and back vowel connotation theory tremendously. It obliges a marketer to ask questions like these: Would a brand name having a back vowel suggest that my ketchup is thicker? With a brand name with a front vowel suggest that my internet service is faster? Would a brand name with a front vowel suggest that my tissues are softer? According to one study (Athaide and Klink 2012) the answers to these three questions are yes, yes, and yes for a population in India. These investigators assume as an article of faith that front and back vowel symbolism (as well as consonant- based forms) is universal rather than language-specific.

The researchers created pairs of imaginary brand names, some of which differed only in backness of the vowels. They asked 171 university students in Mumbai, India, who spoke a wide variety of languages, to choose the better brand name for each product. Of 31 questions testing various hypotheses about sound symbolism, 13 were concerned with a hypothesis about front-back vowel connotations over a variety of attributes. Some typical results:

The subjects, on average, thought that:

 Toyag beer sounded darker that Teyag beer.  Vuzag ketchup sounded thicker than Vizag ketchup.  Belah tissues sounded softer than Bolah tissues.  Rinder internet service sounded faster than Runder internet service.  Wudum gloves sounded warmer than Wedum gloves.  Senuk lemonade sounded more bitter than Sonuk lemonade. (Hmm. I would have chosen Sonuk as more bitter and Senuk as sweeter.)  A Kuffi vacuum cleaner sounded heavier than a Keffi vacuum cleaner.  Fipple dresses sounded prettier than Fupple dresses.

In the summary above, I arbitrarily selected one of the four possible pairs for each product. There were actually four forms of the questionnaire, so the subject got one of four possible questions. For example, for the beer, the questions were: Which do you think is thicker,

 Esab beer or Usab beer?  Teyag beer or Toyab beer?  Flimet beer or Flumet beer?  Gidan beer or Godan beer?

In the four versions, I have presented the two choices in the same order, the front vowel brand name first (with an e or i) and the back vowel one second (with an o or u), but in the study they were presented to the subjects in random order.

The researchers’ conclusions: that front vowels connote things that are lighter (in color), thinner, softer, faster, cooler, more bitter, lighter (in weight) and prettier. Conversely, dark vowels connote things that are darker, thicker, rougher, slower, warmer, sweeter (wow, that’s surprising!), heavier, and less pretty John Milbury-Steen, Front and Back Vowels in Linguistics, page 6

– which probably means less feminine and more masculine. One of the researchers had done a similar study (Klink 2000) for English speakers. In that study, he found that front vowel brand names connoted the smaller laptop, the milder soap, and the friendlier airline service; back vowel brand names, the more masculine deodorant and the stronger pain reliever – opinions that the Indian subjects did not support. However, the subjects in both studies agreed on the first list, from the beer to the dresses.

Studies like this suggest that it’s not just us English speakers who use front-back vowel symbolism, but speakers of other languages as well. These studies also generalize the range of attributes that you can have back-front vowel symbolism about. Front and back vowels are apparently like positive and negative ions: they love to make molecules of contrast. The front-back contrast can apply to lots of different dualities. All you need is a scale with two contrasting points that correspond to a general pattern of contrast. The reader or listener tends to assign predictable valences to front and back vowels, based on various well selected dualities that a researcher (or a poet) proposes.

I do not mean to carry this to the extreme of saying that any pair of opposites will do. For example, one pair on a typical antonym list would be buy-sell. Now, would buying be more front vowel and selling more back vowel, or vice versa? It strikes me as a silly question. However, for a list of common antonyms, it is surprising how easily one of the pair fits into Aei-our’s front-vowel realm and the other into Aei-our’s back vowel realm. My sense of fit is based on connotations I intuit about each member of the pair, not on its phonemes. The question marks mean “I am not sure.” My responses to this self- imposed questionnaire are quick, felt-in-the-gut reactions:

Antonym Pair Front Vowel Realm Back Vowel Realm above-below above below all-none all none always-never always never beautiful-ugly beautiful ugly before-after before after best-worse best worse big-little little big black-white white black boy-girl ? ? buy-sell ? ? city-country country city come-go come go deep-wide ? ? dirty-clean clean dirty early-late early late empty-full full empty fast-slow fast slow father-mother mother father fat-thin thin fat first-last first last for-against ? ? freeze-thaw thaw freeze front-back front back John Milbury-Steen, Front and Back Vowels in Linguistics, page 7 give-take ? ? happy-sad happy sad hard-easy easy hard hard-soft soft hard hello-good-bye hello good-bye high-low high low hot-cold hot cold in-out ? ? large-small small large laugh-cry laugh cry lead-follow ? ? least-most (in a good quality) most least lease-most (in size) least most left-right left right long-short ? ? loud-quiet quiet loud man-woman woman man morning-night morning night near-far near far night-day day night off-on on off old-new new old old-young young old open-closed open closed over-under over under push-pull ? ? question-answer answer question rich-poor rich poor same-different ? ? smile-frown smile frown stop-go go stop summer-winter summer winter tall-short short tall throw-catch ? ? top-bottom top bottom true-false true false up-down up down warm-cool warm cool weak-strong strong weak wet-dry wet dry win-lose win lose work-play play work wrong-right right wrong yes-no yes no John Milbury-Steen, Front and Back Vowels in Linguistics, page 8

The literature on the connotation of back-vowel nonsense words suggests that they supports anything vaguely dark, interpreted as negative: such as ugly, worse, empty, dirty, hard, cry, night, frown, false, weak, wrong, and no. This notion of negativity could easily apply to dry and work, though a dry basement or interesting work would be positive. It also supports anything sizable, such as big and large. Also, anything on the negative part of the vertical scale, as in below, low, under, bottom and down. Also anything having to do with entropy, such as slowing down or losing heat or warmth: as in slow, freeze, cold, winter, and cool. Plus, anything to do with the passing of time or its cessation, as in: after, old, stop and never.

Another study looked at perception of not individual nonsense words but an entire speech consisting of nothing but nonsense words (Steven and Isaacson 1969). The researchers say that they took King Edward VII’s abdication speech, systematically changed the consonants, and then created a front vowel version and a back vowel version to see if the audience would perceive any differences in tone. By the way, they give a telling footnote to explain why they are focusing on differences between front and back vowels: “Our justification for using front versus back vowels is simply that of all the results on phonetic symbolism the difference in meaning between front and back vowels is the most adequately demonstrated.” They do not quote the two nonsense versions of the speech, but they do give a substitution chart for the consonants and vowels. Using this chart, I have taken the first sentence of the speech and distorted it according to their rules. The original first sentence is part of the historical record:

At long last I am able to say a few words of my own. I have never wanted to withhold anything, but until now it has not been constitutionally possible for me to speak.

This is the passage with consonant substitutions but the same vowels:

At ron rats I an avle to tay a pew herzd ub nigh oam. I wab nevvle hamsèd soo hishworz amyshin, vus umsir mau is wad nahs vin contsisuthonary fottiver pol nee sue treeg.

Here is the front vowel version that I derive from their substitution table:

At ran rats I an avle to tay a pee herzd ub nigh em. I waab nevvle hamsèd sih hishworz amyshin, vaes umsir mau is waed naehs vin ken-tsi-sithonary fettiver pel nee see treeg.

And here is the back vowel version:

At ron rots ow on ovle to toe a pew herzd ub nu oam. Ow wab nawvvle homsood soo hooshworz omyshun, vus umsir mau us wod nos voon con-tsi-suthonary fottiver pol nu sue troog.

I am not sure whether my substitutions are entirely correct, but this will give you the flavor of the kind of discourse the subjects were subjected to. How did they react? They perceived the speaker of the back-vowel speech as more experienced, more expert, better trained, more competent, more aggressive, bolder, more energetic and more extroverted. The investigators did the same experiment using a simpler speech, and got the same results, except, in addition, the speaker of the back-vowel speech was perceived as significantly less kind. The back vowel speech was also judged to be on a sacred subject. The back vowels give the speech more dynamism and authority. Evidently, John Milbury-Steen, Front and Back Vowels in Linguistics, page 9 connotations of largeness for objects translate into weightiness for speech. In this sense, the back vowels are advantageous rather than negative. They do not make the speech “dark,” but they do seem to give it more authority. Perhaps Aei-our’s fall to the back vowel at every line lends a little sound of authority to the cadence, compared to ending on the relatively more trivial, diminutive front vowel.

Consonant Phonesthemes

I now have to face a reasonable objection you might be having, namely, that, sure, we might instinctively follow predictable back and front vowel connotations when coining new words, but, really, how often are we in that position? How many poets, for example, are writing volumes in Jabberwockese? The question, then, is whether real actual English words empirically, demonstrably, follow back-front vowel connotations. The patterns we have seen in words we generate might not be present in words we hear and read. After all, the words we actually use in English are, for the most part, not, arguably, even English in origin at all, but mostly Germanic, Greek and Latin (through French), and ultimately Indo-European. At some remote time in the past, Indo-European speakers were coining the words that we now use, and their sense of vowel connotation could have been completely different. Also, their actual vowels were probably different, since vowels, compared to consonants, are unstable over time, and some of these shifts, no doubt, crossed the front-vowel back-vowel boundary.

If I were writing about consonants rather than vowels, my job would be much easier. The literature about sound symbolism for consonants is more substantial than for vowels. I will summarize it here as an example of how convincing the evidence can be, the standard for vowels that we would like to reach. I have to demonstrate that certain consonants or consonant combinations have predictable connotations, indeed, are so predictable that these associations cross over into denotation. In other words, these consonants or consonant combinations suggest tone or meaning so strongly that they are practically morphemes.

An example would be initial br-, suggesting a splitting apart, as in break, breach, and brook (Magus, 1999). I feel that mouth in making the br sound imitates the splitting. Consonants are good imitators. The various stops, and liquids are easily drafted to imitate various actions and events. Words that do this are not as frankly onomatopoeic as animal sounds like meow or moo, but, in my opinion, they come close. A family of words like this is known as a cluster, and the common sound is a phonoestheme. Some researchers (especially Margaret Magus, who worships at the cluster crêche like one of the magi) have even compiled cluster dictionaries I am tempted to call quasi-thesauri.

If words in a cluster try to imitate a sound or action, they are iconic. Iconism refers more generally to any way in which language attempts to imitate reality. By the way, the word iconic used to confuse me, since a friend of mine taught an ESL course called “Icons of American Culture,” featuring such icons as jazz and the hamburger. I used to think that “iconic” meant “classic” or “representative.” It can also mean “pertaining to a representation” as an icon represents a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church, or as the little picture of the quick brown fox embracing the world represents the Firefox browser on a computer.

Some researchers assume that all clusters are iconic. However, the poster child for clustering is gl, as in glare, gleam, glimmer glint, glisten, glister, and glow (Magus, 1999). The initial two consonants do seem to emit denotation in the form of a low intensity, sometimes intermittent light. However, I do not feel John Milbury-Steen, Front and Back Vowels in Linguistics, page 10 that making the gl sound in my mouth in any way imitates how a light bulb or the setting sun must feel. I doubt that all clusters are iconic.

Here are some other clusters, all from Magus (1999), except where noted: gl-: might also relate to reflecting surfaces, as in glace, glacier, glare glass, glaze and gloss. gl-: as well as relating to light, may relate to looking, as in glance, glare, glazed, glimpse, glint, and glower gr-: grabbing, as in grab, grapple, grasp, grip, grommet, grope. I do not think this is iconic. -k: terminal k: forceful or aggressive action, as in attack, break, or fuck (Henchey 2010). This is surely iconic, since /k/ is as assertive sound. Remember, that when we try to estimate oral forcefulness, we are in the mouth, which has a very limited range, not in the world of movies, which have spectacular special effects for car chases and cosmic explosions. Once you adjust your scale to the range of effects that the human mouth can produce, you will see that /k/ is definitely one of the strongest. m: comforting, pleasurable, agreeable, as in mom, yum, mmm (assent), om (in meditation) (Henchey 2010). Iconic, since it probably goes back to nursing. str-: kinds of “straining,” as in stretch, stress, struggle. Iconic, since the three-consonant combination (also called a cluster) is somewhat hard to pronounce. It is not a stretch or struggle for native speakers, but the pronunciation is relatively difficult. wr-: writhe, wriggle, wrist, write, in which the wr- refers to twisting (Perniss, Thompson and Vigilocco, 8). I think this is not iconic. I do not have to twist my mouth when I make an r sound. I happen to know that the first three words come from the Indo-European WER-3, a root having to do with turning. (Writing as a form of writhing and wriggling, however, would be a great metaphor to explore.) Evidently, the fact that a consonant combination is a submerged root does not disqualify its word family from belonging to a cluster.

According to Magus, to group words into clusters, you create lists of words with common sounds, initial, medial or terminal, and then group them into classes by meaning. This should be a purely inductive (data-driven) process. For example, for the phoneme /t/, she discovers a lot of words having to do with traveling (tour, train, trip), vehicles (tank, taxi, toboggan, tractor, traffic, trailer, train, tram, trolley, truck), and travelling by foot (toddle, tramp, tread, trek, tromp, troop, trot, trudge). These instances are so fascinating that I am prepared to be convinced. Maybe she is really on to something! Yet, I wonder among the tens of thousands of English words beginning with t, whether this is a random result. I feel that she is straining when she includes even tariff, ticket, token and toll, plus traveling in order to sell something as in trade. She even includes tender, which I would consider further removed from travelling: money offered for purchase of goods that travel has moved. She includes words that she says are about following, another motion like traveling, but this list, it seems to me, is also about carrying and pulling, such as: tag, tail, tandem, tote, tow, trace, track, trail, troll, and tug. She even includes trend, which I guess is a tendency that events follow.

I think you can appreciate the problem: that once a “phonesthemetician” commits to a certain meaning for a certain sound, a lot of semantically related words can be drafted into the club. Probably the root cause of the problem is starting with an interpretation of how the sound works in the mouth. According to Magus, /t/ is pronounced in the middle of the mouth and, although a stop, does not impede the flow of breath as much as a /d/ or /g/, so it betokens a relatively unobstructed “towardness” (my word) or a “directedness” in the middle of reaching a goal. In short, is about all about “to” – hence the motif of travel and movement towards the goal. The implicit trope (that could be another travelling word, as it John Milbury-Steen, Front and Back Vowels in Linguistics, page 11 does confer direction) is that the breath has a goal (getting out) and that /t/ is involved in this motion, but does not impede it that much, so, naturally, words that begin with /t/ refer to instruments of motion (trucks and tractors), or enablers of motion if you pay (tickets and tolls), or kinds of motions (tromps and trudges), or paths along which motion takes place (tracks and trails). The interpretation of how the phoneme acts in the mouth imposes an expectation of what the phoneme must denote, which mixes a deductive (expectation-driven) with an inductive (data-driven) process.

We now turn to the issue of vowel clustering.

Front Vowel Phonesthemes

Actually, we have already seen evidence of the contribution vowels make to consonant phonesthemes. In the gl- cluster, for example, we see the vowel pattern: that very low intensity or intermittent light uses the short i (glimmer, glint, glisten, glister) while bright or constant light uses a long vowel, usually front, as in glare, gleam, and glow.

In the vowel phonesthemes, the vowel often travels with a consonant to give us a series of rhymes with a common connotation. A convenient dictionary of phonesthemes is available at: http://www.oocities.org/soho/studios/9783/phono1.html compiled by Benjamin Shisler, from which the following data comes, except where noted. I will consider selected front vowels first. The bulleted categories are not mutually exclusive, and examples may be redundant. I have omitted words I do not know. I have also omitted groups of rhymes Shisler unhelpfully labels as “unclassified.”

The short i as in wit and long e as in wheat connote:

 A high or thin tone: hiss, swish, whimper, whinney, click, clip, clink, tick, ting, jingle, plink, bing, tink  Diminution: itsy-bitsy, kid, bit, grit, pittance, mini, Lilliput.  Trembling or shaking: quiver, shiver  Noise: whizz, fizz, sizz, blizzard  Continuous, quietly sputtering noises as of rain or fat in a pan: drizzle, sizzle, fizzle  Sound with extended decay: ring, sing, ding, ping,  Movement: swing, sling, fling, wing  Quick movement: clip, whip, skip, nip, snip, flip, zip  Jerky movement: twitch, pitch  Quick sound or action: prick, kick, tick, flick, nick, click, crick (the verb that cricket comes from)  Small, continuous movement: wiggle, wriggle, squiggle, sniggle (snicker)  Noise of breath or liquor (sic): sniff, whiff, tiff, sip, tipple  High pitched sound: peep, beep, cheep, creak, squeak, tweet, screech  Diminution, brevity: teeny-weeny. And diminutives, such as the ie of Katie, Mikie.

Jesperson notes that the short i “is particularly appropriate to express what is small, weak, insignificant, or, on the other hand, refined and dainty” (402). He cites other words in this family with similar John Milbury-Steen, Front and Back Vowels in Linguistics, page 12 connotations: chit, midge, bit, whit, tip, pin, kid, pygmy, imp, and slit. He notes that this vowel can mean “in a short time,” as in in a jiffy, quick, swift.

Jesperson also notes that the short i may indicate what is near, for example, this as opposed to that. This is known as distance symbolism. There is a lot of evidence that high front vowels correlate with proximity to the speaker. (Nuckulls 233)

Short a, as in bad connotes:

 Clear and distinct sharp medium sounds: bang, twang, rap, tap, slap, pat, crack, clatter, patter, cackle, crash, clash  Action that strikes then glides off: clap, tap, flap, rap, snap, slap, yap, flap, clap, rap  Consternation, frustration: blast! damn! crap! rats! bad, sad  Exultation: glad, rad, ba-a-ad  Clatter, chatter and batter: clatter, chatter, batter (beat), patter, smatter, splatter, blatter (talk noisily and fast, blather), natter, flatter, scatter, shatter  Sound with abrupt decay: crack, clack, smack, thwack, quack, whack  Impact, violence: dash, lash, crash, gnash, smash, slash, plash, gash, bash, hash, trash  Lack of restraint (sic): jazz, razzmatazz, pizzazz. But I see this more as improvisation and flamboyance.  Unsteady to and fro movement: amble, scramble, ramble, shamble  Falling behind: lag, drag, flag, sag

These results mostly confirm and partly contradict my own, and I believe, the universal stereotyping that comes out in research on front vowel connotations in nonsense words. You will recall that nonsense word studies associated front vowels with littleness and quickness, just as Shisler attests. The energy of the front vowels, especially the short a group, except for the lag-drag group, agrees with my bias that they are perky little things. Synesthesia could easily represent them as pointed (jagged, zig-zaggy) rather than rounded. Although in Shisler’s index, I do not find any consistent pattern suggesting brightness or the upbeat, there are occasional positive categories. In Aei-our, beginning the line with front vowels uses connotations of lightness, littleness, and quickness to set up the line for the fall to the relatively ponderous, torpid back vowels.

Back Vowel Phonesthemes

Here are some of Shisler’s findings for rhymes involving back vowels. I have radically reorganized his findings. His primary sorting key was by the vowel itself. I am lumping all back vowels together. His secondary key was to sort by rhyme. I have merged his atomic categories to place entries with similar meanings together:

 A low-pitched tone: knock, bawl, caw, bong, tock, clop, gong., groan, moan, roar, snore, snort, knoll, toll, buzz, drum, rumble, hum, thrum, munch, crunch, clunk, plunk, thunk, boom, clop, hoot, toot, boom, whoop, to whit to whoo (the call of an owl), howl, yowl, grunt, gulp, squawk, cough, clomp, gargle, snarl, honk  Stuntedness, dullness: dull, stunted, thud, mumble, rut, dud, dross  Awe: ooh! dude! cool! super-duper! groovy!  Largeness: all, always, awesome John Milbury-Steen, Front and Back Vowels in Linguistics, page 13

 Heaviness: stuffedness: podge, stodge  Muddiness: frog, hog, bog, clog, slog, fog, smog  Drawn out or clumsy movement: sprawl, crawl, drawl  Rounded things: bump, clump, hump, slump, stump, rump, scrunch, lump  Pulling movement: pull, tug, lug  Heaviness, unpleasantness: grudge, murmur, grumble, drudge, trudge, smudge, sludge  Untidiness, disorderliness: scuffle, jumble, fumble, bungle, crumple, muddle, blur  Agitated activity: hurry, scurry, flurry, worry  Triviality: boob, Rube, bumpkin

Notice the category of rounded things: this is the bouba side of the bouba-kiki effect. Notice also the general negativity of this group: the dullness and unpleasantness, the figuratively dark. There is also a lowness to these words even in the referents -- those bogs and muddy places, those scrunchings down and those low-pitched grunts and rumbles.

Of all the back vowels the phoneme uh has the worst connotations. Nims in Western Wind (p. 185) says that this is the vowel we use for horror or disgust. He calls it the “shudder vowel.” We look at something terrible and exclaim, “Ugh!” He lists some examples of words in this disreputable group: upchuck, mud, blunder, bungle, clumsy, humdrum, slum, slush, muck, muddle, slut, dump, crummy, sludge, chump, bunk, punk, runt, pus, repugnant. Of course, any selection is purely subjective and deductive, so it doesn’t technically prove that the vowel is negative. If you feel it is negative, you will select words that are negative to show that it is negative. One can always object with counterexamples that denote positive things like love. However I, personally share Nim’s feelings about this generally disgusting and repulsive vowel. My own includes dumb, numb, crummy, but, dung, null, rut, yuck, bum, bug, cuss, gunk, muck, suck, bummer, and fungus.

It seems that everyone has an “ugh list.” Otto Jespersen’s includes many on Nims’ list, also: bung, numskull, dunderhead, and gull (Jesperson, 26). He notes that Mrs. Grundy is an appropriate name for someone representing “narrow-minded, conventional morality” (401). And Jespersen can entertain us with the etymology of bunk, which comes from bunkum, meaning “nonsense” or “hogwash.” It seems that the word comes from Buncombe County, North Carolina, the congressman for which was once giving a speech so boring that many members of congress had left. He told those who remained that any who wished to leave could, since he “was only talking for Buncombe.” “Talking for Buncombe” became “talking bunkum.” The question that makes this anecdote revealing is to ask whether the word would have stuck for denoting empty rhetoric if the man had been talking for Avery, Clay or Franklin (other counties in North Carolina). No. The double ugh of “Buncombe” was just perfect.

I do not need to point out the obvious here: that Aei-our follows the generally accepted interpretation of back vowel phonesthemes to connote something negative – a decline, a deterioration, a falling off. The line is always sliding into muck.

Front-Back Contrast in General

So far, I have focused on back and front vowels as separate group or as separate sounds. This section brings front and back vowels together into the contrast as it is generally interpreted. First, some quotations. John Milbury-Steen, Front and Back Vowels in Linguistics, page 14

“[The front vowels] are especially fitted to express uncontrollable joy and delight, gayety, triviality, rapid movement, brightness, delicacy and littleness; [the back vowels] are peculiarly adapted to express horror, solemnity, awe, deep grief, slowness of motion, darkness, and extreme or oppressive greatness of size. The scale runs, then, from the little to the large, from the bright to the dark, from ecstatic delight to horror, and from the trivial to the solemn and awful” (Perry).

“If a word containing some sound or noise contains a high pitched vowel like i, it strikes us as implying a high pitch in the sound or noise spoken of; a word with a low pitch like u implies low pitch in affected words not only descriptive of sound like English screech, boom... but also their more remote connotative effects. A high tone implies not only shrillness, but also fineness, sharpness, keenness; a low tone not only rumbling noise, but also bluntness, dullness, clumsiness....” (quoted from Maurice Bloomfield in Magus 1999).

Differences in regard to front and back vowels have been found between men’s and women’s names. One study found that female names showed a statistically significant higher frequency of the /i/ sound (ee). This group of names includes not only names that have been feminized with the addition of –ina or –ine such as Wilhemina or Justine, but also classic feminine names like Lisa, Beatrice, Celia, Tina, Mimi and Fifi (Cutler, McQueen and Robinson 1990). Another study, trying to duplicate this result, looked at the most popular names given to babies in 1996 (Miall 2001). The researcher selected the top 50 male names and the top 50 female names. A rank order was assigned to each vowel, from a 9 for the frontest vowel, that of bead, to -10 to the backest vowel, that of tour. Females names had an average vowel ranking of around 8; male names of around 2. By the way, I am keenly aware of the function of front and back vowels in my own name. “John,” I think, has the proper back vowel of gravitas in it, never mind toilets and the customers of prostitutes. However, in my childhood, I was diminished by the nickname Jack, and further reduced by the diminutive: “Jackie.” Not until I had a circle of my own friends could I insist on being called “John.” Miall assigns to the vowel of “John” a score of -3, which I regard as respectably back. If you average the two vowels in “Jackie,” they come out as 6.

I should also discuss the possible significance of shifting from front to back vowels in the way certain irregular English verbs make their past tense or past participle. This derives from ablaut patterns in German strong verbs. For example, one ablaut pattern in German is Class 3 (i-a-u/o) as in finden, fand, gefunden, reflected in English verbs like begin, began, begun. Since I am an ESL teacher, I spend a lot of time in the beginning and intermediate levels teaching these irregular verbs. As an experiment I looked at 61 irregular verbs and tabulated patterns of front and back vowels. In the abbreviations, f=front and b=back for the three forms (base form, simple past, and past participle):

 ffb (Ablaut Class 3): begin, began, begun; drink, drank, drunk; ring, rang, rung; sing, sang, sung; sink, sank, sunk; spring, sprang, sprung; swim, swam, swum (7 verbs). Since the “a” is actually a little backer that the “i”, you could argue that the pattern is actually “front, backer front, back.”  fbb: verbs that shift from a front vowel in the base form to back vowels in both the simple past and past participle: bear, bore, borne; break, broke, broken; bring, brought, brought; buy, bought, bought; catch, caught, caught; fight, fought, fought; fly, flew, flown; forget, forgot, forgotten; freeze, froze, frozen; get, got, gotten; hang, hung, hung; seek, sought, sought; speak, spoke, spoken; steal, stole, stolen; sting, stung, stung; strike; struck, struck; swear, swore, sworn; swing, swung, swung; tear, tore, torn; wake, woke, woken; wear, wore, worn (21 verbs) John Milbury-Steen, Front and Back Vowels in Linguistics, page 15

 fbf: verbs that shift back in the past tense only: arise, arose, arisen; dive, dove, dived; drive, drove, driven; ride, rode, ridden; rise, rose, risen; see, saw, seen; shake, shook, shaken; take, took, taken; write, wrote, written (9 verbs)  other patterns: these are usually bbb (as in choose, chose, chosen) or fff (as in give, gave, given). There are 24 verbs in this class. (I am using a typical irregular verb table.)

Conclusion: about 60% of irregular verbs become “backer” in the simple past, the past participle, or both. I am not sure whether this is statistically significant enough to support a claimed association of back vowels with pastness. Frankly, I wish the numbers were stronger. It would be real neat to claim that the back of the mouth, where food is swallowed, corresponds to pleasurable experiences running down the drain. Enjoyment being over. Being past. I do still believe that the back of the mouth can support this connotation, but it may not be backed up by back vowel shifting in irregular English verbs.

As an experiment, for a few weeks, I kept a log about any phrases I heard exploiting front and back vowels. Some entries:

 On my way to work, I saw a truck labeled “Verizon,” the cable company. It rhymes with “horizon” and it contains the syllable “rise.” The front vowel is a good basis for the positive connotations of wide expanses opened by the world wide web and one’s hopes or fortunes rising. I don’t think it would do to call the company “Veroozin” or “Verawzin.”  In a conversation with my daughter, I heard there is rental car company called Skip Car. The short i of skip implies that these are fast little cars.  My wife told me that a friend in Northern Ireland, a pigeon enthusiast, had named one of his pigeons after her, but my wife is a pacifist and it seems her namesake (the pigeon) always gets into fights. My wife called the pigeon “a scrappy bugger.” The two words neatly express her mixed feelings towards the pigeon captured in different vowel registers. Being scrappy is positive: he is assertive: he will take no crap from any fellow pigeon. On the other hand, my wife calls him a bugger, which gives him a negative evaluation. (A bugger is someone who annoys you; but it also means someone who sodomizes people.) It seems she disapproves of him. Combining front and back vowels in a phrase is known as “vowel shock” as Anderson explains in The Grammar of Iconism. His example is from Hart Crane’s “Black Tambourines:” “a carcass quick with flies” (Anderson 226). The “ar” of “carcass” is back and the “i” of “quick” is front.  I noted that my tea was almost too hot to drink, but I did drink it, and said, “I wonder it doesn’t burn my goozle.” “Burn my throat” would convey a more serious possibility of being burned, but “burn my goozle” shifts everything into a comic register. Any negative valence of the back vowel is relieved by the “le” ending, which is often a diminisher. A “drizzle” is just a little rain; to ”dabble” in something is to take less than a serious interest is something, a “giggle” is less than a hearty laugh, to “jiggle” is to make repeated little motions, and so on.  A friend of mine at a restaurant remarked that she loved bread, rolls and all wheat products, and wanted to have nothing to do with the “gluten-free kerfluffle.” The deliberate pseudo- German awkwardness of the last word captures her feeling. The u also helps to denigrate the debate and the ‘le’ ending helps to trivialize it.  My niece remarked that her town in Maine is the place where highly regarded “Bates bedspreads” are made. I felt that the front vowels contributed to the favorable opinion. John Milbury-Steen, Front and Back Vowels in Linguistics, page 16

 I head that my local public radio station had organized a fundraiser in which people could taste food from local restaurants and vote for the most delicious. It was called “The Best of the Chefs.” The front vowel assonance made it sound inviting.

Front-Back Contrast in Conjuncts Expressions of the form “rough and ready” or “wind and weather” or “Jack and Jill” may be called binomials, coordinates or conjuncts (sometimes frozen conjuncts). I will call them conjuncts. The two terms, A and B, can be nouns, adjectives, verbs, or adverbs. They are joined by the word “and” or “or,” sometimes “to:” “head to foot.” The order of the two words is fixed. Switching the order sounds wrong. For example, we would never say “ready and rough” or “weather and wind” or “Jill and Jack.” It turns out that there is an impressive rule base, mostly subconscious, for deciding which of the two terms comes first. One consideration in this decision involves front and back vowels: namely, all things being equal, the word with the back vowel comes second, as in “deaf and dumb.” (We would never say “dumb and deaf.”)

This turns out to be very supportive for vocalic verse, since in each line, words with front vowels come first, and words with back vowels come second. Therefore, I might say, Q.E.D., vowel order in conjuncts affirms the vowel order of vocalic verse. In other words, the transition from front to back vowels is natural in English.

What makes the above conclusion sloppy is that front-back vowel ordering is one of several phonological rules for word order in conjuncts, and the phonological rule set is itself secondary to a semantic one. It turns out that not many conjuncts are unambiguously ordered by front and back vowels. You may have noticed for example, that “rough and ready” puts the word with the back vowel first. To get an unambiguous group of conjuncts you first have to eliminate examples that are “determined” by other semantic and phonological rules.

What are these rules? I have synthesized this material from several sources that are roughly in agreement (Allan 1987, Grossman 1975, Malkiel 1959 and Abraham 1950). Semantic ordering is based on (in my opinion) fossilized hierarchies and stereotypical preferences. Here are some, given in no particular order:

1. chronological (first first): (from) beginning to end; breaking and entering (the thief first breaks the window, then he enters); cash and carry; (from) first to last; forgive and forget; (to) have and to hold; hit and run; kiss and tell; open and shut; past, present and future; rack and ruin; spit and polish; (from) start to finish; tried and true; wait and see 2. now first: now and then, now or never, sooner or later 3. ladies first, mom first: bride and groom, ladies and gentlemen, mom and dad 4. male first: Adam and Eve, boys and girls, brother and sister, husband and wife, Jack and Jill, king and queen, men and women 5. older first (mostly from Grossman): cat and kitten; cow and calf; father and son; men, women, and children; mother and daughter John Milbury-Steen, Front and Back Vowels in Linguistics, page 17

6. higher status first: animal, vegetable, mineral; doctor and patient; employer and employee; God and man; judge and jury; man and beast; man or mouse; people and things; person, place or thing; sun and moon. A predator has higher status than its prey: cat and mouse, hunter and hunted 7. positive first: all or nothing, (for) better or worse, birth and death, dead or alive, fish or cut bait, friend and foe, like or dislike, love and hate, plus or minus, pro and con, the quick and the dead, sweet and sour, (through) thick and thin, true or false, wear and tear, win or lose, yes and no 8. solid first (from Grossman): Army and Navy, field and stream, land and sea 9. front first: bow and stern, fore and aft, front and back, front and rear 10. bigger first: more or less, tall or short 11. nearer first (mostly from Grossman): come and go, hither and thither, hither and yon, here and there, in and out, inhale and exhale, near and far, this and that 12. higher first: (from) head to foot, heaven and hell, high road and low road, north and south, (from) tip to toe, up and down 13. for food and drink (this is amazing) the order is fish, meat drink, fruit, vegetables, baked goods, dairy products (from Grossman): corned beef and cabbage, ham and eggs, meat and potatoes, pork and beans, fruits and vegetables, fish and chips, tea and scones, coffee and donuts, etc. 14. main thing then adjunct (ouch! I am an adjunct): coffee and cream, cup and saucer, food and drink, horse and hounds, shoes and stockings, tables and chairs 15. agent and instrument: agent and patient, hammer and nail, needle and thread, subject and object

There are some interesting categories proposed by Malkiel that seem to me to have a very weak semantic basis for the ordering.

1. A and B are synonyms and B adds emphasis : beck and call, checks and balances, dollars and cents, each and every, fair and square, first and foremost, goods and services, if and when, heart and soul, (by) hook or by crook, house and home, law and order, leaps and bounds, life and limb, (by) might and main, nip and tuck, nickel and dime, null and void, rock and roll, tongue and groove, tooth and nail, ways and means 2. A and B are mutually complementary: cheeky by jowl, food and drink, give and take, ham and eggs, hammer and sickle, hammer and tongs, hat and coat, heads and tails, knife and fork, meat and potatoes

However, I am more interested in the phonological rules, proposed by Grossman:

1. The word with more syllables comes second: bow and arrow; hot and heavy; milk and honey; out and about; part and parcel, pen and pencil; prim and proper; rhyme or reason; rough and ready; rough and tumble; salt and pepper; wind and weather. This has great implications for poetry. It suggests that feminine endings sound natural and resolved. 2. The word with the longer main vowel (“the vocalic nucleus”) comes second: sun and surf, bill and coo, fits and starts, safe and sound, cat and mouse, trick or treat, stress and strain. Notice in all of these pairs (this is a coincidence) it takes two vowels to represent the longer sound in John Milbury-Steen, Front and Back Vowels in Linguistics, page 18

the second word of each pair. Generally, I believe, a vowel is long when the vowel “says its name” (like the “a” in “name”) or when the following consonant is voiced, as in “man.” In the last pair (stress and strain), the “ai” of “strain” is a diphthong, so it is longer than the “e” of “stress.” 3. The word with more initial consonants comes second: fair and square, fight or flight, high and dry, by hook or by crook, make or break, sea and ski. Word A begins with one consonant sound and word B begins with two. Word B, in the initial part, is harder to pronounce. Some non- coordinate freezes also show this: helter-skelter, harum scarum, nitty-gritty 4. This rule is similar to the preceding one. Both words begin with one consonant but the word with the more obstruent initial consonant comes second. Obstruence refers to how much the sound interferes with the outflow of breath. Stops (like p, t, k, b, d, g) are called stops because they temporarily stop the outflow of breath. Less abstruent are the fricatives (like f, s, sh, v, z, zh). Less abstruent still are affricatives (ch, j). Then sounds become more sonorant, such as the nasals (m and n), the liquids (l and r) and the vowels. To create minimal pairs, you need rhyming words. Grossman’s examples: rough and tough, wear and tear, wheel and deal. His non- coordinate examples: razzle-dazzle, razzmatazz, roly-poly, walkie-talkie, wingding. 5. The word with the back vowel comes second: back and forth, bed and board, cats and dogs, deaf and dumb, (neither) fish nor fowl, kit and caboodle, knife and fork, (by) leaps and bounds, live and learn, (from) pillar to post, (from) stem to stern, sticks and stones, wild and wooly. I will have more to say about this category. 6. The word with fewer final consonants comes second: sink or swim, betwixt and between, wax and wane. To create minimal pairs, the beginning and middle of the word have to be the same. . 7. The word with the less obstruent final consonant(s) comes second. Grossman’s examples: hit or miss, kith and kin, might and main, push and pull, rant and rave, rise and shine, rock and roll, stress and strain.

Simply put, rules 1-4 say that the beginning and middle of the second word is harder (takes more effort) to pronounce. Rules 6-7 say, however, that the consonant ending of the second word is easier to pronounce. (As for rule 5, I am not sure whether back vowels are harder or easier to pronounce that front ones.) If you look at all the rules together, it sounds quite musical: you create a little tension or complication in the beginning and middle of the second word, and then slide to an easy ending: you resolve all difficulty on a tonic chord. Incidentally, I now understand why in my intensive English program, the three subjects of my course are called “Reading, Writing, and Grammar” in that order. If you look only at the stressed syllables, “Read,” “Write,” and “Gram,” “Gram” has more initial consonants than the other two (rule 3) and ends in a liquid m rather than a stop d or t. The m is less obstruent (rule 7).

Rule 5, of course, is the one most relevant to Aei-our. To create a set of convincing conjuncts, however, is not easy. Often you think you have a good example, then you discover a semantic or alternative phonological explanation for the ordering of words in the conjunct. Here are some typical examples that can be rightly challenged: John Milbury-Steen, Front and Back Vowels in Linguistics, page 19

 divide and conquer: also follows semantic rule 1, chronology. You divide first and then you conquer.  (no) ifs, ands, or buts: this also follows semantic rule 7, positive first.  man and boy: this also follows semantic rule 5, older first.  rich and poor: also follows semantic rule 7, positive first  (from) stem to stern: this also follows semantic rule 9, front first, since the “stem” here is the front of the ship  (by) leaps and bounds: this also follows phonological rule 4, since the ‘b’ of “bounds” is more obstruent than the ‘l’ of “leaps.”  sticks and stones: also follows phonological rule 7, since the ‘n’ of “stones” is less obstruent than the ‘k’ of “sticks.”

In sum, if A and B in the conjunct do not fit into any of the usual semantic ordering classes, you look for a phonological basis and if the difference is in vowel backness, you have a valid front-back pair (henceforth, an “FB pair”). In the examples given rule 5, I find no objection to the following: fish nor fowl, kit and caboodle, knife and fork, wild and wooly. The two words have to be in no hierarchical relationship to each other. They have to lead you into unanswerable philosophic reflections like these: Which has higher status, fish or fowl? Is a kit more or less important than a kaboodle? Is use of a knife instrumental to use of a fork or are they both instruments of roughly equal utility? Is it more positive or masculine or important to be wild than to be wooly? As for “(from) pillar to post,” this seems like a good example of phonological rule 5 especially because it goes against phonological rule 1 (more syllables second) and 7 (less obstruent terminal consonant second). However, it might possibly follow semantic rule 1 (nearer first) because a pillar would belong to your house and a post would belong to a fence, or semantic rule 6, since a pillar might be a higher status vertical support than a post. Therefore if you go “from pillar to post” (from place to place) there might be an implication that you are coming down in the world. You see the difficulties in applying the various ordering rules to any given conjunct!

Research shows that the more convincing and more frequent FB pairs are not of the conjunct type but of the slant rhyme type, such as the ones that initially attracted my attention like tick-tock and ding- dong. These expressions have two syllables of the form CV1C-CV2C, where the consonants are the same but the vowels differ: V2 is backer that V1. I have heard this form of slant rhyme referred to as “rim rhyme.” Here the sound dominates sense, so the meaning of the individual components is less important than the phonology. This lets us jump over the semantic rules of conjunct ordering. Often only one of the words has meaning, such as cross in criss-cross. What exactly is a criss? Sometimes both words are onomatopoeic as in tick-tock or ping pong. The repetition of consonants lets us evade most of the phonological rules, too.

Here are some examples from Grossman: bibbity bobbety (boo), crisscross, ding dong, flip flop, heehaw, hickory dickory dock, hippity hop, King Kong, ping pong, seesaw, singsong, tick-tock. On rare occasions, conjuncts coordinated by “and” show the same rim-rhyme pattern, but, of course, when both words have their own denotation, semantic rules come into play. For example, we might think the ordering in “brain and brawn” is a good example of an FB pair, but it also follows semantic rule 6, higher status first, if you value intelligence over muscle.

In the examples above, I have included only the FB pairs whose transition from the first to the second word crosses the front-back vowel boundary. Within the front vowel phonemes, there is a second boundary like a state line rather than a national border: the crossover from short ‘i’ to short ‘a,’ as in John Milbury-Steen, Front and Back Vowels in Linguistics, page 20 flimflam. Both vowels are front, but the ‘a’ is backer than the ‘i’ (lower down on the vowel scale). Other examples from Grossman: bric-a-brac, chitchat, dilly-dally, fiddle-faddle, knick-knack, mishmash, pitter- patter, riffraff, shilly-shally, tit for tat, wigwag, zigzag. (And there is a candy bar called a Kit Kat Bar.) These words sound like one of the German ablaut patterns, the one from which English gets present- past pairs like begin-began, drink-drank, ring-rang, sing-sing, sink-sank, and swim-swam. Jespersen has noted that coordinate words in German like Klingklang and Ticktack are “wie in den Ablautbildung” (quoted in Abraham, p. 283).

The conclusion I draw from FB pairs is that whenever phonology dominates semantics, the transition to the back vowel is natural in and habitual to English. I am trusting that formal poetry creates an environment that privileges phonology, not at the total expense of meaning -- not to the point of nonsense -- but to the point of welcoming and foregrounding sound patterns. I trust that formal verse is a highly permissive environment.

The intuition that the transition from front to back vowels is natural in English motivated me to make it a basis for my prosody. Admittedly, at the time I started out, I had extremely weak evidence. I noted the giant’s chant in “Jack and the Beanstalk:” “Fee, fi, fo, fum.” I noticed some pairs like ding-dong, tick- tock, seesaw and sing-song. The first two especially caught my attention, because they have to do with bells and clocks: the passage of time. The ticking and the tolling are objectively monotones, but we evidently feel a need to organize them into contrasting pairs, which, prosodically are either trochaic or spondaic feet, the first word of each foot having a front vowel; the second a back. I made the wild conclusion that the need to organize by vowel backness was as strong as the need to organize into feet. I figured I was on to something, but I had never heard of linguistic studies of conjuncts.

Nor had I heard of other linguistic studies finding that the back vowels sounded bigger, heavier, more rounded and darker than the front. Finally, I was glad to discover research reporting that front-back vowel contrast is flexible enough to correlate with many different positive-negative dualities. I emerged from the linguistic studies with a feeling that my naive intuitions about front-back vowel contrast had been confirmed.

John Milbury-Steen, Front and Back Vowels in Linguistics, page 21

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