linguistics1-1 Exercise 2: Bird, Sneeze and Arbitrariness ========================================================== Any three languages will do. One possible set: Meaning English French German Hungarian ----------- --------- -------- --------- ---------- bird bird oiseau Vogel madar to sneeze sneeze éternuer niesen tüsszent Analysis: "Bird" is a clear case of arbitrariness. Nothing in the sound of bird, oiseau, Vogel or madar resembles a bird, and the four words share almost nothing. (German Vogel and English fowl are historically related, but that is shared ancestry, not a natural link between sound and meaning.) "To sneeze" is closer to onomatopoeia in some languages, because the sound of the verb can echo the sound of a sneeze. Where a word looks like an imitation, the languages differ in how they imitate: each one fits the imitation into its own sound system. How this supports the claim: if the link were natural, bird would be similar everywhere. It is not. How it does not contradict it: the claim is that the link is MOSTLY arbitrary, not that it is always arbitrary. Imitative words are a small exception, and even they are shaped by each language's conventions, so no two languages imitate a sound in exactly the same way. (The word choices in your own table will differ; check that your reasoning distinguishes arbitrary words from imitative ones.)