The Harp, a Waterfall: Metaphor and Sound Symbolism as Word-formation Strategies in the Musical Instrument Lexicon in Guarani

Abstract

The semantic field of musical instruments, unlike ethnobotanical and ethnozoological nomenclature, still represents an underexplored area in ethnolinguistic studies. The present work is based on the analysis of three primary lexemes; mbaraka, angu’a and mimby, which originally in Mbya Guarani designated musical instruments of indigenous origin and, later, in Old Guarani and Modern Guarani, were either re-semantisized or included in nominal compounds in order to designate instruments introduced by the population of European origin. Each source, then, represents a different degree of contact with the creole culture, a fact that is reflected in the hyponymy and hypernymy relations between these primary lexemes and the more recent incorporations or developments. Furthermore, this linguistic analysis reveals word-formation strategies in this field result in morphologically complex names motivated by metaphorical or analogical relations with other elements of the world, as well as instances of sound symbolism, phenomena which are usually associated with biological nomenclature.