REFLECTION AND NEGATION: A PHONOSEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF SHARED ICONIC ROOTS IN TURKIC, SLAVIC, AND ENGLISH DEIXIS AND REFLEXIVITY MARKERS

Abstract

This article applies the phonosemantic framework developed within Odam Tili 
theory, associated with Dr. Mahmudjon Kuchkarov, to a cluster of deictic, reflexive, 
and negational morphemes found in Turkic (Uzbek), Slavic (Russian), and English. 
We argue that a small inventory of articulatory-iconic primitives recurs across these 
languages with a consistent semantic profile: space, an object occupying space, and 
the reflection of that object, understood as an entity that occupies no space of its own. 
Central to the argument are negating consonants such as n, k, v and p acting on the 
open spatial vowel a, and a reflexive-image marker realised as ay, я, or I. We illustrate 
the framework through the Uzbek word yoziq and the Russian язык, the Uzbek darya 
and the Russian dative form даря, the Uzbek aynak and aynan, the historical hydronym 
Sayhun, the Russian меня against мен, and the object-marking particle на compared 
with the English indefinite article an. We do not claim genetic relatedness between 
Turkic, Slavic, and English in the sense used by historical linguistics; instead we 
propose that these forms are best understood as convergent phonosemantic iconicity, 
grounded in a shared embodied human experience of standing upright and seeing one's 
own reflection in still water. We situate the claim against Ferdinand de Saussure's 
arbitrariness principle and against the existing literature on sound symbolism, and we 
set out what would be needed to test it more rigorously.