Upic sound symbolism

Phonetic value of *r
Investigation into sound symbolism in Proto-Upic has provided some insight into the phonetic nature of the consonant *r, specifically whether it was an alveolar or uvular trill. It is evident that *r appears in similar phonesthemes to the voiced coronal consonants *n, *l and *y, rather than consonants which were likely articulated at or near the uvula like *q', *q, *ʔ, *ħ and *h. The clearest evidence for this is in roots which feature a bilabial coda consonant, examples of which are shown below: Bilabial-final roots with initial *r tend to fall into similar semantic categories to those with initial *n, *l and *y, pertaining to fabrication and manipulation of cords or textiles, as well as physical restraint and enclosure. In contrast, those beginning with *q', *q, *h, *ʔ and *ħ tend to have meanings associated with the sky, weather and wind.

This relationship has been presented as proof that *r had coronal articulation rather than uvular, either at the time of Proto-Upic or at an even earlier stage. It has also been suggested that both the alveolar and uvular pronunciations coexisted in free variation, with the alveolar quality prevailing in Proto-Öbic and the uvular quality remaining elsewhere. In actual fact, the use of *r as a sound symbol directly gives us information only about the cognitive perception of the sound, and does not necessarily imply anything about its actual phonetic value.

A further counterpoint to the alveolar *r theory is that even if it were not coronally articulated, it could still be phono-semantically associated with *l and *y through the shared [+resonant] feature. Testing this theory by comparing to *w, which also shares this feature, turns out to be difficult due to the small sample size. There are only two known roots which begin with *w and end in a bilabial consonant, *wap "easy, lightweight" and *weyp "two", neither of which exhibit identifiable sound symbolism.