Relationship Between Linguistic Indicators in Hot and Cold Climates and Related ‎Concepts in Persian Medicine: An Iinterdisciplinary Theory

The concepts presented in Persian medicine, as one of the holistic theories in complementary and alternative medicine, are closely related to other fields of sciences. Institutionalizing the World Health Organization's approach to the application of traditional medical schools requires an interdisciplinary academic approach. In Persian medicine, changing the quality of warmth and coldness can lead to a change in the quality of speech characteristics. One case of this quality change is the change in outside temperature due to climatic differences. Since according to the hypothesis of Persian medicine, climatic characteristics can affect the quality of warmth and coldness and consequently the rate of air exchange (Tarvih) and ultimately the qualities of sound and speech, the present study, with an inductive approach, tries to find evidence to refute or accept this hypothesis.

First, the reference books of Persian medicine, including Qanoun, Kamel al-Sena'a at-Tibbia and Zakhirih- e- Kharazm- Shahi were surveyed and materials related to the subject of speech and the quality of warmth and coldness were extracted. Then, Medical databases and search engines, including PubMed and Google Scholar, as well as linguistic databases were investigated.

The results show that in situations that according to the principles of Persian medicine lead to an increase in the quality of warmth, languages ​​with implosive consonants and clicks, as well as pharyngeal approximants and breathy voiced consonants are more concentrated. In addition, there is a greater tendency of concentration of the prototype of open-syllable languages and the languages with highest frequency of words ending to /h/ phoneme in warm areas. On the other hand, the focus of the prototype of the spectrum of close-syllable languages and the languages with the phenomenon of palatalization is more in the conditions and areas that lead to an increase in the quality of coldness.

The findings of this study are in line with the initial theory believing the qualities of warmth and coldness as external variables can influence speech characteristics. These results can be a confirmation on the hypothesis of the present study about the possibility of the relationship between speech characteristics and qualities of warmth and coldness from the perspective of Persian medicine, although there are other confounding factors that should be evaluated in larger studies.