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Research Guide on Language Change
This chapter is in the book Research Guide on Language Change
Etymology Edgar C. ΡοΙοπιέ The purpose of etymology is to trace back the lexical component of a language to its origins and to describe the basic meaning, history, and development of the terms involved. It is therefore closely associated with historico-comparative linguistics, as it has to apply the rules of diachronic phonological and morphological change to determine the original form or reconstruct the prototype of each lemma in the language from which it originated — whether it be derived from a prehistoric protolanguage or some dialect of an earlier language, or borrowed from an outside source. The term "etymology" — borrowed from the Old French into Middle English under the form ethimologie — derives ultimately from the Greek ετυμολογία which designated the attempts of the Greek philosophers to discover the "true sense" of the words "according to their origin" (Grk. το ετνμον), an endeavor which led to the two opposed schools of thought illustrated by Plato's Cratylus. While Cratylus defends the claim advanced by Heraclitus that there is a natural link (Grk. φύσει) between name and object, Plato sides with Democritus who considers the attribution of names as a matter of "arbitrary determination" (Grk. θέσει), but he fails to draw the proper consequences from this view on account of his own concept of "truth" (Ducrot - Todorov 1983: 131). In the Middle Ages, purposeful etymological investigation was thwarted by theological concerns which fostered the belief in the monogenesis of language and the derivation of all tongues from Bib-lical Hebrew. Apart from some enlightened forerunners in the seven-teenth and eighteenth centuries, etymological research only started on a genuinely scientific basis with the development of linguistics in the

Etymology Edgar C. ΡοΙοπιέ The purpose of etymology is to trace back the lexical component of a language to its origins and to describe the basic meaning, history, and development of the terms involved. It is therefore closely associated with historico-comparative linguistics, as it has to apply the rules of diachronic phonological and morphological change to determine the original form or reconstruct the prototype of each lemma in the language from which it originated — whether it be derived from a prehistoric protolanguage or some dialect of an earlier language, or borrowed from an outside source. The term "etymology" — borrowed from the Old French into Middle English under the form ethimologie — derives ultimately from the Greek ετυμολογία which designated the attempts of the Greek philosophers to discover the "true sense" of the words "according to their origin" (Grk. το ετνμον), an endeavor which led to the two opposed schools of thought illustrated by Plato's Cratylus. While Cratylus defends the claim advanced by Heraclitus that there is a natural link (Grk. φύσει) between name and object, Plato sides with Democritus who considers the attribution of names as a matter of "arbitrary determination" (Grk. θέσει), but he fails to draw the proper consequences from this view on account of his own concept of "truth" (Ducrot - Todorov 1983: 131). In the Middle Ages, purposeful etymological investigation was thwarted by theological concerns which fostered the belief in the monogenesis of language and the derivation of all tongues from Bib-lical Hebrew. Apart from some enlightened forerunners in the seven-teenth and eighteenth centuries, etymological research only started on a genuinely scientific basis with the development of linguistics in the

Chapters in this book

  1. I-X I
  2. I. Introduction
  3. Language change and the Saussurean dichotomy: Diachrony versus synchrony 3
  4. Linguistic reconstruction: The scope of historical and comparative linguistics 11
  5. II. Aspects of Language Change
  6. Synchronic manifestations of linguistic change 25
  7. Evidence of language change 37
  8. The context of language change 71
  9. Methods to Study Language Change
  10. Philology: Analysis of written records 97
  11. The chronology of phonological change 107
  12. Linguistic paleontology: Migration theory, prehistory, and archeology correlated with linguistic data 137
  13. Linguistic geography and language change 161
  14. Psycholinguistics: A research review 175
  15. Lexicostatistics 217
  16. Theoretical Models of Change
  17. The Neogrammarian hypothesis 223
  18. A structural view of sound-change 241
  19. The transformational-generative model 249
  20. Other Approaches
  21. Dialect geography 257
  22. Social stratification of language 273
  23. Contact and interference 281
  24. III. Types of Language Change
  25. Phonological Change
  26. Phonetic, phonemic, and phonotactic change 297
  27. Evidence 303
  28. Structuralist interpretation 307
  29. Synchronic rules and diachronic "laws": The Saussurean dichotomy reaffirmed 313
  30. Morphophonology 325
  31. Morphological change
  32. Morphological change 347
  33. Syntactic change
  34. Syntactic change 365
  35. Lexical Change
  36. Onomasiological change: Sachen-change reflected by Wörter 389
  37. Semantic change 399
  38. Borrowing 409
  39. Etymology 415
  40. Change of Languages
  41. Language families and subgroupings, tree model and wave theory, and reconstruction of protolanguages 441
  42. The development of standard language (koine) and dialect: Language split and dialect merger 455
  43. Contact linguistics: Research on linguistic areas, strata, and interference in Europe 471
  44. Creolization and language change 507
  45. Bi- and multilingualism: Code-switching, interference and hybrids 527
  46. Subject Index 535
  47. Language Index 548
  48. Author Index 553
  49. 565-566 565
Readers are also interested in:
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110875379.415

Chapters in this book

  1. I-X I
  2. I. Introduction
  3. Language change and the Saussurean dichotomy: Diachrony versus synchrony 3
  4. Linguistic reconstruction: The scope of historical and comparative linguistics 11
  5. II. Aspects of Language Change
  6. Synchronic manifestations of linguistic change 25
  7. Evidence of language change 37
  8. The context of language change 71
  9. Methods to Study Language Change
  10. Philology: Analysis of written records 97
  11. The chronology of phonological change 107
  12. Linguistic paleontology: Migration theory, prehistory, and archeology correlated with linguistic data 137
  13. Linguistic geography and language change 161
  14. Psycholinguistics: A research review 175
  15. Lexicostatistics 217
  16. Theoretical Models of Change
  17. The Neogrammarian hypothesis 223
  18. A structural view of sound-change 241
  19. The transformational-generative model 249
  20. Other Approaches
  21. Dialect geography 257
  22. Social stratification of language 273
  23. Contact and interference 281
  24. III. Types of Language Change
  25. Phonological Change
  26. Phonetic, phonemic, and phonotactic change 297
  27. Evidence 303
  28. Structuralist interpretation 307
  29. Synchronic rules and diachronic "laws": The Saussurean dichotomy reaffirmed 313
  30. Morphophonology 325
  31. Morphological change
  32. Morphological change 347
  33. Syntactic change
  34. Syntactic change 365
  35. Lexical Change
  36. Onomasiological change: Sachen-change reflected by Wörter 389
  37. Semantic change 399
  38. Borrowing 409
  39. Etymology 415
  40. Change of Languages
  41. Language families and subgroupings, tree model and wave theory, and reconstruction of protolanguages 441
  42. The development of standard language (koine) and dialect: Language split and dialect merger 455
  43. Contact linguistics: Research on linguistic areas, strata, and interference in Europe 471
  44. Creolization and language change 507
  45. Bi- and multilingualism: Code-switching, interference and hybrids 527
  46. Subject Index 535
  47. Language Index 548
  48. Author Index 553
  49. 565-566 565
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