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Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rwrd20 WORD ISSN: 0043-7956 (Print) 2373-5112 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rwrd20 Etymology and General Linguistics Yakov Malkiel To cite this article: Yakov Malkiel (1962) Etymology and General Linguistics, WORD, 18:1-3, 198-219, DOI: 10.1080/00437956.1962.11659774 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.1962.11659774 Published online: 04 Dec 2015. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 2343 View related articles YAKOVMALKIEL----------------------- Etymology and General Linguistics 1. The anomalous status of etymology. Within the bundle of linguistic disciplines etymology occupies a position difficult to define. It does not, strictly speaking, mark a transition between the domains of language viewed chiefly as a means of communication (linguistics) and language considered as a vehicle of art (lite;ature), in the way poetics, stylistics, and folklore may be interpreted; neither does it bear any resemblance to se· mantics. Of every other discipline (say, phonology and syntax) one can imagine a synchronic and a diachronic projection. But synchronic etyrno· logy-despite the authority of an aging Vendryes (Bulletin de Ia Societe de linguistique de Paris XLIX: 1 [1953], 1-19: "Pour une etymologie statique") -amounts to scarcely more than a paradox. For approximately a century scholars have been operating with the term and concept of folk etymology, which again lacks any counterpart in other disciplines. 2. Conflicting views. An appeal to leading authorities to clarify the situa- tion is of little avail, since their verdicts have been either evasive or con· tradictory. In some slimmer introductory treatises, from the eleven loosely strung essays forming Sapir's Language (1921) to the six stimulating, if uneven, chapters which Martinet has combined into his Elements de linguistique generale (1960), etymology barely, if at all, receives incidental mention. The situation is somewhat different, but hardly less disappointing, with the broader outlines. Even that most lucid of theorists, Saussure, who relegates-surely not by chance-his brief discussion to an Appendix, pre· sents a picture not wholly convincing. For him etymology is neither an autonomous discipline nor a smoothly integrated part of evolutionary linguistics: it amounts to a special application, to early stages of word history, of principles generally valid in linguistic research. Saussure's prime examples are four pairs of words-all perfectly transparent-illustrating, in this order, sound change, semantic change, simultaneous change of sound and meaning, and derivation. Later, more complex relationships come up for mention, e.g., the link of Fr. oiseau to Lat. aui(cellu)s; the (historical) study of suffixes and prefixes is likewise included. After a some- what lukewarm remark to the effect that explaining one word means tracing 198 ETYMOLOGY AND GENERAL LINGUISTICS 199 it to other words, Saussure recognizes certain ties between etymology, on the one hand, and such better established disciplines as phonology, mor- phology, semantics, on the other, but doubts that any strict methodology can be prescribed and expressly discards the possibility of rigorous opera- tional arrangement.1 Bloomfield's approach (1933) is equally unpromising. His book contains no single section, let alone chapter, on etymology pure and simple, but the Index leads one to some relevant passages, as when etymology is identified as a special concern of ancient Greek scholars (4) and, later, as a butt of Voltaire's sarcasm (6). More important is the modern "precise" definition of the etymology (15) of a speech-form as "simply its history ... obtained by finding the older forms in the same language and the forms in related languages which are divergent variants of the same parent form" (15); the tracing of Engl. mother via OE modor and its congeners to Prim. Gmc. *moder, hence to Prim. IE *miiter serves as a prime example. In accordance with this definition, the technique of etymology is obliquely mentioned first under Phonetic Change (346-347, 351-355), later under Semantic Change (427-430). The dual disadvantage of such a position consists in this: (a) etymology is reduced, as it were, to a small-scale-indeed, the smallest-operation within diachronic phonology, a role which deprives it (to make things worse, inexplicitly) of any independent status; (b) the reader remains un- aware of the fact that professional etymologists will rebel against examining problems as transparent as the provenience of mother. Surely, it is no mere coincidence that a handbook as influential in this country (and later the world over) as Bloomfield's has singularly failed to stimulate the slightest curiosity about genuine etymological research, at its most exciting. 1 "Comme Ia linguistique statique et evolutive, elle decrit des faits, mais cette des- cription n'est pas methodique, puisqu'elle ne se fait dans aucune direction deter- mince .... Pour arriver a ses fins, elle se sert de tous les moyens que Ia linguistique met a sa disposition, mais elle n'arrete pas son attention sur Ia nature des operations qu'elle est obligee de faire" (2d ed. [Paris, 1922], p. 260; Supplement C to Parts III-IV). Between 1893 and 1912 Saussure taught several formal courses on etymology, with emphasis on Greek and Latin, and his ideas on the scope of the discipline must have wavered considerably; seeR. Godel, Les sources manuscrites du "Cours de linguistique generate" (Geneva and Paris, 1957), pp. 24, 25, 134. In his earlier synthesis Le langage (1921; completed in 1914), p. 206, Vendryes equated etymology with diachronic lexi- cology; what he accomplished in 1953, under the avowed influence of Saussure and some ancient Indian grammarians as interpreted by F. Edgerton, was to substitute 'static etymology' for synchronic lexicology, a less than felicitous decision. Meillet's etymo- logical testament (1932) will be found in his prefaces to the Dictionnaire etymologique de Ia langue latine and to 0. Bloch's Dictionnaire etymologique de Ia langue franfaise. 7•• 200 YAKOV MALKIEL 3. Four claims to autonomy. The correct place of etymology, if one agrees to define it as the search for word origins, must be sought elsewhere. If it is true that word biographies lend themselves to graphic projection, then the etymologist's task is the elucidation of the starting point, better still, of the initial segment of chosen lexical trajectories. Etymology is thus a mere subdivision of lexicology (here taken to mean 'theoretical, pre- eminently historical study of the lexicon', in contrast to lexicography, viewed as an applied science2), but a subdivision endowed with several peculiarities which tend to give it special rank. One can single out at least four such claims to autonomous high status: (1) Though classifiable by present standards as a mere subdivision, ety- mology boasts a venerable history .of its own, throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, a history involving significant contacts with areas of human endeavor unrelated to lexicology and even to linguistics, as that science is currently understood. Compressed into a formula, the paradoxical situa- tion may be described thus: the part is older than the whole. (2) Because creative etymology presupposes, on the part of its practi- tioner, a desire to transcend the domains of the obvious and of the highly probable in the matter oflexical equations and to operate in the hazardous realm of the increasingly conjectural, it often attracts a totally different type of personality than does grammar, even in its modern garb of 'structure'. (3) Like all lexical subdisciplines, etymology is equally concerned with form and with meaning and, through the latter, also with the outer world of realities. But in a more intimate sense than the others, this subdiscipline is tied up with certain facets of historical grammar, chiefly phonology and derivation-a point duly recognized, but magnified out of all proportion, by Saussure and Bloomfield. (4) The main idiosyncrasy of etymology stems from the fact that, unlike most cognate subdisciplines, it operates consistently with fragmentary 2 Not all lexical monographs exhibit an etymological slant. H. and R. Kahane's article on the (predominantly nautical) progeny of surgere (Romance Philology IV [1950-51], 195-215) embodies an experiment in spatio-temporal semantics. The prime purpose of my reconstruction of the Hispanic branch of per-, re-, suc-cutere (Hispanic Review XIV [1946), 104-159) was to demonstrate that Class. and Mod. acudir-semantically many- faceted, hence genetically elusive-perpetuates OSp. recudir. In special instances, as where a blend is involved, heavy documentation seems indispensable; cf. OSp. Gal.-Ptg. desmazelado 'wretched' (from mac-ula, -ella 'spot') x Hebr. maz·al 'star, destiny'> (Jud.-) Sp. desmazalado 'weak, destitute' (Hispanic Review XV [1947), 272-301); but consistent use of massive illustration, as advocated and very effectively practiced by W. von Wartburg (on his technique see Word X [1957), 288-305; also, in his Bibliography [1956), items A 138, 209, 350; B 19, 21), tends to smother the nuclear problems of etymology. ETYMOLOGY AND GENERAL LINGUISTICS 201 evidence, with dotted evolutionary lines. Every etymologist protests that he would prefer to rely, in his reconstructions, on a vastly increased stock of recorded forms; few would be candid enough to admit that truly com- plete records would deprive the etymologist's endeavors of their real charm, even of their raison d' etre. The sparseness or even unavailability of critically needed material has fascinated some workers (moulding, in the process, their personalities) and has, with equal power, repelled others. Were it not for these four considerations, particularly the last three, etymology could be safely eliminated from the uploads/Geographie/ etymology-and-general-linguistics.pdf