Etymology

This chapter gives an overview of what etymology is, what etymology engages in and what issues are under debate, focusing on the following key points. First, etymology is the foundation of historical linguistics, the starting point of the historical investigation of a language and at the same time one of its subfields. In order to establish the etymology of an item one must backtrack to the chronological stage at which it was transparently formed for the first time, and account for the changes it has undergone since then. Hence, etymologies give us a view of a language’s history. They make more general statements possible, and they are historical accounts of individual items as well. Second, etymology is distinct from describing synchronic processes, such as wordformation. It is an inherently diachronic perspective in relating one chronological stage of a language to earlier ones. Third, the research questions of etymology can in principle applied to bigger and smaller linguistic units with sufficient stability, as etymology is concerned with the origin and history of linguistic elements. Hence, a distinction can be made between lexical and structural etymology, which has methodical ramifications. Fourth, etymologies can be graded according to quality, i.e. the likelihood of their correctness. In theory there is one correct history of an item, namely the events that actually happened. But reconstructing this chain of events and the point of origin is in practice a puzzle with many missing parts. Thus, some etymologies are more probable than others, and some of the key factors that make a good etymology will be discussed in this chapter. Fifth, etymologies are not necessarily confined to one language. If the item in question came into the language through the contact with another language, then a complete etymology must also contain the history of this element in that language, and possibly a third or a fourth, if, for instance, a word was borrowed successively by several languages. Sixth, connected with this is the methodological position of etymologies that contain such a contact element as opposed to purely “internal” etymologies. It will be argued that there is no theoretical reason why one should be considered a priori more normal, but that what is normal depends on linguistic and especially socio-historical circumstances. Consequently, contact etymologies are not per se inferior or a last resort, but a viable and sometimes even more likely account. Both avenues have in principle to be considered theoretically equal.