www.atilf.fr james bond is back: how secret agents from the dictionnaire Étymologique roman...

www.atilf.fr

James Bond is back: how secret agents from the Dictionnaire Étymologique

Roman (DÉRom) are promoting a paradigm shift in Romance etymology

The Philological Society, 13 January 2012Éva Buchi

Analyse et Traitement Informatique de la Langue Française

2

Overview

1. Introduction

2. DÉRom’s agents’ licence to reconstruct

3. Battle for the defense of a glorious tradition

4. Example:

rŏtŭndus, 2. rĕtŭndus (REW3) vs. */ro'tʊnd-u/ (DÉRom)

5. Conclusion


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DÉRom’s MI6?

Scientifically established at

- ATILF (CNRS & University of Lorraine), Nancy- Saarland University, Saarbrücken

Funded mostly by- ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche)- DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft)

2008-2010 (300.000 €) and 2012-2014 (360.000 €)


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Moneypenny?

Pascale Baudinot

ATILF

In charge of the bibliography (970 titles)

Simone Traber

Saarland University

Moneypennies!


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M?

Bernard Lee and Judy Dench

Wolfgang Schweickard

Saarland University

Éva Buchi

ATILF


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‘If it hadn’t been for Q Branch, the DÉRom would have been dead long ago!’

Q?

Gilles Souvay

ATILF

Computer scientist


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Secret agents: 001?

Xosé Afonso Álvarez Pérez

Postdoctoral fellow University of Lisbon

*/'arbor-e/ fem.n. ‘tree; shaft; spar’


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002?

Giorgio Cadorini

Lecturer University of Opava

*/'lun-a/ fem.n. ‘moon’

‘Colloqui retoromanistic’ (Lavin [Graubünden], August 2011)


9

003?

Ana María Cano González

Professor University of Oviedo

*/ka'βall-u/ masc.n. ‘horse’

‘La filología románica hoy’ (Madrid, November 2011, with Éva Buchi and Maria Reina Bastardas i Rufat)


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004?

Victor Celac

Junior researcher Romanian Academy

*/'βɪndik-a-/ trans.vb. ‘save; avenge’

With Jean-Paul Chauveau


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005

Jérémie Delorme

Postdoctoral fellow FNRS/University of Liège

*/βi'n-aki-a/ fem.n. ‘grape marc’


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006

Marco Maggiore

PhD student Sapienza University of Rome

Disciple of Rosario Coluccia (Lecce)

*/'kresk-e/ tr./intr. vb. ‘sprout; grow’


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007?

Sorry, but 007’s identity is top secret ?


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008?

Jan Reinhardt

Postdoctoral fellow ATILF

Disciple of Wolfgang Schweickard

*/la'brusk‑a/ ~ */la'brʊsk‑a/ fem.n. ‘wild grape; fruit of wild grape’

With Pascale Baudinot, Wolfgang Dahmen, Maria Iliescu and Johannes Kramer


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009?

Agata Šega

Lecturer

University of Ljubljana

*/'mur-u/ masc.n. ‘wall’

Ceremony in honour of Mitja Skubic (Ljubljana, December 2010)


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There is no equivalent to Felix Leiter in the DÉRom project, which is strictly European

Felix Leiter?

Unfortunately, the project wasn’t (yet) able to attract scholars from the United Kingdom

Although three young researchers working at the Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND), Larissa Birrer, Jennifer Gabel and Heather Pagan, attended DÉRom’s Summer school from 2010


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Membership upward trend

Funding cocktail 25th Congrès international de linguistique et de philologie romanes (Innsbruck, September 2007)

The project attracts more and more scholars (currently: 58 members from 12 European countries)

Due in part to DÉRom’s Summer school (Nancy, July 2010): 41 participants from 13 countries


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DÉRom’s Summer school (2010)

1. Attending lectures

2. Information retrieval

3. Compiling of DÉRom entriesMarc-Olivier

Hinzelin (lecturer University of

Hamburg; postdoctorate

with Martin Maiden)


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Overview

1. Introduction



4. Example:


5. Conclusion


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How do DÉRom’s agents carry out their mission?

They are licensed to reconstruct

No Walther PP involvedin their mission

Why is that unusual?


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The Romanists’ splendid isolation

Leading paradigm in etymology of inherited lexicon all over the world: comparative reconstruction, a classical bottom-up approach, where the common ancestor of a language family is reconstructed from current languages (Indo‑European, Germanic, Slavic, Semitic, Austronesian…)

Romanists discard generally the comparative method as unnecessary in the face of written testimony of classical Latin, from Plautus via Caesar to Tacitus. Instead, they apply a top-down method, which stresses the disintegration of ‘high’ Latin into ‘low’ Romance languages. So, since its beginning in the 19th century, Romance etymology and etymography always promoted classical Latin etyma


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Romanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (REW3 1935)

Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke (1861–1936)

DÉRom’s illustrious ancestor

One of the most outstanding Romanists

Etyma of inherited lexicon < Latin dictionaries < Latin texts


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DÉRom’s claim

Hence DÉRom’s objective: recreating Romance etymology on the basis of comparative grammar

Romance languages are ‘normal’ languages

Their study has to be carried out relying on ‘normal’ procedures (which may be completed by Romance specific ones)

No bypassing of the ‘normal’ ones!


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No Aston Martin, but...

A web site: http://www.atilf.fr/DERom

A ressource book: ‘Livre bleu’

(please contact [email protected] for a copy)


25

Overview

1. Introduction



4. Example:


5. Conclusion


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DÉRom in the middle of a methodological debate

Criticism from leading scholars in Romance linguistics

In particular Alberto Vàrvaro (former president and honourary member of the Société de linguistique romane):2 papers Revue de linguistique romane 2011

Vàrvaro 2011a; 2011b; Buchi & Schweickard 2011a; 2011b

Fights a “totally selfless battle for the defense of a glorious tradition” (Vàrvaro 2011b: 626: “Ma la mia è una battaglia del tutto disinteressata per la difesa di una tradizione gloriosa”)


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Vàrvaro 2011b: 625 [1.2.]

“At this point I go back to the pages Büchi and Schweickard kindly dedicated to me and I realize that those do not broach at all the essential point of my short article: the advisability, indeed the absolute necessity of distinguishing between the etymologi-cal methodology applied to a fully historical linguistic stage and that to be applied, for lack of something better, to prehistoric stages. I never said comparative reconstruction […] should not be used where we lack direct information, in short for prehistory. But Romance etymology concerns a fully historical stage and benefits from ample documentation. Moreover, it is the only one to be in this favourable position and to be able to provide sophisticated models to the other etymologies. Thus it seems to me absurd that Romance etymology should adopt methods imposed by the lack of documentation for prehistoric stages.”


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Kramer 2011: 779 [2.2.]

“The new Dictionnaire Étymologique Roman, which Éva Buchi in Nancy and Wolfgang Schweickard in Saarbrücken compile with their teams […], deals only with the pan-Romance lexicon of a little less than 500 units. It is based on ‘Proto-Romance’ etyma (i.e. words reconstructed from Romance on the basis of the historical-comparative method), which only incidentally have someting to do with what we traditionnally mean by an etymon, namely a word pertaining to the Latin language continuum which ideally is documented in written form. ‘Once Proto-Romance reconstruction is carefully established, a comparison between those etyma and philologically established data for classical Latin becomes possible’ (Buchi/Schweickard 2008, 353). But by doing so, we dismiss as second-rate the etymon in the true sense, i. e. the element which really existed in one of Latin’s manifestations, presented a real semantic spectrum and a real integration in the real-linguistic environment and work within Romance linguistics only with bloodless reconstructed etyma. As for highlighting the different manifestations of the Latin ancestors of Romance words within their actual linguistic context, one cannot expect much from the new DÉRom, for in this respect it is stuck in an irreal theoretical structure.”


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Overview

1. Introduction



4. Example:


5. Conclusion


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Justifying the comparative method

“So, what is the use, in our case, of ‘the comparative-reconstructive method’? Shouldn’t one give some explicit examples of its usefulness […]?” (Vàrvaro 2011b: 625: “Insomma, a che serve, nel nostro caso, ‘la méthode comparative-reconstruction’? Non sarebbe il caso di darcene qualche esempio esplicito […]?”)


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Meyer-Lübke’s REW3 (1935) [3.]

Headword → classical Latin (as found in Latin dictionaries)

Subentry → ‘fiddled with’ classical Latin(vowel system based on quantity, not timbre)

Does not account for Romanian rătund nor for its cognates

Exceptionally, similar to comparative method,but not comparative method in the technical sense


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Corresponding DÉRom entry [4.]

Compiled by Maria HegnerPhD student Saarland UniversityParticipant of DÉRom’s summer school

*/ro'tʊnd-u/ adj. ‘round’

With decisive contributions from eight internal revisors, in particular from Jean-Pierre Chambon


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Presents a nuanced picture

REW: one etymon: rĕtŭndus

DÉRom: four etyma:I.1. */ro'tʊnd-u/I.2. */to'rʊnd-u/ (metathesis)II. */'tʊnd-u/ (apheresis)III. */re'tʊnd-u/ (dissimilation)

I.1. */ro'tʊnd-u/: Sardinian; northern Italian, Ladin, Romansh, French, Francoprovençal

I.2. */to'rʊnd-u/: northern Italian, Friulian, Ladin

II. */'tʊnd-u/: Sardinian; central and southern Italian

III. */re'tʊnd-u/: almost general (including Romanian), but without Sardinian


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Ontogeny and stratification





Proto-Romance

I.1. II.

III.I.2.

Before voicing of intervocalic voiceless plosives (definitional of Italo-Western Romance)


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Correlates in written Latin of the Antiquity?





I.1. */ro'tʊnd-u/: documented since VarroI.2. */to'rʊnd-u/: not documented II. */'tʊnd-u/: not documentedIII. */re'tʊnd-u/: documented only in the 7th century

(when Latin had ceased to be a mother tongue → influenced from Romance)


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Model of diglossia/variation linguistics

Within the Latin diasystem:

- I.2. (*/to'rʊnd-u/), II. (*/'tʊnd-u/) and III. (*/re'tʊnd-u/) = distinctive (oral) features of L (low variety) without access to H (high variety)H → uniformity / L → diversity

- I.2. and II. (and I.1. by archaism) = regionalisms

With all due respect to the glorious tradition of Romance etymology, at least in this case, comparative reconstruction yields more interesting results

What is more “bloodless”: rĕtŭndus (REW3) or this reconstruction of a complex micro-diasystem of words for ‘round’?

Living, “bloodfilled” languages present internal variation!


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Overview

1. Introduction



4. Example:


5. Conclusion


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To conclude

Underlying idea: the comparative method is better suited to Romance etymology than the Latin-centered and grapho-centered method practiced traditionally

DÉRom contributes to “the debate surrounding the vitality and future of historical Romance linguistics and its need to forge stronger links with general linguistics” (Dworkin 2005: 125)


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Why is this methodological debate so important?

64 auxiliary arts:

1. Singing2. Music3. Dance4. Painting[…]

Kama Sutra

54. Etymology55. Lexicography

Etymology has a social impact

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