Language

Its Nature and Development

Otto Jespersen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135662950
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book was first published in 1922, Language is a valuable contribution to the field of English Language and Linguistics.

Book IV
The Development of Language

Chapter XVI
Etymology

§ 1. Achievements. § 2. Doubtful Cases. § 3. Facts, not Fancies. § 4. Hope. § 5. Requirements. § 6. Blendinga. § 7. Echo Words. § 8. Some Conjunctions. § 9. Object of Etymology. § 10. Reconstruction.

XVI.—§ 1. Achievements.

FEW things have been more often quoted in works on linguistics than Voltaire's mot that in etymology vowels count for nothing and consonants for very little. But it is now said just as often that the satire might be justly levelled at the pseudo-scientific etymology of the eighteenth century, but has no application to our own times, in which etymology knows how to deal with both vowels and consonants, and—it should be added, though it is often forgotten—with the meanings of words. One often comes across outbursts of joy and pride in the achievements of modem etymological science, like the following, which is quoted here instar omnium: "Nowadays etymology has got past the period of more or less 'happy thoughts' {glücklichen einfälle) and has developed into a science in which, exactly as in any other science, serious persevering work must lead to reliable results" (H. Schröder, Ablautstudien, 1910, X; cf. above, Max Müller and Whitney, p. 89).

There is no denying that much has been achieved, but it is equally true that a skeptical mind cannot fail to be struck with the uncertainty of many proposed explanations: very often scholars have not got beyond 'happy thoughts,' many of which have not even been happy enough to have been accepted by anybody except their first perpetrators. Prom English alone, which for twelve hundred years has had an abundant written literature, and which has been studied by many eminent linguists, who have had many sister-languages with which to compare it, it would be an easy matter to compile a long list of words, well-known words of everyday occurrence, which etymologists have had to give up as beyond their powers of solution (fit, put, pull, cut, rouse, pun, fun, job). And equally perplexing are many words now current all over Europe, some of them comparatively recent and yet completely enigmatic: race, baron, baroque, rococo, zinc.

XVI.—§ 2. Doubtful Cases.

Or let us take a word of that class which forms the staple subject of etymological disquisitions, one in which the semantic side is literally as clear as sunshine, namely the word for 'sun.' Here we have, among others, the following forms: (1) sun, OE. sunne, Goth, sunno; (2) Dan., Lat. sol, Goth, sauil, Gr. hélios; (3) OE. sigel, sœgl, Goth, sugil; (4) OSlav. slǔnǐce, Russ. solnce (now with mute l). That these forms are related cannot be doubted, but their mutual relation, and their relation to Gr. selénē, which means 'moon,' and to OE. swegel 'sky,' have never been cleared up. Holthausen derives sunno from the verb sinnan 'go' and OE. sigel from the verb sigan 'descend, go down '—but is it really probable that our ancestors should have thought of the sun primarily as the one that goes, or that sets? The word south (orig. *sunp; the n as in OHG. sund, is still kept in Dan. sønden) is generally explained as connected with sun, and the meaning 'sunny side' is perfectly natural; but now H. Schröder thinks that it is derived from a word meaning 'right' (OE. swiþe, orig. 'stronger,' a comparative of the adj. found in G. geschwind), and he says that the south is to the right when you look at the sun at sunrise—which is perfectly true, but why should people have thought of the south as being to the right when they wanted to speak of it in the afternoon or evening?

Let me take one more example to show that our present methods, or perhaps our present data, sometimes leave us completely in the lurch with regard to the most ordinary words. We have a series of words which may all, without any formal difficulties, be referred to a root-form seqw-. Their significations are, respectively—

1. 'say,' E. say, OE. secgan, ON. segja, G. sagen, Lith. sakýti. To this is referred Gr. énnepe, enĺspein, Lat. inseque and possibly inquam,
2. 'show, point out,' OSlav. sočiti, Lat. signum.
3. 'see,' E. see, OE. seon, Goth, saihwan, G. sehen, etc.
4. 'follow,' Lat. sequor, Gr. hépomai, Skr. sácate. Here belongs Lat. socius, OE. secg 'man,' orig, 'follower.'

Now, are these four groups 'etymologically identical'? Opinions differ widely, as may be seen from C. D. Buck, "Words of Speaking and Saying" (Am. Journ. of Philol. 36. 128, 1915). They may be thus tabulated, a comma meaning supposed identity and a dash the opposite:

1, 2-3, 4 Kluge, Falk, Torp.
1, 2, 3-4 Brugmann.
1, 2, 3, 4 Wood, Buck.¹

For the transition in meaning from 'see' to 'say' we are referred to such words as observe, notice, G. bemerkung, while in G. anweisen, and still more in Lat. dico, there is a similar transition from 'show' to 'say.' Wood derives the signification 'follow' from 'point out,' through' show, guide, attend.' With regard to the relation between 3 and 4, it has often been said that to see is to follow with the eyes. In short, it is possible, if you take some little pains, to discover notional ties between all four groups which may not be so very much looser than those between other words which everybody thinks related. And yet? I cannot see that the knowledge we have at present enables us, or can enable us, to do more than leave the mutual relation of these groups an open question. One man's guess is just as good as another's, or one man's yes as another man's no—if the connexion of these words is 'science,' it is, if I may borrow an expression from the old archæologist Samuel Pegge, scientia ad libitum. Personal predilection and individual taste have not been ousted from etymological research to the extent many scholars would have us believe.

Or we may perhaps say that among the etymologies found in dictionaries and linguistic journals some are solid and firm as rocks, but others are liquid and fluctuate like the sea; and finally not a few are in a gaseous state and blow here and there as the wind listeth. Some of them are no better than poisonous gases, from which may Heaven preserve us!¹

XVI.—§ 3. Facts, not Fancies.

As early as 1867 Michel Bréal, in an excellent article (reprinted in M 267 ff.), called attention to the dangers resulting from the general tendency of comparative linguists to "jump intermediate steps in order at once to mount to the earliest stages of the language," but his warning has not taken effect, so that etymologists in dealing with a word found only in comparatively recent times will often try to reconstruct what might have been its Proto-Aryan form and compare that with some word found in some other language. Thus, Talk and Torp refer G. krieg to an Aryan primitive form *grêigho-, *grîigho-, which is compared with Irish bríg 'force.' But the German word is not found in use till the middle period; it is peculiar to German and unknown in related languages (for the Scandinavian and probably also the Dutch words are later loans from Germany). These writers do not take into account how improbable it is that such a word, if it were really an old traditional word for this fundamental idea, should never once have been recorded in any of the old documents of the whole of our family of languages. What should we think of the man who would refer boche, the French nickname for 'German' which became current in 1914, and before that time had only been used for a few years and known to a few people only, to a Proto-Aryan root-form? Yet the method in both cases is identical; it presupposes what no one can guarantee, that the words in question are of those which trot along the royal road of language for century after century without a single side-jump, semantic or phonetic. Such words are the favourites of linguists because they have always behaved themselves since the days of Noah; but others are full of the most unexpected pranks, which no scientific ingenuity can discover if we do not happen to know the historical facts. Think of grog, for example. Admiral Vernon, known to sailors by the nickname of "Old Grog" because he wore a cloak of grogram (this, by the way, from Fr. gros grain), in 1740 ordered a mixture of rum and water to be served out instead of pure rum, and the name was transferred from the person to the drink. If it be objected that such leaps are found only in slang, the answer is that slang words very often become recognized after some time, and who knows but that may have been the case with krieg just as well as with many a recent word?

At any rate, facts weigh more than fancies, and whoever wants to establish the etymology of a word must first ascertain all the historical facts available with regard to the place and time of its rise, its earliest signification and syntactic construction, its diffusion, the synonyms it has ousted, etc. Thus, and thus only, can he hope to rise above loose conjectures. Here the great historical dictionaries, above all the Oxford New English Dictionary, render invaluable service. And let me mention one model article outside these dictionaries, in which Hermann Moller has in my opinion given a satisfactory solution of the riddle of G. ganz: he explains it as a loan from Slav konǐcǐ 'end,' used especially adverbially (perhaps with a preposition in the form v-konec or v-konc) ' to the end, completely '; Slav c = G. z, Slav k pronounced essentially as South G. g; the gradual spreading and various significations and derived forms are accounted for with very great learning (Zs. f. D. AU, 36. 326 £f.). It is curious that this artiole should have been generally overlooked or neglected, though the writer seems to have met all the legitimate requirements of a scientific etymology.

XVI.—§ 4. Hope.

I have endeavoured to fulfil these requirements in the new explanation I have given of the word hope (Dan. håbe, Swed. hoppas, G. hoffen), now used in all Gothonic tongues in exactly the same signification. Etymologists are at variance about this word. Kluge connects it with the OE. noun hyht, and from that form infers that Gothonic *hopôn stands for *huqôn, from an Aryan root hug; he says that a connexion with Lat. cupio is scarcely possible. Walde likewise rejects connexion between cupio and either hope or Goth, hugjan. To Falk and Torp hope has probably nothing to do with hyht, but probably with cupio, which is derived from a root *kup = kvap, found in Lat. vapor 'steam,' and with a secondary form *kub, in hope, and *kvab in Goth, af-hwapjan 'choke '—a wonderful medley of significations. H. Möller (Indoeur.-Semit, sammenlignende Glossar 63), in accordance with his usual method, establishes an Aryo-Semitic root

meaning 'ardere' and transferred to 'ardere amore, cupiditate, desiderio,' the root being extended with b-: p- in hope and cupio, with gh-in Goth. hugs, and with ĝ- in OE. hyht. Surely a typical example of the perplexity of our etymologists, who disagree in everything except just in the one thing which seems to me extremely doubtful, that hope with the present spiritual signification goes back to common Aryan. Now, what are the real facts of the matter? Simply these, that the word hope turns up at a comparatively late date in historical times at one particular spot, and from there it gradually spreads to the neighbouring countries. In Denmark (håb, håbe) and in Sweden (hopp, hoppas) it is first found late in the Middle Ages as a religious loan from Low German hope, hopen. High German hoffen is found very rarely about 1150, but does not become common till a hundred years later; it is undoubtedly taken (with sound substitution) from Low German and moves in Germany from north to south. Old Saxon has the subst. tō-hopa, which has probably come from OE., where we have the same form for the subst., tō-hopa. This is pretty common in religious prose, but in poetry it is found only once (Boet.)—a certain indication that the word is recent. The subst. without tō is comparatively late (ÆIfric, ab. 1000). The verb is found in rare instances about a hundred years earlier, but does not become common till later. Now, it is important to notice that the verb in te old period never takes a direct object, but is always connected with the preposition tō (compare the subst.), even in modern usage we have to hope to, for, in. Similarly in G., where the phrase was auf etwas hoffen; later the verb took a genitive, then a pronoun in the accusative, and finally an ordinary object; in biblical language we find also zu gott hoffen. Now, I would connect our word with the form hopu, found twice as part of a compound in Beowulf (450 and 764), where 'refuge' gives good sense: hopan to, then, is to' take one's refuge to,' and to-hopa' refuge.' This verb I take to be at first identical with hop (the only OE. instance I know of this is Ælfric, Hom. 1. 202: hoppode ongean his drihten). We have also one instance of a verb onhupian (Cura Past. 441) 'draw back, recoil,' which agrees with ON. hopa 'move backwards' (to the quotations in Fritzner ma...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Preface
• Contents
• Abbreviations of Book Titles, Etc.
• Phonetic Symbols
• Book I History of Linguistic Science
• Book II The Child
• Book III The Individual and the World
• Book IV The Development of Language
• Index