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