Vladimir Orel – A Handbook of Germanic Etymology

Автор: Vladimir Orel
Название книги: A Handbook of Germanic Etymology
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Лингвистика
Страницы: 722
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

This book represents a reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic vocabulary as attested in ancient and modern Germanic languages and projected to the Proto-Germanic level. The volume contains valuable linguistic information giving an outline of Proto-Germanic language, culture and pre-historic tradition. It is the first attempt to reconstruct the Proto-Germanic lexicon after the work of Falk and Torp in the beginning of the XXth century.

The objective of this work is to present a reasonably full (but certainly not
exhaustive) collection of Proto-Germanic lexemes with their reconstructions,
their reflections in main branches of Germanic and, whenever
possible, with plausible etymologies and etymological references (the latter
include main etymological dictionaries as well as articles and notes). As it
sometimes happens in other fields of knowledge, for the last fifty or sixty
years linguists have operated under the misleading impression that Germanic
etymology does not leave us much more than minor issues to deal
with and that the main bulk of relevant problems in this field has been
solved. I do not believe this view to be true and this book is to prepare
grounds for a future serious revision of the etymologies (mainly, root etymologies)
automatically accepted today and sanctified more by habit than
by reason.
The dictionary includes the following categories of (Proto-)Germanic
words:
(a) words attested in two or three branches of Germanic;
(b) words attested in only one Germanic branch but having precise external
cognates or being sources of wider attested Germanic derivatives;
(c) words attested in only one Germanic branch but representing ancient
loanwords that might have penetrated Germanic at the Proto-
Germanic level.
Clearly, with words of categories (b) and (c), the writer depends on etymological
solutions and, therefore, on scholarly preferences and tastes to
a greater extent than with words of category (a). That has certainly
influenced the choice of certain entries. In some cases, entries were added
even when the word represented an innovation in one branch but its discussion
and analysis in the etymological literature indicated otherwise and
the entry could be of some interest for the study of Proto-Germanic.
The dictionary only deals with full lexical parallels in Germanic and the
resulting reconstructions are words (sometimes with their morphological
variants), not morphemes. Internal Germanic cognates are represented by
the oldest attested forms from each branch involved in a given comparison.
Thus, High German is represented by an Old High German form
unless such has not been registered. In the latter case, High German will
be represented by Middle High German or modern German, and so on.
Normally, an entry will include Gothic (or other East Germanic dialects usually in reconstruction), Old Norse (or other Old Scandinavian), Old
English, Old Frisian, Old Saxon and Old High German forms. Transliterations chosen for individual Germanic languages could not be
entirely consistent throughout the book. However, an attempt has been
made to reach a certain level of standardization (which includes, among
other conventions, the omission of traditional post-word asterisks in
Gothic). At the same time, I made it a point to return to the main lexicographic
sources for most of the involved Germanic languages (and occasionally,
to texts), with the unfortunate exception of Low German, in order
to verify morphological features and meanings of the forms compared.
This process took considerable time and some efforts and was particularly
painful in determining meanings and expressing them in English. It is wellknown
how misleading translations of translations of translations can be—
I did my best to control them and to replace them with originally coined
English glosses whenever possible (that applied primarily to Gothic, Old
Norse and Old English). Numerous ghost-words and ghost-meanings
appearing in linguistic publications (not only on Germanic but on other
Indo-European dialects as well) were pitilessly eliminated. I realize, however,
that some of those unfortunately remained undetected.
The semantic reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic words was not even
attempted: too many complications and arguments would have followed
the decision to ascribe meanings to Proto-Germanic words. This exercise
is therefore left to the reader, not without some relief on my part.
Certain constraints (partly dictated by external factors, partly following
the linguistic views of the author) have been imposed to filter out several
groups of words. Primarily, that applies to prefixal verbs and nouns that
have not been included as separate entries even in (numerous) cases when
a prefix is attested in all compared forms. Whenever the prefix can be projected
into the Indo-European prehistory of Germanic, this—rather infrequent—fact is noted in the corresponding unprefixed entry. It was also
decided not to include Germanic proper names, toponyms and ethnonyms
as separate units. Proper names, however, appear in quite a few entries
whenever they form parallels to appellative nouns in other Germanic languages.
Loanwords to Proto-Germanic have been included; however, the
status of Latin loanwords proved to be problematic. As a result, the dictionary
covers only such Latin elements as may be given the credit of
doubt of being quite old and not obtained by different Germanic dialects
separately or through chain-borrowings.
Clearly, some of the Proto-Germanic morphological reconstructions of
entries are, to a great extent, idealized. In certain cases, for example in
nouns, when certain fluctuations of gender appeared to be of regular
nature, a deeper reconstruction was offered without additional comments.
Some other reconstructions, for example, those of root stems, are undoubtedly
rather arbitrary too. The same accounts for the reconstruction of
stem vowels in compounds and for the way in which adverbial forms are
presented.
I owe my gratitude to several colleagues of mine: my teachers Leonid
A. Gindin and Vladimir A. Dybo whose interest and encouragement were
always of great importance, Oleg N. Trubachev and Zhanna Zh. Varbot
whose insights of etymology inspired me, Olga A. Smirnitskaia who was
my first teacher of Gothic and Old Norse. I feel greatly indebted to George
Durman and Grigory Zubakov for their practical help with the retrieval of
some etymological sources.1
Several institutions provided me with their assistance, in particular, the
libraries of McMaster University, Princeton University, Hebrew University
in Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv University and Bar-Ilan University.
Finally, I must thank those whose unspoken word keeps me alive