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The Philological Society, 13 January 2012 Éva Buchi

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 2012 Éva Buchi. Overview. 1. Introduction. 2. DÉRom’s agents’ licence to reconstruct.

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The Philological Society, 13 January 2012 Éva Buchi

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  1. 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 2012 Éva Buchi

  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

  3. 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 €)

  4. Moneypenny? Moneypennies! Pascale Baudinot ATILF In charge of the bibliography (970 titles) Simone Traber Saarland University

  5. M? Bernard Lee and Judy Dench Wolfgang Schweickard Saarland University Éva Buchi ATILF

  6. Q? Gilles Souvay ATILF Computer scientist ‘If it hadn’t been for Q Branch, the DÉRom would have been dead long ago!’

  7. Secret agents: 001? Xosé Afonso Álvarez Pérez Postdoctoral fellow University of Lisbon */'arbor-e/ fem.n. ‘tree; shaft; spar’

  8. 002? Giorgio Cadorini Lecturer University of Opava ‘Colloqui retoromanistic’ (Lavin [Graubünden], August 2011) */'lun-a/ fem.n. ‘moon’

  9. 003? Ana María Cano González Professor University of Oviedo ‘La filología románica hoy’ (Madrid, November 2011, with Éva Buchi and Maria Reina Bastardas i Rufat) */ka'βall-u/ masc.n. ‘horse’

  10. 004? Victor Celac Junior researcher Romanian Academy With Jean-Paul Chauveau */'βɪndik-a-/ trans.vb. ‘save; avenge’

  11. 005 Jérémie Delorme Postdoctoral fellow FNRS/University of Liège */βi'n-aki-a/ fem.n. ‘grape marc’

  12. 006 Marco Maggiore PhD student Sapienza University of Rome Disciple of Rosario Coluccia (Lecce) */'kresk-e/ tr./intr. vb. ‘sprout; grow’

  13. 007? ? Sorry, but 007’s identity is top secret

  14. 008? Jan Reinhardt Postdoctoral fellow ATILF Disciple of Wolfgang Schweickard With Pascale Baudinot, Wolfgang Dahmen, Maria Iliescu and Johannes Kramer */la'brusk‑a/ ~ */la'brʊsk‑a/ fem.n. ‘wild grape; fruit of wild grape’

  15. 009? Agata Šega Lecturer University of Ljubljana Ceremony in honour of Mitja Skubic (Ljubljana, December 2010) */'mur-u/ masc.n. ‘wall’

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

  17. 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

  18. DÉRom’s Summer school (2010) 1. Attending lectures 2. Information retrieval 3. Compiling of DÉRom entries Marc-Olivier Hinzelin (lecturer University of Hamburg; postdoctorate with Martin Maiden)

  19. 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

  20. How do DÉRom’s agents carry out their mission? No Walther PP involved in their mission They are licensed to reconstruct Why is that unusual?

  21. 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

  22. DÉRom’s illustrious ancestor Romanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (REW3 1935) Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke (1861–1936) One of the most outstanding Romanists Etyma of inherited lexicon < Latin dictionaries < Latin texts

  23. DÉRom’s claim 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! Hence DÉRom’s objective: recreating Romance etymology on the basis of comparative grammar

  24. No Aston Martin, but... A web site: http://www.atilf.fr/DERom A ressource book: ‘Livre bleu’ (please contact pascale.baudinot@atilf.fr for a copy)

  25. 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

  26. 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”)

  27. 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.”

  28. 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.”

  29. 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

  30. 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 […]?”)

  31. Meyer-Lübke’s REW3 (1935) [3.] Headword → classical Latin (as found in Latin dictionaries) Does not account for Romanian rătund nor for its cognates Subentry → ‘fiddled with’ classical Latin (vowel system based on quantity, not timbre) Exceptionally, similar to comparative method, but not comparative method in the technical sense

  32. Corresponding DÉRom entry [4.] */ro'tʊnd-u/ adj. ‘round’ Compiled by Maria Hegner PhD student Saarland University Participant of DÉRom’s summer school With decisive contributions from eight internal revisors, in particular from Jean-Pierre Chambon

  33. 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/: almostgeneral (including Romanian), but without Sardinian

  34. Sardinian Continental Romance Romanian Italo-Western Romance 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/: almostgeneral (including Romanian), but without Sardinian Before voicing of intervocalic voiceless plosives (definitional of Italo-Western Romance) Proto-Romance I.1. II. I.2. III.

  35. 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/: almostgeneral (including Romanian), but without Sardinian I.1. */ro'tʊnd-u/: documented since Varro I.2. */to'rʊnd-u/: not documented II. */'tʊnd-u/: not documented III. */re'tʊnd-u/: documented only in the 7th century (when Latin had ceased to be a mother tongue → influenced from Romance)

  36. 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 What is more “bloodless”: rĕtŭndus (REW3) or this reconstruction of a complex micro-diasystem of words for ‘round’? Living, “bloodfilled” languages present internal variation! With all due respect to the glorious tradition of Romance etymology, at least in this case, comparative reconstruction yields more interesting results

  37. 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

  38. 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)

  39. Why is this methodological debate so important? Etymology has a social impact Kama Sutra 64 auxiliary arts: 1. Singing 2. Music 3. Dance 4. Painting […] 54. Etymology 55. Lexicography

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