28.3406, Review: Romance; Historical Linguistics; Lexicogrpahy; Phonology; Semantics; Syntax: Buchi, Schweickard (2016)

Mon Aug 14 16:09:13 UTC 2017

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-3406. Mon Aug 14 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.3406, Review: Romance; Historical Linguistics; Lexicogrpahy; Phonology; Semantics; Syntax: Buchi, Schweickard (2016)

Moderators: linguist at linguistlist.org (Damir Cavar, Malgorzata E. Cavar)
Reviews: reviews at linguistlist.org (Helen Aristar-Dry, Robert Coté,
                                   Michael Czerniakowski)
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Clare Harshey <clare at linguistlist.org>
================================================================

Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 12:09:07
From: Bruno Maroneze [maronezebruno at yahoo.com.br]
Subject: Dictionnaire Étymologique Roman (DÉRom) 2

Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36291957

Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-4860.html

EDITOR: Éva  Buchi
EDITOR: Wolfgang  Schweickard
TITLE: Dictionnaire Étymologique Roman (DÉRom) 2
SUBTITLE: Pratique lexicographique et réflexions théoriques
SERIES TITLE: Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2016

REVIEWER: Bruno O. Maroneze, Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados

REVIEWS EDITOR: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

“Dictionnaire Étymologique Roman (DÉRom) 2”, edited by Éva Buchi and Wolfgang
Schweickard, written all in French, is divided in two parts: a theoretical and
methodological first part (with eleven contributions) and a lexicographical
second part, which includes 40 dictionary entries, in more than 140 pages. The
volume has a total of 617 pages.

A foreword (“Avant-propos”) written by the editors explains the main goals of
the volume: its theoretical and methodological contributions try to present
solutions to some problems posed in the first volume (called, shortly, Dérom
1), as well as to enlarge the number of entries (114 in the first volume, 40
in this one). The authors finish the text describing the “Ten commandments of
the déromien” (déromien is a person who writes a DÉRom entry), which show the
methodological rigour that is sought in the work.

The theoretical and methodological first part is divided in three subparts: 1.
“Réflexions soulevées par la pratique lexicographique” (Reflections raised by
lexicographical practice), with nine chapters; 2. “Codification des principes
rédactionnels” (Codification of writing principles), with two chapters; and 3.
“Liste des publications du DÉRom” (DÉRom’s list of publications).

The first contribution, by Valentin Tomachpolski, is entitled “La modélisation
de l’inventaire phonématique vocalique en position atone du protoroman”
(Modelisation of Proto-Romance phonemic inventory of unstressed vowels). The
author describes the work of a team of researchers (all members of the DÉRom
project) who discussed the best ways to represent the unstressed vowels of
Proto-Romance. Two systems are presented, both used in traditional works of
Romance studies: the ternary notation system, which represents “closed”,
“open” and neutralized vowels; and the binary notation system, which
represents tense/closed (marked) and lax/open (unmarked) vowels. The author
concludes presenting four proposals that will still be debated in the future.

The second contribution, by Xavier Gouvert, also deals with phonological
reconstruction: “Du protoitalique au protoroman: deux problems de
reconstruction phonologique” (From Proto-Italic to Proto-Romance: two problems
of phonological reconstruction) brings discussion on two issues: first, the
articulation (bilabial or labiodental) of Proto-Romance /F/ [because of
limitations of ASCII characters, I will employ common letters together with
phonetic descriptions]: it is argued, against Maniet (1950) and others, that
this segment was labiodental. The second issue is the spirantization of
intervocalic plosives: the author argues that this phenomenon is older than
usually thought, dating from the period before the first Archaic Latin texts
(but after Proto-Italic).

Lexical semantic reconstruction is the subject of the third chapter,
“Reconstruction comparative et histoire sémantique” (Comparative
reconstruction and semantic history), by Jean-Paul Chauveau. The author
discusses how to identify if a lexical meaning is already present in
Proto-Romance or if it was diffused by language contact or, still, if it
appeared in more than one language in a parallel way. The text is very rich in
examples, presenting solutions brought by different dictionaries (DÉRom
included) and proposing some criteria to help the researchers in this
reconstruction task.

The next contribution deals with a classic theoretical problem of Romance
Linguistics: the reconstruction of a neuter gender in Proto-Romance:
“Problèmes théoriques (et pratiques) posés par la reconstruction du genre
neutre en protoroman” (Theoretical (and practical) problems caused by the
reconstruction of a neuter gender in Proto-Romance), by Éva Buchi and Yan
Greub, asks the following question: is it possible to demonstrate the
existence of a neuter gender in Proto-Romance only through reconstruction,
without relying on written Classical Latin evidence? The authors answer the
question with a “yes”, after the evidence presented by the so-called Zurich
School (Faraoni, Gardani & Loporcaro 2013), and argue that, at least for one
specific case (*fame[n], ‘hunger’), it is possible to reconstruct a neuter
gender even if the attested Classical Latin correlated word is not neuter.

The following three chapters deal with aspects of linguistic Geography and
areal Romance Linguistics. “La classification des glottonymes dans un
dictionnaire étymologique panroman. L’exemple des dialectes italiens”
(Classification of glottonyms in a Pan-Romance etymological dictionary: the
case of italian dialects), by Marco Maggiore, brings up the very complex
subject of the Italian geographical variation, which is the most
linguistically fragmented area in the Romance languages area and perhaps in
all Europe. The author compares the dialect classification employed in the
Romanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch with his own proposal and the current
simplified system of the DÉRom.

The sixth chapter is entitled “Les constellations géolinguistiques dans le
DÉRom” (Geolinguistic constellations in the DÉRom), by Jan Reinhardt. The
author analyses the constellations, which are groups of three Romance
languages that share etymons. By quantifying the number of reconstructed
etymons shared by each constellation, it is possible to identify which
languages are more closely related; this knowledge may help in reconstruction
and also in the lexicographic presentation of the articles.

The seventh chapter, “Le protoroman mis en carte: guide de lecture”
(Proto-Romance put in maps: reading guide), by Jérémie Delorme, presents 34
maps (preceded by a very detailed explanation on how to read and interpret
them) that show the distribution of morphological and semantic phenomena
throughout the Romance languages.

At the eighth chapter, “Le DÉRom expliqué aux lecteurs non spécialistes, mais
dotés d’une saine curiosité” (DÉRom explained to non-specialist readers, but
with a healthy curiosity), Marie-Thérèse Kneib explains in great detail the
methodology, theoretical principles and lexicographical decisions that guide
the research, presenting also a consultation guide for the dictionary,
employing a language accessible to non-specialist readers.

The ninth and last theoretical chapter is entitled “Ouverture: protoroman,
latin et indo-européen” (Opening: Proto-Romance, Latin and Indo-European), by
Romain Garnier. The main point argued by the author is that there is a
continuity from Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Romance; as such, Proto-Romance
should not be regarded as “derived” from Latin, but as Latin itself, and the
written Latin texts must be regarded as “derived” from spoken Proto-Romance.
The author also proposes interesting solutions for old etymological problems,
like */kaBallu/ ‘horse’ and */rokka/ ‘stone, rock’.

The second subpart, entitled “Codification des principes rédactionnels”
(Codification of writing principles) contains two contributions: the first one
is a long and detailed text by Victor Celac, “Normes rédactionnelles” (Writing
norms), which details all the principles followed by the authors of DÉRom
articles and explains all the lexicographical conventions to the consultants.
It is followed by the “Bibliographie de consultation et de citation
obligatoires” (Bibliography of mandatory consultation and citation), by
Mihaela-Mariana Morcov, which is a rich list of works classified by language
(including some general works), all of them of mandatory consultation for the
writers of DÉRom articles.

Finally, the third subpart (“Liste des publications du DÉRom” - DÉRom’s list
of publications) presents a seven-page long list of published works from the
DÉRom research group.

The second part, “Partie lexicographique” (Lexicographical part), contains 40
dictionary articles, all of them at least two pages long, followed by
“Abréviations et signes conventionnels” (Abbreviations and conventional signs)
and “Bibliographie” (Bibliography), this one signed by Pascale Baudinot. All
dictionary articles are also available for consultation on the DÉRom website
(although the printed version includes maps for many of them, which are not
found on the website).

EVALUATION

The Dictionnaire Étymologique Roman intends to be a new reference work for
Romance Linguistics, and it is certainly on the right path. Its articles are
very detailed and its methodology is solid and rigorous. The proposal of
reconstructing all the forms instead of employing the forms of written Latin
may sound odd at first sight, because it is a radical shift from traditional
research on Romance Linguistics, but the researchers have successfully
demonstrated that this method certainly brings new insight on the subject.

The methodological rigor of both the theoretical chapters and the dictionary
articles is really impressive. Also very useful for Romance linguists is the
bibliography presented by Morcov (on the second part), which is organized by
language and language group.

A reader, like myself, who is reading this book as the first contact to the
texts of the project may feel that some of its aspects are left unexplained.
For instance, on the subject of reconstruction, it may seem odd that the DÉRom
researchers prefer to reconstruct a bilabial /F/ instead of a labiodental /f/.
Most Romance languages (maybe all) have a labiodental instead of a bilabial
/F/. Bilabial /F/ is, thus, reconstructed based not on language comparison,
but on written Latin accounts. The second chapter, by Xavier Gouvert,
explicitly argues against this reconstruction. As such, more arguments for
bilabial /F/ reconstruction are needed for the reader, which are certainly
presented on other DÉRom publications (to which I did not have access yet).

Another phonological issue that may seem unusual is the transcription of
Proto-Romance “qu”, as in */’kuando/ (Classical Latin “quando”): there is no
indication of the non-syllabic character of the vowel /u/ and, thus, the word
might be incorrectly syllabified as /’ku.an.do/ (with a stressed /u/). A
complete explanation on why “qu” is transcribed as /ku/ (and not as /kw/, for
instance) is lacking in this volume (although it may be presented in other
DÉRom publications).

In the same respect, the first chapters of this volume presuppose that the
reader already understands the methodological principles of the DÉRom, which
are not widely known even among Romance linguists. Because of that, the eighth
chapter, which explains these principles, might be put at the beginning of the
volume.

A few typos were detected:

- on page 198, in explaining the pronunciation of the bilabial sound /B/
[“beta” in the IPA], Spanish ‘lavar’ is transcribed /la’bar/, but it obviously
should be /la’Bar/;

- on page 267: “Dans ce cas, elles peuvent soit apparaître dans le corps des
articles, sont [it should be “soit”] être citées en note”;

- on page 329: “Remarques préliminiares” [it should be “préliminaires”]

- on page 330: the title of Meyer-Lübke’s first mentioned work is correctly
spelled “Grammatik der Romanischen Sprachen” [not “Grammaik”, as misspelled on
the printed text]

- on pages 396 and 397, the same map “*/Bad-e-/ (types formels)” was printed
mistakenly twice, although the second time it is marked as “types
sémantico-syntaxiques”.

All the issues pointed out in this review are only minor problems. The DÉRom
project, as a whole, is one of the most important advances in Romance
Linguistics in the last decades and this volume is certainly a must-have for
linguists working on the subject. The project website
(http://www.atilf.fr/DERom/) also contains many other materials, including
downloadable publications and many different ways of consulting the dictionary
articles, and it is also worth exploring.

REFERENCES

FARAONI, Vicenzo; GARDANI, Francesco; LOPORCARO, Michele (2013) Manifestazioni
del neutro nell’italoromanzo medievale. In: Emili Casanova Herrero; Cesáreo
Calvo Rigual (eds.) Actas del XXVI Congreso Internacional de Lingüística y de
Filología Románicas (Valencia 2010), vol. 2, Berlin/New York, De Gruyter,
171-182.

MANIET, Albert (1950). L’évolution phonétique et les sons du latin ancien.
Louvain: Arta.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Bruno Maroneze completed his Ph.D. in the University of Sao Paulo in 2011. His
Ph.D. thesis focuses on Brazilian Portuguese neologisms formed by suffixation.
His main research interests are on Lexicology, specifically word formation,
neologisms and diachronic studies of the lexicon. He is currently teaching in
the Faculty of Communication ,Arts and Letters of the Universidade Federal da
Grande Dourados, MS, Brazil.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
            http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-28-3406	
----------------------------------------------------------
Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated
from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships:
          http://multitree.org/