etymology of "trouver"

[Kevin Tuite]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Dear colleagues,

As many of you may know, especially those working in Romance
linguistics, the etymology of French "trouver" and Occitan "trobar"
was the subject of an animated debate a century ago between Hugo
Schuchardt and the French linguists Gaston Paris and Antoine Thomas.
(I have cobbled together a summary out of various papers &
etymological dictionaries, shown below). The debate is of interest
for a number of reasons: the priority to be accorded regular sound
change in reconstruction (as against the consideration of semantics,
lexical contamination, etc.), the beginnings of the
"Wörter-und-Sachen" deployment of data from folklore and material
culture in etymological argumentation, and of course, the
personalities involved.  My impression, as a non-specialist, is that
most recent references to the etymology of "trouver" derive it from
*tropare, although the authors of some etymological dictionaries
continue to lean toward Schuchardt's hypothesis. I plan to cite this
debate in a book chapter I am now writing on historical linguistic
methodology, and I wish to have a sense of where the matter stands at
present. I would like to hear your opinions of the arguments
formulated by the various parties to the debate. (And if there has
been any recent discussion of the "trouver" etymology, please send me
the references). I will summarize your responses for the list.

thanks in advance!

Kevin Tuite

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The story of the "trouver" debate begins with Friedrich Diez's
supposition that Latin /turbare/ "stir up" was the source, although a
somewhat far-fetched sequence of meaning changes had to be assumed:
"stir up" > "rummage through" > "seek" > "find". In 1878, Paris
challenged Diez's hypothesis on phonetic grounds. The transition from
turbare to its alleged descendants would require (1) metathesis of
the /r/: /turbare/ > */trubare/; (2) lowering of the initial vowel to
/o/: */trubare/ > */trobare/; (3) retention of the intervocalic /b/
in Occitan: */trobare/ > /trobar/. Metathesis of /r/ is not rare in
the history of the Romance languages, but the lenition of
intervocalic /b/ to /v/ or zero appeared to be a highly regular sound
change in Occitan (e.g. /probare/ > /proar/ "prove"). As an
alternative source, Paris  reconstructed the Vulgar Latin proto-form
*tropare, which had the advantage of accounting for "trouver" and
"trobar" via regular sound laws, but like /turbare/ it necessitated
an unusual semantic pathway ("compose [a melody]" > "invent" >
"discover, find" ). About two decades later, Schuchardt attempted to
show that Diez's initial proposal might not have been so wrong-headed
after all. The /turbare/ etymology could be made to work if one
allowed for irregular sound changes under the influence of the
closely-related verb /turbulare/ > */trublare/ "stir up", whence
French "troubler" and Occitan "treblar". As for the semantic
development, in Schuchardt's opinion, turbare underwent a meaning
shift from "stir up" to the more specialized sense of "stir up
[water] in order to drive [fish toward a trap or net]", a meaning
continued by cognates in several Italian and Sardinian dialects,
which denote hunting by flushing game animals out the bush, or
catching fish by driving them toward poisoned water. Besides amassing
linguistic evidence, Schuchardt undertook research into traditional
European fishing techniques. According to Malkiel (1993: 26), he was
said to have "temporarily transformed one of the rooms of his home
into a small-scale museum of fishing gear" while investigating this
etymology. There is a very good summary and discussion of the
"trouver" debate in: Ernst Tappolet. 1905. "Phonetik und Semantik in
der etymologischen Forschung", reprinted in Etymologie, Rüdiger
Schmitt, ed., 74-102. Darmstadt: Wissenschaft(1977).



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Kevin Tuite                                    514-343-6514      (bureau)
Département d'anthropologie                    514-343-2494 (télécopieur)
Université de Montréal
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Montréal, Québec H3C 3J7                          tuitekj at anthro.umontreal.ca
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