[Lingtyp] Unidirectionality of language naming

[Christian Lehmann]

Depending on how you assess the role of derivation and compounding in 
your ">" symbols, the autonym of German inverts your entire path.

The word /deutsch/ was /thiutisk/ in Old High German. It is an adjective 
derived from the noun /thiuda/ 'people' and was first used to refer to 
the language spoken by the people, as opposed to Latin. It thus does not 
presuppose a community name (which /thiuda/ was not). On the contrary, 
the adjective got secondarily applied to the people who speak the 
/thiutisk/ way. Finally, the land which these people inhabit was called 
(by earlier forms of the modern word) /Deutschland/.

(„deutsch“, in: Wolfgang Pfeifer et al., Etymologisches Wörterbuch des 
Deutschen (1993), digitalisierte und von Wolfgang Pfeifer überarbeitete 
Version im Digitalen Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 
<https://www.dwds.de/wb/etymwb/deutsch>, abgerufen am 28.11.2023.)

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Am 28.11.2023 um 13:39 schrieb Pun Ho Lui:
> Dear All,
>
> Recently I have been working on the etymology of language names with etymons such as ’no’, ‘what’, and commonly place names and community names.
>
> It seems that language names (specifically endonyms, i.e. how the locals call their own language) follow a unidirectional change of derivation or semantic extension (e.g using the community name as language name without any formal word formation):
>
> place name> community name> language name
>
> I am wondering if there is any language name that violates the above unidirectional cline.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Warmest,
> Pun Ho Lui Joe
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-- 

Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
Rudolfstr. 4
99092 Erfurt
Deutschland

Tel.: 	+49/361/2113417
E-Post: 	christianw_lehmann at arcor.de
Web: 	https://www.christianlehmann.eu
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