[Lingtyp] Unidirectionality of language naming

[Kate Lindsey]

A similar pattern to Christian's deutsch example: *barbar* (languages that
are not Greek) --> *barbarian *(people who speak these languages) --> *barbaria
*(place where these people live)*.*
____________________
Kate L. Lindsey
Assistant Professor of Linguistics
Boston University
Boston, MA 02215
http://ling.bu.edu/people/lindsey


On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 1:23 PM Christian Lehmann <
christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> wrote:

> 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>
> <https://www.dwds.de/wb/etymwb/deutsch>, abgerufen am 28.11.2023.)
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 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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