[Lingtyp] Unidirectionality of language naming

[Riccardo Giomi]

The name Yugoslavia is also a modern compound, whereas the root for 'Slavic' people that it contains is much older. So you have at least a reversal of the place > community directionality. According to one of the many theories about the origins of the community-denoting root, there is one that states it is connected for the (Proto-Slavic) word for 'word', which in a way could even feature a reversal of the community > language claim (if you enlarge the notion of 'language' somewhat). But then again, this is just a theory, and certainly not the dominant one, as far as I know.

Best,
Riccardo


Riccardo Giomi
Assistant Professor of Functional Linguistics
University of Amsterdam
Faculty of Humanities: Department of Linguistics
Spuistraat 134, 1012 VB, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
________________________________
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Christian Lehmann <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de>
Sent: 28 November 2023 19:22
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Unidirectionality of language naming


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.)

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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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