[Lingtyp] Unidirectionality of language naming

[Hartmut Haberland]

See this from the English Wikipedia s.v. theodiscus:
“[t]he first known attestation of theodiscus is to be found in a letter written around the year 786 by the Bishop of Ostia. In the letter, the bishop writes to Pope Adrian I about a synod taking place in Corbridge, England; where the decisions were later read aloud elsewhere "tam Latine quam theodisce", meaning "in Latin as well as the vernacular/common tongue. Rendered in Old English as þēodisc, the term was primarily used as an adjective concerning the language of the laity.”
So there theodisc had nothing to do with the language or the people later called German, but just referred to the local vulgar tongue (Old English) as opposed to the language of the erudite, viz. Latin.


Fra: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> På vegne af Christian Lehmann
Sendt: 28. november 2023 19:22
Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
Emne: 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.)

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

_______________________________________________

Lingtyp mailing list

Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>

https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
--

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

+49/361/2113417

E-Post:

christianw_lehmann at arcor.de<mailto:christianw_lehmann at arcor.de>

Web:

https://www.christianlehmann.eu


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20231128/dc34f5f7/attachment.htm>