Asian etymology: achieving faster progress and more secure results
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 2020-12-17

A keynote address given by Nathan W. Hill and Xun Gong at the 9th International Conference: New Horizons in Oriental Studies (University of Warsaw. 8 December 2020). 

ABSTRACT: In the absence of formalized verification procedures, progress in etymological research relies on a thriving community of interlocutors to collectively gather data and scrutinize new hypotheses. This ‘crowd sourcing’ serves Indo-European languages well; 20 Italian dialects have etymological dictionaries (Crevatin 2004). Less well resourced languages lag behind. Among the 300 Trans-Himalayan languages only Chinese has received meaningful etymological attention (Schuessler 2007). For new etymological dictionaries of understudied languages to be compiled the workflows of etymological research demand partial automation. During the first phase of etymological research—the phase we target for automation—the bulk of words are traced to their ancestors according to regular phonology (Malkiel 1993: 148-151). Thus, progress in etymology depends on and stimulates progress in historical phonology (Hoffmann & Tichy 1980). Malkiel (1993: 11) illustrates this ‘zigzag’ with the example of Friedrich Diez (1794-1876), who alternatingly published three editions of his comparative Romance grammar and etymological dictionary. We attempt to model this positive feedback loop between etymology and phonology in a method for computer-assisted proto-language reconstruction.