3.2.6 Folk Etymology

Etymological analysis requires a systematic research of the origin and development of lexemes or expressions that is done by scholars; however, not only researchers are concerned with the etymology of the language items, but laypersons are also curious about the make-up of words. People try to associate strange words with the ones they already know; therefore, every speaker is a kind of etymologist himself or herself. This trivial and amusing phenomenon is called folk etymology, or popular etymology, or false etymology. “In its simplest operations, folk etymology merely associates together words which resemble each other in sound and show a real or fancied similarity of meaning, but which are not at all related in their origin” (Greenough & Kittredge, 1967, p.145). This arises from ignorance of the true origin of these words. Some examples of folk etymology are Welsh rarebit (the original Welsh rabbit, ‘cheese on toast’) and sirloin (original surloin). Folk etymology not only affects the spelling of words and their associations, but “it [also] transforms the word, in whole or in part, so to bring it nearer to the word or words with which it is ignorantly thought to be connected” (p.147). Often, folk etymology affects borrowed words, e.g., sparrowgrass (L. asparagus), but it may affect native words as well, as in the example of sand-blind (original samblind). These examples show that folk etymology is based on people’s misunderstanding of certain words and their attempt to domesticate them so that they sound and spelled like the words in their own language. “Folk etymology—the naive misunderstanding of a more or less esoteric word that makes it into something more familiar and hence seems to give it a new etymology, false though it be—is a minor kind of blending” (Algeo, 2010, p. 241).

Part IV: The Word

4.1 Defining a Word

While everyone knows what a word is, defining one is surprisingly complex. Since the word is central to any language system, different disciplines including phonology, lexicology, syntax, morphology, psychology, and other branches of science bring their own particular questions to the notion of ‘word.’ Scholars in these fields characterize the notion of ‘word’ very specifically; therefore, their respective definitions show certain limitations. Within the scope of linguistics, the word has been defined syntactically, semantically, phonologically, and by combining various approaches. The semantic-phonological approach may be illustrated with Alan Gardiner’s definition: “A word is an articulate sound-symbol in its aspect of denoting something which is spoken about” (1922, p. 355). The eminent French linguist Paul Jules Antoine Meillet combines the semantic, phonological, and grammatical criteria: “A word is defined by the association of a particular meaning with a particular group of sounds capable of a particular grammatical employment” (1926, p.30). Edward Sapir takes into consideration the syntactic and semantic aspects when he calls the word “one of the smallest, completely satisfying bits of isolated meaning into which the sentence resolves itself” (1921, p.35). He also points out a very important characteristic of the word -- its indivisibility: “[A word] cannot be cut into without a disturbance of meaning, one or the other or both of the severed parts remaining as a helpless waif on our hands” (p. 35). We can illustrate this point with the help of the preposition about. If we divide it into two parts, a + bout, we receive two different words, an article a and a noun bout (a period of work or other activity). About and a bout do not share the same meaning. If we cut the word absorb into a and bsorb, we have an article a, but the severed part bsorb does not mean anything, thus “remaining as a helpless waif on our hands” (Sapir, 1921, p.35).

The American linguist Leonard Bloomfield is the first to suggest a formal definition of the word. He defines a word as a minimum free form. He identifies the basic unit of a structure as a morpheme (morphemes will be discussed later in the text). He states that a list of morphemes for a language constitutes the lexicon (1933, p.178). The notion lexicon is further developed by David Crystal. This term was borrowed from Greek in the early seventeenth century, which meant a dictionary containing a selection of words and meanings, arranged in an alphabetical order (Skeat, p. 260). The term itself comes from Greek lexis ‘word.’ The term lexicon has broadened its meaning, and within linguistics, it refers to the stock of meaningful units in a language. To study the lexicon of English means to study all aspects of the vocabulary of the language: words, idioms, prefixes, suffixes, meaning and meaning relations. Crystal differentiates between a word and a lexeme when he states, “A lexeme (or lexical item) is a unit of lexical meaning which exists regardless of any inflectional endings it may have or the number of words it may contain” (p.118). If we encounter a sentence with the words pixilating, pixilatates, and pixilated, we will disregard the endings of these words and look up the meaning of the lexeme pixilate (be somewhat unbalanced mentally or be drunk). For this reason, the headwords in a dictionary are all lexemes.

What counts as a word then? Howard Jackson and Etienne Zé Amvela (2007) define a word as an “uninterruptible unit of structure consisting of one or more morphemes and which typically occurs in the structure of phrases” (p.59). They also make a distinction between lexical and grammatical words. Lexical words are nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, and adverbs. Such elements as prepositions, articles, conjunctions, and forms indicating number and tense are grammatical words (p.59). Irina Arnold believes all the definitions of the word are “dependent upon the line of approach, the aim the scholar has in view” (p.30). She states that for a comprehensive word theory, a description seems more appropriate than a definition:

The word is the fundamental unit of language. It is a dialectical unity of form and content. Its content or meaning is not identical to notion, but it may reflect human notions, and in this sense may be considered as the form of their existence. Concepts fixed in the meaning of words are formed as generalized and approximately correct reflections of reality; therefore, in signifying them, words reflect reality in their content. The acoustic aspect of the word serves to name objects of reality, not to reflect them. In this sense the word may be regarded as a sign. This sign, however, is not arbitrary but motivated by the whole process of its development. That is to say, when a word first comes into existence it is built out of the elements already available in the language and according to the existing patterns. (1986, p.31)

Although we may agree with some points of Arnold’s description of a word and believe that a word has many facets, we adhere to the simple definition of the word as the smallest free form found in a language. According to Bloomfield, ‘a minimum free form’ is a word. By this, he means that “the word is the smallest meaningful linguistic unit that can be used on its own” (as cited in Katamba, 2012, p. 6). We can contrast two words devil and devilish. The word devil is a minimum free form, and we cannot divide this word into pieces without destroying its meaning. The word devilish can be divided into pieces: devil and –ish. While devil has a meaning, -ish does not have any meaning, and it cannot stand on its own; therefore, devil is a word, but –ish is not a word.

William O’Grady, Michael Dobrovolsky, and Mark Aronoff also define a word a “minimal free form” (1993, p.112). A free form is an element which does not have to occur in a fixed position with respect to neighboring elements in a language.

1. A cat is a domestic animal.

2. I see a cat.

3. Many commercial cat foods are laced with corn.

In the first example, the word cat appears before the verb; in the second example, it appears after the verb, and in the third example, it appears in front of the noun. The reference to minimal is important because we do not identify phrases like the birds as one word, since it consists of two free forms—the and birds.

Even though we define words as minimal free forms, they are not minimal meaningful units of language because they can be broken down further. The word unemployment can stand alone, but it can also be broken into three parts: un-, employ, and -ment. The term for these minimal meaningful units is sign (de Saussure, 1959, p.68). A more common term in linguistics is a morpheme. Ferdinand de Saussure states that a sign is a combination of a concept and a sound image. Most linguists believe a sign has an arbitrary nature; however, it does not mean that any person can create a sign; he or she does not have a power to change the sign when it is established in the linguistic community (pp.68-69). William O’Grady, Michael Dobrovolsky, and Mark Aronoff also believe that most linguistic signs are arbitrary, which means that the connection between the sound of a given sign and its meaning is purely conventional, not rooted in some property of the object for which a sign stands (p.133). There is nothing about the sound-image (signifier [de Saussure, p.67]) of the concept (signified [de Saussure, p.67]) of frog, which refers to these creatures; therefore, we consider this sign to be chosen arbitrarily. The same word frog has different sounds in different languages: lyagushka (Russian), baka (Tatar), Frosch (German), kicker (Dutch), and grenouille (French). Some linguists may argue that onomatopoeia (the naming of a thing or action by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with it, as buzz, hiss, etc.) might be used to prove that the choice of the signifier is not always arbitrary, but de Saussure argues that “onomatopoeic formations are never organic elements of a linguistic system” (p.69). Moreover, although onomatopoeia is used to create a word, it does not have the same signifier in all the languages: buzz (English), vızıltı (Turkish), hudziennie (Belorussian), zhuzhzhanie (Russian), zumbido (Spanish), kêu vo vo (Vietnamese), etc. All these examples prove the arbitrary nature of a sign.