Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1993, Page 106

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Pétur Knútsson
ization for pasteurization, where the connection between ‘milk’ and
‘pasture’ is compounded by the almost inevitable homophony of the
two forms. But it is clearly not enough to say that “adaption and con-
tamination” of loans into English will be prompted by the fact that the
word does not appear to be composed of familiar morphemes, firstly
since this could be said of large numbers of native English words, and
secondly since most loans never undergo these changes. Instead, I sug-
gest two essential factors: firstly there must be a pre-existing form
in the receptor language to prompt the change, and secondly there
must be a sanction for paronomasia in the receptor language. We
shall retum to this second point shortly (section 7.1).
4. Prescriptive etymology
4.0 “Etymonic necessity”
My complaint is that the concept of “popular” or “folk-etymology”
is rarely invoked without implications of popular ignorance and error:
there is a prescriptive feeling abroad that this is not the way in which
the language ought to have developed, and that uneducated people have
been stepping out of line. Language change has always been experi-
enced by intellectuals — including, I am afraid, no small proportion
of the linguists — as a decline in standards. Of course disapproval of
“popular etymology” can to some extent be explained by a desire to
maintain scholarly standards; but it is disconcerting, to say the least,
to find Leonard Bloomfield, writing in 1933 as one of the foremost
exponents of descriptive as against prescriptive linguistics, expressing
the prescriptive prejudices of an earlier age. Consider, for example,
the following from English Synonyms Discriminated by W. Taylor of
Norwich, published in London in 1850 (xv, xix)
(3) So much of meaning as inheres in the radical and primary sig-
nification of a word is necessarily immortal: but that which has
accrued from causal application may die out and disappear...
I have habitually endeavoured, by etymologic investigation,
to ascertain of every analysed word the primary sense.