Etymological Studies Based on a Conceptual Framework
Abstract
The purpose of the poster is to demonstrate that vocabulary analyses by concept groups can contribute to etymological research. The paper focuses on some groups of the Indo-European influences on Estonian and cognate languages. Many nautical and fishing terms were borrowed from the Swedish in the Middle Ages, when the coastal areas of Estonia and Finland were populated by Swedes. The Estonian colour terms system is quite similar to the German system, and many words for the specific tones are German loanwords in Estonian (Oja 2001: 32–33). Studying the names of insects we found very few German loanwords, but there are many similarities in comparison with the corresponding Baltic/Slavic thematic groups (Vaba 2015: 370–383). The systematic analysis helps get more reliable results in etymological research. Single concepts will be approached as elements of the semantic system in order to explain the initial motivation for naming the concept.
Session
Historical and Scholarly Lexicography and Etymology
Keywords
etymology; onomasiology; thematic groups; Indo-European loanwords; Estonian
BibTex
@InProceedings{ELX2016-067,
author={Vilja Oja},
title={Etymological Studies Based on a Conceptual Framewor},
pages={608-613},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 17th EURALEX International Congress},
year={2016},
month={sep},
date={6-10},
address={Tbilisi, Georgia},
editor={Tinatin Margalitadze, George Meladze},
publisher={Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi University Press},
isbn={978-9941-13-542-2},
}
