Etymology and the European Lexicon constitutes the proceedings of the
14th Fachtagung of the Indogermanische Gesellschaft, held in Copenhagen
17-22 September 2012. The choice of etymology as the general theme of
the conference was partly motivated by a natural wish to take up this
fascinating field for new discussion more than thirty years after the
magnificent volume Lautgeschichte und Etymologie following the 6th
Fachtagung in Vienna 1978. Another reason was the research focus
characterizing the Indo-European section at the University of Copenhagen
since 2008 where we had the privilege to receive funding for a five-year
project, Roots of Europe - language, culture, and migrations. Etymology
is the obvious link between language and the outside world, and with an
increasing interest in prehistoric migrations and language contacts, we
felt confident that the conference would shed new light on the processes
eventually leading to the linguistic landscape of present-day Europe.
Among the 43 contributions, fitting neatly within the Rahmenthema, a
rich variety of subjects are covered, from the etymological
interpretation of specific words of Indo-European extraction to lexical
evidence for the disintegration of the language family, loan word
relations between Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages and the
basic concepts of historical semantics. The languages under discussion
include not only all the Indo-European branches, but also the assumed
substrata found in the lexicon and in toponyms all over Europe. The
volume thus marks the beginning of a new, focused investigation of the
layers the European lexicon seen in a cultural context which will
undoubtedly flourish in years to come with the combined efforts of
linguists, prehistoric archaeologists and geneticists.
