Etymology and the European Lexicon

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.