Hereditary word
Hereditary word is the name for a word that has developed from a word already contained in a language in previous levels .
The etymology tried the temporal evolution and origin of the vocabulary to clarify the language. Hereditary words provide information about the origin of the language. They have to be distinguished from loan words that have been adopted from a parallel language.
The modern German language can be traced back through several medieval languages ( Middle High German , Old High German ) that have also been handed down in writing . Modern words that have their origins in those languages, for example, are considered hereditary words. Looking back even further, the German language emerged from the indirectly accessible ancient Germanic language - as well as from the ancient Indo-European language , which lies even deeper in the past - from which it received many hereditary words.
It should be noted, however, that “hereditary word” can be a relative term: A word can be inherited from an earlier language level, but it can have been a loan word at an even earlier level. For example, "Bishop" is an hereditary word with regard to Old High German (8th century biscof ), but was not yet available in ancient Germanic (as a word associated with Christianity) and is only later derived from the Latin episcopus (or a Romanic biscopus that is not directly documented ) has been borrowed from a forerunner of Old High German (before the High German phonetic shift , cf. unshifted English bishop ). “Iron” is a word that can already be developed for the Ur-Germanic, but not inherited from the Ur-Indo-European, but an early Celtic loan word. Even older layers of loanwords are also a possibility that must be taken into account, so that even words inherited from Urindo-European can be ancient borrowings.
Examples of hereditary words in the German language are: "Sonne", "Vater", "Nase" and almost all strong verbs .
See also
literature
- Harald Wiese: A journey through time to the origins of our language. How Indo-European Studies explains our words. 2nd Edition. Logos Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3832516017 .
