C. Etymology and the motivation of words

As already noted, the etymology of words is closely bound up with their ‘motivation’: the question whether there is an intrinsic connexion between sound and sense or whether our words are purely conventional symbols, mere ‘tokens current and accepted for concepts, as moneys are for values’. The whole problem, which has exercised many philosophers, writers and linguists, has been fully re-exam­ined during the last quarter of a century, and valuable new insights have been gained into the workings of motiv­ation and the principles of word-structure. There are four main points in particular which have been considerably clarified by recent research:

1. We now know that the real issue is not whether words in general are conventional or motivated, opaque or transparent, since both types are present, in varying propor­tions, in any linguistic system. We also know that motiv­ation itself is a highly complex phenomenon which may work in three different ways:

(a)Onomatopoeic words like crash, rumble, swish, whizz, zoom are phonetically motivated: there is direct correspond­ence between the sounds and the sense. The uses of this principle in poetry are innumerable, nor are they by any means confined to the imitation of noises. Sounds may also evoke light and colour, as well as states of mind and moral qualities.

(b)A great many words are motivated by their mor­phological structure. A compound like ash-tray or motorway, a derivative-like intake or fellowship, will be readily intel­ligible to all who know their components. Even such unor­thodox formations as beautility, automation or meritocracy were perfectly comprehensible when we met them for the first time, though some others, such as beatnik or brinkmanship, whilst transparent in themselves (beatnik is ob­viously, based on sputnik, brinkmanship on showmanship, penmanship, etc.), can be fully understood only in the light of the special circumstances which called them into existence.

(c)There is also a third type of motivation. If we use a word in a transferred meaning, metaphorical or other­wise, the result will be semantically motivated: it will be transparent thanks to the connexion between the two senses. Thus, when we speak of the root of an evil, the branches of a science, an offensive nipped in the bud, the flower of a country’s manhood, the fruits of peace, or a family-tree, the use of these botanical terms is not arbitrary, but motiv­ated by some kind of similarity or analogy between their concrete meanings and the abstract phenomena to which they are applied.

Processes (b)and (c), morphological and semantic mo­tivation, could be bracketed under the more general head­ing of ‘etymological motivation’ since they concern words derived from existing elements whereas phonetic motivation involves the creation of completely new forms. This also means that etymological motivation is always ‘relative’: the result is transparent but the elements themselves are opaque unless they happen to be phonetically motivated. To look again at some of the examples just cited, ash-tray is analysable but ash and tray are not; fellowship is motiv­ated but fellow and the suffix -ship are conventional; ‘the root of an evil’ is a self-explanatory metaphor whereas root in the literal sense is opaque. Onomatopoeia alone can provide ultimate motivation in language.

2. A second principle elaborated by semantics is that of the variability of motivation. The proportion of transparent and opaque terms in a given language, and the relative frequency of the various types of motivation, depends on a multiplicity of factors; it varies characteristically from one idiom to another and may even differ between succes­sive periods of the same language. [...]

3. Another important principle is that of the mutability of motivation. A word which was once motivated may seem conventional today; conversely, a term which was originally opaque, or had lost its transparency, may become motiv­ated, or remotivated, at a later stage. Nothing could be less expressive than English touch or French toucher; yet they go back to Vulgar Latin toccare, from the onomato­poeic toe ‘knock, tap’. The morphological structure of a word may become similarly obscured. In English maintain and French maintenir, the meaning of the two Latin com­ponents, manus ‘hand’ and tenere ‘to hold’, has become totally eclipsed... [...]

4. Yet another fundamental principle is that of the subjectivity of these processes. For a creative writer inter­ested in word-origins and sensitive to linguistic nuances, a term may retain its pristine transparency, or may even acquire unsuspected powers of evocation and suggestion, where the ordinary reader perceives no trace of motivation. It is in the field of onomatopoeia in particular that writ­ers give free rein to their imagination. [...]

Proper names are particularly apt to be caught up in such sound and sense associations. Some of these may have a private background, as in the case of the German poet Morgenstern who once declared that all sea-gulls look as if their name was Emma. [...]