I
The OED tag ‘On Historical Principles’ is understandably emulated without
realizing its full implications. A historian
of human culture or of language has no control over the selection of his data. The historical processes themselves which he
presumably wants to understand have sieved the data for him – from his point of
view this sievage may be felicitous or disastrous or indifferent; in any case
the result is always going to be fragmentary.
I am of course speaking of his principal data – the so-called primary sources.
In relation to the history of language these are texts (or specimens of
the use of language). Besides being fragmentary, the data is also
going to be ‘dead’ in the sense of being a residue of transitory events. For the older stages of the language, for example,
we may have texts available for a postmortem possibly with the help of an interpretative
tradition, but no sample user of the language with his Sprachgefűhl.
The historian, in order to make up for this double handicap, resorts to
the principle of uniformity.
Hutton, a practitioner of geology which is also a historical inquiry unlike
physics or chemistry, formulates it in the following manner (as summarized in
Labov 1971: 482): processes which operated to produce the geological record are
essentially the same as the ones now taking place around us – weathering, sedimentation,
volcanic activity, earthquakes, and so on.
A student of human history unlike that of natural history has a second
string to his bow – which can be as treacherous as it can be helpful. The human beings whose history is being investigated
are disposed to stand back from their own activities even as they are immersed
in them and maintain a running commentary. Indeed some of these comments may stem from
contemporary or subsequent historians’ activity itself. In other words, the so-called secondary sources
of a historian may have been left behind by his forerunners.
Focusing more narrowly on the history of language we must at the outset
make a distinction between a synchronic analysis of a historical stage of a language
to which we have access only through texts and not through live contact on the
one hand and linguistic history proper which diachronically connects various stages
(including of course the contemporary stage if any). By a historical dictionary we shall mean a
dictionary that is historical in this second sense. Whether we have in mind the first or the second sense of the historical
study of a language, we may say that the historian of language has before him
as data the following:
(a) All
available texts – written texts or, in very recent times, mechanically recorded
texts-duly authenticated, edited, dated where possible, and above all assigned
to the correct corpus or subcorpus (in Medieval North India, for example, it is
not always easy to say whether the text in Old Braj or Old Khari Boli or Old Braj
influenced by Rajasthani or Old Rajasthani influenced by Braj and so on; in Eighteenth-Century
western Europe, it is important to say whether the text is a true narrative or
a simulated narrative, colloquial or literary, aristocratic or simulated aristocratic
or bourgeois and so on; the linguistic features in a manuscript text or letter
may be assignable to the official author, the ghost-writer, the redactor, or the
scribe).
(b) All
available secondary responses to language (thus, a parenthetical comment like
‘if I may be forgiven for using a vulgar expression’, helps us in locating the
expression that follows along the stylistic scale; definitions of technical terms
offered by writers in the field or annotations of earlier texts by later commentators
are best regarded as belonging to his category).
(c) All
available previous linguistic descriptions (thus, the attestation of a vocable
together with its gloss in an old lexicon or any etymological proposals are clearly
on a different footing from the primary attestations).
The dividing line between the last two is not a hard and fast one. For example, the etymological proposals made
by Sanskrit authors may not always be valid, i.e., may remain unusable under [c];
but they may still throw light on the contemporary concepts behind the words so
etymologized, i.e., may remain usable under (b). We will call citations under (b) and (c) meta-citations
to distinguish them from the citations proper under (a). Meta-citations can be treacherous in that they
are a fertile source of ghost senses and even ghost words.
The use of the qualification ‘all available’ used earlier is of course
to be taken with several grains of salt. Only
in the really unfortunate case, like that of Gothic or Avesta, is this idea easily
attainable and therefore painfully desirable.
(For such languages, the historical dictionary may well turn out to be
a concordance for the whole corpus). In
the case of Sanskrit the problem is the opposite one – of principled selection
from the embarrassing riches. The selection
will be at three points – selection of texts for extraction, selection of excerpts
for filing, and selection from filed excerpts for citation in the published dictionary.
The discussion of the principles that will help us in grading the texts
in order of relevance or in fixing the density of extraction for each selected
text or in determining the density of extraction for each selected text or in
determining the size and composition of a fair sample is beyond the confines of
this paper. I may simply note in passing that the single
rubric like ‘Sanskrit’ may conceal a variety in spite of the relative stabilization,
even fossilization of certain of its varieties over long stretches of time.
The coinage of rubrics like ‘Vedic’, ‘Classical’, ‘Neo’ is only the first
approximation – we have to make finer chronological, geographical, social, and
stylistic slices.
While the shifts observed in the citations and metacitations in the given
language will constitute the primary residue of historical processes, one must
not lose eight of the evidential value of data from (a) ancestral languages (e.g.
data from Pali for a historical lexicographer of Sinhalese); (b) cognate languages;
(c) descendent languages; (d) donor and recipient languages; and (e) substratum
and superstratum languages. In the case of Sanskrit, evidence from Avestan, Old
Persian, Middle Iranian, MIA (especially Pali in its triple capacity as descendent,
recipient, and substratum), NIA (especially early NIA), Tibetan, Dravidian, Munda,
Arabic, Old Javanese, etc. may be helpful in various ways – including the reconstruction
of obscure senses. There is of course no documentary evidence for the pre-Sanskrit
stages.
In the long and arduous process of collation and interpretation that will
follow and that will in turn feedback to the activity of collecting and selecting
the sources should be envisaged as falling into two somewhat distinct passes corresponding
to the vital distinction between chronicle and history proper.
A chronicle records the more accessible historical facts and documents
them. A history reconstructs or extrapolates the less accessible facts
and interprets and theorizes about the processes that account for all the facts
– whether accessible or extrapolated. The
existing historical dictionaries are (when they are historical at all and not
merely sketchy guides for the contemporary reader to the interpretation of the
older texts of the language) are either chronicles or chronicles struggling to
be history but not quite making it. It is far from my intention to suggest that
a chronicle is merely a poor cousin to history. A good chronicle is an indispensable foundation for a good history;
it is good precisely because it is conscious of its importance. A bad chronicle
is bad either because it is sham history or because it is not inspired by a sense
of relevance but merely compiled.
II
Now, it is perhaps true that given the present state of Sanskrit scholarship,
given the vastness of the total corpus, and given the chronic uncertainties of
the pre-Muslim chronology of India, we can only attempt a lexical chronicle for
the family of languages known as Sanskrit or Old Indo-Aryan postponing a lexical
history to a rather remote future. At
the same time, in order to become a good chronicle this lexical chronicle should
be inspired by a clear notion of what a good lexical history of Sanskrit would
be like. One may even go a step further
at the practical level, and say that at least some of the entries in it should
be preliminary sketches of properly historical entries. More modestly one may require of this lexical
chronicle a historical sophistication.
(1) A historian’s sense of evidence,
scholarly conscience, and sense of fairplay to his reader will lead him not only
to the careful weighing of evidence and sifting of the well-established fact from
the strong conjecture and the open question but also to put the reader in possession
of the evidence and the theories rejected. A historical dictionary – whether of the chronicle
variety or of the history one – will do well to be liberally sprinkled with question
marks. It will separate the editor’s conclusions
and guesses from the evidence and give a “fair” sample of the evidence and the
contending theories – so as to permit the reader to draw his own conclusions.
Where the editor is doubtful about the relevance of a piece of information
he will include it with the label “potentially relevant”.
(2)
A clear distinction should be established between primary citations
– our level (a) – and secondary meta-citations – those at level (b) or (c) or
bordering on either.
(3) Where absolute chronology cannot be maintained,
attempts should be made to evolve techniques for establishing and presenting to
the reader a relative chronology – at least a relative slabwise chronology comparable
to the geological stratum-labels like Upper and Lower Jurassic.
(4) One must not mistake the
merely marginal or ad hoc (and therefore attractively curious or exotic) for the
central core feature (and therefore often dully quotidian or run-of-the-mill).
A felicitous literary departure is grist to the linguistic historian’s
mill chiefly because it may set a new norm for later writers to follow.
A sampling of mediocre writers is as much needed as taking the unavoidable
classics. A historical dictionary is not
a chrestomathy of literary jewels, though of course it certainly need not deliberately
avoid the jewels. A locus classicus is important because it is very often a pace-setting
event. The other pitfall is that the commendable
desire to be exhaustive may rob the editor (and therefore eventually the user
of the dictionary) of the proper perspective.
It is more useful to give a larger number of citations exhausting all the
occasional or short-lived uses of that vocable. Marginal uses include instances
of words coined ad hoc only to be discarded later and also insertions from another
language not as a borrowing but only as a citation or a temporary switch from
the main languages. While offering explicit statistical information
or even intelligent guesses about the shifting ‘popularity’ of a word or a word-sense
from period to period may not be feasible, a historical dictionary may find it
possible to imply such information “in a rough and ready way, - by the proportions
of references given under the different heads” (Aitken 1971).
(5) The true historian
is not the one who is lost to the present, but rather the one who has a lively
sense of (a) the past that lives in the present and (b) contemporary history that
is being made around him. It should not
sound incongruous if I urge the prospective lexicographer of Sanskrit to look
at contemporary chronicling of semantic change, the record of the lexical stock
market (vocable A displacing vocable B in sense X after a tough competition),
and the birth and death register of words – as seen, for example, in American
Speech or Vie et langage. (A convenient
sampling from British English is available in Bhide 1948, 1970.) OIA vocables
must have been subject to the same forces of weathering, sedimentation, and volcanic
displacement to which NIA vocables are subject.
In talking about volcanic displacement I have alluded to the possibility
of major discontinuities of usage. Only
an unawareness of this fact and of the earlier-mentioned distinction between central
and marginal can explain but not justify the blitheness with which post-Dravidic
or neo-Sanskrit innovations are often “supported” by Sanskrit scholars by authentic
but irrelevant citations and, worse still, metacitations. (The justification, if indeed it can be called such, is very often
the Brahmanical reluctance to admit that the well of Sanskrit has been defiled
by non-Indo-Aryan borrowings or substratum interferences.)
The insights gained by an awareness of the living past and contemporary
history and their application through historical imagination to the traditional
scholarly exposure (what is known as “being steeped in Sanskrit”) should be made
available to the team of editors and eventually to the readers by being codified
in a series of notes on recurring features, problems, cultural domains, and processes.
Thus there could be a series of alphabetized entries entitled, say, astronomy
and astrology, ayurveda, compounds, easternisms, euphemisms, gatis and other idioms,
kosa literature, literary expressions, nyayas, plant names, Prakritisms, proverbs,
verb paradigm, and so on. The entry on compounds will, among other things, spell out the editorial
decisions as to what compounds to include as part of the working capital of the
language (Sprachgut) and what to exclude as ad hoc nonce-formations that, like
most phrase and clause level formations, constitute merely the linguistic turnover.
The entry on euphemisms will tell us, for example, what the euphemizable
items are, what the characteristic modes are, whether there have been any major
changes, and so forth. (One may thus report
that English ladies stopped sweating in the 19th century or that Marathi
speakers hide behind English borrowings in talking about unpleasant things like
widowhood, impotence, or even death.) The
drafting of such Guide Entries at an early stage in the editing is a desideratum.
They will set up a comprehensive code of mutually consistent basic editorial
decisions so that the specific decisions in a given entry will not be ad hoc decisions
but applications of certain principles. Of
course these principles will also spell out how much ground is left for the exercise
of editorial discretion. It is only fair that the reader should be given a glimpse
of the editorial kitchen. (A selection
of these has a claim for being included even a sample fascicule.)
III
Finally, one may turn to the vexed question of the arrangement of the various
uses of a vocable within the entry in a dictionary.
On the face of it, the answer seems to be fairly straightforward: in a
descriptive, synchronic dictionary the arrangement should be in an order of descending
frequency as seen in the attestations of the period under consideration; in a
historical, diachronic dictionary the arrangement should be in an order of increasing
recency of the first attestation of that sense. If this apparently straightforward
answer does not work, it is not merely on account of practical exigencies like
the reader’s convenience and the printer’s incompetence (this last factor cannot
certainly be ignored in an underdeveloped country).
The reasons are deeper reasons.
(1) The synchronic order is certainly not liner – sense 1, sense
2, etc., in a mechanical order of frequency will be a travesty of how the word
behaves actually. The uses at any given
stage in the history are best thought of as a multiply spreading and branching
network. Ideally, a descriptive lexical
entry will open with a diagram consisting of a set of variously interconnected
nodes. Since the order of printing is
linear, the subdivisions will be arranged and numbered in a quasi-linear fashion
: to take a sample :
1, la, lal, 2a, 2b, 2bl, 2b2,
3, ….
This is an alphanumeric notation which alternates figures and letters and
which selects one node (numbered 1) as the “unmarked” or neutral meaning – often
called Grundbedeutung. As a rule but by
no means invariably this basic meaning is the most frequent, the least specialized,
the most general, the lest figurative, the historically earliest, etc.
The critical test is whether the meaning is the one which will most readily
suggest itself to the user if the vocable is mentioned out of context rather
than used within a context. In
relation to a synchronic account of a language that is no longer current, one
may want to recast this test slightly: the basic meaning is the one that an editor
interpreting and annotating a text is most disposed to pick up so long as there
are no clear contextual pointers in a different direction.
In the rare cases where a vocable may have more than one equally viable
neutral senses (for example, “rank, class”, “sequence, arrangement”, and “mandate”
in the case of the word order in English), one can start with a summary
paragraph of main senses 1, 2, 3 the order of the subsequent paragraphs being
based on some non-synchronic extrinsic criterion (Consider the Concise Oxford
Dictionary entry for the word order). Note that a given sense under one vocable may
bear a relation of perfect synonymy with a given sense under another vocable.
The lack of perfect synonymy normally refers to the vocables in their total
ranges. An incidental advantage of this notation is
that it permits us to make use of the anuv¤tti principle – everything
said under 1 is to be carried forward to 1a, 1a1; that under 1a to 1a1; and so
on – unless the contrary is stated.
(2)
The diachronic order
is also more complicated. Suppose there
are five main historical stages (to be denoted by Roman numerals) and six senses
(to be denoted by capital letters). The situation may well look like this in a
chart that may be placed at the beginning of the entry.
A
I—IV
B
II—III, V
C
III
D
III—IV
E
III—IV
F
IV—V
Note the eclipse of Sense B in stage IV and its revival in stage V. It is not enough to hunt for the earliest citations
far a given sense; one must hunt for other ‘critical’ citations- the latest, the
earliest revival, the latest before a gap, the transitional citation linking two
senses, etc. Again, while the order between C, D or between C, E can be rationalized
under the chronology principle, that between D, E cannot. The actual dates or
first available attestations are seldom the dates of first usage except in the
special case of the innovative locus classicus.
The same goes for the dates of the last attestations or of gaps in attestations,
Resort will have to be taken, therefore, in such a tie (as the one between D,
E) to some non-diachronic, extrinsic criterion.
(3)
Even assuming that the difficulties mentioned under (2) could
be resolved and assuming that the dated record is ample enough to permit such
clear periodwise assignment of the various senses, the fact remains that in a
fundamental sense the sample chart may be a travesty of history. A true picture will rather look, say, like
the following:
I
1
II
1, 1a, 2, 2a
III
1, 2, 2a, 3
IV
2, 2a, 3, 3a, 3b
V
2, 2a, 2b, 3, 3a, 3b, 3b1
The loss of sense 1 after stage III may thus render senses 2, 3 disjoint. Also, there may be reorderings. Sense 2b may change its “loyalty” and get attached
to 3; what is merely a minor ‘shade’ or ‘slant’ under Sense 1aat one stage may
become a distinct Sense 1a1 at the next stage; Sense 2 may get “promoted” to the
status of being Sense 1, while the erstwhile Sense 1 may become marginal; what
are Senses 1 and 2 at one stage may have been etymologically quite different vocables
or at least etymological doublets at an earlier stage; and so on.
In essence, the diachronic picture has to incorporate the successive synchronic
pictures like the stills in a film.
The distinction between chronicle and history is based, to some extent,
on the distinction between the documentation of the past and its reconstruction. Since documentation and reconstruction feed
on each other and since a good chronicle is always struggling towards being a
good history, the two perspectives, synchronic and diachronic, cannot be kept
apart. A good diachronic account calls
for a prior sound synchronic analysis of each of the stages. Also, the diachronic order and the synchronic
order of the latest stage may often resemble each other. Thus, the sample alphanumeric set given under
(1) above may reflect the diachronic order.
I
1
II
1, 2
III
1, 2, 3
IV
1, 1A, 2, 2a, 2b, 3
V
1, 1a1, 2a, 2b, 2b1, 2b2, 3
This suggests that an arrangement of this entry in the following manner
will not be too difficult to read or too distorting. Thus, the earliest sense is also the unmarked, basic sense.
1/ I-V
1a/ IV-V
1a1/ V
2/
II-V
2a/ IV-V
2b/ IV-V
2b1/ V
2b2/ V
3/
III-V
It is true that this cannot accommodate reorderings of the kind described
earlier. But this need not seriously disturb
us if we realize that such reorderings are not very common; that, where they do
occur, supplementary visual aid can be provided in the entry; and that, for a
dictionary that is a lexical chronicle only struggling to prefigure a future lexical
history, all this is unrealistically ambitious in any case.
We must not of course let our preoccupation with citations and their arrangement
make us lose sight of the simple fact that a historical dictionary is also a dictionary
and as such faces all the problems that a synchronic descriptive dictionary faces.
If it doesn’t face them, it means it is not doing its whole job.
(I have elsewhere (Kelkar 1970-1) discussed some of the general problems
faced by and dictionary whether historical or not and whether bilingual or not
and whether bilingual or not.) The tendency
to look upon the explanations of meaning in a historical dictionary merely as
convenient expendable tags for each of the citation subsets in an entry is dangerous.
(Cf. Aitken 1971: In getting out the defining characteristics of the genre of
which OED is a paradigm example. Aitken frankly states: “The definitions and
descriptive notes, which are also a normal feature of such dictionaries, may be
regarded as fulfilling a somewhat secondary purpose, that of sign posts or labels
to the particular subset of quotations which follows.”) The same goes for the neglect of idioms and
collocations. After all the reader has
as much right to the earliest citation for the idiom as such as to that for the
individual words in the idiom. The reader of a historical dictionary of Bangla
would want to know since when Bangla speakers started “eating” water and cigarettes.
Finally, the dictionary tends to take upon itself the duties of a word
finder (or thesaurus) and a cultural encyclopaedia and the historical dictionary
need be no exception. A historical dictionary need be no exception.
A historical dictionary of English should not only trace the trajectories
of the two words hound and dog independently but also their intersection
– dog displacing hound as the least specialized word for Canis familiaris.
This could be achieved by appending a word-finder-type synonymy section
to the entry for dog. Similarly
the entries for teacher or nurse will not only record the first
attestation and increasing use of she in relation to these nouns but also
connect this with women’s emancipation.
IV
The danger, to my mind, is not the non-realization of the ambition, but
the pedestrian shirking of an ambition. In
other words our modesty may land us with a bad chronicle.
I am aware that this paper is short on live examples and long on simulated
schematic examples illustrating an ambitious theory. But a non-Sanskritist can justify his presence in a gathering of
distinguished-Sanskritists discussing a Sanskrit historical dictionary only by
venturing to tread on a ground that the angles may want to keep away from.
ANNEXURE
I. The Anatomy of a Historical Dictionary
(a) Guide
to the scanning of an entry
(b) Guide consisting
of alphabetized entries
(c) Skeleton
linguistic analysis-rules for proceeding from phonological spelling to phonetic
spelling(s); from grammatical analysis into morphemes to phonological spelling;
from grammatical label to privileges of occurrence; from orthographic spelling
to phonologic and phonetic spelling; from transliteration to original orthography;
from base to productive derivatives
(d) Body of the
dictionary
(e) Appendix
of alphabetized entries of borderline cases like proper names, bound affixes and
bases, abbreviations.
II.
The Anatomy of a Historical Dictionary Entry
(a) Lemma:
transliteration, original script spelling, phonological spelling, phonetic spelling
(or any subset of these in terms of which the rest can be predicted)
(b) Alternant
spelling (of various sorts)
(c) Grammatical
function-class label
(d) Etymology:
ancestral, co-successor, successor forms (taking
you beyond the confines of the language concerned
(e) Grammatical
structure: simple or complex?, if complex the constituents and the structure –
type label operating entirely within the language concerned)
(f) Accompaniments:
inflectional paradigm, syntactic selections, idiomatic collocations, concord and
government label
(g) Explanations:
descriptions, glosses, cultural notes
(h) Citations
(critical and other) and metacitations
(i)
Word-finder section: comparables (synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms,
hypernyms, words confused) and derivatives (affixal, reduplicative, compositional)
(j) To
be inserted at appropriate points in the above arrangement are distinctive alphanumeric
tags ( 1, 1, 1a, etc. ), style labels, social labels, region labels,
period labels
Note:
In Sanskrit the traditional grammatical analyses (in terms of U¸ādi
sūtras, the man grammatical sūtras, etc.) will be cited under
(e), whether valid or not (if not valid, to be introduced by “pace”).
The traditional etymologies will be cited under (d) if valid and as metacitations
under (h) if invalid. The annotations in commentaries will be cited
as metacitations under (h). The loose
term derivation spans (d) and (e) above.
REFERENCES
AITKEN,
A.J. 1971. Historical dictionaries and
the computer. In : The Computer in literary and linguistic research … a
Cambridge symposium. London: Cambdrige University, Oven, 1971, p.3-17.
BHIDE,
H.S. 1948. A Study in the development
of the English vocabulary. U. of Bombay,
Ph.D. diss. Unpublished.
-- 1970. Lexicographical
notes on English. Indian Linguistics 31,
162-73. Based on Bhide 1948.
KELKAR,
Ashok R. 1970-71. The Anatomy of a dictionary
entry with samples proposed for a Marathi-English dictionary, Indian linguistics
29 (1968). 143-9; 30(1969). 50-64.
LABOV,
William. 1971. Methodology. In: DINGWALL,
William Orr (ed.). A Survey of linguistics science. College Park, Maryland: Linguistic
Program. U. of Maryland. Pp. 412-91.
COLOPHON
In
revising and slightly enlarging this paper from the version read at the Seminar,
I benefited from the discussions. This was published in: A.M. Ghatge et al. ed.
Studies in historical Sanskrit lexicography, Deccan College, 1973, p.57-69.
The paper was presented at a Seminar on Historical Sanskrit Dictionary
at Deccan College, Pune, December, 1972. subsequently I came across Aitken 1971
which confirmed some of my hunches.
