German etymology of semantic fields in a European Context

Original project title:
Deutsche Wortfeldetymologie in europäischem Kontext. Der Mensch in Natur und Kultur

While other European cultural nations have comprehensive etymological dictionaries, German, one of the world’s most common languages in quantitative terms, lacks a large scientific etymological dictionary. For this reason, the “German etymology of semantic fields in a European Context (DWEE)” wants to close this gap.

DWEE uses the findings of today’s semantic research to describe the change in meaning and thus simultaneously acts as a touchstone for more recent “cognitive-semantic theories” in the field of historical semantics. By responding to the urgent demand for a “dialogue between historical and cognitive semantics”, DWEE thus represents not only the current state of research in Indo-European studies with its continuous increase in knowledge, but also that of modern linguistics.

The decisive innovation, however, is first of all the combination of etymology with the organisation of vocabulary according to word fields in a modular structure, which provides for an arrangement of the word fields around “man in nature and culture” in their linguistic-historical stratification: The fields of words, which are grouped according to the noun as the main terminology, are traced from contemporary language - including its stylistic assessments, spatial, temporal, technical, special and foreign-language classifications - to the older New High German, Early New High German, Middle High German and Old High German. This makes it possible for the first time to systematically document semantic change on a comprehensive corpus. Secondly, the word fields are placed in their European context. Through this representation of the occupation of word fields with native or foreign vocabulary, the degree of interculturality of the German vocabulary becomes clear at every language level.

DWEE is published in print and online.