Piotr wrote:
<I've checked the earliest references to <eagle> in the Oxford Dictionary.
There are too few of them to be sure that the primary meaning of <eagle> was
emblematic rather than ornithological: both are attested.>
I'm sorry, but I don't know how one deduces "primary meaning" even if you
have fifty entries. The lettered elite of the time may have used the
"tertiary" meaning and just used it often and that was what was preserved.
Let me also suggest it's not "emblematic" versus "ornithological." There was
no ornithologists around at the time. I don't remember a single early
reference to someone critically observing an eagle in the wild or accurately
describing one in that context. That is the trouble with identifying old
bird names with modern ornithology. And though we don't know how common an
eagle was in every day experience, it's a good bet - if it was a modern
"eagle" - that it was rare.
We do know that bird representations on coins and elsewhere were named using
the "borrowed" word, eagle. We also know the "emblematic" eagle was more
than just a picture of some bird. The symbol and the word itself had many
connotations, some probably much more meaningful in people's lives than a
live bird could ever be. And that included everything from biblical and
religious and political meanings to inn signs to coinage.
<<Anyway, <eagle> soon came to mean what <earn, arn, ern(e)> meant in Old
English,...>>
Actually, what I think happened was that <eagle> meant much more than <erne>
and that simply made it a much more commonly used word. Thus it would have
simply been more meaningful to see a wild eagle than a wild erne. And so
<erne> simply faded from conversation. (Or perhaps the books of the
naturalists, using Latinisms, finally helped people to pin down what a live,
native eagle actually was.)
<<Wycliff uses the words interchangeably and, as far as I can see, there is
no real suggestion of a different specific reference.>>
Wycliff never says "the erne also known as the eagle." Conversely, I see no
evidence that he considered them the same bird. This scale tips both ways.
Let me go back to my point. Calling these two words the same word for all
purposes EXCEPT for the difference in prestige is clearly not the case. They
carried different histories and bundles of different meanings. Only a strict
neo-platonist could seriously say that the words referred in some ultimate
sense to something abstract called an eagle.
Which brings me to <inwit>.
Piotr writes:
<<As a matter of fact, ME <inwit> was coined... to translate <conscientia> in
the sense 'inner knowledge'.>>
Take it a step further. The word <conscientia> was probably being spoken on
English soil hundreds of years before <inwit> would have been "coined."
"Conscience" had already been a concept of immense importance in Christian
doctrine for centuries. ("Redi ad conscientiam tuam, ipsam interroga..."
Augustine.) It was the name of a key element in daily monastic practice
("cases of conscience".) By the time it was "borrowed", many English
speakers should have been exposed to it - in Latin - for generations. And of
course <conscience>, the English word, seems at least as old as <inwit>.
So the answer here might be that "conscience" was already English - borrowed
before there was a "perfectly functional Anglo-Saxon synonym" and borrowed
English words whatever their source beat made-up words whatever their source.
But it should be noted that the borrowed "prestige" of conscience apparently
wasn't enough to stop someone's attempt at supplying a perfectly functional
Anglo-Saxon synonym.
There's also the possibility, however, that "a coincidentally similar but
etymologically different word" from Old English, <inwit>, was not so
coincidental and not so etymologically different. Consider the Christian
practice of adapting native words to new Christian meanings (e.g., German
<geist>). The OE <inwit> (deceit) should certainly have been a ripe target
for that, since it involved both conscience and morality. I suspect the
conclusion that the words are not connected may be again mainly for
convenience. <inwit> as deceit in OE implies the word may have been carrying
quite a bit of non-Christain baggage and what evidence do we have of when
exactly it "disappeared?" And I also suspect that some of that old baggage
slipped through in some of the references in OED, despite the hard work of
_Ayenbite of Inwyt_ and other obvious proselytizing examples. I'd suggest
that <inwit> was an attempt to target a word with some bad old meanings.
It's survival, after those meanings were dissipated by cross-talk, was
irrelevant to almost anyone.
I think all of this suggests even more strongly that "prestige" is never an
adequate lump explanation for borrowings. Chaucer might have been learning
more on the continent than just fancy ways of saying the same thing. He may
have been learning new ways to say new things - in English (the language of
Canterbury Tales). Coming to that conclusion is no more subjective than
concluding that those words were borrowed for prestige - hardly a measurable
or objectively verifiable concept.
Words can carry lots of meaning and the assumption that two words have
identical meaning favors prestige as a default explanation. But that
assumption, as far as I'm concerned and as much as that matters, is uncalled
for. The better working assumption is that words were borrowed because they
had "added value" in meaning and function. Increasing prestige is only one
of many functions and in the scheme of life, a minor one, compared to bread,
money, wine, shelter and better ways to say I love you.
Forgive me, Piotr, this is not personal. I have come to respect your
knowledge and understanding a great deal in the short time I've spent on the
list. But the prestige explanation with regard to Gothic borrowings in
Slavic seems to be a easy, pat answer used by mainstream linguistics to
account for things that cannot be accounted for by linguistics. And
generally I think seeing borrowings as a reflection of the relative prestige
of two languages misleads us about the importance of how real, practical
information and ideas moved between those languages.
Piotr wrote:
<<Of course you can't wind back the clock and ignore a cumulative process
that has been going on for centuries -- except for comic relief.>>
Right. And are these cumulative processes built by borrowing "virtual"
synonyms that are just more prestigious than the ones that came before?
Superficially, today's <atom> is synonymous with the Greek <atomos>. But
there was quite a lot more than prestige that borrowed that word. Nearly two
thousands years of "cumulative processes" came with it. It was more than a
languages' mere prestige that put <atom> in modern languages.
Piotr wrote:
<<However, there are languages (e.g. German, at least until recently) that
have borrowed less freely and have made the best use of their inherited
resources. The French are now trying to do without using English loans to
power up their language, God knows why. Loans should be paid back ;).>>
Well, the Academie has been around for awhile. But there's a good example
here. The dreaded "hamburger" word would seem totally synonymous with
"ground beef on a bun". And there's nothing in particular that raises your
social status in France these days in being able to order a "Quarter-pounder
with Cheese" using an isolated American word versus a French one.
But "Hamburger" is not really synonymous with beef on a bun. I think that
the real impetus behind the word is not what would be a rather silly jot of
borrowed prestige. I'd suggest that the real "danger" in the word is that it
is nonsynonymous and actually carries a new idea, one that might shake
"French culture" to the core. And that idea is "fast food."
Steve