Dallin Bailey and Dr. Cynthia Hallen, Linguistics and English Language
Main Text
In addition to priceless definition writing, the famed lexicographer, Noah Webster, spent over a decade in research for the etymologies, or word origins, in his dictionary. Unfortunately, scholars and biographers often criticize his etymological work in the literature. The trend in these criticisms seems to be that labeling a few obscure examples of Webster’s etymologies as incorrect is sufficient reason for the entire collection of his etymologies to be ignored. These critics dismiss his etymologies as being too speculative, lacking in scientific rigor, and too Biblical. Surprisingly, no study to date has reported a scientific analysis of his etymologies. My ORCA project included such an analysis, intended to validate Webster’s etymological work as a whole. My results confirmed my hypothesis that a significant portion of Webster’s etymologies contains valid information, that Webster’s critics were incorrect in labeling his work as too Biblical, and that Webster was actually a noteworthy example of a disciple-scholar who applied revelation to academic pursuits.
Webster believed the Biblical account of the Lord’s confounding of languages at the Tower of Babel. He therefore believed that all languages came from a common ancestor, a mother tongue he called Chaldaic. Being a man of faith, he believed that his academic pursuits would succeed as he kept them in line with revealed truth. My advisor, Dr. Cynthia Hallen, wrote that “Christian doctrine was infused into Webster’s dictionary, particularly in the illustrations of his headwords.” My research adds that he also infused Christian doctrine into his etymological research. He was still a man of science: In a logical manner, Webster researched thousands of words in twenty different language and etymological dictionaries. But overall, his research had a scientific approach with a scriptural basis.
His personally developed approach, leading to cautious and substantiated etymologies in his dictionary, was definitely a comparative one. While carefully analyzing the words from the different languages for both semantic and phonological patterns, he wrote a large work he personally referred to as a Synopsis of the principal Words in twenty Languages, arranged in Classes, under their primary Elements or Letter. The title itself implies that Webster compared and organized large amounts of data, and the contents of the Synopsis validate it. Thus, the validity of his dictionary’s etymologies as a whole, not just a couple of handpicked examples, deserves to be evaluated.
Using a portion of the funds I received from the ORCA grant, I was able to purchase a portion of the Synopsis on microfilm from the New York Public Library. My observations of his research in his own handwriting confirmed that his comparative research method was scientific and advanced for his time. The Synopsis also gave me insight into his research method, giving me confidence to validate his etymologies.
Even though Webster’s Synopsis and etymologies were mostly overlooked at the time he wrote them, because of the European philological scholarship of the 19th century, that oversight should not suggest that his work was worthless. Advances in historical linguistics past the late 19th century wave render necessary a new look at Webster’s ideas. If he had lived in current times, Webster likely would have found more support for his reconstructed mother tongue because of its theoretical similarities to, for example, Alan Bomhard’s reconstructed ancestor language of Indo-European, Nostratic.
The objective analysis portion of my study consisted of comparing Webster’s etymologies to modern and widely accepted etymological research, that of Calvert Watkins. Calvert Watkins has performed substantial research in the reconstruction of Indo-European, the prehistoric ancestor of English and other languages. In preliminary research, I noticed similarities between the Chaldaic, or mother tongue, roots in Webster’s etymologies, and the Indo-European roots of Calvert Watkins. My study evaluated the etymologies from the first volume (letters A through I) of Webster’s 1844 American Dictionary of the English Language (ADEL)2 using Calvert Watkins’ American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots (AHDIER), 2nd edition, published in 2000. Using an objective comparison method, I found that one out of three of Webster’s reconstructed Chaldaic roots has positive semantic correspondence with the glosses (meanings) of Watkins’ Indo-European roots. Since Webster and Watkins are separated by over a hundred of the most prolific years of historical and comparative linguistics research, considering the resources available to Webster relative to the resources available to Watkins, any level of correspondence should be seen as significant. A level of 32.87% Webster/Watkins correspondence of reconstructed semantic roots, as I found, is remarkable. This high level of positive correspondence, in conjunction with a new look at his stillunpublished Synopsis, is strong evidence that Webster should be recognized as an American pioneer comparative linguist in addition to his other established credentials.
In addition, the high number of etymologies with valid etymological information calls attention to the value of Webster’s etymological work. My findings counter the claims made by Webster’s critics. His etymologies are not speculative, not lacking in scientific rigor, nor harmfully affected by his Biblical theory on the origin of language. When faced with the reality of an objective sample of his etymologies, their criticisms are unfounded. No longer should scholars use isolated, handpicked etymologies to suggest a lack of accuracy in Webster’s etymological work; rather, scholars should view the general trends of his etymologies, as I did.
My research of Webster’s Chaldaic roots provides tangible validity to the claim that Webster was “America’s first comparative philologist.” Indeed, his method, and the results he obtained by his method, both vindicate his etymological work and his place in the field of comparative and historical linguistics. Webster can honestly be called an American pioneer in comparative linguistics. My results showed that applying scriptural truth to academic pursuits, as Webster did, leads to academic success. Webster is a prime example of a disciple-scholar.
My results will be published as my Honors thesis. I am also preparing them for submission to the journal Dictionaries, published by the Dictionary Society of North America.
References
- Hallen, Cynthia and Tracy B. Spackman. Biblical Citations as a Stylistic Standard in Johnson’s and Webster’s Dictionaries. Lexis No. 5: Lexicology and Stylistics. Centre d’Etudes Linguistiques, University Jean Moulin – Lyon 3, 2010. Accessed on December 30, 2010 at http://screcherche.univ-lyon3.fr/lexis/spip.php?article161
- http://edl.byu.edu/webster
- Read, Allen Walker. “The Spread of Germanic Linguistic Learning in New England During the Lifetime of Noah Webster.” American Speech. 41 (1967): 163-81.