Words and Their Stories: An Etymological Exploration of the English Vocabulary (Research Grant)

Description

PERONO CACCIAFOCO, Francesco (PI) - "Words and Their Stories: An Etymological Exploration of the English Vocabulary" - Summer Undergraduate Research Fund (SURF), Grant Number: SURF-2023-0119, School of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS), Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU), Suzhou (Jiangsu), China, 2023

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This Project aims at investigating a set of words from the English lexicon according to the perspective of Etymology. The history of those words will be reconstructed, including their historical phonetics and phonology, morphology, and semantics. The focus will be on different semantic fields, to provide a qualitative / intensive lexicological analysis which can cover several conceptual areas of the English language. The investigation will be conducted, for example, on lexical items like "butterfly", "black", and "pandemic", and on some English 'proper words', like "boy" and "girl", which, despite appearing extremely simple and common, exist only in English and have not an actual etymological explanation. Words with uncertain etymology and origins will also be object of investigation. In particular, the lexical item "recorder", whose etymology is still puzzling scholars, will be the subject of a specific analysis involving the comprehensive exploration of literary and documentary sources. The Project, therefore, will associate traditional etymological and philological methodologies with an experimental comparative method aimed at shedding light on historically interesting and/or 'problematic' lexical items. Their possible reconstruction and the development of an innovative methodology will represent the intrinsic value of the Project itself.

Period	19 Jun 2023 → 28 Aug 2023
Held at	School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Degree of Recognition	National