Émile Benveniste - Dictionary of Indo-European Concepts and Society

Dictionary of Indo-European Concepts and Society

Executive Editor

Giovanni da Col

Managing Editor

Sean M. Dowdy

Editorial Board

Anne-Christine Taylor

Carlos Fausto

Danilyn Rutherford

Ilana Gershon

Jason Throop

Joel Robbins

Jonathan Parry

Michael Lempert

Stephan Palmi

www.haubooks.com

2016 Hau Books.

Foreword: The Vocabulary and the Voice 2016 Hau Books and Giorgio Agamben.

Original French edition, Le vocabulaire des institutions Indo-Europeenes , 1969 Les Editions de Minuit, Paris.

English translation by Elizabeth Palmer (with summaries, table, and original index by Jean Lallot), 1973 Faber and Faber Ltd., London (also published in 1973 by University of Miami Press).

Cover and layout design: Sheehan Moore

Cover image: The Tower of Babel, Hendrick van Cleve III (ca. 15251589), ca. Sixteenth Century, Oil, Krller-Mller Museum, Netherlands, KM 100.870

Typesetting: Prepress Plus ( www.prepressplus.in )

ISBN: 978-0-9861325-9-9

LCCN: 2016955902

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Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.

Table of Contents

foreword

Preface

List of Abbreviations

BOOK I: ECONOMY

section i: livestock and wealth

Chapter One: Male and Sire

Chapter Two: A Lexical Opposition in Need of Revision: ss and porcus

Chapter Three: Prbaton and the Homeric Economy

Chapter Four: Livestock and Money: pecu and pecunia

section ii: giving and taking

Chapter Five: Gift and Exchange

Chapter Six: Giving, Taking, and Receiving

Chapter Seven: Hospitality

Chapter Eight: Personal Loyalty

section iii: purchase

Chapter Nine: Two Ways of Buying

Chapter Ten: Purchase and Redemption

Chapter Eleven: An Occupation without a Name: Commerce

section iv: economic obligations

Chapter Twelve: Accountancy and Valuation

Chapter Thirteen: Hiring and Leasing

Chapter Fourteen: Price and Wages

Chapter Fifteen: Credence and Belief

Chapter Sixteen: Lending, Borrowing, and Debt

Chapter Seventeen: Gratuitousness and Gratefulness

BOOK II: THE VOCABULARY OF KINSHIP

Introduction

Chapter One: The Importance of the Concept of Paternity

Chapter Two: Status of the Mother and Matrilineal Descent

Chapter Three: The Principle of Exogamy and its Applications

Chapter Four: The Indo-European Expression for Marriage

Chapter Five: Kinship Resulting from Marriage

Chapter Six: Formation and Suffixation of the Terms for Kinship

Chapter Seven: Words Derived from the Terms for Kinship

BOOK III: SOCIAL STATUS

Chapter One: Tripartition of Functions

Chapter Two: The Four Divisions of Society

Chapter Three: The Free Man

Chapter Four: Phlos

Chapter Five: The Slave and the Stranger

Chapter Six: Cities and Communities

BOOK IV: ROYALTY AND ITS PRIVILEGES

Chapter One: Rex

Chapter Two: xay - and Iranian Kingship

Chapter Three: Hellenic Kingship

Chapter Four: The Authority of the King

Chapter Five: Honor and Honors

Chapter Six: Magic Power

Chapter Seven: Krtos

Chapter Eight: Royalty and Nobility

Chapter Nine: The King and His People

BOOK V: LAW

Chapter One: Thmis

Chapter Two: Dk

Chapter Three: Ius and the Oath in Rome

Chapter Four: * med - and the Concept of Measure

Chapter Five: Fas

Chapter Six: The Censor and Auctoritas

Chapter Seven: The Quaestor and the * Prex

Chapter Eight: The Oath in Greece

BOOK VI: RELIGION

Chapter One: The Sacred

Chapter Two: The Libation

Chapter Three: The Sacrifice

Chapter Four: The Vow

Chapter Five: Prayer and Supplication

Chapter Six: The Latin Vocabulary of Signs and Omens

Chapter Seven: Religion and Superstition

Table

Bibliographical Note

foreword

The Vocabulary and the Voice

Giorgio Agamben

Translation by Thomas Zummer

mile Benvenistes Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-europennes is certainly the culmination of twentieth-century linguistics, in both senses of the term. It is here that the nineteenth-century project of comparative grammar had reached its highest point, and, simultaneously, coincided with its end. While there certainly will be further studies that prolong the scientific orientation embodied in the prestigious genealogy of Bral, Saussure, Meillet, and Benveniste, it is also the case that, after the death of Benveniste, linguistics as a whole has taken quite different paths, whereof the school of transformational-generative grammar is such an outstanding example. It is all the more pressing, then, to understand what gives Benvenistes conception of language such an unusual character. It is necessary, in other words, to investigate the background, to show what is really diversified, and in this manner, to try to understand upon what seemingly insurmountable obstacle this project has been shipwrecked.

The conception that it was possible to trace, through purely linguistic analysis, the prehistoric, or at least the most archaic stages of social history, was earlier hinted at by Hermann Usener in his book Gtternamen ([1896] 2000). Usener, whose research concerned the names of the Gods, noted that for such an investigation we have no other documents than those that come from an analysis of language (ibid.: 5). As early as 1859, the Genevan linguist and patrician Adolphe Pictet, who had a likely influence on the young Saussure, published the two volumes of his masterpiece Les origines indoeuropennes. As his subtitle, Essai de palontologie linguistique, suggests, his purpose was to reconstruct the whole life of a prehistoric people, the Indo-Europeans (or Aryans as he preferred to call them), entirely through the analysis and comparison of words. Because words last as long as bones the linguist, like the paleontologistwhose examination of the fossil record can not only reconstruct the animal, but also instruct us about habits, ways of moving, feeding, etc.can replenish, through an examination of common linguistic data, the state of material, social and moral welfare of the people who have produced this primitive idiom . (Pictet 1877: 6).

Still, Benveniste was determined to put himself at a distance from such a model. While not specifically naming Pictet in the Preface to the Vocabulaire probably one of the last texts he wrote (the Vocabulaire was published four months after the hemiplegia which rendered him aphasic until his death)Benveniste refers to his predecessors in these terms:

Il est apparu trs tt aux spcialistes de lindo-europen que les concordances entre les vocabulaires des langues anciennes illustraient les principaux aspects, surtout matriels, dune culture commune; on a ainsi les receueilli preuves de lhritage lexical dans les termes de parent, les numraux, les noms danimaux, des mtaux, dinstruments agricoles, etc. Plusieurs auteurs successifs, du XIX e sicle jusqu ces dernires annes, se sont des employs dresser des rpertoires, au demeurant fort utiles, de ces notions communes . ( Voc ., I, pg. 9)

Although he adds immediately: Notre entreprise est entirement diffrente (ibid., pg. 12).

What does this incomparable novelty consist of? Benveniste soon clarifies his purpose. For him, the task is not to make an inventory of the Indo-European institutional realities as they were defined by lexical correspondences between languages, but to investigate the genesis and development of the vocabulary that refers to those realities.