Following in the footsteps of Yakov Malkiel: Text-based etymology, context-situated text

A critical appraisal is attempted of the three structurally-designated theses that are typically voiced in relation to what etymology is and what it consists in: (i) etymology is diachronic in scope, (ii) etymology involves the reconstruction of proto-forms and proto-senses, and (iii) etymology is based on the earliest possible attestations. The examination is guided and motivated by Yakov Malkiel's etymological research as well as by selected studies of the Lublin-based cognitive ethnolinguists. It is, then, concluded that etymological investigations are more likely to be productive and successful if (i) the temporal perspective employed is that of panchrony, not of the diachrony-synchrony distinction, (ii) the reconstruction aims at identifying ways of cross-generational conceptualisation (mentalities), rather than original forms, and (iii) the examination includes the whole of the historical spectrum of attestations, not just earliest records. This all leads to a full appreciation of the kind of etymology that feeds on texts, not words or lexemes, and on cognitive and experiential contexts, not on purely linguistic abstractions.