In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymology ancestor in a common Language family.
Because language change can have radical effects on both the sound and the meaning of a word, cognates may not be obvious, and it often takes rigorous study of historical sources and the application of the comparative method to establish whether are cognate.
Cognates are distinguished from , where a word has been borrowed from another language.
Name
The English term
cognate derives from
Latin language cognatus]], meaning "blood relative".
[ "cognate", The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed.: "Latin cognātus: co-, co- + gnātus, born, past participle of nāscī, to be born." Other definitions of the English word include "related by blood; having a common ancestor" and "related or analogous in nature, character, or function".]
Examples
An example of cognates from the same Indo-European root are:
night (
English language),
Nacht (
German language),
nacht (
Dutch language, Frisian),
nag (
Afrikaans),
Naach (Colognian),
natt (
Swedish language, Norwegian),
nat (
Danish language),
nátt (
Faroese language),
nótt (Icelandic),
noc (
Czech language,
Slovak language,
Polish language), ночь,
noch (
Russian language), ноќ,
noć (Macedonian), нощ,
nosht (Bulgarian),
ніч,
nich (Ukrainian),
ноч,
noch/
noč (Belarusian),
noč (
Slovene language),
noć (
Serbo-Croatian),
nakts (
Latvian language),
naktis (Lithuanian),
nos (
Welsh language), νύξ,
nyx (
Ancient Greek),
νύχτα /
nychta (
Modern Greek),
nakt- (
Sanskrit),
natë (Albanian),
nox, gen. sg.
noctis (
Latin),
nuit (
French language),
noche (
Spanish language),
nochi (Extremaduran),
nueche (Asturian),
noite (Portuguese and Galician),
notte (
Italian language),
nit (
Catalan language),
nuet/nit/nueit (Aragonese),
nuèch /
nuèit (
Occitan language) and
noapte (Romanian). These all mean 'night' and derive from the Proto-Indo-European *nókʷts]] 'night'. The Indo-European languages have hundreds of such cognate sets, though few of them are as neat as this.
The Arabic سلام salām, the Hebrew language shalom, the Assyrian Neo-Aramaic shlama and the Amharic language selam 'peace' are cognates, derived from the Proto-Semitic *šalām- 'peace'.
The Guarani language panambi, the Eastern Bolivian Guarani panapana, the Cocama language and Omagua language panama, and the Sirionó ana ana are cognates, derived from the Tupi language panapana, 'butterfly', maintaining their original meaning in these Tupi languages. Brazilian Portuguese panapanã (flock of butterflies in flight) is a borrowing rather than a cognate of the other words.
Characteristics
Cognates need not have the same meaning, as they may have undergone
semantic change as the languages developed independently. For example
English language and Dutch language 'to die' or
German language 'to die' all descend from the same Proto-Germanic verb, 'to die'.
Cognates also do not need to look or sound similar: English , French language , and Armenian ( hayr) all descend directly from Proto-Indo-European *ph₂tḗr. An extreme case is Armenian ( erku) and English , which descend from Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁; the sound change *dw > erk in Armenian is regular.
Paradigms of conjugations or declensions, the correspondence of which cannot be generally due to chance, have often been used in cognacy assessment.
False cognates
False cognates are pairs of words that appear to have a common origin, but which in fact do not. For example, Latin habēre and German haben both mean 'to have' and are phonetically similar. However, the words evolved from different Proto-Indo-European (PIE) roots: haben, like English
have, comes from PIE
'to grasp', and has the Latin cognate
capere 'to seize, grasp, capture'. Habēre, on the other hand, is from PIE
*gʰabʰ 'to give, to receive', and hence cognate with English
give and German geben.
[ Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben]
Likewise, English much and Spanish mucho look similar and have a similar meaning, but are not cognates: much is from Proto-Germanic < PIE and mucho is from Latin multum < PIE . A true cognate of much is the archaic Spanish maño 'big'.
Distinctions
Cognates are distinguished from other kinds of relationships.
-
are words borrowed from one language into another; for example, English beef is borrowed from Old French boef (meaning "ox"). Although they are part of a single etymological stemma, they are not cognates.
-
Doublets are pairs of words in the same language which are derived from a single etymon, which may have similar but distinct meanings and uses. Often, one is a loanword and the other is the native form, or they have developed in different dialects and then found themselves together in a modern standard language. For example, Old French boef is cognate with English cow, so English cow and beef are doublets.
-
, or semantic equivalents, are words in two different languages that have similar or practically identical meanings. They may be cognate, but usually they are not. For example, the German equivalent of the English word cow is Kuh, which is also cognate, but the French equivalent is vache, which is unrelated.
Related terms
Etymon (ancestor word) and descendant words
An
etymon, or ancestor word, is the ultimate source word from which one or more cognates derive.
In other words, it is the source of related words in different languages.
For example, the etymon of both Welsh
ceffyl and Irish
capall is the Proto-Celtic *
kaballos (all meaning
horse).
are words inherited across a language barrier, coming from a particular etymon in an ancestor language.
For example, Russian мо́ре and Polish morze are both descendants of Proto-Slavic * moře (meaning sea).
Root and derivatives
A
root is the source of related words within a single language (no language barrier is crossed).
Similar to the distinction between etymon and root, a nuanced distinction can sometimes be made between a descendant and a derivative.
A derivative is one of the words which have their source in a root word, and were at some time created from the root word using morphological constructs such as suffixes, prefixes, and slight changes to the vowels or to the consonants of the root word.
For example unhappy, happily, and unhappily are all derivatives of the root word happy.
The terms root and derivative are used in the analysis of morphological derivation within a language in studies that are not concerned with historical linguistics and that do not cross the language barrier.
See also
External links
