Re: Roots of English language

From: M. Ranjit Mathews (ranjit_mathews_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 09/17/04 

Date: 17 Sep 2004 09:28:44 -0700

Anti-imperialist <ai@anti-imperialist.net> wrote ...
> "M. Ranjit Mathews" wrote:
> >
> > Cognates are words of different languages that have a common etymology
> > http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/cognate
> >
> > <prAtal> and Frühstück have the same meaning and are cognates because
> > they have a common etymology.
>
> Okey, but have you ever taken a Linguistics course?

No.

> In my Historical Linguistics grad level course, we only used cognates to
> mean direct genetic relationship.

Like this?
http://www.bartleby.com/61/11/C0461100.html
Related in origin, as certain words in genetically related languages
descended from the same ancestral root; for example, English name and
Latin nomen from Indo-European *n-men-.

> Otherwise we say borrowing.

Consider an English word descended from a borrowed Latin word and a
Spanish word descended from the same Latin word. Consider the word
cognate itself, coming from co + gnatus. Latin gnatus, has the same
root as genesis and nascent and like these two words, has to do with
birth, so cognate means co-born. The Spanish equivalent is cognado.
Bartleby doesn't clearly say that all words descended from the same
ancestral root are cognate; it says only that certain words are. In
the example given, English name and Latin nomen came from a word
/*n-men-/ in PIE, their common ancestor language. Now, if English got
cognate not directly from PIE but via borrowing from Latin which is
not a common ancestor of English and Spanish, is "cognado" cognate
with "cognate"? If it is not, how would you use "borrow*" to describe
how English got the word "cognate"?
 
> How do you know so much about Linguistics anyway? You really know a
> lot.

How do amateur photographers know so much about photography?

Relevant Pages

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