Re: Roots of English language

From: Anti-imperialist (ai_at_anti-imperialist.net)
Date: 09/18/04 

Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 20:33:04 -0700

"M. Ranjit Mathews" wrote:
>
> 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"?

Yes both go back to PIE root.

 If it is not, how would you use "borrow*" to describe
> how English got the word "cognate"?

They both go back to the same root in the same family. It's usually not
used for borrowings in different families IE -> Dravidian.
>
> > How do you know so much about Linguistics anyway? You really know a
> > lot.
>
> How do amateur photographers know so much about photography?

I'm really impressed at your self-education. You know politics very
well too. :) 

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