Re: term for similarly-spelled words

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
On Sep 2, 3:08 am, "PaulJK" <paul.kr...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Artur Jachacy wrote:
On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:16:37 +1200, PaulJK wrote:
Harlan Messinger wrote:
[...]
To expand on that, true cognates are often false friends, such as the
following pairs of true cognates:

French "attendre" = "wait", not "attend" Spanish "embarazada" =
"pregnant", not "embarrassed" German "Knabe" = "boy", not "knave"

Most of the old native words in Slavic languages will have cognates in
other Slavic languages, however, quite often their meaning has changed
over time and thus they are false friends.

A typical example:
Ru "pozor"=shame, disgrace; Cz "pozor"=attention
Ru "pozorniy"=shamefull; Cz "pozorný"=quiet and attentive

Pl pozór 'appearance, as in "keeping up appearances"'
Pl pozorny 'apparent, illusory, ostensible etc.'

Hey, thanks Artur, I didn't know that.
What a busy little word this "pozor" is.
It's a solid cognate and multiple false friend extraordinaire.

As far as can ascertain, only Slovenian and perhaps
Croatian "pozor" means something akin to Czech "pozor".
pjk

So the question becomes whether it's attested in OCS, and whether in
the Ru sense or the cluster of Cz/Pl senses. (Can one sense easily be
seen as a development from the other, or are they both variants of
something else?)

Yes, that's a good question. For a short answer, see the
last two paragraphs below.

When I implied I was sure all Slavic "pozor"s were cognates
I didn't explain on what basis I made that assertion. "Pozor" is a compound, prefix "po" +
noun "zor", both of which are well attested from the day nought
(a Slavic day nought).

Prefix "po" means something like after, over, and similar.
For example, Cz "popoledni" (=afternoon); "po" (=after) +
"pol" (old "půl/puol"=half) + "dni" (locative of "den"=day)

The old "zor" (=sight) may or may not be present in all
Slavic languages but it still lives in all of them in multitude
of derived words. Such words are well known for frequent
semantical shifts.
See the following Cz examples:
"zora" = poetic dawn
"zornice" = pupil (of the eye)
"zrak" = sense of sight
"zorný" = adj. sight, as in "zorný úhel" (angle of sight)
"dozor" = supervision
"vzor" = example, template (eg.grammatical paradigm), or
model (eg.of a car or machinegun)
"názor" = opinion (ie.point of view)
"přezírat" = to ignore with intention to insult
"prozíravý" = provident, perspicacious
"prozřetelný" = prudent
"zřejmý" = obvious
etc.

Another competing 'sight' stem, "-vid-" has more productive
than "-zor-", however, there are still many words like "pozor"
in the "-zor-" family.

To answer you question whether "pozor" is attested in OCS,
and whether in the Ru sense or the cluster of Cz/Pl senses,
I looked up the following in the book "Meaning as explanation:
advances in linguistic sign theory" by Ellen Contini-Morava,
Barbara Sussman Goldberg, and Robert S. Kirsner.
On page 126 I find: pozor(išče) meant "spectacle",
OCS to nineteenth century Russian, later "shame, disgrace".

It seems that the Russian last and most significant change
in meaning from the already diverse West/South/East meanings
occured as recently as the 19th C.

pjk

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