Cognate

In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical effects on both the sound and the meaning of a word, cognates may not be obvious, and often it takes rigorous study of historical sources and the application of the comparative method to establish whether lexemes are cognate or not. Cognates are distinguished from loanwords, where a word has been borrowed from another language.

The term ''cognate'' derives from the Latin noun '' cognatus blood relative'.

Characteristics

Cognates need not have the same meaning, which may have changed as the languages developed independently. For example English '' starve'' and Dutch '' sterven'' 'to die' or German '' sterben'' 'to die' all descend from the same Proto-Germanic verb, '' *sterbaną'' 'to die'.

Cognates also do not need to look or sound similar: English '' father'', French '' père'', and Armenian հայր (''hayr'') all descend directly from Proto-Indo-European ''*ph₂tḗr''. An extreme case is Armenian երկու (''erku'') and English '' two'', which descend from Proto-Indo-European ''*dwóh₁''; the sound change ''*dw'' > ''erk'' in Armenian is regular.

An example of cognates from the same Indo-European root are: ''night'' ( English), ''nicht'' (Scots), ''Nacht'' ( German), ''nacht'' ( Dutch, Frisian), ''nag'' (Afrikaans), ''Naach'' ( Colognian), ''natt'' (Swedish, Norwegian), ''nat'' ( Danish), ''nátt'' ( Faroese), ''nótt'' ( Icelandic), ''noc'' ( Czech, Slovak, Polish), ночь, ''noch'' ( Russian), ноќ, ''noć'' (Macedonian), нощ, ''nosht'' ( Bulgarian), ''ніч'', ''nich'' ( Ukrainian), ''ноч'', ''noch''/''noč'' (Belarusian), ''noč'' ( Slovene), ''noć'' ( Serbo-Croatian), ''nakts'' ( Latvian), ''naktis'' (Lithuanian), νύξ, ''nyx'' (Ancient Greek), ''νύχτα'' / ''nychta'' ( Modern Greek), ''nakt-'' (Sanskrit), ''natë'' ( Albanian), ''nox'', gen. sg. ''noctis'' (Latin), ''nuit'' (French), ''noche'' ( Spanish), ''nueche'' ( Asturian), ''noite'' ( Portuguese and Galician), ''notte'' ( Italian), ''nit'' (Catalan), ''nuet/nit/nueit'' ( Aragonese), ''nuèch'' / ''nuèit'' ( Occitan) and ''noapte'' ( Romanian). These all mean 'night' and derive from the Proto-Indo-European 'night'. The Indo-European languages have hundreds of such cognate sets, though few of them are as neat as this.

The Arabic ''salām'', the Hebrew ''shalom'', the Assyrian Neo-Aramaic ''shlama'' and the Amharic ''selam'' 'peace' are cognates, derived from the Proto-Semitic *šalām- 'peace'.

False cognates

False cognates are pairs of words that appear to have a common origin, but which in fact do not. For example, Latin and German both mean 'to have' and are phonetically similar. However, the words evolved from different Proto-Indo-European (PIE) roots: , like English ''have'', comes from PIE '' *kh₂pyé-'' 'to grasp', and has the Latin cognate ''capere'' 'to seize, grasp, capture'. , on the other hand, is from PIE ''*gʰabʰ'' 'to give, to receive', and hence cognate with English ''give'' and German .

Likewise, English ''much'' and Spanish look similar and have a similar meaning, but are not cognates: ''much'' is from Proto-Germanic '' *mikilaz'' < PIE '' *meǵ-'' and is from Latin ''multum'' < PIE '' *mel-''. A true cognate of ''much'' is the archaic Spanish 'big'.

Distinctions

Cognates are distinguished from other kinds of relationships.
*Loanwords 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.
* Translations, or semantic equivalents, are words in two different languages that have similar 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

*The etymon, or ancestor word, is the ultimate source word whence one or more cognates derive. For example, the etymon of both Welsh ''ceffyl'' and Irish ''capall'' would be the Proto-Celtic *''kaballos'' (all meaning ''horse''). Outside of historical linguistics, a parallel term for an etymon is a root or ''root word''. In this usage however, the analysis is limited to within a single language rather than across separate languages. ''Run'', as such, can be said to be the root of both ''running'' and ''runs'', while ''happy'' would be the root word of such others as ''unhappiness'' or ''happily''.
*A derivative is any word coming from a particular etymon. Similar to the distinction between ''etymon'' and ''root'' above, a nuanced distinction can sometimes be made between a ''derivative'' and a ''descendant''. ''Descendant'' can be used more narrowly within the context of historical linguistics to emphasize a word inherited across a language barrier. For example, Russian ''мо́ре'' and Polish ''morze'' are both descendants of Proto-Slavic *''moře''. By contrast, within the study of morphological derivation, ''unhappy'', ''happily'', and ''unhappily'' are all derivatives of the word ''happy''.

See also

* Homology (biology)
* Indo-European vocabulary

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cognate (Etymology)
Historical linguistics
Comparative linguistics