In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common origin. They may occur
within a language, such as shirt and skirt as two English words descended from the Proto-Indo-European word *sker-, meaning "to cut". They may also occur across
languages, e.g. night and German Nacht as descendants of
Proto-Indo-European *nokt-, "night".
The word cognate derives from Latin cognatus, from co (with) +gnatus, natus, past
participle of nascor "to be born".[1] Literally it
means "related by blood, having a common ancestor, or related by an analogous nature, character, or function".[2]
Characteristics of cognate words
Cognates need not have the same meaning: dish (English) and Tisch
("table", German), or starve (English)
and sterben ("die", German), or head (English) and chef ("chief, head", French), serve as
examples as to how cognate terms may diverge in meaning as languages develop separately,
eventually becoming false friends.
In addition to having separate meanings, cognates through processes of linguistic change may no longer resemble each other
phonetically: cow and beef both derive from the same Indo-European root *gʷou-, cow having
developed through the Germanic language family while beef has arrived in
English from the Italo-Romance family descent. (ModE cow < ME cou < OE cū < PIE
*gʷou >
Latin bos > Latin bovis (genitive) > OFr boef > ME beef)
Cognates may thus also arise through borrowings into languages. So the resemblance between English to pay and French payer originates
through English borrowing to pay from Norman which, like French, had derived its
word from Gallo-Romance.
Cognates across languages
Examples of cognates in Indo-European languages are the words night
(English), nuit (French), Nacht
(German, Dutch), nicht (Scots), natt (Swedish), nat (Danish) noc (Czech, Polish), ночь, noch (Russian), ніч, nich
(Ukrainian), ноч, noch/noč (Belarusian) noć (Croatian, Serbian), νύξ, nyx (Greek), nox (Latin), nakt- (Sanskrit), natë (Albanian), noche (Spanish), nos
(Welsh), noite (Portuguese and
Galician), notte (Italian),
nit (Catalan), noapte (Romanian), nótt (Icelandic), natt
(Norwegian), and naktis (Lithuanian), all meaning "night" and derived from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE)
*nokt-, "night."
Another Indo-European example is star (English), str (Sanskrit)[3], astre or étoile (French), taru
(Sinhala), αστήρ (astēr) (Greek),
stella (Latin, Italian), stea (Romanian and Venetian), stairno (Gothic), astl
(Armenian), Stern (German), ster (Dutch and Afrikaans), starn (Scots), stjerne (Norwegian and
Danish), stjarna (Icelandic), stjärna (Swedish), setare (Persian), sitarah
(Hindi), seren (Welsh), steren
(Cornish), estel (Catalan),
estrella (Spanish), estrela (Portuguese and Galician) and estêre (Kurdish), from the PIE
*hstēr-, "star". The Hebrew shalom and the Arabic salaam ("peace") are also cognates, derived from a common Semitic root, having the triliteral slm.
Cognates within the same language
Cognates can exist within the same language. For example, English ward and guard (<PIE *wer-, "to
perceive, watch out for") are cognate as are shirt and skirt (<PIE *sker-, "to cut"). In some cases, such
as "shirt" and "skirt", one of the cognate pairs has an ultimate source in another language related to English, while the other
one is native, as happened with many loanwords from Old Norse (which was mutually intelligible
with Old English) borrowed when the Vikings
conquered part of England. Sometimes, both cognates come from other languages, often the same one but at different times. For
example, the word chief comes from the Middle French chef, and its modern pronunciation preserves the Middle French
consonant sound. The word chef was borrowed from the same source centuries later, by which time the consonant had changed
to a "sh"-sound in French. Such words are said to be etymological twins.
Cognates may often be less easily recognised than the above examples and authorities sometimes differ in their interpretations
of the evidence. The English word milk is clearly a cognate of German Milch and of Russian moloko (<PIE *melg-, "to milk"). On the other hand, French lait and
Spanish leche (both meaning "milk") are less obviously cognates of
Greek galaktos (genitive form of gala, milk) (<*g(a)lag-,
galakt-), as is the English word lactic.
False cognates
-
False cognates are words that are commonly thought to be related (have a common origin)
whereas linguistic examination reveals they are unrelated. Thus, for example, on the basis of superficial similarities one might
suppose that the Latin verb habere and German haben, both meaning 'to have', are cognates. However, an
understanding of the way words in the two languages evolve from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) roots shows that they cannot be cognate (see for example
Grimm's law). German haben (like English have) in fact comes from PIE
*kap, 'to grasp', and its real cognate in Latin is capere, 'to seize, grasp, capture'. Latin habere, on the
other hand, is from PIE *ghabh, 'to give, to receive', and hence cognate with English give and German
geben.
The similarity of words between languages is not enough to demonstrate that the words are related to each other, in
much the same way that facial resemblance does not imply a close genetic relationship between people. Over the course of hundreds
and thousands of years, words may change their sound completely. Thus, for example, English five and Sanskrit pança are cognates, while English over and Hebrew a'var are not, and neither are English dog and Mbabaram dog.
Contrast this with false friends, which frequently are cognate.
Parliamentary term
In a parliamentary sense, a cognate debate means that two or more bills can be debated together, if the House does not object
to the matter. Bills are only debated cognately if they are closely related.
Mechanical systems
In Mechanical Systems, the term "cognate" has been used by Hartenburg and Denavit to
describe a linkage, of different geometry, which generates the same coupler curve.
Molecular Biology term
In molecular biology a ligand may have a cognate receptor. This is a receptor that specifically binds to that ligand.
References
See also
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