"I’m giving up on the word “related” because it appears to be hopelessly confusing, but no, they’re not cognate.  “Cognate” refers to words descended from a common ancestor—descended in the natural course of language change, just to make that clear.  Hebrew shalom and Arabic salaam are cognate because they descend from the same Proto-Semitic form.  English salaam ("he made a deep salaam") is not cognate with either; it is a borrowing from Arabic, as are imam and almaami.”

--------------------

A broader definition, including any words of a common origin, seems popular enough.

So perhaps it is one of those many phrases whose semantic breadth varies with context.

http://person.sol.lu.se/JoostVanDeWeijer/Texts/glossary.pdf
Glossary of Linguistics
cognates: words that have the same source or origin

http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/dictionaries/difficultwords/data/d0003607.html
Dictionary of Difficult Words
n. word of same origin;

http://www.plexoft.com/SBF/C09.html
COGNate [word]. [A word] having a common etymological root [with another].

I’ve been trying to follow various semantic arguments here, without much success.  Everyone seems to have his own interpretation of these terms, and discussion just seems to have stirred up even muddier waters.  I’ve now come to the conclusion that I’d better stick to what we all seem to know - that a word is either descended from (which I’ve used before, without being challenged) an earlier word in the same language or language group, or borrowed from another language or language group.  I’m not a linguist and I’m not bothered about the finer distinctions, really.  In future, if you don’t understand what I mean, please just ask.  I try to use plain English wherever possible, and make myself understood.

ElizaD - 25 March 2008 10:48 PM

I’ve been trying to follow various semantic arguments here, without much success.  Everyone seems to have his own interpretation of these terms, and discussion just seems to have stirred up even muddier waters.  I’ve now come to the conclusion that I’d better stick to what we all seem to know - that a word is either descended from (which I’ve used before, without being challenged) an earlier word in the same language or language group, or borrowed from another language or language group.  I’m not a linguist and I’m not bothered about the finer distinctions, really.  In future, if you don’t understand what I mean, please just ask.  I try to use plain English wherever possible, and make myself understood.

I agree! If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it has most certainly is descended from a duck :-)

So what does it mean when you say that a word is “inherited"--without a “from...”?  LH appears to be saying that this must be interpreted as “inherited as far back as can be traced, without borrowing"--under which interpretation, mill is not “inherited”.  OTOH, Dave seems to be interpreting it as “inherited from some ancestral form of the language"--by which interpretation mill certainly is “inherited”.

Good point, and yes, I mean “inherited as far back as can be traced, without borrowing.” That does not, of course, mean that the word was not borrowed farther back; Proto-Indo-European, like every other language, doubtless borrowed words, but we have no way of knowing what they are (though we can guess in some instances: PIE *woinos ‘wine’ was probably borrowed from Semitic).

Incidentally, with regard to words for ‘mill’ it’s interesting that both mill and mulenn (Modern Irish muileann) replaced inherited words from an extension in -n- of the PIE root *gwer- ‘heavy’: Old English cweorn (which survives as quern) and Old Irish brao, bró (genitive broon; Modern Irish bró); this is also the root of the Slavic words for ‘millstone’ (e.g. Russian žërnov).

I’d better stick to what we all seem to know - that a word is either descended from (which I’ve used before, without being challenged) an earlier word in the same language or language group, or borrowed from another language or language group.

You’re entirely correct, Eliza (as usual).

FWIW, I think the problem is using “inherited” without a “from”.

I concur. I even made the same point in an early version of my post, but I edited it out before sending.

Good point, and yes, I mean “inherited as far back as can be traced, without borrowing.”

For the record, I would agree with this amended definition. I didn’t find the distinction distasteful, nor was I trying to muddy or derail it. On the contrary, I found the definition of inheritance as originally put forward to be inexact and unclear. I was trying to clarify it.

Fair enough, and sorry I misinterpreted your objection.

The only problem with that definition (of “inherited” standing alone) is that it can lead to seemingly contradictory statements like ”Mill is inherited from Old English, but it is not inherited.” I’m sure that linguistic professionals rely on context to avoid confusion about how to interpret “inherited”.  A lot of the specialized jargon in the fields I know has similar opportunities for confusion, and avoiding them usually comes down to “you know what I mean”. Which works well enough until one is talking to someone who doesn’t.

All too true, and I will try my damnedest to avoid such ambiguous locutions.

"I’d better stick to what we all seem to know - that a word is either descended from (which I’ve used before, without being challenged) an earlier word in the same language or language group, or borrowed from another language or language group.”

There is a third case: the word might have sprung mysteriously into life in its current form.

That’s a perfectly cromulent possibility.

There is a third case: the word might have sprung mysteriously into life in its current form.

I wholly agree with Dr. Techie. That’s a brilliant suggestion, OP Tipping; it’s not only cromulent (a word, by the way, which is not related to Cromulus and Cremus, the cognate Cromans; it’s inherited from an archaic form of PIE called Creative American PIE, or CREAM PIE for short), but crapulent too. I think a word such as you have in mind might be wiener, which sprang fully grown from the brain of its daddy (an ancestor, though not a relative, of Dr. Seuss). Who isn’t familiar with that famous painting The Birth of Wieners, served on the half-shell garnished with pickled ablauts and Sundried Vermicelli?

(crawls back to near-empty bottle, resolved to switch to a less toxic brand if he survives this one)

Yes, I’m aware of the third possibility.  I was simply trying to put the other two possibilities into plain English.  But it led on to a wonderful word, cromulent, and an idea for another thread ...

lionello - 26 March 2008 09:00 PM

I wholly agree with Dr. Techie. That’s a brilliant suggestion, OP Tipping; it’s not only cromulent (a word, by the way, which is not related to Cromulus and Cremus, the cognate Cromans; it’s inherited from an archaic form of PIE called Creative American PIE, or CREAM PIE for short), but crapulent too. I think a word such as you have in mind might be wiener, which sprang fully grown from the brain of its daddy (an ancestor, though not a relative, of Dr. Seuss). Who isn’t familiar with that famous painting The Birth of Wieners, served on the half-shell garnished with pickled ablauts and Sundried Vermicelli?

(crawls back to near-empty bottle, resolved to switch to a less toxic brand if he survives this one)

If laughter could kill, I am dead now :)