Cognate Nouns Research Articles

The Study of Cognate and Non-cognate Nouns and Verbs Naming in Mazandarani-Persian Bilinguals

Introduction: The main purpose of this study was to investigate how words are retrieved in the picture naming tasks (retrieval is discrete serial or cascading and networked) by examining the effect of word cognateness on the ability to name. Obtaining normal data on the ability to name of Mazandarani-Persian bilingual individuals with different genders, ages, and educational groups, was another goal of this study.
 Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, after completing the language proficiency questionnaire, 120 Mazandarani-Persian individuals named 109 nouns and 90 verbs in Mazandarani and Persian languages. The speed and voice of people were recorded by DMDX software.
 Results: The results show that the accuracy of the naming cognate nouns in Mazandarani, cognate verbs in Mazandarani and Persian, and the speed of naming cognate nouns in Mazandarani is more than non-cognate (P=0.000). Cognate status, gender (men), word type (noun), level of education, and Persian language had a positive effect on naming accuracy.
 Conclusion: The results of this study are an example of the effect of cognate status on naming ability and thus confirming the cascaded activation model. Also, gender (men), word type (noun), level of education, and Persian language has a positive effect on naming accuracy.

Hope for the future: An analysis of HOPE/HÅP(E) across genres and languages

This article reports on a contrastive study of the cognate nouns and verbs hope and håp(e) that investigates their lexico-grammatical conditions of use in English vs. Norwegian fiction texts and football match reports. The complex dataset consists of material from a parallel corpus of fiction texts and a comparable corpus of football match reports. An interesting finding is that the verb use outnumbers the noun use in the fiction texts, whereas the noun use outnumbers the verb use in the match reports in both languages. Moreover, the analysis of the lemmas suggests that they have similar potential of use but with slightly different preferences, both across the genres and languages. It is also suggested that the English lemmas are more consistently used in negative contexts than the Norwegian ones. Finally, the method of combining data from two different types of contrastive corpora proved fruitful, as the results become more robust.

Specificity of Cognate Nouns and Adjectives Functioning

Introduction. The aim of the article is to determine whether syntactic behavior of linguistic unit depends on its part-of-speech identity or only its semantics. The importance of the research is determined by the absence of systematic description of the specificity of cognate words functioning in linguistics.Methodology and sources. The research deals with the cognate nouns and adjectives functioning. According to the classification of semantic types of predicates developed by A. G. Eliseeva, O. N. Seliverstova we define the researched predicates as the ones denoting state. These predicates are studied in terms of case grammar, i. e. they are compared in the aspect of an argument structure realization. In determining the semantic cases of predicates, we mainly rely on the set of semantic cases proposed by V. V. Bogdanov.Results and discussion. It is shown that the analyzed nouns, as a rule, expressing given or known information require a lower number of cases in its explicit forms which still can be implicit. The researched adjectives that usually denote new information are accompanied by a higher number of cases in a surface structure. These predicates also differ in the forms of their arguments.Conclusion. The revealed features of cognate nouns and adjectives functioning show the significant influence of the form of linguistic unit on syntactic behavior and indicate that formation of syntactic structures is not only determined by semantics.

Cognate effects on anaphor processing.

There are numerous studies demonstrating facilitated processing of cognates relative to noncognates for bilinguals, providing evidence that bilingual lexical access is language nonselective. We tested whether cross-language activation affects comprehension of larger units of meaning, focusing specifically on comprehension of anaphoric references. Highly proficient, Spanish-English bilinguals read sentences either in English (Experiment 1) or Spanish (Experiment 2) while their eye movements were recorded. Sentences consisted of an initial clause with 2 nouns that were either cognates or noncognates, and a later clause with an anaphor that either referred to the first or second noun. In the English experiment, cognate status facilitated selection of the sentence's foundational noun, reflected by shorter reading times for cognate nouns in the first position. Processing of pronouns was facilitated when they referred to cognates, reflected by higher skipping rates and shorter reading times. Final selection of cognate referents was also facilitated, reflected by total reading shorter total reading times, but only when the pronoun referred to the first noun. In the Spanish experiment, total reading times for cognate nouns were shorter, irrespective of their order of mention, reflecting a general cognate facilitation effect that was not affected by which noun was selected as the foundational structure. Spillover fixations from anaphors referring to cognates were shorter than noncognates, but only when they were the second-mentioned noun, suggesting that cognate status affected coreferencing for the more recently encountered noun. Implications for theories of cross-language activation and anaphoric reference are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Mutual intelligibility of Dutch-German cognates by children: The devil is in the detail

AbstractSeveral studies (e.g., Ház 2005) have found German to be easier to understand for Dutch listeners than Dutch for German listeners. This asymmetry has been attributed to the fact that German is an obligatory subject in Dutch secondary school and that many Dutch people watch German television. In contrast, it is much less common for German children to learn Dutch at school and for German people to watch Dutch television. It cannot be excluded, however, that in addition to the extralinguistic factor of language contact, linguistic factors also play a role in the asymmetric intelligibility between German and Dutch. The present study aimed at gaining insight into the phonetic-phonological factors playing a role in Dutch-German intelligibility at the word level for speakers of the respective languages in a first confrontation (i.e., assuming no prior language contact).We presented highly frequent Dutch and German cognate nouns, recorded by a perfect bilingual speaker, to Dutch and German children between 9 and 12 years in a word translation task. The German and Dutch children were comparable in that they did not know the other language or a related dialect and expressed equally positive attitudes towards the other language, its speakers and the country. It was thus ensured that language contact and language attitude could not play a role in the present study.Our results revealed that the Dutch subjects were significantly better at understanding the German cognates (50.2% correct translations) than the German subjects were at understanding the Dutch cognates (41.9%). Since the relevant extra-linguistic factors had been excluded, the asymmetry must have a linguistic basis. A thorough analysis of the 16 cognate pairs with an asymmetry larger than 20% showed that (combinations of) neighbors (lexical competitors), phonetic detail and asymmetric perceptions of corresponding sounds play a major role in the explanation of the asymmetry.

The role of extra-linguistic factors in receptive bilingualism: Evidence from Danish and Swedish pre-schoolers

Danish and Swedish are closely related languages that are generally mutually intelligible. Previous research has shown, however, that Danes comprehend more spoken Swedish than vice versa. It has been suggested that this asymmetry is caused by extra-linguistic factors such as literacy, contact with, and attitudes held towards the test language. However, also linguistic factors, such as supra-segmental features or differences in speech rate, could cause or increase an asymmetry. The aim of the experiment reported in this article was to exclude three extra-linguistic factors (attitude, contact and literacy) in order to determine their role in mutual intelligibility. Participants were 19 Danish- and 26 Swedish-speaking illiterate preschoolers. Their task was to match 50 cognate nouns to corresponding pictures in a multiple-choice task. Results revealed that word-recognition scores in Danish children (63 percent) did not differ significantly from the Swedish scores (65 percent). That means that, in contrast to adult Danes, Danish children did not perform better on the word-recognition task than their Swedish peers. This finding suggests that extra-linguistic factors play an important role in intelligibility of a closely related language, and, as extra-linguistic factors develop, the intelligibility asymmetry develops.

The treatment of assagai and zagaie by the OED, and of assegai by the Dictionary of South African English

This article consists of three parts. First, I argue that the OED is confused and mistaken in its treatment of the relationship between the cognate nouns assagai and zagaie in Early Modern English, and that it fails to distinguish a number of different senses in which both words are used. This I demonstrate by examining the etymologies of both words and analysing their relationship to one another. Next I consider the glosses supplied for assagai/assegai by both the OED and the Dictionary of South African English in order to show that both dictionaries conflate the word’s etymological sense with a later, transferred sense, from which the etymological sense should properly be distinguished. Finally, I argue that both the OED and the Dictionary of South African English overlook important evidence regarding the naturalisation of assagai in English. The strong influence of Dutch, I argue, needs to be accommodated in any etymological consideration of the English word, and in any analysis of its later development. The article closes with a suggested revised structure for the entry on assagai/assegai in both the OED and the Dictionary of South African English, followed by a brief consideration of issues concerning the transmission and semantic evolution of this word on which further research is needed.

Orthographic Transparency and Morphology of Spanish–English Cognate Adjectives

The English and Spanish languages share over 20,000 cognates. Cognates are words that are orthographically, semantically, and syntactically similar in two languages. In 2009, Montelongo, Hernández, and Herter collected orthographic transparency ratings for over 2,000 Spanish-English cognate nouns and cognate adjectives drawn from the Juilland and Chang-Rodríguez' Frequency Dictionary of Spanish Words. The present analysis of the cognate adjectives in the Montelongo, et al. norms identified orthographic and morphological characteristics which affected ratings of cognate transparency. The analysis identified an initial-letter effect: the earlier an English word deviates from its Spanish equivalent, the lower it is rated. Similarly, the more orthographically similar an English suffix is to its Spanish suffix equivalent, the higher its rating.

The Boutique and the Gallery: An Apologia for a Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Academy

The Boutique and the GalleryAn Apologia for a Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Academy Tim Muldoon (bio) Many times now I have witnessed the scene of parents carting suitcases and small refrigerators up the steps of residence halls, offloading from their cars the accumulated detritus of their adolescents’ young lives. The busyness and stresses of the moving-in period belie, of course, the deeper feelings of both parents and children, especially families for whom the experience of freshman year at college is new. Yet even for parents who themselves underwent this ritual many years earlier, and whose older sons and daughters have already passed through their college years, the experience of bringing a child to college is significant: it is the passing of trust for their child’s development to the people the child will encounter there.1 Lost, often, in arcane discussions about mission in higher education or in explorations of the objects of intellectual inquiry is the recollection of how the very enterprise of tertiary education—like all levels of education, really—depends upon acts of trust. In 1871, the future president James A. Garfield suggested that the ideal college was the sainted Mark Hopkins of Williams College on one end of a log and a student on the other. Such an image illustrates how the very decision, by either a parent or a student, to learn from [End Page 74] someone else involves trusting him or her to tell the truth. Professors are naturally in a position of power for their students trust them (if even for a short time) with contributing to their development as thinkers. Even amidst the prevalence of an instrumental approach to higher education—an approach shared by many parents, students, and even faculty and administrators, which sees education as merely a means to the end of good employment or social advancement—there is nonetheless a confluence of acts of trust in the one who is to direct the intellectual development of students. The implicit message is this: “Think the way I lead you to think, and you will get what you are after.” Of course it is the second part of that compound sentence that is the issue of debate among many in academia today. What, exactly, are we after? And what ought we to be after? There are really two distinct issues, but in colleges and universities where intellectual work is the engine that fuels both student diligence and capital campaigns, these two issues come together. The first issue is one that preoccupied the earliest thinkers in the West: namely, the question about knowledge itself—what it is, what it strives for, what it can be used for. The second issue has to do with what we want to hand on—the Latins used the verb tradere and its cognate nouns: traditio (a handing on), tradita/traditus/traditum (the feminine/masculine/ neuter “something handed on”). Assuming we know what we’re doing when we use our knowledge, what then ought we to hand on to our students? What things ought we to hand on, and what practices ought we to teach them in order that they might continue the work we ourselves have inherited? Two Images I propose two images, each of which represents a way in which thinkers today conceive of knowledge, and each of which carries implications for the way thinkers hand on what they are doing to students. [End Page 75] The Boutique The first image is that of the boutique—or better, the cluster of boutiques one might find at a mall or a downtown shopping district. Let us assume that each boutique is run by an expert, a connoisseur (if you will) of the precise items of the boutique’s specialty. In a typical boutique, say, “English romanticism,” a procurement associate (let us call her a “faculty member”) is responsible for working with various vendors—Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats are a few of the more prominent brands—to develop new product lines. Here she develops a new psychoanalytic look at Coleridge; there she offers a postcolonial critique of Frankenstein’s monster. Her work is an exercise of both skill and creativity; not only must...

The Power and the Glory: The Aesthetics of the Hebrew Bible

The Power and the Glory: The Aesthetics of the Hebrew Bible

Like a Woman: Hector and the Boundaries of Masculinity

"But why does my heart within me debate these things? I might approach him as a suppliant and he not pity me nor respect me in any way, but kill me instead in my nakedness, like a woman, since I would have stripped off my armor. Nor is there any way from an oak or a rock to babble to him the things a boy and girl do, what a boy and girl say when they flirt."1 Iliad 22.122-28 In the midst of his final, definitive monologue, Hector turns wistfully away from the hard necessities of the moment to imagine a different world. There boys and girls flirt in the shade of a spring; there he can shed his armor and talk like a woman. But that protected space, which surfaces again fleetingly in the hut of Achilles in Book 24, cannot long survive the relentless masculine drive for status that so dominates the Iliad. In Hector's mind, as in the aftermath of the poem, the beauties of peace and intimacy are immediately swept aside by the force of destruction. Commentators have been drawn to the enigmatic phrase "from an oak or a rock," but, for me, the heart of this speech is in the verb oarizein, usually translated as "to chat or gossip." For [End Page 221] me, as for Hector, the prospect of a vacation from the need to reassert, endlessly, my right to exist, is sweet.2 The verb is cognate with oar, "wife," the etymology suggesting that to oarizein is basically to "talk like a wife." In his last moments, Hector tries out the dream of bringing Achilles into a sheltered feminine space. But his rhetoric is dominated by the other world, and so the vignette of young lovers comes after the dismal picture of Hector, "like a woman," stripped of his protective armor, helpless before his masculine killer. This vision becomes reality soon after, as he lies pinned like a butterfly by Achilles' spear, begging for a decent burial (Il. 22.337ff.). Since this monologue sums up for us in many ways the character of Hector, his strengths and his failings, it is no accident that talking like a woman marks for him the impossibility of survival: he cannot sustain the dream of that other, feminine self, which seems to him the negation of all that is heroic. But the idea of being a woman--or acting like one--stays with Hector a little longer in the monologue. As he clings to it, his mind goes back to a time he did in fact talk like a wife: "And quickly he (Paris) came upon his brother Hector, as he was about to turn away from the spot where he was talking like a wife (oarize) to his wife" (Il. 6.514-16).3 The verb is used only in these two places in Homeric epic, though cognate nouns also appear in a few passages. Of these, two remain firmly within the world of women: oar, "wife" (Il. 9.327), and oaristus (Il. 14.216), the power of intimate, sexually-charged congress wafting from the girdle of Aphrodite; oaristês, "dear friend," is used by Odysseus in his disguise as Aethon, describing the friendship of "Odysseus" and Idomeneus (Od. 19.179). Here Odysseus is in fact talking to his wife, though she doesn't know it. In two other places, oaristus appears in contexts that extend the range of the root meaning in suggestive ways. At Iliad 13.291, the noun is limited by promachôn, "fighters in the forefront" and, at Iliad 17.228, it appears with polemou, "battle." The poet creates a brilliant and disturbing metaphor, comparing the chaos of battle, where men mingle with their enemies, to an intimate--often sexual--encounter. [End Page 222] The common thread running through all these usages is that of boundaries breached, of intimacy that scrambles the orderly separation so...

Picture naming of cognate and non-cognate nouns in bilingual aphasia

Previous research has found differences in the speed and accuracy of responses involving concrete cognate nouns and non-cognate nouns in a range of written and “on-line” tasks using neurologically unimpaired, bilingual adults. The present study investigated whether cognateness affects verbal confrontation naming performance in balanced French/English bilinguals ( N = 15 aphasic and 15 non-aphasic subjects). Subjects met selection criteria for equal proficiency, regular use, and early acquisition of both languages. Results of a picture naming test show that cognate pictures were more often correctly named in both languages than were non-cognates. Some error types and self-correction behaviors also varied with cognate status. There were similarities between the results of this study and those of previous studies of monolingual naming. Some error types and self-correction strategies appear to be unique to bilingual speakers. Theoretical questions and treatment applications arising from these findings are outlined.

A Further Consideration of D. W. Thomas's Theories About Yāda

The late D. Winton Thomas published a number of articles on the Hebrew verb yddac, as well as on cognate nouns, and argued that it does not always mean know or the like. He claimed to have discovered a homonymous root related to the Arabic verb waduCa, become still, quiet, at rest. He suggested that, for example, the qal in Hebrew sometimes means have rest, be still, be quiet (e.g. Isa. xv 4; Ps. xxxv 15; Job ix 5, xx 20; Prov. v 6), the hiphcil make quiet, submissive (e.g. Judg. viii 16), humiliate (e.g. Ecclus vii 20), and punish (e.g. Gen. xviii 21), and the niph al be brought to submission (e.g. Judg. xvi 9); further, the qal itself can mean be humiliated (e.g. Hosea ix 7). He also claimed to find support for his theory in the ancient versions and in the writings of medieval and later Jewish commentators and lexicographers. Although he was not aware of the fact when he put forward his theory, Thomas had been anticipated by J. J. Reiske, Coniecturae in lobum et Proverbia Salomonis (Leipzig, 1779), who compared the Arabic and translated lo6-yddac in Job xx 20 as Non erit quietus, and tedac in Job xxxvii 15 as quietus manes, and suggested humiliabitur as a possible rendering of yiwwddeac in Prov. x 9. In 1970 I discussed Thomas's theory in an article (which he was able to read in typescript shortly before his death on 12 June of that year), which listed his relevant publications and the Hebrew

The Theology of Baptism

In the Bible we find Baptism suddenly appearing for the first time in that action of John the Baptist which, according to one way of reading Mark I.I, was ‘the beginning of the Gospel’. The Evangelists speak of Baptism not as a strange rite invented by John, but as something so familiar that it requires neither detailed description nor careful explanation.To readers of the present day, however, the sudden appearance of Baptism at the beginning of the New Testament is a source of bewilderment which can easily lead to the kind of false interpretation of Scripture that underlies the Baptist movement et hoc genus omne.It is therefore necessary to try to discover all we can as to the origin and significance of this strange rite.The New Testament uses two cognate nouns: βάπτισμα and βαπτισμóς. βάπτισμα is found only in the New Testament and in Christian writers, and in the New Testament is used only of Baptism, whether it be John's Baptism or Christian Baptism. βαπτισμóς is used in the New Testament meaning a special form of ‘washing’. It occurs only at Mark 7.4, Heb. 6.2 and 9.10. In all these cases the reference is to ritual washings either of persons or of things. It is never used of Baptism in the New Testament, though Josephus, the only profane author to use the word, applies it to John's Baptism (Ant. xvii.v.2).

The Noun Mena in the Divine Comedy

THE noun mena occurs twice in the Divine Comedy; and its Latin etymon minae is found in Dante's Epistle VI. In Inferno, xvii, Vergil suggests that, while he himself is making final arrangements for aerial transportation to the circle below, Dante take a look at the souls of the Usurers, who are frantically trying to beat out and brush off the steadily falling flakes of fire that torture them and to ease themselves from the burning sand on which they are sitting; he says to Dante: 'Go, and see their mena.'l With the sorry picture of their agonized gestures in mind, it is not surprising that mena, here, has struck a number of commentators as almost selfevidently having the sense of the cognate nouns dimenamento and dimen'o and the verb dimenare; namely, (often wild) waving of the hands and thrashing about. This is the stage in the semantic development of minae Classical Latin for 'impending juts' or 'overhangs' in which it meant threatening gesticulations used in driving live-stock: giving finally dimenamento, dimenio and dimenare on the one hand, which preserve the lively picture of manual motions, and on the other hand the weakened significations of merely 'leading, conducting, taking' of modern Italian menare, French mener. Whatever meanings the noun mena may have had in the transitional period, it now retains little, if any, trace of the vivid connotations still preserved in dimenamento, dimento and dimenare (and French se de'mener); and has taken on the more abstract and rather sinister import of the French mene'e, that is, 'machination, scheming, intrigue, underhand dealing.' The overwhelming majority of modern Italian commentators assert, or assume, that the word in Dante's time and usage did not have the force of dimenamento or dimenso; in fact Tommaseo seems to have been the last Dante scholar of importance who so explained it without reservation.2 The meanings usually given by commentators are quite abstract, ranging from 'condition, nature, state, quality' through 'manner, custom' to the more concrete 'occupation.' This last meaning, and related ones,3