`cognate'

[Eduard Selleslagh]

-----Original Message-----
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Date: Wednesday, July 14, 1999 12:43 AM

>>larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk writes:

>>This posting will not be news to the linguists on this list, who may prefer
>>to stop reading at this point, unless they want to offer criticisms of the
>>definitions below.  But I have noticed that a significant number of
>>non-linguists on this list have apparently misunderstood the sense of our
>>technical term `cognate': many of them
>>appear to believe that `cognates' means something like `words of similar
>>form

>- that's odd; I always assumed it meant "derived from a common ancestral
>word".  You know, like Tiwaz and dyaus.

[Ed Selleslagh]

That's what I meant when I caused all this by calling Grk. 'cheir' (N.Grk.
'cheri') and Georgian (Kartvelian) 'cheli' cognates. I should have said
'possible cognates' since I was asking the list members whether these
actually were or could be cognates.

Sorry for all the fuss, but at least things got clearer (1. they probably
aren't cognates, 2. we, the non-professionals,  have a better understanding
of what cognates are).

Ed.