Sum: `oblique cognates'

[Larry Trask]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
A few days ago I posted a query about terminology for labeling certain
kinds of indirect cognates.  I received about a dozen responses from
eight different people.  The terms put forward are summarized below.
Most of them have apparently appeared in print, though not all.
 
(1) `direct cognates': forms which are fully cognate in every detail,
and are independently descended from a single reconstructible
ancestral form.
 
(2) `lexical cognates': direct cognates (in the above sense) which are
word-forms.
 
(3) `paradigmatic cognates': forms which are directly descended,
without additional material, from paradigmatic alternants of a single
item: what I called `oblique cognates', as in the IE words for
`tooth'.
 
(4) `doublets': etymologically related forms descended from variants
of a single proto-morpheme.
 
(3) and (4) are perhaps identical.
 
(5) `derivational cognates': forms which are derived by morphological
processes from directly cognate stems but which may contain additional
non-cognate morphological material of a derivational nature.
 
(6) `partial cognates': forms which contain cognate material but at
least some of which contain further material which is not cognate.
 
(7) `morpheme cognates': forms which share at least one cognate
morpheme but which also contain additional material which is not
cognate (at least in some forms).
 
(8) `root cognates': forms whose roots are cognate but which contain
additional material which is not cognate (at least in some forms).
 
(9) `root etymology' (German `Wurzeletymologie'): same as the
preceding, but often used in the past as a dismissive term indicating
skepticism.
 
(6) to (9), and perhaps also (5). are very similar, and in some cases
identical.
 
(10) `deformed cognates': forms which are clearly of a common origin
but which require irregularly different etyma, such as the IE forms
variously requiring PIE *<ulkwos> or *<lukwos> `wolf, fox',
particularly when it can be shown that one of the reconstructed forms
is original and the other has arisen from an irregular development.
These might also be termed `oblique cognates' if the original form
cannot be identified.
 
(11) `skewed cognates' or `skewed correspondences': forms which are
clearly cognate but which exhibit irregular developments or
correspondences.
 
(12) `word family': a set of items which clearly contain cognate
material (especially cognate roots) but whose precise relation is
obscure.
 
(13) `allofams': the members of such a word family.
 
I'll try to organize these terms as best I can in my dictionary.
Further comments welcome.
 
My thanks to Richard Coates, Isidore Dyen, Ralf-Stefan Georg, Martin
Huld, Carol Justus, Harold Koch, Gonzalo Rubio, and Roger Wright.
 
Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK
 
larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk