Common Indo-European and Slavic roots; Metaphorical mechanisms of semantic extensions; False cognates; Slavic etymological dictionaries
Homework #10 (due end of week 10) Either use monolingual Slavic dictionaries and compare the polysemic structures of five body parts in one pair of languages or compare the vocabulary from this list, or go to this page and explain the processes which have lead to the emergence of the false cognates between two Slavic languages.
General: here or Trubachov; The Prague Dictionary
Russian:Vasmer and other Russian Dictionaries
Polish: Brückner, Sławski
Serbo-Croatian: Skok, Gluhak
Inherited PIE vocabulary: color terms, body parts, kinship terms, basic objects and activities, closed class parts-of-speech (pronouns in particular)
Take a look at the the following site. You can trace IE roots through English meanings. You can also browse IE semantic fields. These and other resources are available at the The U. of Texas at Austin IE Documentation Center.
This page provides a nice example of how lexical cognates are established. Indo-European Language Exercise is here (Harvard [Haaavd] English Dept.).
Borrowings: Iranian languages (religious terminology), Germanic (various), Turkic, Greek and Latin, some Celtic.
Click here for a description of the cross-cultural differences of Slavic langauges.
Some examples:
Lexical items:
| Russian | дядя | ||
| Polish | wuj | stryj | |
| S-Cr | ujak | stric | tetak |
Metaphorical extensions
| Russian | горлышко | little throat (of a bottle) |
| Polish | szyjka | little neck (of a bottle) |
| S-Cr | grlić | little throat (of a bottle) |
Take a look at this page about inter-Slavic false cognates
Polish - S-Cr Examples
Different Semantic Extensions
| S-Cr | Pol |
| akademik 'academician' | akademik 'dorm' |
| blud 'lust' | bląd 'error' |
| doba 'time (e.g., of the day)' | doba '24 hours' |
| gavran 'raven' | gawron 'crow' |
| jutro 'morning' | jutro 'tomorrow' |
| maslo 'lard' | masło 'butter' |
| okno 'window glass' | okno 'window' |
| rok 'deadline' | rok 'year' |
| voleti 'love' | woleć 'prefer' |
Borrowing
| S-Cr | Pol |
| halas 'fisherman' (Hungarian) | hałas 'noise' (Ukrainian) |
| dah 'breath' (Slavic) | dach 'roof' (German) |
| fleka 'stain' | fleka 'mole' (both German) |
| penzija 'pension' | pensja 'salary' (both Latin) |