[Histling-l] earliest attestation of a 'cognate set'?

[Vit Bubenik]

Hi Claire,

 

The earliest attestation of a cognate set in the  Afro-Asiatic phylum can be found in three risaalas (‘letters’) by Yehudah ibn Quraysh, a rabbi of the late 10/11th c. from Tahert (Tiaret in Algeria),  who compared Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic (and some Berber) and noticed correct correspondences among them. 

 

Another early ‘comparatist’ was Zigmund Gelenius who established a set of 292 corresponding words (in Greek, Latin, Germanic and Slavic (published in 1573  in Basel):  Lexicon symphonum, quo quattuor linguarum Europae familiarum, graecae scilicet, latinae, germanicae et slavonicae concordia consonantiaque indicatur. (Basic information: V. Flajshans, Pisemnictvi ceske, Prague, 1901:317).

 

Vit

 

From: histling-l [mailto:histling-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Claire Bowern
Sent: Monday, April 22, 2019 7:36 PM
To: Histling-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: [Histling-l] earliest attestation of a 'cognate set'?

 

Dear list members,

I'm writing an article about historical databases and I'm trying to trace the earliest example of a correspondence set (or some other equivalent organization of data). Rask has comparisons, of course, and earlier the typological/lexical comparisons of Gesner and contemporaries. Dante makes comparisons between Latin and contemporary vernaculars but I'm not sure we could call those correspondence sets. Are there similar correspondences in the Arabic or Turkic grammatical traditions? Or other early authors who talk about systematic correspondences or organize data in a way that we might associate with cognate or comparison sets? 

Thanks in advance for your help,

Claire


 

-- 

 

Claire Bowern

Professor, Director of Graduate Studies

Chair: Yale Women Faculty Forum (wff.yale.edu <http://wff.yale.edu> )

Department of Linguistics

New Haven, CT  06511

 

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