Is there a word meaning something like “other grammatical forms of this word,” or “other words deriving (fairly closely) from the same root”?
I thought the word “cognates” could be used in this way, but having looked it up in several dictionaries (including the O.E.D.) I am no longer confident that it is right.
For example, if I want to refer collectively to the words “know,” “knowing,” “knew,” “knowledge,” “knowledgeable,” and perhaps also “acknowledge,” etc., is it correct to say “‘know’ and its cognates,” or is there some other word I should use, or is there some better (and still reasonably concise) way to say it?
I suppose “derivatives” comes close, but it seems to privilege one form over all the others, as the original from which all the others flow, and I do not really want to do that. I do not want to commit myself to some implicit claim that “know” is the original word from which all the other forms derive. I also do not want to include words that might derive historically from the same root word, way back, but which now mean something quite different.
“Various forms” occurs to me as another possibility, but it seems to limit things too much. “Knowing” and “knew” are forms of the verb to know, but it seems like a stretch to say that of “knowledge,” let alone “knowledgeable,” or “acknowledge” are mere forms of know.
So, is “cognates” acceptable, or does anyone have a better suggestion?
I can’t really think of a good term for exactly what you’re looking for. The problem with ‘cognate’ is that it usually refers to a historical relation, whereas the relation between, for example, ‘know’ and ‘knowing’ is very much active/productive in the language.
Linguists usually distinguish between two ways in which forms of a word relate to each other, ‘inflection’ and ‘derivation’. For example, ‘know’, ‘knows’, ‘knew’, ‘known’ and ‘knowing’ are all inflectional varieties of the same basic root, the abstract unit known as a ‘lexeme’. On the other hand, the relation between, for example, ‘create’ and ‘creation’ is derivational, because the addition of -tion results in a new part of speech entirely and hence a new lexeme that can undergo its own inflections and derivations.
A wordy solution would be “‘know’ and its inflectional and derivational kin”. Even this is not perfect, though, because it’s not clear that ‘acknowledge’ is really derived from ‘know’ in any way except historically.
So, what does that leave us with? “know and other words from the same root”. I don’t think you can get any more concise or accurate than the title of your thread!
Yes, that is what I was getting from the dictionaries. “Cognate” normally refers either to a historical relationship or (if I understood correctly) a relationship across different languages.
As for the other people’s suggestions, I do want to be understood, so a neologism is not going to do the job (unless its meaning is really obvious).
It looks like sundog66’s wordier suggestions may be the best I can do (though I am not sure I understand what you mean about ‘acknowledge’ being only historically derived from ‘know’). I must say that I am a bit surprised that linguists have not felt the need for a word for this, although, if it was a very obscure, jargony term that only people trained in linguistics would know, it would not be much use to me anyway. I was already worried that “cognate” might be a bit too obscure.
Cognates are historically related words in different languages that may or may not mean the same thing, but if not, the meanings are usually related. For instance, German and English “Hund” and “Hound” are obviously cognates, but don’t mean exactly the same thing. Less well known to English speakers is the German word “Dogge”, which means a mastiff or Great Dane–again clearly related but different in meaning. The words are cousins, so to speak…and it so happens that in Romanian, the word for cousin is “kumnat”, which is strikingly close to “cognate” if you imagined the “gn” pronounced as it would be in French or Italian.
The only argument I can come up with for using cognate is that entering “other words from the same root” in a reverse dictionary produces, as one of its results, the word cognate. I think people will understand what you mean even if it isn’t precise.
However, considering this:
I think Pithecanthropus may have a good suggestion:
When I’ve written about these sorts of terms, I’ve used the clunky term “etymologically linked.” Not as elegant or specific, but it worked for the context.
‘Lexeme’ is the usual term for the base unit (e.g. ‘know’ in the OP) but I don’t know if there’s a term for all the forms so related (aside from ‘forms’). Although ‘morpheme’ would also make sense, once you expand it to words like ‘knowledge’ or ‘unknown’. A lexeme would normally refer to the units that can change form via inflection or declension and might be thought of as a necessary dictionary entry. A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning, which is why ‘unknown’ would be said to be made up of two morphemes. Since these are intended to apply to any given language, the boundary isn’t necessarily strictly defined.
Why not just say they’re “related” or “etymologically related,” if you want to get technical?
The fact that you can’t think of “the” word means that most of your readers wouldn’t recognize any of the obscure technical terms that might be suggested here in response to the OP.
Remember the wise admonition: eschew obfuscation. Or to put it more simply: Keep It Simple, Stupid!
To clarify on this, the usual test in linguistics for whether two forms are related synchronically (i.e., in the active mental grammar of a native speaker) is whether they exemplify a pattern that is “productive”. The relation between ‘know’ and ‘knowing’ is clearly productive as evidenced by the fact that if you teach an English speaker a new verb such as “wug”, they will happily produce “wugging” without thinking about it should the context call for it. “wugledge” and “ackwugledge”, on the other hand, would probably not be forthcoming. In fact, I suspect an illiterate English speaker would not even realize that “acknowledge” contains the root “know”. The relation is not part of the active grammar; it’s just a historical relation.
I can see where you’re coming from. I suspect that the reason for this gap is that by wanting to include both inflectionally/derivationally and historically related words, you’re trying to pick out a class too heterogeneous to be of use to most workaday linguists.
modulation of the voice; change in pitch or tone of voice.
Also, flection. Grammar.
a. the process or device of adding affixes to or changing the shape of a base to give it a different syntactic function without changing its form class.
b. the paradigm of a word.
c. a single pattern of formation of a paradigm: noun inflection; verb inflection. d. the change in the shape of a word, generally by affixation, by means of which a change of meaning or relationship to some other word or group of words is indicated.
e. the affix added to produce this change, as the -s in dogs or the -ed in played.
f. the systematic description of such processes in a given language, as in serves from serve, sings from sing, and harder from hard (contrasted with derivation ).
a bend or angle.
Mathematics. a change of curvature from convex to concave or vice versa.
