Cognates in language, in the mind and in a prompting dictionary for translation (original) (raw)
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Cognates -words that have similar spelling and meaning in two or more languages -can accelerate vocabulary acquisition and facilitate the reading comprehension task. A student has to pay attention to the pairs of words that look and sound similar but have different meanings -false-friend pairs, and especially to pairs of words that share meanings in some but not all contexts -partial cognates.
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The more similar the better? Factors in learning cognates, false cognates and non-cognate words
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism , 2019
http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/ISe9NWGf9d4gWWQV8PpR/full In this study we explored factors that determine the knowledge of L2 words with orthographic neighbours in L1 (cognates and false cognates). We asked 150 Polish learners of English to translate 105 English non-cognate words, cognates, and false-cognates into Polish, and to assess the confidence of each translation. Confidence ratings allows us to employ a novel analytic procedure which disentangles knowing cognates and false cognates from strategic guessing. Mixed-effects logistic regression models revealed that cognates were known better, whereas false cognates were known worse, relative to non-cognate controls. The advantage of knowing cognates, but not false cognates, was modulated by the degree of similarity to their L1 equivalents. The knowledge of cognates and false cognates was not affected by the frequency of their formal equivalent in L1. Based on these findings we conclude how cross-linguistic formal similarity affects L2 word learnability, proposing a mechanism by which cognates and false cognates are acquired.
Comparing Modalities: Cognates as a Case in Point
Across Languages and Cultures, 2005
Because interpreting affords only limited opportunity for restatement or corrections, it can be seen as the practitioner's default version, with written translation representing a more polished rendition. Thus, a comparison of the target texts of interpreting and translation can shed light not only on the differences between the two modalities as such, but on the processes involved in each of the two as well. In this case, target texts from interpreting and translation were used to investigate cognate status, performance on false cognates, and cognate processing. In the first stage of this experiment, seven professional translators/interpreters interpreted an English text into their L1, Hebrew; four years later, they rendered the same ST in writing. The source text contained 51 words for which Hebrew offered true cognates and 10 for which it offered false cognates. The data show that: (a) cognate status is most often consistent across modalities; (b) noncognate synonyms are more...
Are cognates as easy to recognize as we think?
RAEL: revista electrónica de lingüística aplicada, 2004
Cognates are words that are very morphologically and phonologically similar to their translations into another language. Hence, it is expected that L2 students understand cognates better than noncognates. However, not all cognates are as easy to interpret by students as instructors think a priori. In this paper, we categorized a series of cognates (Spanish-English) according to their similarity with their equivalent counterparts in the L2 (Spanish) and we contrasted this categorization with some basic Spanish students' intuitions and those of their instructors. After all this, we proposed a new categorization that is adapted to our results in a better way. (español-inglés) según su similitud con la palabra equivalente en la segunda lengua (español) y hemos contrastado esta categorización con las intuiciones de unos estudiantes de español básico y sus respectivos instructores. Posteriormente, hemos propuesto una nueva categorización que se adapte mejor a los resultados.
A tool for detecting French-English cognates and false friends
2008
Les congénères sont des mots qui ont au moins un sens en commun entre deux langues en plus d'avoir une orthographie semblable. La reconnaissance de ce type de mots permet aux apprenants de langue seconde ou étrangère d'enrichir plus rapidement leur vocabulaire et d'améliorer leur compréhension écrite. Toutefois, les faux amis sont des paires de mots qui à l'écrit ont des similarités, mais ils ont des significations différentes. Pour leur part, les congénères partiels sont des mots qui ont la même signification dans certains contextes dans chacune des deux langues. Cet article présente une méthode pour la classification automatique des paires des mots classées en congénères ou faux amis, en utilisant des mesures de similarité orthographiques et des méthodes d'apprentissage automatique. Ainsi, nous construisons des listes complètes des congénères et des faux amis entre les deux langues. Nous désambiguisons les congénères partiels dans des contextes spécifiques. Nos méthodes sont évaluées pour le français et l'anglais, mais elles seraient applicables à d'autres paires des langues. Nous avons construit un outil qui prend ces listes et marque dans un texte français les mots qui ont des congénères ou des faux amis en anglais, dans le but d'aider les apprenants en français langue seconde ou étrangère à améliorer leur compréhension écrite et à développer une meilleure rétention.
2009
Cognate status is one of the most complicated issues for those who deal with or are interested in linguistics. In the present study, we have provided a general overview related to this specific matter, and compiled a list of English-Turkish cognates and false cognates. According to the derived list, we determined that 2411 of English words, examined from among approximately 80,000 words, are either cognates or false cognates in Turkish. After determining the number of cognate and false cognate words, we tested and evaluated the correctness of the translations of three software programs and five websites that provide translation services using some of the cognates and false cognates from the derived list. Results suggest that cognate words are translated correctly in most sentences at lexical level, while false cognates and especially partial false cognates are mostly translated wrongly. Nevertheless, at sentential level, it is revealed that almost all sentences translated by computer are unsatisfactory, and need human correction.