Doublet (linguistics)

In etymology, two or more words in the same language are called doublets or etymological twins (or possibly triplets, etc.) when they have different phonological forms but the same etymological root. Often, but not always, the variants have entered the language through different routes. Because the relationship between words that have the same root and the same meaning is fairly obvious, the term is mostly used to characterize pairs of words that have diverged in meaning at least to some extent.[1]

For example English pyre and fire are doublets. Modern words with similar meaning but subtle differences contribute to the richness of the English language, as exemplified by the doublets frail and fragile (both from the Latin adjective fragilis): one might refer to a fragile tea cup and a frail old woman, but never frail tea cup, whilst fragile old woman adds a dimension of meaning by implying emotional infirmity rather than physical.

Another example of nearly synonymous doublets is aperture and overture (the commonality behind the meanings is "opening"), but doublets may develop divergent meanings, such as the opposite words, host and guest from the same PIE root, which occur as a doublet in Latin and then Old French hospes, before having been borrowed into English. Doublets also vary with respect to how far their forms have diverged. For example, the resemblance between levy and levee is obvious, whereas the connection between sovereign and soprano, or grammar and glamour, is harder to guess synchronically from the forms of the words alone.

Origin

Doublets can develop in various ways, according to which route the two forms took from the origin to their current form. Complex, multi-step paths are possible, though in many cases groups of terms follow the same path. Simple paths are discussed below, with the simplest distinction being that doublets in a given language can have their root in the same language (or an ancestor), or may originate in a separate language.

Native origin

Most simply, a native word can at some point split into two distinct forms, staying within a single language.

Alternatively, a word may be inherited from a parent language, and a cognate borrowed from a separate sister language. In other words, one route was direct inheritance, while the other route was inheritance followed by borrowing. In English this means one word inherited from a Germanic source, with, e.g., a Latinate cognate term borrowed from Latin or a Romance language. In English this is most common with words which can be traced back to Indo-European languages, which in many cases share the same proto-Indo-European root, such as Romance beef and Germanic cow. However, in some cases the branching is more recent, dating only to proto-Germanic, not to PIE; many words of Germanic origin occur in French and other Latinate languages, and hence in some cases were both inherited by English (from proto-Germanic) and borrowed from French or another source – see List of English Latinates of Germanic origin. The forward linguistic path also reflects cultural and historical transactions; often the name of an animal comes from Germanic while the name of its cooked meat comes from Romance. Since English is unusual in that it borrowed heavily from two distinct branches of the same language family tree – Germanic and Latinate/Romance – it has a relatively high number of this latter type of etymological twin. See list of Germanic and Latinate equivalents in English for further examples and discussion.

Less commonly, a native word may be borrowed into a foreign language, then reborrowed back into the original language, existing alongside the original term. An English example is animation and anime "Japanese animation", which was reborrowed from Japanese アニメ anime. Such a word is sometimes called a Rückwanderer (German for "one who wanders back").[2][3]

Borrowed origin

In case of twins of foreign origin, which consist of two borrowings (of related terms), one can distinguish if the borrowing is of a term and a descendent, or of two cognate terms (siblings).

Etymological twins are often a result of chronologically separate borrowing from a source language. In the case of English, this usually means once from French during the Norman invasion, and again later, after the word had evolved separately in French. An example of this is warranty and guarantee.

Another possibility is borrowing from both a language and its daughter language. In English this is usually Latin and some other Romance language, particularly French – see Latin influence in English. The distinction between this and the previous is whether the source language has changed to a different language or not.

Less directly, a term may be borrowed both directly from a source language and indirectly via an intermediate language. In English this is most common in borrowings from Latin, and borrowings from French that are themselves from Latin; less commonly from Greek directly and through Latin.

In case of borrowing cognate terms, rather than descendents, most simply an existing doublet can be borrowed: two contemporary twin terms can be borrowed.

More remotely, cognate terms from different languages can be borrowed, such as sauce (Old French) and salsa (Spanish), both ultimately from Latin, or tea (Dutch thee) and chai (Hindi), both ultimately from Old Chinese. This last pair reflects the history of how tea has entered English via different trade routes.

By language

English

Many thousands of English examples can be found, grouped according to their earliest deducible Indo-European ancestor, in Calvert Watkins, The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. In some cases over a hundred English words can be traced to a single root. Some random examples in English include:

Norman vs. standard or Modern French

Many words of French origin were borrowed twice or more. There were at least three periods of borrowing: One that occurred shortly after the Norman Conquest and came from Norman French, one in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries from standard (Parisian) French at the time when English nobles were switching from French to English, and a third one during the sixteenth to nineteenth century, when France was at the height of its power and international influence. Examples of doublets from the first and second periods are catch vs. chase, cattle vs. chattel, and warden vs. guardian. More recent borrowings are often distinguished by maintaining the French spelling and pronunciation, cf. chef (vs. chief), pâté (vs. paste), fête (vs. feast). There are multiple doublets caused by the w → g and ca → cha sound changes, which happened in standard French but not Norman French. Several of these examples also reflect changes that occurred after Old French which caused the possible environments of [s] to be greatly reduced.

Norman Standard Old or Modern French
carchariot
castlechâteau
catchchase
cattlechattel
conveyconvoy
pastepâté
feastfête
hostelhôtel
pocketpouch
rewardregard
wallopgallop
wardenguardian
wardrobegarderobe
warrantyguarantee
wile, wilyguile

Chinese

Derivative cognates are a classification of Chinese characters which have similar meanings and often the same etymological root, but which have diverged in pronunciation and meaning. An example is the doublet 考 and 老. At one time they were pronounced similarly and meant "old (person)." Now 老 is pronounced /lɑʊ̯˨˩˦/ in Standard Mandarin and mainly means "old" and 考 is pronounced /kʰɑʊ̯˨˩˦/ and mainly means "examine."

Differing literary and colloquial readings of certain Chinese characters are common doublets in many Chinese languages and the reading distinctions for certain phonetic features often typify a dialect group. Literary readings are usually used in formal loan words or names, when reading aloud and in formal settings, while colloquial readings are usually used in vernacular speech. For a given Chinese language, colloquial readings typically reflect native phonology, while literary readings typically originate from other Chinese languages, typically more prestigious varieties. Sometimes literary and colloquial readings of the same character have different meanings. For example, in Cantonese, the character 平 can have the colloquial pronunciation /pʰɛŋ˨˩/ which means "inexpensive," or the literary pronunciation /pʰɪŋ˨˩/ which means "flat."

Japanese

In Japanese, doublets are most significant in borrowings from Chinese, and are visible as different on'yomi (Sino-Japanese readings) of kanji characters. There have been three major periods of borrowing from Chinese, together with some modern borrowings. These borrowings are from different regions (hence different Chinese languages) and different periods, and thus the pronunciations have varied, sometimes widely. However, due to consistent Chinese writing, with cognate morphemes represented by the same character, the etymological relation is clear. This is most significant at the level of morphemes, where a given character is pronounced differently in different words, but in some cases the same word was borrowed twice. In scholarly terms, these have been very valuable for reconstructing the sounds of Middle Chinese, and understanding how the pronunciations differed between Chinese regions and varied over time.

Polish

Doublets

Triplets

Spanish

As with many languages in Europe, a great deal of borrowing from Latin occurred during the Renaissance and the early modern era. Because Spanish was itself originally a dialect of Latin, this later borrowing created a number of doublets. Adding to this was Spain's conquest by the Berbers in the Middle Ages leading to another vector for creating doublets (Latin to Arabic to Spanish).

Native Spanish Borrowed from Latin Borrowed from Arabic Original Latin
bicha
(bug)		bestia
(beast)		BESTIA
llave
(key, a physical object)		clave
(key, an essential concept)		CLAVIS
raudo
(swift-moving)		rápido
(rapid)		RAPIDVS
castillo
(castle)		alcázar
(fortress)		CASTELLVM
denario
(denarius coin)		dinero
(money)		DENARIVS

References

  1. ↑ Walter William Skeat, Principles of English Etymology: The Native Element, chapter "Doublets and Compounds", p. 414ff, §389-391 and passim in all volumes
  2. ↑ "μουνί vs. monín". Ἡλληνιστεύκοντος An occasional blog on Greek linguistics (broadly meant). 2010-02-10. Retrieved 6 November 2014. Comment February 11, 2010 11:20 AM: However the timeframe for Venetian–Greek contact rules out the classic Rückwanderer scenario. (Greek lends the word to Venetian, Greek forgets the word existed, Greek reimports the word back from Venetian.)
  3. ↑ "Etymology: φλιτζάνι, fincan, فنجان". Discuz!. 2011-06-20. Retrieved 6 November 2014. a wild guess -- the Persian word pingân seems to suggest the form 'finjan' is a reloan from Arabic. If there is a Pers. word ‘finjan”, this rather seems to suggest a Rückwanderer from Turkish – not from Arabic.

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See also