Verbs and nouns derived from the root sĭgnāre by prefixation
Introduction
Latin had a number of verbs derived from the verb sĭgnāre by prefixation. Several of these
have made it into Spanish and English and remain common to this day. Some of the
Spanish verbs are patrimonial, such as enseñar
‘to show; to teach’, diseñar ‘to design’,
and reseñar ‘to review, describe’ (the
associated noun is reseña ‘review’). Additionally,
Spanish has a number of learned (borrowed) versions of Latin words derived from
sĭgnāre by prefixation. Many of these
words have English cognates. The main Latin verbs derived from sĭgnāre by prefixation are the
following:
ad‑
|
+ sĭgnāre
|
assĭgnāre
|
‘to appoint to, assign, distribute, allot,
allocate’
|
con‑
|
cōnsĭgnāre
|
‘to (fix a)
seal; put on record; establish; attest/authenticate’
|
|
dē-
|
dēsĭgnāre
|
‘to mark out, point out, trace,
designate, define’
|
|
in‑
|
insĭgnāre
|
(Vulgar Latin)
‘to engrave’
|
|
ob‑
|
obsĭgnāre
|
‘to sign, seal’
|
|
re‑
|
resĭgnāre
|
‘to unseal,
open; to give back, give up, resign; to annul, cancel’
|
|
sub‑
|
subsĭgnāre
|
‘to mark, undersign, enter,
register; to mortgage’
|
Sp. diseñar
and Eng. design
Both the Spanish verb diseñar and its English cognate
to design [dɪ.ˈzaɪ̯n] mean something like ‘to make drawings or plans before
something is made or created’. Because of the letter ñ on this word, one might be tempted to think that this word is a patrimonial
word, but it is actually a 16th century borrowing from Italian disegnare, pronounced [di.seɲ.ˈɲa.ɾe], meaning ‘to draw’. This
word ultimately comes from Latin dēsĭgnāre
or dissĭgnāre (both spellings are
found for basically the same verb since Lat. dis‑ came to have a similar meaning to dē‑ in Latin). This Latin verb had at least two major
senses: ‘to signal, make a mark, mark out, trace out’ and ‘to designate,
appoint, denote’. This verb was formed from the verb sĭgnāre ‘to make a mark’ by adding the prefix dē‑ ‘out, etc.’ or dis‑
‘apart, reversal, etc.’ (variant allomorph: dī).
dē‑ ‘out, etc.’
|
sĭgnāre
|
desĭgnāre
|
‘to signal, make a mark, mark out,
indicate, describe, etc.’
|
In Spanish, the corresponding noun to the verb diseñar is diseño, which is
equivalent to the English noun design.
This noun appears in Spanish writings later than the verb in the 16th century.
The ultimate source is It. disegno¸
which is derived by conversion from
the verb.
The English verb to
design and the noun design came
into English in the 16th century, presumably through French and ultimately from
Italian. The story of these two words is somewhat confused. Let us start with
the noun design, which is a loanword from Middle French desseign ‘purpose, project, design’, which
got it from Italian disegno. This
Italian word had what can be seen as two major different senses: ‘model,
picture’ and ‘purpose’, seemingly derived from the two major senses the source
word had in Latin. Below you can see the three main meanings of the English
noun design, the first two are
derived from the ‘model, picture’ sense and the third one from the purpose one:
design n.
· a plan or drawing produced to show
the look and function of something before it is built or made.
· a decorative pattern
·
the
purpose or planning that exists behind an action or object.
|
French ended up differentiating the two senses in
the spelling, using dessein for ‘purpose,
plan’ and dessin for ‘design in art’
(OED), but English kept them as a single polysemous word. (Note that the two
French words have the same pronunciation, namely [de.ˈsɛ̃].)
Only the first two senses of the English noun design translate into Spanish as diseño. The third one, which can be
paraphrased as ‘intention, plot’, translates by a word that shares the same
root, namely designio, a learned loan from Latin desĭgnĭum, the source of It. disegno and, thus, a cognate. There may
have been an older patrimonial version of this word, namely deseño, but it was replaced by the learned
version. The Spanish word designio, however,
is quite fancy. Better translations of this sense of the English noun design are intención, propósito, objetivo, or plan.
The third sense of Eng. design
is admittedly rare. It is used primarily in two idiomatic phrases. The first
one is by design, which translates
into Spanish as deliberadamente (cf. Eng.
deliberately) or some other
synonymous phrases. The second idiomatic phrase is to have designs on something or someone, which means ‘to aim to
obtain, especially in an underhand way’ and, informally, ‘to have an
undisclosed sexual interest in’ (COED). This expression translates into Spanish as tener los ojos puestos en algo/alguien.
The situation with the verbs related to the noun design are equally confused. The Italian
verb dissegnare also had two major
senses in the 16th century. They would eventually be borrowed into French at
different times, and from there they were borrowed by English and perhaps also
by Spanish, though maybe the Spanish words were obtained directly from Italian.
In French, the two senses eventually came to have different spellings:
(1) désigner ‘appoint, name, choose’:
related to Eng. designate and Sp. designar
(2) dessiner ‘to draw, delineate, design’:
related to Eng. design and Sp. diseñar
For the artistic sense, English has the verb to
design (a cognate of Sp. diseñar). It may have been borrowed from
French désigner though it may also
have been derived from the noun design,
which was presumably borrowed first.[a]
When English first obtained the verb design
it seems to have had both of the original meanings, but sense (1) has been now
been taken over by the learned designate,
a 17th century coinage which means ‘give a specified name, position, or status
to’ (COED). Spanish too now has the learned word (cultismo) designar for
this sense as well, which is a cognate. This word was already attested in the
mid-14th century.
The two verbs Eng. designate [ˈdɛ.zɪɡ.neɪ̯t] and Sp. designar [d̪e.siɡ.ˈnaɾ] are pretty close friends, but they are not perfect
matches. They share the ‘appoint’ sense (synonyms: Sp. nombrar, Eng. appoint)
and to some extent also a more formal and more rare ‘indicate, show’ sense
(synonym: indicar, señalar). Spanish uses designar with yet a third sense, namely
the ‘fix, set a place or date’ sense, which translates into English as to fix, to set, or to arrange.
From the verb design,
English has derived the agentive noun designer
for ‘someone who designs’. It is formed with the English agentive suffix ‑er. The equivalent of this noun in
Spanish is a noun derived from the verb diseñar
with the agentive suffix ‑dor(a): diseñador(a). In the world of theater, a
(set) designer is known in Spanish as an escenógrafo/a.
The English noun designer is often used as a modifier in compounds such as designer clothes or designer drug. These phrases have been calqued into Spanish by
means of the noun diseño, cf. ropa de diseño (also ropa de marca), droga de diseño.
Sp. enseñar
The verb enseñar is very common in Spanish. It
has two main senses, which can be easily distinguished in context according to what
it is that follows the verb:
(1) ‘to show/reveal’,
as in Me enseñó el libro ‘She showed me the book’
(2) ‘to
teach’, as in Me enseñó a leer ‘She taught me how to read’
In some cases, the actual sense intended may
not be clear, resulting in ambiguous sentences, such as Me enseñó el camino
‘She showed/taught me the way’. Also, the ‘show/reveal’ sense typically refers to
a voluntary act, but in some contexts it can be understood as involuntary, as in
Enseñas la pantorrilla ‘Your lower
leg is showing’.
ĭn‑ ‘in’ + sĭgnāre
|
ĭnsĭgnāre
|
‘to mark with a sign; to distinguish; to
engrave’
|
Enseñar is
a patrimonial word whose source is Vulgar Latin insĭgnāre ‘mark with a sign, to engrave’, formed with the prefix ĭn‑ ‘in’ and the verb sĭgnāre ‘to make a mark’ (principal parts:
insignō, insignāre, insignāvī, insignātum). Actually, this first
conjugation Vulgar Latin insĭgnāre is
derived from the fourth conjugation Classical Latin verb insĭgnīre, which meant ‘mark with a characteristic feature; to distinguish’
(principal parts: insĭgniō,
insĭgnīre, insĭgnīvī, insĭgnītum). It seems that the
conjugation of this verb was regularized in Vulgar Latin, probably by analogy with
other first conjugation verbs formed from first conjugation sĭgnāre.
The meaning change from ‘make a mark’ to ‘show’ and ‘teach’ is
not as far-fetched as it might seem. It turns out that already in Latin this verb
could mean ‘to make something known by pointing or signaling’ (note that the Spanish
word for to point out is señalar). From there to the main two meanings
that enseñar has in Modern Spanish is
not a long way. The Portuguese cognate ensinar
has both senses, just like Spanish, so these two senses may have been part of
these words from very early on. Cognates of this verb in other Romance languages,
however, only have the ‘teach, instruct’ sense, such as French enseigner [ɑ̃.se.ˈɲe] and Italian insegnare
[in.seɲ.ˈɲa.ɾe].
A very common word derived from Spanish enseñar is enseñanza, which is equivalent to
Eng. education, teaching, schooling, and instruction. Examples of this word in
common phrases are enseñanza secundaria ‘secondary education’, enseñanza obligatoria ‘compulsory education’, enseñanza superior ‘higher
education’, centro de enseñanza
‘school’, enseñanza en línea
‘online education’, and dedicarse a la
enseñanza ‘to be a teacher’. It can also
mean ‘teaching, doctrine’, as in las enseñanzas de Jesús ‘the teachings of
Jesus’.
Interestingly, in some dialects of Spanish the reflexive form
of the verb enseñar, namely enseñarse,
literally ‘to teach oneself’, is the main or only way to express the meaning ‘to
learn’, which in standard Spanish is usually expressed by the verb aprender. Finally, the noun enseñante
is sometimes used to refer to an educator, though its use is not as common as the
words educador or instructor to express this meaning.
As we mentioned earlier, the verb īnsĭgnāre is unlike other prefixed ‑sĭgnāre verbs, in that it
was originally a fourth conjugation verb in Classical Latin, namely īnsĭgnīre.
The reason that this was a 4th conjugation verb is that it was not derived from
sĭgnāre by the addition of a prefix
like the other verbs we’ve seen, but rather, it was derived from the adjective īnsĭgnis ‘conspicuous, distinguished, famous,
etc.’ (i.e. “marked, remarkable”), which is also derived from
the root sĭgn‑.
Latin īnsignis (īn‑+‑sign‑+‑is) is both the masculine/feminine
nominative singular wordform of this third declension Latin adjective. Its neuter nominative singular form is īnsigne. From this form of the
adjective, Latin derived the third declension neuter ‘pure’ i-stem noun (nom. sg.) īnsigne ‘coat of arms, badge’. The nominative
plural of this noun was īnsignĭa, a word
that has made it into both English and Spanish, twice in each language, as
doublets: Eng. ensign and insignia and Sp. enseña and insignia. These
words are at best partial friends, if not fully false friends.
English ensign [ˈɛn.sən] is a 14th century borrowing from Old French enseigne, where the word was patrimonial.
It can translate into Spanish as the patrimonial enseña when it refers to ‘a
flag, especially a military or naval one indicating nationality’ (COED, also known
as bandera or pabellón in Spanish. When Eng. ensign
refers to a military rank, namely ‘the lowest rank of commissioned officer in
the US and some other navies, above chief warrant officer and below lieutenant’
(COED), it translates as alférez (de fragata), a word of Arabic origin.
English insignia [ɪn.ˈsɪɡ.niə̯] is a 17th century learned word.
It refers primarily to ‘a patch or other object that indicates a person’s official
or military rank, or membership in a group or organization’ (Wikipedia). It can
be used as a singular noun and as a plural noun. It seems at one point, English
could use the form insigne as a
singular form, but that use is now obsolete. Eng. insignia can be translated into Spanish as insignia [in.ˈsiɡ.ni̯a]
(pl. insignias). Spanish insignia, however, has a broader meaning
and can translate also as badge, flag, banner, or medal, all emblematic
symbols of organizations of different types.
Finally, we should mention that Spanish also has the learned,
fancy adjective insigne , which translates into English as ‘distinguished, eminent,
famous, notable’, e.g. Mi abuelo es un
insigne escultor ‘My grandfather is a famous sculptor’. It is a 15th century
borrowing from the neuter form of the already mentioned Latin adjective īnsĭgnis.
Sp. reseñar and resignar and Eng. resign
The third patrimonial Spanish verb based on Lat. ‑sĭgnāre is reseñar ‘to review, to describe,
to make a sketch, outline’. This verb is used, for example, for the writing of
reviews of books found in academic journals or of films in newspapers or Web sites.
The associated noun is reseña, which actually appeared in
the DLE before the verb reseñar, both
in the first half of the 19th century. The meanings of the noun reseña parallel those of the verb and
thus it translates as review when it
is about a book, summary or report’, when said of a meeting, for
example, or else as description.
The verb reseñar
comes ultimately from Lat. resĭgnāre,
with the prefix re‑ ‘back, again’ attached
to the verb sĭgnāre ‘to make a mark’.
In Latin, this verb had originally meant to ‘take back or undo a mark’ or in other
words ‘check off’, and from there ‘to unseal, open’ and, finally, ‘to annul, cancel,
invalidate, rescind, cancel, give up’. But another major meaning of the Latin word
at some point was ‘to write something down’ and it is from here came that the modern
meanings of reseñar.
re‑ ‘back, etc.’ + sĭgnāre
|
ĭnsĭgnāre
|
‘to undo a mark’, ‘to write something
down’, etc.
|
Additionally, Latin resĭgnāre has given us the learned cognate verbs Eng. resign [ɹɪ.ˈzaɪ̯n] and Sp. resignarse (reflexive). These verbs are not
close friends, however. That is because their meanings differ somewhat, for Spanish
only shares one of the two major meanings of English resign.
English resign has two main senses: ‘to give
up a position’ and ‘to give up to fate’. The meaning ‘to give up a position’, can
be seen as an extension of the ‘cancel, invalidate’ sense already mentioned for
Lat. resĭgnāre and it was already present
in English in the 14th century when it borrowed it from French resigner, a learned word in this language
(a 13th c. borrowing from Latin). But this sense is not available for Spanish resignar. In Spanish to resign
is dimitir or presentar la dimisión.
The other sense of English resign, ‘to give up to fate’, is always used with a reflexive pronoun,
cf. to resign (oneself) ‘accept that
something undesirable cannot be avoided’ (COED), as in I resigned myself to living in obscurity forever. This is the only possible
sense of also reflexive Spanish resignarse. This sense of the English
word resign is not recorded before the
18th century, so it must have come late, but its seeds can already be seen in the
Latin sense ‘to give up’ and it may have come through French. (A semi-learned version
of this verb, namely resinar, with consonant
cluster simplification, is found Nebrija’s 15th century dictionary.)[1]
The nouns Sp. resignación and Eng. resignation,
derived from the respective verbs we just saw, are also semi-false-friends. English
resignation, like the verb resign, has two senses: ‘giving up a position’
and ‘giving up to fate’. As with the case of the verbs, the second sense translates
as resignación in Spanish, but not the
former one, which is rendered as dimisión (see above).
Sp. asignar and Eng. assign
Another pair of learned, cognate verbs in Spanish and
English that were derived from the Latin verb sĭgnāre are Sp. asignar [a.siɡ.ˈnaɾ]
~ Eng. assign [ə.ˈsaɪ̯n],
which are quite friendly cognates. They come from Lat. assĭgnāre, which was formed by the preposition/prefix ad‑ ‘to’ plus the verb sĭgnāre and meant something like ‘to mark
out, to allot (by sign), to attribute’. This verb came into English in the
early 14th century through French learned assigner,
which borrowed it from Latin first. Sp. asignar is also a loanword and it is
already attested in the 13th century. It may have been borrowed directly from Latin
or, more likely, through French.
ad‑ ‘to’ + sĭgnāre
|
assĭgnāre
|
‘to mark out, to allot (by sign), to
attribute’
|
There are a couple of nouns derived from the Latin
verb that have also made it into English and Spanish. English has a derived noun
assignment
[ə.ˈsaɪ̯n.mənt], whose main
meaning is ‘an assigned task’. It is a 14th century borrowing from Old French assignement (or assinnement), from Medieval Latin assignamentum (ad+sign+a+ment+um).
(French does not have a reflex of this noun any longer, although it does have a
verb assigner.)
The word assignment
does not have a Spanish cognate. The meaning ‘assigned task’ in Spanish is expressed
typically by the noun tarea, if it’s a small assignment, or
misión,
if it is a large one. When assignment
means just ‘the act of assigning’, as opposed to ‘something that has been assigned’,
then Spanish can use the noun asignación.
The Spanish noun asignación is a cognate of the rare
English learned noun (15th c.) assignation
[ˌæ.sɪɡ.ˈneɪ̯.ʃən],
which may refer to ‘the act of assigning’, but also to ‘a secret arrangement to
meet’, typically between lovers (Sp. cita
a escondidas
or cita de amantes). The most
common meaning of Sp. asignación,
however, is ‘allocation of something’, usually a ‘money allowance’. These learned
words come from the Latin noun stem assĭgnātiōn‑
(nom. assĭgnātiō, acc. assĭgnātiōnem), which
was formed from the past participle stem (assĭgnāt‑) of the verb assĭgnāre and the noun-forming suffix ‑iōn‑ that we have seen so
often (cf. ad+sĭgn+ā+t+iōn+em).
Spanish has another noun derived from the verb asignar, namely asignatura. It means primarily
‘school subject’, a particular area of study that is taught formally in a class,
such as Calculus or Economics. This noun does not have an English cognate. It
is a learned loanword from Latin assignātūra,
derived from the past-participle stem assĭgnāt‑
of the verb assĭgnāre and the
noun-forming suffix ‑ūr‑ and the feminine nominative
inflexional ending ‑a (cf. signature above). The suffix ‑ūr‑
was one of the suffixes used to derive nouns from Latin verbs, which has
resulted in a number of nouns in ‑ure
in English and in ‑ura in Spanish
(cf. Eng. signature). Common phrases involving
the word asignatura in an academic environment
are the following: asignatura obligatoria ‘required course’, asignatura optativa ‘optional subject, elective course’, and asignatura pendiente ‘remaining subject, do-over subject’, which can also mean,
by extension, ‘unfinished business, unresolved matter’.
Sp. consignar and Eng. consign
The verbs Sp. consignar [kon.siɡ.ˈnaɾ] ~ Eng. consign
[kən.ˈsaɪ̯n] are also cognates derived from sĭgnāre,
neither one of which is very common in its language. They are also only partial
friends. They go back to Lat. consĭgnāre
‘to (fix a) seal; to register (put on record), etc.’, which was formed from the
prefix com‑ ‘with’, plus the verb sĭgnāre ‘to mark with a sign’.
con‑ ‘with’ + sĭgnāre
|
consĭgnāre
|
‘to (fix a) seal; to register (put on
record), etc.’
|
Both are
learned words. Both words came either directly from Latin or from a learned French
consigner, English consign is first attested in the 15th century
and Spanish consignar in the 16th century.
When English borrowed this word, it had the same meaning as French consigner, namely ‘to ratify by a sign or
seal’. The Modern English verb consign
has three major, related senses:
(1) ‘to
deliver to someone’s custody’ (COED)
(2) ‘to
send (goods) by a public carrier’ (COED) (added in the 17th c. and now obsolete)
(3) ‘to
set aside for some purpose’, as in a consignment store, or to get rid of.
Spanish consignar
has 8 senses according to Larousse, 5 according to VOX, and 10 according to DLE,
all of them quite specialized and rare and not likely to be known by most speakers
of the language. There is overlap between the words in the two languages so, for
instance, Spanish has senses that are the same as, or similar to, all the three
senses of English consign mentioned above.
There are also a few nouns related to the verbs just mentioned.
As we just saw in sense (3) above, English has a noun consignment [kən.ˈsaɪ̯n.mənt] to refer to either to
the act of consigning or to the goods consigned. This noun was formed in English out of the verb consign and the Latinate suffix ‑ment, which creates nouns from verbs.
Not surprisingly, because of its origin, Spanish does not have
a cognate of this noun. Things that are consigned in the sense of being sent by
carrier are known as a remesa or envío, e.g. Yesterday they sent a consignment of books ‘Enviaron una
remesa/envío de libros ayer’. Things that are consigned in the sense of being set
aside, may be known in some contexts and in some dialects as consignación, a related word formed from
the verb consignar and the suffix ‑ción (from Lat. ‑t‑iōn‑).
Spanish also has a noun consigna, which is more common
than, but very different in meaning from, the verb consignar. Actually, consigna
can have four rather different meanings:
(1) (in Spain)
the check-room at a train station (left-luggage office)
(2) a
secret sign, password, watchword
(3) a
political slogan
(4) order
or instruction given to subordinates
Actually, sense (2) is rare. A more common word for
password in Spanish than consigna is yet another seña word, namely contraseña, probably the most
common one for this meaning. English too used to have a cognate noun countersign, now obsolete, with the same
meaning Sp. contraseña originally
had, namely ‘a signal or password given in reply to a soldier on guard’ (COED).
The source of this meaning has to do with a military practice in which in order
for two soldiers to known that they were on the same side, one soldier gave a certain
sign or seña and the other soldier would
give the countersign or contraseña.
Nowadays contraseña
in Spanish is the main word used for ‘password’ as used on the Internet, for
instance (even though there is no seña
for it to go with). In English, countersign
is now just used as a verb, meaning ‘to add a signature to (a document already signed
by another person)’ (COED) (cf. Sp. refrendar).
Sp. persignarse
Spanish has one more verb based on Lat. sĭgnāre, namely the reflexive persignarse
‘to cross oneself’, ‘to make the sign of the cross’.[2]
This verb is a 17th century borrowing from Latin. In Latin persĭgnāre meant ‘to note down, record’. It was formed from the prefix
per‑ ‘through, etc.’ and the verb sĭgnāre ‘to make a mark’.
per‑ ‘through’ + sĭgnāre
|
persĭgnāre
|
‘to note down, record’
|
The meaning of Spanish persignarse does not agree the original meaning of the Latin word,
so it must have been a meaning that the word acquired in Church Latin. It
refers to an act of self-blessing by making ‘the sign of the cross in front of one’s
chest as a sign of Christian reverence or to invoke divine protection’ (COED). As
we saw earlier, an early word for this meaning was signarse, without the prefix per‑,
though that word is now obsolete.
In the Catholic Christian tradition, centered in Rome, one crosses
oneself by pointing with one’s right hand to one’s forehead, then one’s chest, then
one’s left shoulder, and finally one’s right shoulder, all while reciting the words
In the name of the
Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost (in Spanish: En el nombre
del padre, del hijo y
del espíritu santo). In the Orthodox
Christian tradition, centered in Constantinople until its fall in 1453, the order
of the last two steps is reversed. Some Protestant Christian traditions, such as
Lutherans and Methodists, also use this symbolism.
Sp. significar
and Eng. signify
Finally, there is one more very important set of cognate words
of the sign word family, the set of
lexemes that contain the Latin sĭgn‑ root,
namely the compounds Sp. significar and Eng. signify.
Both of these verbs are learned loanwords that come ultimately from Lat. sĭgnĭfĭcāre ‘to signify,
indicate, show’ (sĭgn+ĭ+fĭc+ā+re).
These words contain the cognate Latinate pseudo-suffixes Sp.
-ficar and Eng. ‑fy (cf. Part II, Chapter 37).
This Latin suffix comes from the verb facĕre
‘to make/do’, the source of Sp. hacer,
and thus qualifies as a suffixoid in Latin (cf. Chapter 5,
§5.11).
These two words are vaguely related in meaning, but they are
rather false friends, since they are not used the same way. Spanish significar
means ‘to mean’, plain and simple, e.g. ¿Qué
significa esto? ‘What does this mean?’ (lit. ‘What does this signify?’) (cf.
Part I, Chapter 6).
Eng. signify, on the other hand, is a
formal word that means ‘to represent, mean, or be a sign of something’ (DOCE).
Although the literal meanings are similar, Eng. signify is rarely translated by Sp. significar. More likely translations would be indicar, ser indicio de, mostrar, expresar, señalar, or simbolizar. Likewise, Sp. significar never translates into English
as signify, but rather primarily as to mean, but also to represent, to involve,
and to express.
The noun associated with and derived from the verb significar in Spanish is significado
‘meaning’. Of course, significado was
originally the past participle of the verb significar,
as in ¿Qué ha significado esto para
ti? ‘What has this meant to you?’. English
does have a cognate of Spanish significado,
namely the noun significate [sɪɡ.ˈnɪ.fɪ.kǝt], which is first attested in the 15th century,
but which is very rare. One dictionary gives the following meaning for this
noun: ‘that which is signified or symbolized’ (SOED). Both of these nouns are derived
from the past participle of Lat. sĭgnĭficāre,
namely sĭgnĭficātus
There is an adjective in Spanish that is derived from the verb
significar, namely significativo,
which translates as meaningful or significant, even though English also
has a fancy adjective significative,
with pretty much the same meaning, but which is much rarer. These two cognates
come from the Latin adjective signĭfĭcātīvus
‘denoting, signifying, significative’, formed with the Latin suffix ‑īv‑,
which attached itself to past participle stems of verbs (sign+ĭ+fĭc+ā+t+īv+us).
As we just saw, one of the possible translations of Sp. significativo is Eng. significant.
This last word is also a derivate of the verb sĭgnĭficāre. It comes from this verb’s present participle, whose
stem was signĭfĭcant‑ (nom. signĭfĭcans, acc. signĭfĭcantem). Present participles such as this one were used as
adjectives in Latin, but were also sometimes nominalized (turned into nouns).
Eng. significant means ‘extensive or important
enough to merit attention’ (COED). Besides significativo,
this English adjective significant can
translate into Spanish as importante,
trascendente, or considerable, e.g. Tuve que
pagar una cantidad considerable de dinero por ese arreglo ‘I had to pay a
significant amount of money for that repair job’. Spanish does have a cognate
adjective significante, but this is
merely a technical term in linguistics, as we saw in Chapter 6,
§6.1.
Its English equivalent is signifier.
Both Sp. significante and Eng. signifier are calques of Fr. signifiant, a technical coinage by
Ferdinand de Saussure.
[a] Modern
French designer /de.zi.ˈɲe/ has three
main senses: (1) (to show ) ‘to point out, to indicate’, (2) (choose) ‘to
choose, single out’, and (3) (name) ‘to appoint, nominate’.
No comments:
Post a Comment