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Are the verb suffixes "-ate" in English and "-ать" in Russian cognates?
I would guess that "-ate" comes from Latin and is also the source of the verb suffix "-ar" in Spanish. Latin and Russian are supposed to be similar in many ways, so it perhaps would not be surprising.
I tried searching for this on Google but I couldn't find any results (probably because I am bad at searching). Anyway I figured that someone on this website would probably know.
No, they are not directly cognates. The -ate comes from Latin -atus, as Roux stated above, and the -atus is dividable in -a and -tu(s), as Nikolay stated. -tus is homonymic for participle *-to and verbal noun *-tu. But the verbal noun *-tu is not the same verbal noun as verbal noun in *-ti(s), whose dative *-tei gave us our -ть- and -ти-infinitives (-чь-infinitive is -к-ть or -г-ть). The -a- of Latin verbs and of Russian verbs is usually suffix in both (and even the exception is the same: dare/дать), but it is not always the same one (though there is verbalisator -ā in both languages). So neither part is directly cognate.
I also think it is worth mentioning that when we have loanwords for verbs in -ate, they usually end in -ировать (because of German and French interference), as in castrate - кастрировать, meditate - медитировать. However, their verbal noun is -ация for -ation: castration - кастрация, meditation - медитация.
However, their verbal noun is -ация for -ation: castration - кастрация, meditation - медитация. maybe not always as there's a word кастрирование which is a genuine verbal noun, as well as саботирование and the like. It's true they're not completely normative or not all of them, but they're morphologically correct and used in speech
Sep 5, 2016 at 14:23
You are right, English suffix -ate comes from the Latin -ātus.
In Russian, there's no suffix "-ать". Usually, "-a" is considered to be one suffix, and "-ть" - another one. "-ть" is assumed to originate from "-ти", marker for the infinitive in proto-slavic language, which, in turn, comes from Proto-Indo-European "-tei".
So, they are quite unlikely to be cognates.
*-tei, though, was the dative form of a verbal noun. And it's not a single suffix in Latin either, since there's also -itus (as in preferitus) or just -tus (dictus). I'd say, it mirrors the Russian/Slavic situation fairly well.
Sep 5, 2016 at 9:25
-re(from earlier*-se). So the Spanish one is a different beast.