Re: Hot, Cold, and Temperature

Philippe Caquant wrote:

> - for some "objective" values, qualifying both ends of
> the scale with "+" or "-" seems all right (when it's
> about quantity in some or other way, I guess).
> - but for other "objective" values, qualifying them by
> "+" or "-" seems to be a mere convention
> (temperature...) [common people don't think about the
> laws of physics and the movement of the atoms when
> saying "warm" or "cold"]
Well, a temperature is a quantity of Celsius degrees. And before the
invention of the thermometer, people certainly understood that fire is "more
warm" than ice.

The +/- is only a logical consequence of the (0) prefix. It's easier to
understand than "one end" vs. "another end". Maybe should we talk about "low
end" vs. "high end"? I don't think we can find a name free of any bias for
this kind of scale... unless we use the con-native terms.

> I once tried to consider, for every entry of a lexicon
> of some thousands substantives, whether:
> - when I thought of that word, I felt it connotated
> positively, negatively, or sometimes both (depending
> on the field considered), or simply not at all, anyway
> on a +/- scheme
> - when I felt that there was a +/- connotation, how
> strong it was (on a scale from 1 to 5), and what was
> the reason why I felt it so.
> This was of course perfectly subjective and personal.
To say the least.

> The main interest was to determine the connotation
> fields.
I'm not creating a neutral conlang but I think that your way is way too
subjective. Almost all words can have a +/- connotation depending on your
mood of the moment but if your start to apply a "scalar" marking to almost
every word, your language becomes very monotonal.

> For ex: life#death, health#disease,
> order#disorder, hygiene#dirtyness, security#danger,
> high spirit#low spirit (for ex: exotic dreams #
> everyday banality), etc. I found about 20 to 30 of
> such fields, as far as I remember.
My list contains already more than 30 entries and it doesn't include your
examples, except clean/dirty. I looked at:

http://virtual.cvut.cz/kifb/en/toc/all.html

And I kept all qualities that have an opposite and the ones for which a
value of 0 is meaningful. I also added some adjectives that came immediatly
to my mind. I will certainly find some new ones when I'll review my vocabulary.

But I base my decisions on my con-culture, especially on what my
con-speakers could have find important in older days in order to introduce
their own con-cultural bias in the vocabulary. I also think that some
irregularity is important, so sometimes there will be 2 opposite terms
instead of one single "scalar" concept.

> Just as a test, how many of us, reacting on a purely
> instinctive and immediate way, would think "-" when
> hearing the word "spider", and how many would think
> "+" when hearing "kitten" ?
I will! But I don't think that there can be one single "scalar" concept
which goes from spider to kitten!  :-D

See ya,

================
Remi Villatel
maxilys@tele2.fr
================

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