Re: Hot, Cold, and Temperature

Merhaba!

John Q. wrote:
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Ithkuil utilizes the third approach, i.e., a stem meaning 'linear spatial
extent or degree' as opposed to 'shortness' or 'length.' To quote from Sec.
10.3 of the Ithkuil grammar:

"Rather than lexicalize such concepts as pairs of binary oppositions,
Ithkuil delineates these qualities as varying points along a continuous
range. In other words, in Ithkuil you do not say 'X is cold and Y is hot',
but rather 'X has less temperature and Y has greater temperature'.
Similarly, one does not say 'A is near to me and B is far from me', but
rather 'the distance from me to A (or proximity of A to me) is less than the
distance from me to B (or proximity of B to me)'. Note that the choice of
translation for the latter stem as either ‘distance’ or ‘proximity’ becomes
arbitrary, as the real meaning of the Ithkuil stem is ‘amount of linear
space separating two entities.’ Virtually all Western descriptive and
dimensional oppositions are similarly handled in Ithkuil as mere variance in
the quantity of a single quality, the degree of an attribute, or the extent
along a spatio-temporal range or continuum."
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That's a really great idea! In Kel, I inflect roots for scalar opposites
like this:

vowel change
English example
type

high-tone final vowel
'bright'
'extremely'

low-tone final vowel
'light'
'very'

long plain final vowel
'dim'
'moderately'

low-tone-long final vowel
'dark'
'not very'

high-tone-long final vowel
'pitch black'
'not extremely'

Now I'm going to change the system, creating words such as...I dunno; any
ideas for things like 'linear spacial degree' for 'brightness'?, which will
be modified by comparison modifiers (which themselves will be inflected as
above--using a root noun meaning 'degree/amount', inflected with tone/length
change--resulting in 'most', 'more', 'same as', 'less', 'least').

Robert.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Trebor1990