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Hot, Cold, and Temperature

From:Nokta Kanto <red5_2@...>
Date:Tuesday, March 23, 2004, 18:41
I was in the shower, thinking, "this water needs more temperature"... It led
me to wonder how languages name properties that fall on a continuous scale,
such as hot-cold, long-short, loquatious-breviloquent, etc. We have a few
scales where the property gets its own name: hot-cold-temperature,
far-near-distance... while for many, it is derived from one of the
adjectives: long-short-length, strong-weak-strength, wrong-right-wrength.
(Well, it should be a word.)

Esperanto and other logical-leaning languages prefer to define one of the
directions in terms of its opposite, instead of having separate roots for
opposites. What about the name for the property, though? Do your languages
not have such words (can't say "What is its length", have to say "How (much)
long is it?"), do they derive from the augmented word (length), or from the
diminished word (shortness), or from another root altogether (duration)?

----
"Everyone's different, except me." --Noktakanto

Reply

Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>