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Re: Semantic typology?

From:ROGER MILLS <rfmilly@...>
Date:Monday, August 11, 2008, 16:31
Jim Henry wrote:
(re compass points)
>That's a sensible hypothesis. Do you know of any languages that >have roots for the intercardinals rather than deriving them from >cardinals?
Malay/Indonesian at least, has one: tenggara 'southeast', not sure of its origin (Sanskrit anyone?); all the others IIRC are compounds based on the cardinal points. 'Southwest' oddly, is barat daya, lit. west inland.
> >The basic directional roots would all be 22.5 degrees clockwise >off from the cardinals.
On an island oriented NW-SE, and lacking knowledge of the compass and not too concerned with the stars, "north" might actually refer to the direction perpendicular to the island, hence really northeast....

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Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>