Re: Semantic typology?
| From: | ROGER MILLS <rfmilly@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, August 11, 2008, 16:31 |
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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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