Re: Two different opposites

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe" <joe@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Monday, January 12, 2004 7:03 PM
Subject: Re: Two different opposites


> Gary Shannon wrote:
>
> >It's interesting that there can sometimes be more than
> >one "opposite" to a word.  While I was atempting to
> >discover which verb roots are necessary and which can
> >be formed by a negating prefix on the root, I noticed
> >that I need two different negating prefixes, one for
> >"un" and one for "not".
> >
> >
>
> Well, 'not'(on verbs) does not oppose, but makes things
> absent(linguistic term for this?), whereas un- makes things opposite.
>
> On the other hand, on adjectives, they are identical, making things
> absent or opposite, depending on the adjective in question.  There is,
> however, a third possibility is some things, and in some, it's not even
> included into English.
That let me think to Esperanto where
     utila = useful,
     neutila = useless     and
     malutila = harmful.