Re: Two different opposites

Quoting Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...>:

> 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".
>
> consider these opposites:
>
> take <-> not take (refuse)
> take <-> untake (give)
>
> make <-> not make
> make <-> unmake (destroy)
>
> know <-> not know
> know <-> unknow (forget)
>
> do <-> not do
> do <-> undo
>
> This seems more like the three points of a triangle
> than the two endpoints of a single spectrum.  Yet in
> other cases these two different opposites really mean
> about the same thing:
>
> welcome <-> not welcome
> welcome <-> unwelcome
>
> happy <-> not happy
> happy <-> unhappy
To me, "not happy" suggests merely the abscence of happiness, while "unhappy"
suggests its opposite; much like the examples above.

Anyway, I tend to think of it as the plain form being +1, the "not" form 0,
and the "un-" form as -1; "not" vs "un-" is abscence vs opposite. Doesn't work
always (damn lexicalizations!), but seems to be the main rule. Where I to
concoct an aux- or loglang, I'd be including two 'negative' markers to
distinguish precisely between abscence and opposite.

ObBadJoke: Does that mean I ought to have it in Yargish, an orcs' lang?

                                                            Andreas

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