Re: Two different opposites

On Tuesday, January 13, 2004, at 06:57 PM, Joe wrote:

> Ray Brown wrote:
[snip]

>> If I came across the word 'enfast', I'd assume it was a quaint archaic or
>> dialect
>> word meaning "to fasten", i.e. to cause something to be fixed.
>
>
>
> Heh, yes.  I wasn't really thinking realistically, there.  Still, the
> concept's interesting.
Yep - and not so straightforward as is often supposed. The subject line of
this thread is OK if it means we're discussing two different kinds of
opposites out of a possibly larger number of different kinds of opposites.
But if it is meant to imply that there are only two kinds of opposites,
then
I think it is mistaken.

In my critique of Speedwords I touch on the subject of opposites, and
distinguish between antonyms, negatives and complementaries:
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown/SWwords.html

The topic of opposities is not an easy one. In "A Dictionary of Linguistics
and Phonetics", David Crystal writes:
"It is a matter of controversy how many types of opposites one should
usefully
recognize in semantic analysis......"

I think you topic you raise is an important one, especially for designers
of
auxlangs (where in some IMHO the idea of 'oppositeness' has been rather
clumsily implemented, e.g. in Speedwords) and, more importantly for this
list,
designers of loglangs.

Ray

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