Re: Polysemy of "long"

Roger Mills wrote:

>Sanghyeon Seo wrote:
> > English word "long" or Han ideograph ’· may mean either "long in
> > distance" or "long in time". As I don't know much about other
> > languages, is this polysemy common? Which languages distinguish two?
> >
>Indonesian, I think, would qualify-- _lama_ means specifically '(a) long
>time', _panjang_ means 'long (dimension)'.  But unless I'm mistaken, you
>could use panjang in a phrase like "Several long moments passed...." or
>"there was a long delay".  OTOH for Engl. "long way(s)" (as in "New York is
>a long way(s) from Michigan") you would simply use jauh 'far'.  Pretty much
>the same in my conlang Kash.
>
>Spanish too, IIRC. Mucho tiempo 'long(much) time', but largo for
>measurement.
I read an article about Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. In the Experiment 1, they
compare the languages that treat time as lenght and the languages that treat
time as quantity.

http://www.cogsci.northwestern.edu/cogsci2004/papers/paper575.pdf

It might interest you and Sanghyeon Seo

- Max