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Re: Polysemy of "long"

From:# 1 <salut_vous_autre@...>
Date:Tuesday, August 23, 2005, 4:18
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