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Re: Keeping Track of Ambiguity in your Conlang?

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Saturday, August 31, 2002, 23:38
Wesley Parish wrote:
>> >> ( another pairing i've seen mentioned is 'dust' >> >> meaning to rid of dust and 'dust' meaning to sprinkle >> >> with dust, but at least these come from the same root ) >> > >> >I do think this is used by everyone, although the first >> >meaning is probably the more common one. >>
(Moi)
>> In my life, at least, 'to dust (sprinkle with....)' is mainly restricted
to
>> the kitchen-- >> "Dust the cutlets with flour......", Dust with powdered sugar" I can't >> imagine dusting something with real dust-----though given my housekeeping >> habits it could happen.... > >Heard of crop-dusting? From aircraft?
Ah yes, slipped my mind. Dusting with insecticide. But if your crops are simply looking untidy, Martha Stewart(TM) recommends attaching a really big feather-duster to the plane. :-) Actually this is a quite productive means of producing Engl. verbs from nouns (and probably the despair of foreign learners)-- box (container), to box pocket, to... bottle, to... bag, to... as verbs these generally mean 'put s.t. into NOUN' (the noun must be marked semantically as "container"; so [recording]tape must be a container) water carpet paint dust roof etc. as verbs, 'apply NOUN (or noun-like substance) to s.t.' (semantics here are a little looser; [adhesive]tape would go here) There are more categories, though some, like "to table", where the meaning is not immediately deducible, surely fall under "figurative speech".

Replies

Tim May <butsuri@...>
Roberto Suarez Soto <ask4it@...>
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
bnathyuw <bnathyuw@...>