Re: Keeping Track of Ambiguity in your Conlang?

Tom Wier wrote:


>Quoting bnathyuw <bnathyuw@...>:
>
>>  --- Roberto Suarez Soto <ask4it@...> wrote: > On
>> Aug/30/2002, Amanda Babcock wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >         And there's also the homonyms that you can't
>> > tell the difference
>> > out of context: in spanish, "era" (somewhat archaic
>> > form to call the
>> > land outside a farm or country house) and "era"
>> > (singular third or first
>> > person of the imperfect past tense of "to be") are
>> > exactly pronounced
>> > the same, to my knowledge.
>> >
>>
>> of course, english has the wonderful pairing 'cleave'
>> and 'cleave'
Isn't the sense cleave = 'stick to' nowadays pretty much restricted to the
KJV and formal marriage ceremony? A man shall cleave unto his
wife........etc.
>>
>> one means 'to cling to, be firmly attached to'
>> the other means 'to split, divide'
>
>In my experience these 'two' words are in fact never
>used in opposition to one another.  People either use
>one or the other, but not both.  This would make it
>like the difference between American 'to table'
>(to remove from consideration) and British 'to table'
>(to put into consideration)
>
>> ( 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.
>
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....

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