Re: Keeping Track of Ambiguity in your Conlang?

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'
>
> 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.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier
Dept. of Linguistics  "Nihil magis praestandum est quam ne pecorum ritu
University of Chicago sequamur antecedentium gregem, pergentes non qua
1010 E. 59th Street   eundum est, sed qua itur." -- Seneca
Chicago, IL 60637

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