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Re: Keeping Track of Ambiguity in your Conlang?

From:Wesley Parish <wes.parish@...>
Date:Saturday, August 31, 2002, 11:22
On Sat, 31 Aug 2002 12:12, Roger Mills wrote:
> 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.
Well, the other sense is transitive - and a man cleaving his wife and vice versa is horror-movie stuff.
> > >> 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....
Heard of crop-dusting? From aircraft? Wesley Parish -- Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?" You ask, "What is the most important thing?" Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata." I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."