Re: Non-polairty

On Tuesday, June 28, 2005, at 03:44 , Henrik Theiling wrote:

> Hi!
>
> Sai Emrys <saizai@...> writes:
[snip]
>> The problem: there are too many words that reference what are actually
>> (multi-dimensional?) (infinite?) spectra as if they were two (or more,
>> but finite) points.
>>
>> E.g.: Good/bad. Old/young. Rich/poor. Etc.
>
> These are not the same kind of scales in my view.  I'll explain that
> in a second.
Exactly so. As you well explain with old/young.

>> I object. I would like to eradicate all of these - and the associated
>> (cringily kludgy) Esperantoesque practice of having some word be the
>> base and then antonyming it (e.g. malbono [sp?] et al). Likewise with
>> referring to the spectrum, or the unkown quantity, with one of the
>> endpoint words - e.g. "how old are you?".
>
> Very good! :-)
yes, indeed - the failings of the Esperanto mal-, especially the way it
treats different types of "opposites" the same way, is well-known. In my
pages on Speedwords, I discuss the illogical & inconsistent way "opposites"
  are dealt with in that language. This is nothing new and has been
discussed here before.
=============================
On Tuesday, June 28, 2005, at 02:45 , Sai Emrys wrote:
[snip]
> For that matter, as a starter, do any of you actually understand what
> I'm talking about
Most certainly.

> and why it annoys me?
I can well understand why the use of affixes like the Esperanto mal- and
Speedwords -o/-x would annoy you. I don't get so worked up about natlangs.
  For example there is nothing in the form of the words 'good' and 'bad'
which remotely suggests they are opposites. In fact they are not always
treated as polar opposites. Also by having different words it does not
enforce upon humans one particular philosophic viewpoint as between
whether, for example, good is an absolute or relative term.

But the question of opposites has exercise some language planners. See for
example Rick Morneau's essay "Lexical Semantics", section 8 - Polarity


Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
===============================================
"A mind which thinks at its own expense will always
interfere with language."         J.G. Hamann, 1760