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Re: Disambiguating polysemy (was: "triggers et al" as I presently understand them)

From:Rodlox <rodlox@...>
Date:Saturday, November 20, 2004, 23:35
----- Original Message -----
From: Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Saturday, November 20, 2004 10:50 PM
Subject: Disambiguating polysemy (was: "triggers et al" as I presently
understand them)


> On Friday, November 19, 2004, at 09:20 , Rodlox wrote: > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: Amanda Babcock Furrow <> > [snip] > > >> On the other hand, just keep your original idea and give it a new name
:
> >> ) > > > > thus far, Polynymic Selectives. bad name? :) > > 'Selective' is OK - tho 'selector' might be considered. But 'polynymic'?
I drew it from - * "poly" (many) * "-nym" ie pseudonym (name)
> There is a correctly formed English word 'polyonymic' but that means > "formed from more than one word".
oh; nevermind. that's a compound word. :)
> I think what you are trying to deal with is 'polysemy' - the property of > being _polysemic_, i.e. of having more than one meaning.
ahh, okay.
> But 'polysemic selective' would mean that 'selective' itself had more than > one meaning. What you need is a name for a particle that selects one out > of a set of possible different meaning. The word that come immediately to > mind is _disambiguator' - which I admit is a bit of a mouthful.
non- or making non-ambiguous, yes?
> But your idea reminds me quite a bit of R. Srikanth's _Lin_ in which words > are 'enneasemic' (have nine different possible meanings - indeed, a few > have ten!). Srikanth had an ingenious system of "cements".
hrmm...
> A 'cement' in fact did two things: > - it serve to bind or relate one word to another (hence the term 'cement') > ; > - it also served to _disambiguate_ the meaning of the two words, i.e. it > selected the correct meaning.
fascinating. (and feeling a wee bit of deja vu). what I'm wondering now (and was even before getting *this* email from you), is how does one specify between the various meanings of a word? see the _C-23..._ post for examples.

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Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>