----- 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.