Re: Negatives (Trentish, with adjective notes too) (was: Re: narethanaal)

On Sat, 15 Dec 2001 08:57:33 -0500, Muke Tever
<alrivera@...> wrote:


>I think a trent would say finding the opposite of a noun would be
>meaningless.
>At least, given those examples...
>
>Maybe with "resistance" / "non-resistance"... But I think in such a case it
>would be the underlying verb or adjective (here 'resist' or 'resistant'--
>probably 'resist' in English) that takes the negative, not the noun.
>
>In other words, if you had to reverse a _noun_, you couldn't do it
>morphologically; only lexically.
With some exceptions, I think. A "non-bachelor" would probably mean
(unequivocally) 'a married man' (rather than, say, 'a widow').

BTW and IIRC, the semanteme negated in sentences like "he/she/it isn't
an X" is called "the assertive component of meaning". Can be identified in
the meaning of many (but not all of) substantives, and will often have
an obvious natural opposite.


Basilius
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