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

From:Vasiliy Chernov <bc_@...>
Date:Thursday, December 20, 2001, 17:31
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 -