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

Muke Tever wrote:

The ?o- in {?o-ysli-kwV-kV} "?o-red-be-this" is a morpheme
that has to attach to
most adjectives, as most adjectives are on a scale and
require comparison.  So
{?o-} is a positive marker; {?oysli-} means something like
"some red".

    ?o-xlo?-    POS-clean
    ?o-ysli-    POS-red

However some adjectives *don't* take comparison markers, and
don't take ?o-
either:

    Oxaly-      dead
    mina-       two

You can say this is because it doesn't mean anything to say
things are more or
less dead than each other, or more or less two--although the
class of
non-comparable adjectives doesn't necessarily correspond to
the semantics:

    twena-      forked
      (not *?o-twena-)
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
i like this tagging of polarity, degree and comparison on
adjectives (i just couldn't manage it right in my lang)
but if i take your example of /?o-xlo?/ and /oxaly/:
is "dirty" /lo-xlo?/? if so, do you tag the scale on "dirty"
too: /?o-lo-xlo?/?
is "alive" /lo-Oxaly/?

could you detail the difference between "go" and "lo"?
"to not X" vs. "non  X": are adjectives stative verbs? are
they nouns? btw, how would you make a reverse noun? for
instance: "life" vs. "death" or "cleanliness" vs."dirtiness"
(or maybe "no-dirt" vs. "dirt"?)

btw, for those who don't have polarity and degree tags but
still have opposite/reverse tags, what is the base word in
your conlangs?
i'm sorry to list many examples in Tunu below but it's
really to know how you would manage them in your langs:
in Tunu the concept felt more "positive" is the base on
which the reverse/opposite tag is affixed like
bigger quantity: nali "long" > nanali "short", beki "old" >
bebeki "young", keco "tense" > kekeco "loose", musu "wet" >
mumusu "dry"
nicer feeling: tica "happy" > titica "sad", besi "life,
alive" > bebesi "death, dead", kano "above" > kakano
"underneath", kulo "protect" > kukulo "threaten"
but there are plenty of opposite pairs that don't deal with
quantity and don't ping back any psychological echo in me,
in which case i try to pick the "logical initial" concept as
the base:
culo "open" > "cuculo" closed
i did that because i'd say that something closed implies it
could open sometime while something open could lack the
device to close up, and also because of the
"mabugo-mabitugo" example in whatever african lang i can't
remember. same for sibu "sleep" > sisibu "awaken", nuca
"enter" > nunuca "exit", kumo "gather" > kukumo "scatter",
etc.
example: "misi akukumo u suba" "the mice scatter in the
house" vs. "misi akumo u tisa" "the mice gather in the
corner".
and lastly the really completely arbitrary ones:
mese "female" > memese "male" (XX vs. XY? masculinity
defined as minus feminity? oedipus complex? anasakiosis
backlash? unconscious machisto attempt to look cool'nPC?),
cali "daytime" > cacali "night time" (don't ask and pull
down the shutters --i hate those spooky shadows outside.)

on the other hand, there are opposites that imply
existence/absence of an item:
clean = with no dirt, to clean = to remove dirt
healthy = with no disease, to cure = to remove disease
but Tunu makes "dirty" as "un-clean" (sosoke) and "healthy"
as "un-sick" (momocu). not consistent at all but i tried
reversely "clean" as "un-dirty" and that sounded weird to
me. i'm quite sure it's because of spoken french where
"dirty" is "paprop" and "healthy" is "pamalad" as in "mwa
shüpaprop me shüpamalad nõpü" "i'm no clean but no sick
either". what could i do to free myself from fuzzy slow
thinking flaws? help!

Mathias
www.geocities.com/kalatunu/index.htm