summary: Humorous Antonymic Nicknames

[Raffaele Simone]

Caveat: in any case, it is evident that the majority of the cases pointed at 
or mentioned in connection with our query have not to do with languages but 
more precisely to the social uses of languages -- which is completely 
different. Accordingly one canno say that such and such fact is "typical to" 
Italian, Bosniac, etc., but just to the linguistic habits of those speaking 
those languages.
I think it would be necessary to ascertain which cases of antiphrastic 
designations are really lexicalized, namely converted into language facts.
Best,
Raffaele Simone

http://raffaelesimone.blogspot.com/
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----- Original Message ----- 
From: <ludwig.paul at UNI-HAMBURG.DE>
To: <LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
Sent: Tuesday, December 01, 2009 2:27 PM
Subject: Re: summary: Humorous Antonymic Nicknames


> Dear David,
>
> another example. My wife (who is from Bosnia) told me that in her 
> childhood, there
> was a fat person whom the children in her street called "kosco" (with long 
> o, a
> hachek on the s and an accent on the c, i.e. kooshcho) which means "bony" 
> (this is a
> word made-up by the children, derived from kost "bone", which is not 
> likely to be
> found in dictionaries).
>
> In sum, you may add Bosnian(-Serbian-Croatian) to your list. I can hardly 
> believe, by
> the way, that there are languages where this kind ot humorous antonymic 
> nicknames
> would be outright  IMPOSSIBLE. But certainly this needs further study.
>
> All best,
> Ludwig Paul
> Hamburg, Iranistik