[Lingtyp] Does bipolar polysemy exist?

Dmitry Nikolaev dsnikolaev at gmail.com
Sat Jun 2 19:11:23 UTC 2018 

Dear Mattis,

a small correction:

> Furthermore, it is not that trivial as the google-people suggest: they
> use extremely large training corpora for automatic translation which is
> based on stochastic (albeit apparently simple) grammars. A human,
> however, acquires a language with much LESS training material and a
> smaller brain. This questions cannot be solved if we rely on google or
> the engineering part of "computer science".

The biggest announced neural networks seem to have on the order of 1 to 2
hundred billion parameters (weights of connections between neurons). Human
brain has ~100 billion neurons and on the order of 100 trillion connections
/ learnable parameters. Huge NLP endeavours probably match and surpass the
amount of input humans receive when acquiring a language, but
computationally human brain is not small, it is in another universe.

With kind regards,
Dmitry


On Sat, 2 Jun 2018 at 14:29, Mattis List <mattis.list at lingpy.org> wrote:

> Dear Stela,
>
> very brief, but there's a misunderstanding regarding scientific endeavor
> here: google people are engineers, their goal is to get a machine
> running that replicates a human talking. What linguists want to do is
> scientific endeavor, we do not only want to replicate a machine doing
> the same things that we do, but we want to UNDERSTAND what the machine
> does.
>
> This issue of machine learning approaches which are all very black-boxy,
> has now finally gained some intention among scholars, since it is also
> dangerous, if we want to use machines to replace human labor in the
> future (look at how badly facebook filters hate-speech). But it is also
> fundamentally different as an approach: we NEED to care about
> categories, as we want to look inside the box, not simply create a new one.
>
> Furthermore, it is not that trivial as the google-people suggest: they
> use extremely large training corpora for automatic translation which is
> based on stochastic (albeit apparently simple) grammars. A human,
> however, acquires a language with much LESS training material and a
> smaller brain. This questions cannot be solved if we rely on google or
> the engineering part of "computer science".
>
> Best,
>
> Mattis
>
>
>
> On 02.06.2018 11:17, Stela Manova wrote:
> > Dear Randy,
> >
> > What you write simply shows that you do not know enough about numerical
> > systems and how a computer works. Yes, there exist different numerical
> > systems, btw not only the binary and the decimal one, but there are
> > special notations for the different systems, so that mathematicians and
> > computers know in which system a number is. Additionally, a computer
> > works only in binary code. How exactly those things happen in computer
> > science is explained, e.g., here: http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/hex/.
> >
> > Regarding induction / deduction and Jeff Dean’s method, I will not
> > philosophize, there is a clear definition of mathematical induction. In
> > math, induction is used in recursive situations to establish the basic
> > case. That MIT professor explains induction and recursion very
> > well:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPSeyjX1-4s&t=0s&list=PLUl4u3cNGP63WbdFxL8giv4yhgdMGaZNA&index=23
> .
> > Let us leave readers decide of what type is Jeff Dean’s method.
> >
> > What linguists cannot understand is the fact that in order to apply
> > mathematical logic, one needs elements that are of the same type. If you
> > assume that there are different types of words (basic elements of a
> > system), you cannot describe that system mathematically, at least not
> > without preliminary sortings of the elements, which will make the
> > analysis more time-consuming = slower computer program. Therefore, Jeff
> > Dean claims that using grammar is less efficient than handling without
> > grammar. In sum, the difference between the computer scientist Jeff Dean
> > and a linguist: Jeff Dean treats all words as units (elements of the
> > same type) while linguists philosophize on bipolar polysemy = Jeff Dean
> > solves a problem, linguists create an additional one.
> >
> > Btw, if linguists listen to computer scientists, there would not be any
> > research on complexity in linguistics, either. The above MIT professor
> > again, part 1
> > at:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9nW0uBqvEo&list=PLUl4u3cNGP63WbdFxL8giv4yhgdMGaZNA&index=36
> , and
> > part 2
> > at:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lQXYl_L28w&list=PLUl4u3cNGP63WbdFxL8giv4yhgdMGaZNA&index=37
> .
> >
> > Best,
> > Stela
> >
> >> On 02.06.2018, at 08:51, Randy J. LaPolla <randy.lapolla at gmail.com
> >> <mailto:randy.lapolla at gmail.com>> wrote:
> >>
> >> Dear Stella,
> >> The mathematical approach you discussed is very much in the
> >> Structuralist tradition, and not that much in line with the most
> >> cutting edge recent AI research. Almost all linguistics (including
> >> Chomsky), plus most computer science, particularly NLP, is based on
> >> Structuralist principles (though Interactional Linguistics,
> >> Usage-based approaches, and Halliday’s approach are not). What you
> >> said, "in mathematics / computer science, in isolation, a sequence of
> >> elements always has a single meaning because if it has not, no
> >> computation is possible”, and you assume it must be true for language,
> >> is very much the sort of thing I was talking about. Even in computer
> >> science that is not true, as “10” in a binary system such as machine
> >> code has a different “meaning” from “10” in a non-binary situation, so
> >> 1 + 1 = 2 is only true in the context of a non-binary code.
> >> Mathematics and logic is also tautologies, as Wittgenstein pointed
> >> out, so quite different from natural language, where even “War is war”
> >> is not a tautology, and that is why there was the whole Oxford School
> >> of Ordinary Language Philosophy (Grice, Austin, Searle, etc.), as they
> >> saw that natural language is quite different from the mathematical
> >> approach being pushed by the logical positivists and analytic
> >> philosophers. (Frege and Russel had turned logic into mathematics, and
> >> tried to apply it to language—the early Wittgenstein went along with
> >> that initially, but later saw how problematic even his own early
> >> approach was.)
> >>
> >> I am aware of what has been going on in AI, particularly by Jeff Dean,
> >> in the switch from symbolic (deductive/rule-based) AI to inductive
> >> approaches, and am quite happy they finally have seen the light in
> >> that regard, and that has made a big difference in terms of what the
> >> systems can do. That switch, from rule based deductive algorithms, is
> >> what Dean means by doing without grammar; what they find using the
> >> inductive approach is still grammar (as Peirce said “Induction infers
> >> a rule”), and simply based on symbol manipulation, so a long way from
> >> modelling actual communication, which is based on meaning, not
> >> symbols, and so what they are talking about is not really
> >> “understanding". Induction can only take you so far (Peirce’s view was
> >> that deduction (which is tautology) and induction do not tell you
> >> anything new—although abduction is the “weakest” inference, as he put
> >> it, it is the only one that tells you something new; On the difference
> >> between the latter two: “. . . the essence of an induction is that it
> >> infers from one set of facts another set of similar facts, whereas
> >> hypothesis [abduction—rjl] infers from facts of one kind to facts of
> >> another.”); the next step is to understand how communication actually
> >> works (as it isn’t coding/decoding) and try to see if it is possible
> >> to model abductive inference, which is what real communication is
> >> based on. I don’t know if that is possible. The problem is they are
> >> not working with linguists who understand communication, and so on the
> >> one had assume it is about symbol manipulation, and on the other end
> >> up often reinventing the wheel. One example is a talk I went to at our
> >> Complexity Institute, where the speaker talked about how his algorithm
> >> had shown that some words in English, such as “a little bit" occur
> >> together more often than others. We linguists of course knew that
> >> decades ago, but as this person had not talked to any linguists before
> >> starting a linguistic study, he had no clue about what had been done
> >> in terms of collocational relationships.
> >>
> >> Yes, the abilities and principles related to meaning creation and
> >> linguistic behaviour are general cognitive mechanisms and behavioural
> >> principles, not specific to language, and not unique to humans. You
> >> say, "Linguists believe that linguistics is a module of its own in the
> >> brain and love re-defining things as something specific for the
> >> field”, but that statement only applies to an ever-shrinking minority
> >> of people doing rationalist philosophy rather than empirical
> >> linguistics, and the ones associated with the now discredited symbolic
> >> AI.
> >>
> >> All the best,
> >> Randy
> >> -----
> >> *Randy J. LaPolla, PhD FAHA* （羅仁地）
> >> Professor of Linguistics and Chinese, School of Humanities
> >> Nanyang Technological University
> >> HSS-03-45, 14 Nanyang Drive | Singapore 637332
> >> http://randylapolla.net/
> >> Most recent book:
> >>
> https://www.routledge.com/The-Sino-Tibetan-Languages-2nd-Edition/LaPolla-Thurgood/p/book/9781138783324
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> On 1 Jun 2018, at 4:57 PM, Stela Manova <stela.manova at univie.ac.at
> >>> <mailto:stela.manova at univie.ac.at>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Dear Randy,
> >>>
> >>> What I wrote does not have anything to do with structuralism but is
> >>> based on recent research in language understanding on which we rely
> >>> every day. I mean research carried out by Google. Intriguingly,
> >>> people who do NLP and LU at Google are not linguists but computer
> >>> scientists and the senior fellow of the Google Brain Team, Jeff Dean,
> >>> claims that language understanding does not need grammar, see his
> >>> slides on Scaling language understanding models
> >>> at https://blog.ycombinator.com/jeff-deans-lecture-for-yc-ai/, starts
> >>> at 24:54 in the video, as well as the slides on Google Translate -
> >>> 27:52 in the video (the slides are below the video), but please watch
> >>> the whole video if you have time. This is one of Jeff Dean’s many
> >>> talks on Deep Learning, I give this link because I have it in my
> >>> computer but you can google the topic and the speaker. So, Google’s
> >>> LU does not use grammar but is based on combinations / sequences of
> >>> elements and statistics; and ironically, linguists who believe in
> >>> grammar and irony (based on your message below) use Google products
> >>> every day. The wisdom from the Google sequence-to-sequence model is
> >>> that single examples do not count as evidence for the organization of
> >>> a system. Reread now our discussion on what is bipolar polysemy and
> >>> you will understand, why so many linguistics professors from so many
> >>> different countries cannot agree on a definition.
> >>>
> >>> It is not about bipolar polysemy, it is about the future of the
> >>> field. Google guys claim and prove that the same learning logic
> >>> applies to all areas of life; roughly, the same rules operate
> >>> in visual perception, chemistry, language, etc. Linguists believe
> >>> that linguistics is a module of its own in the brain and love
> >>> re-defining things as something specific for the field - there is
> >>> even statistics for linguists which unfortunately differs from Google
> >>> statistics because people who do statistics in Google are
> >>> mathematicians while (most of the) linguistic statisticians were bad
> >>> at math at school and therefore studied languages at the university,
> etc.
> >>>
> >>> I have a PhD in general linguistics from the University of Vienna
> >>> (and my both PhD supervisors were very bad at math) but I cannot
> >>> agree that this is sufficient evidence that the tip of my nose is the
> >>> end of the horizon. OK, I was also educated in math nine years -
> >>> intensively.
> >>>
> >>> Best,
> >>>
> >>> Stela
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> On 01.06.2018, at 06:06, Randy J. LaPolla <randy.lapolla at gmail.com
> >>>> <mailto:randy.lapolla at gmail.com>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Hi All,
> >>>> This whole discussion shows how problematic some of the a priori,
> >>>> non-empirical assumptions of the Structuralist approach are. The
> >>>> assumption that there is a fixed association of sign and signifier,
> >>>> and so words have meaning in some abstract universe divorced from
> >>>> context, and the assumption that language can be dealt with
> >>>> mathematically, and the assumption that communication happens
> >>>> through coding and decoding (on the computational model), and that
> >>>> the “real” word is the written, abstract, out-of-phonetic-context
> >>>> form, and so phonology in context can be ignored, and as there is
> >>>> only one “real” meaning to a word, the different uses in context ,
> >>>> such as irony, can be simply ignored or treated as deviant. The
> >>>> assumption that there is a fixed system that has iron-clad rules,
> >>>> and that there are aspects of the system that are necessary for
> >>>> communication to occur.
> >>>>
> >>>> There is much literature showing how problematic these assumptions
> >>>> are, but somehow they are still in force in much of linguistics, as
> >>>> reflected in some of this discussion.
> >>>>
> >>>> My own view is that communication involves one person performing a
> >>>> communicative act in a particular place and time and to a particular
> >>>> addressee, and the addressee abductively inferring that person’s
> >>>> reason for performing that act in that particular context to that
> >>>> particular person at that particular time. So it is completely
> >>>> context dependent, as Nick shows, and there is no minimum
> >>>> morphosyntactic structure required, as David Gil has shown. No part
> >>>> of the communicative situation or act can be left out in terms of
> >>>> understanding the meaning that the addressee creates in inferring
> >>>> the communicator’s intention (as Mark shows in including gesture in
> >>>> his discussion, though it also includes non-conventionalised
> >>>> behaviour, e.g. gaze and body movements; and it is creation of
> >>>> meaning, not transfer of meaning, and so subjective and
> >>>> non-determinative). Language and other conventionalised
> >>>> communicative behaviour (language is behaviour, not a thing, and
> >>>> does not differ in nature from other conventionalised behaviour)
> >>>> emerges out of the interaction of the people involved.
> >>>>
> >>>> So the question asked is like a Zen koan: you can’t answer it yes or
> >>>> no, as it is based on problematic assumptions.
> >>>>
> >>>> Randy
> >>>>
> >>>> -----
> >>>> *Randy J. LaPolla, PhD FAHA* （羅仁地）
> >>>> Professor of Linguistics and Chinese, School of Humanities
> >>>> Nanyang Technological University
> >>>> HSS-03-45, 14 Nanyang Drive | Singapore 637332
> >>>> http://randylapolla.net/
> >>>> Most recent book:
> >>>>
> https://www.routledge.com/The-Sino-Tibetan-Languages-2nd-Edition/LaPolla-Thurgood/p/book/9781138783324
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> On 1 Jun 2018, at 7:42 AM, Nick Enfield <nick.enfield at sydney.edu.au
> >>>>> <mailto:nick.enfield at sydney.edu.au>> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> In Lao:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>  1. The verb cak2 means ‘know’, and can be negated as in man2 bòò1
> >>>>>     cak2 [3sg neg know] ‘S/he doesn’t know.’ But when used alone,
> >>>>>     with no subject expressed, often with the perfect marker (as in
> >>>>>     cak2 or cak2 lèèw4) it means “I don’t know.”
> >>>>>  2. The verb faaw4 means ‘to hurry, rush’, and can be negated as in
> >>>>>     man2 bòò1 faaw4 [3sg neg rush] ‘S/he doesn’t hurry/isn’t
> >>>>>     hurrying.’ But when used alone as an imperative, with no
> >>>>>     subject expressed, often repeated, or with an appropriate
> >>>>>     sentence-final particle (as in faaw4 faaw4 or faaw4 dee4) it
> >>>>>     means “Don’t hurry, Stop hurrying, Slow down”.
> >>>>>  3. Often, both positive and negative readings of verbs are
> >>>>>     available when the irrealis prefix si is used (with context or
> >>>>>     perhaps intonation doing the work); eg khaw3 si kin3 [3pl irr
> >>>>>     eat] could mean ‘They will eat it’ or ‘They will definitely not
> >>>>>     eat it’ with a meaning similar to the colloquial English
> >>>>>     expression “As if they would eat it.” The second meaning is
> >>>>>     made more likely by insertion of the directional paj3 ‘go’
> >>>>>     before the verb (khaw3 si paj3 kin3 [3pl irr go eat] ‘As if
> >>>>>     they would eat it.’).
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Nick
> >>>>>
> >>>>> * *
> >>>>> * *
> >>>>> * *
> >>>>> * *
> >>>>> *N. J. ENFIELD *| FAHA FRSN | Professor of Linguistics
> >>>>> Head, Post Truth Initiative https://posttruthinitiative.org/
> >>>>> Director, SSSHARC (Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced
> >>>>> Research Centre)
> >>>>> Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
> >>>>> *THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY*
> >>>>> Rm N364, John Woolley Building A20 | NSW | 2006 | AUSTRALIA
> >>>>> T +61 2 9351 2391 | M +61 476 239 669
> >>>>> orcid.org/0000-0003-3891-6973 <http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3891-6973
> >
> >>>>> E nick.enfield at sydney.edu.au
> >>>>> <mailto:nick.enfield at sydney.edu.au> | W sydney.edu.au
> >>>>> <http://sydney.edu.au/> nickenfield.org <http://www.nickenfield.org/
> >
> >>>>> * *
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> *From: *Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org
> >>>>> <mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>> on behalf of
> >>>>> Mark Donohue <mark at donohue.cc <mailto:mark at donohue.cc>>
> >>>>> *Date: *Friday, 1 June 2018 at 7:13 AM
> >>>>> *To: *David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de <mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de>>
> >>>>> *Cc: *"LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
> >>>>> <mailto:LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>"
> >>>>> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> >>>>> <mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>>
> >>>>> *Subject: *Re: [Lingtyp] Does bipolar polysemy exist?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> In Tukang Besi, an Austronesian language of Indonesia, the verb
> >>>>> 'know' is dahani; verbs are generally prefixed to agree with the
> >>>>> S,A argument, thus
> >>>>>
> >>>>> ku-dahani 'I know'
> >>>>> 'u-dahani 'you know'
> >>>>>
> >>>>> etc.
> >>>>> In some contexts (imperatives, emphatic generic (TAME-less)
> >>>>> assertion), the prefix can be omitted.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> dahani 'I/you certainly know'
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Now, I've heard this (and only this) verb used, in the absence of
> >>>>> any inflection, with exactly its opposite meaning
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Dahani 'I don't know'
> >>>>>
> >>>>> in what might be a sarcastic sense. Unlike the antonymic uses of
> >>>>> many adjectives in many languages, including English, this use of
> >>>>> dahani is actually a simple (though emphatic) negation of the
> >>>>> verb's 'normal' meaning.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> -Mark
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On 1 June 2018 at 04:43, David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de
> >>>>> <mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de>> wrote:
> >>>>>> Yes, as Matti points out, negative lexicalization is not quite as
> >>>>>> rare as I was implying.  Yet at the same time, I suspect that it
> >>>>>> might not be as common as Matti is suggesting.  Looking at the
> >>>>>> examples that he cites in his Handbook chapter, I suspect that in
> >>>>>> some cases, the negative counterpart isn't "just" negative, but is
> >>>>>> also associated with some additional meaning components.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Matti doesn't list "good"/"bad" as being such a pair, though,
> >>>>>> citing work by Ulrike Zeshan on sign languages, he does mention
> >>>>>> other evaluative concepts such as "not right", "not possible",
> >>>>>> "not enough".  in English, at least, "bad" is not the negation of
> >>>>>> "good", it is the antonym of "good"; there's all kind of stuff in
> >>>>>> the world which we attach no evaluative content to, and which
> >>>>>> hence is neither good nor bad. (It's true that in English, in many
> >>>>>> contexts, the expression "not good" is understood as meaning
> >>>>>> "bad", which is interesting in and of itself, but still, it is not
> >>>>>> necessarily understood in this way.) While I have no direct
> >>>>>> evidence, I would strongly suspect that in languages that have
> >>>>>> lexicalized expressions for "not right", "not possible", and "not
> >>>>>> enough", the meanings of these expressions will be the antonyms of
> >>>>>> "right", "possible" and "enough", and not their negations.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Under lexicalized negatives in the domain of tense/aspect, Matti
> >>>>>> lists "will not", "did not", "not finished".  Well the one case
> >>>>>> that I am familiar with that falls into this category is that of
> >>>>>> the Malay/Indonesian iamative/perfect marker "sudah", which has a
> >>>>>> lexicalized negative counterpart "belum".  However, "belum" isn't
> >>>>>> just "not sudah"; it also bears a strong (if not invariant)
> >>>>>> implicature that at some point in the future, the state or
> >>>>>> activity that is not complete will be completed — in fact, just
> >>>>>> like the English expression "not yet".  (When people in Indonesia
> >>>>>> ask you if you're married, it's considered impolite to answer with
> >>>>>> a simple negation "tidak"; you're supposed to say "belum"
> >>>>>> precisely because of its implicature that you will, in the future,
> >>>>>> get married.  By avoiding this implicature, the simple negation
> >>>>>> "tidak" is viewed as a threat to the natural order of things, in
> >>>>>> which everybody should get married.)
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I suspect that many if not all of the cases characterized by Matti
> >>>>>> as "lexicalized negatives" will turn out to be associated with
> >>>>>> some additional meaning component beyond that of "mere" negation.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On 31/05/2018 20:06, Miestamo, Matti M P wrote:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Dear David, Zygmunt and others,
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> negative lexicalization is not quite as rare as David seems to
> >>>>>>> imply. There is a cross-linguistic survey of this phenomenon by
> >>>>>>> Ljuba Veselinova (ongoing work, detailed and informative
> >>>>>>> presentation slides available through her website), and Zeshan
> >>>>>>> (2013) has written on this phenomenon in sign languages. There's
> >>>>>>> also a short summary in my recent Cambridge Handbook of
> >>>>>>> Linguistic Typology chapter on negation (preprint available via
> >>>>>>> the link in the signature below).
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Best,
> >>>>>>> Matti
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> --
> >>>>>>> Matti Miestamo
> >>>>>>> http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/~matmies/
> >>>>>>> <
> https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/O7N4CL7rK8t5zx0kUBCq-Q?domain=ling.helsinki.fi
> >
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Zygmunt Frajzyngier <Zygmunt.Frajzyngier at COLORADO.EDU
> >>>>>>>> <mailto:Zygmunt.Frajzyngier at COLORADO.EDU>> kirjoitti 31.5.2018
> >>>>>>>> kello 17.23:
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> David, Friends
> >>>>>>>> Related to David’s post, not to the original query.
> >>>>>>>> In any individual language, there may exist a few of ‘Not-X’
> items.
> >>>>>>>> In Mina (Central Chadic) there is a noun which designates
> >>>>>>>> ‘non-blacksmith’.
> >>>>>>>> In several Chadic languages there exist negative existential
> >>>>>>>> verb unrelated to the affirmative existential verb.
> >>>>>>>> Zygmunt
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> On 5/31/18, 5:52 AM, "Lingtyp on behalf of David Gil"
> >>>>>>>> <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org
> >>>>>>>> <mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf
> >>>>>>>> of gil at shh.mpg.de <mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de>> wrote:
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>     On 31/05/2018 13:37, Sebastian Nordhoff wrote:
> >>>>>>>>> On 05/31/2018 01:18 PM, David Gil wrote:
> >>>>>>>>>> A point of logic.  "Not X" and "Antonym (X)" are distinct
> >>>>>>>>>> notions, and
> >>>>>>>>>> the original query by Ian Joo pertains to the former, not the
> >>>>>>>>>> latter.
> >>>>>>>>> but is there any (monomorphemic) lexeme which expresses not-X
> >>>>>>>>> which is
> >>>>>>>>> not the antonym of X?
> >>>>>>>>     But how many (monomorphemic) lexemes expressing not-X are
> >>>>>>>> there at all?
> >>>>>>>>     The only ones I can think of are suppletive negative
> >>>>>>>> existentials, e.g.
> >>>>>>>>     Tagalog "may" (exist) > "wala" (not exist). Even suppletive
> >>>>>>>> negative
> >>>>>>>>     desideratives don't quite fit the bill, e.g. Tagalog
> >>>>>>>> "nais"/"gusto"
> >>>>>>>>     (want) > "ayaw", which is commonly glossed as "not want",
> >>>>>>>> but actually
> >>>>>>>>     means "want not-X", rather than "not want-X" — "ayaw" is
> >>>>>>>> thus an antonym
> >>>>>>>>     but not a strict negation of "nais"/"gusto".
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>     What is not clear to me about the original query is whether
> >>>>>>>> it is asking
> >>>>>>>>     for negations or for antonyms.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>     --
> >>>>>>>>     David Gil
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>     Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
> >>>>>>>>     Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
> >>>>>>>>     Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>     Email: gil at shh.mpg.de <mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de>
> >>>>>>>>     Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834
> >>>>>>>>     Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>     _______________________________________________
> >>>>>>>>     Lingtyp mailing list
> >>>>>>>>     Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> >>>>>>>> <mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> >>>>>>>>     http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
> >>>>>>>> <
> https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/VBmHCMwvLQTGnKp2ikHGCw?domain=listserv.linguistlist.org
> >
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>>>> Lingtyp mailing list
> >>>>>>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
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> >>>>>>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
> >>>>>>>> <
> https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/VBmHCMwvLQTGnKp2ikHGCw?domain=listserv.linguistlist.org
> >
> >>>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>>> Lingtyp mailing list
> >>>>>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> >>>>>>> <mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> >>>>>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
> >>>>>>> <
> https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/VBmHCMwvLQTGnKp2ikHGCw?domain=listserv.linguistlist.org
> >
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> --
> >>>>>> David Gil
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
> >>>>>> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
> >>>>>> Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Email: gil at shh.mpg.de <mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de>
> >>>>>> Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834
> >>>>>> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>> Lingtyp mailing list
> >>>>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> >>>>>> <mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> >>>>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
> >>>>>> <
> https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/VBmHCMwvLQTGnKp2ikHGCw?domain=listserv.linguistlist.org
> >
> >>>>>
> >>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>> Lingtyp mailing list
> >>>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> >>>>> <mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> >>>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
> >>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> Lingtyp mailing list
> >>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> >>>> <mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> >>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
> >>>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Lingtyp mailing list
> > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
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