[Lingtyp] Does bipolar polysemy exist?

[Mathias Jenny]

In Thai, *cʰâj* means 'be so', but in literary style it is also used to
mean 'not be so'.

Mathias Jenny

mathias.jenny at uzh.ch


On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 1:07 PM Giorgio Francesco Arcodia <
giorgio.arcodia at unimib.it> wrote:

>
> I don't know if that counts, but: in Italian, *ospite* means both 'host'
> and 'guest'. In a given situation, you can't be both, so, (I guess) in a
> sense this word can be the negation of itself.
>
> Apologies, semantics is not my *forte.*
>
> Best,
>
> Giorgio
> 馬振國
>
> 2018-05-31 13:03 GMT+02:00 Mattis List <mattis.list at lingpy.org>:
>
>> Wouldn't the frequent cases of pronouns or pronoun-like words in French
>> (personne = "person, nobody", pas = "step, not", etc.) come close to
>> this notion? And this process has historically also be claimed for other
>> negation words, like Ancient Greek "ou", if I am not mistaken.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Mattis
>>
>> On 2018-05-31 12:57, Joo Ian wrote:
>> > Dear all,
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > I would like to know if the following universal claim holds:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > /There exists no lexeme that can mean X and the negation of X. (For
>> > example, no lexeme can express “to go” and “to not go”)./
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > I wonder if such “bipolar polysemy” exists in any lexeme, because I
>> > cannot think of any, and whether this claim is truly universal.
>> >
>> > I would appreciate to know if there is any counter-evidence.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > From Hong Kong,
>> >
>> > Ian Joo
>> >
>> > http://ianjoo.academia.edu
>> >
>> >
>> >
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>
>
>
> --
> Prof. Dr. Giorgio Francesco Arcodia
> 馬振國博士 副教授
> Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca
> 米蘭比克卡大學
> Dipartimento di Scienze Umane per la Formazione
> 教育學系
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