[Lingtyp] Does bipolar polysemy exist?

[Reggie Duah]

​In Ewe (Kwa, Ghana), the form ​*etsɔ *means 'yesterday' and/or 'tomorrow'.
I guess one can think of *tomorrow *and *yesterday *as some kind of
'opposites',
since they involve inverse trajectories on a timeline.

/reggie

On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 11:18 AM David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de> 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.  Hence,
> the Wikipedia entry on "auto-antonym", however interesting in its own
> right, is not directly relevant to the original query.
>
> From a narrow truth-functional perspective, "X or not X" is a tautology,
> and hence any meaningless expression in a language (e.g. an exclamation
> expressing an affective state) would be equivalent to, say, "go or not
> go".  But somehow, I suspect that this is not what Ian Joo is looking for
> ...
>
> On 31/05/2018 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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>
> --
> 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
> Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834
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>
>
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-- 
*R. Akuoko Duah (PhD)*
------
Lecturer
Department of Linguistics
School of Languages Seminar Series Coordinator
ACLS-AHP Fellow (F12, F17)
College of Humanities
University of Ghana, Legon
Email: raduah at ug.edu.gh
Tel: +233-270-674-848
IP: 4074
webpage: http://www.reggieduah.ga/
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