6.556 Words that are their opposites

Thu Apr 13 17:01:42 UTC 1995

----------------------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-6-556. Thu 13 Apr 1995. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 223

Subject: 6.556 Words that are their opposites

Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. <aristar at tam2000.tamu.edu>
            Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. <hdry at emunix.emich.edu>

Asst. Editors: Ron Reck <rreck at emunix.emich.edu>
               Ann Dizdar <dizdar at tam2000.tamu.edu>
               Ljuba Veselinova <lveselin at emunix.emich.edu>
               Annemarie Valdez <avaldez at emunix.emich.edu>

-------------------------Directory-------------------------------------

1)
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 1995 12:49:27 +0930
From: "David M. W. Powers" (powers at ist.flinders.edu.au)
Subject: Re: 6.531 Words that are their opposites

2)
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 1995 07:21:04 +0200 (MET DST)
From: hartmut at ruc.dk (Hartmut Haberland)
Subject: Re: 6.531 Words that are their opposites

3)
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 1995 06:46:47 -0500 (EST)
From: MOKENNON at ACAD.ALBION.EDU
Subject: Re: 6.531 Words that are their opposites

4)
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 1995 17:06:39 +0200
From: Roland Stuckardt (stuckard at darmstadt.gmd.de)
Subject: Re: 6.531 Words that are their opposites

5)
Date:          Wed, 12 Apr 1995 11:42:13 SAST-2
From: "Gowlett, DF, Derek, Mr" (GOWLETT at beattie.uct.ac.za)
Subject:       self-opposites

6)
Date:    Wed, 12 Apr 95 22:47 PDT
From: benji wald                           (IBENAWJ at MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU)
Subject: Re: 6.531 Words that are their opposites

7)
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 95 23:41:17 CST
From: GA5123 at SIUCVMB.SIU.EDU
Subject:  Words that are their own opposites

-------------------------Messages--------------------------------------
1)
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 1995 12:49:27 +0930
From: "David M. W. Powers" (powers at ist.flinders.edu.au)
Subject: Re: 6.531 Words that are their opposites

Given we are bringing in the interaction of the different functions
and roles of prepositions/particles, as well as constrasts across
languages, here is one of my standard examples - which is relvant to
Alex's restore/eliminate paradigm:

English: She kills him.
German:  Sie bringt ihm um.
Gloss:   She brings him around.
English: She revives him.

Another hairy area is different scopes of "until/bis" and "as soon
as/des que".  The problem is not really autoantonmy, but rather a too
naive association of the English gloss with the German/English word.

Two examples (a headline in a German newspaper and a sign on every train door
in the Paris metro resp., but I can't remember it exactly).

English: No more posion gas in German by/after September.
German:  Kein Giftgas mehr in Deutschland bis September.
Gloss:   No poison gas more in Germany    until September.

English: Do not open the doors until the train ...
French: Ne pas  ouvrir les portes des que    le train  ...
Gloss: (Do) not open   the doors  as soon as the train ...

        powers at acm.org   http://www.cs.flinders.edu.au/people/DMWPowers.html
Associate Professor David Powers                David.Powers at flinders.edu.au
        SIGART Editor; SIGNLL Chair             Facsimile:    +61-8-201-3626
Department of Computer Science                  UniOffice:    +61-8-201-3663
The Flinders University of South Australia      Secretary:    +61-8-201-2662
GPO Box 2100, Adelaide  South Australia 5001    HomePhone:    +61-8-357-4220

Ein Reiher hob ein Knie, Bohre hier nie.                (A palindrome)
"A heron raised a knee, never woodpeckers here" (???)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
2)
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 1995 07:21:04 +0200 (MET DST)
From: hartmut at ruc.dk (Hartmut Haberland)
Subject: Re: 6.531 Words that are their opposites

Mentioning Chinese "jie" 'to lend/to borrow' reminds of German
"leihen/borgen" which normatively speaking should be 'to lend' and 'to
borrow', resp., but which in actual usage both have both meanings.
Danish "at laere" means both 'to teach' and 'to learn'. This doesn't seem to
have worried anybody (since context usually helps) until scholars of (first
and) second language learning needed a Danish word for 'learner'. "laerer"
was already established in the  meaning of 'teacher'. So they borrowed
'learner' from English as "loerner". (ae= ae-ligature, oe= o-slash)
Hartmut Haberland

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 1995 06:46:47 -0500 (EST)
From: MOKENNON at ACAD.ALBION.EDU
Subject: Re: 6.531 Words that are their opposites

when i posted my xhosa example "abafundi" = "the students" or "they do not
study", i neglected to tell you that in spoken xhosa, the tonal structure of
the "sentence" disambiguates it.  here is august cluver's reply to me.

)Your  Xhosa example works only in the written form:  abafundi
)("the students") has high tone on the first vowel, whereas
)abafundi ("they do not study") has low tone on the first vowel.

)August Cluver
)Department of Linguistics
)University of South Africa

but here is one for alex eulenberg.  how about "i fixed my dog" when he wasn't
really broke?

martha

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
4)
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 1995 17:06:39 +0200
From: Roland Stuckardt (stuckard at darmstadt.gmd.de)
Subject: Re: 6.531 Words that are their opposites

Another example of auto-antonymy which, according to the originator
of the discussion topic, hasn't been mentioned on Linguist yet,
is "transparent":

(1) In one sense, transparency of a material or object means that
one can see through it - in other words, the material or
object is more or less INVISIBLE.

But to my mind (I'm not a native speaker of English), a more or
less opposite reading is also possible:
(2) A material/object/matter is transparent in a certain surrounding
if it is VISIBLE because one can "see through" the physical or
virtual things which make up its surrounding.

Some years ago, in a Database Systems Lecture held at the University
of Frankfurt in Germany, this auto-antonymy caused some confusion
under the students. The lecturer discussed a slide showing some
aspects of a database system with the property of "being transparent
to the user". However, it was not clear to all students that he ment
reading (1), because in German Language (the lecture was given
in German, but based (at least in certain parts) on English
literature), there seems to be a slight preference for reading (2).

Roland Stuckardt
GMD Darmstadt, Group KONTEXT (Text Analysis Systems)
Germany

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
5)
Date:          Wed, 12 Apr 1995 11:42:13 SAST-2
From: "Gowlett, DF, Derek, Mr" (GOWLETT at beattie.uct.ac.za)
Subject:       self-opposites

In her letter of April 8, martha o'kennon states that in Xhosa (a
Bantu language of South Africa), the word (abafundi) can mean "the
students" and "they do not study".

Not so!  There is a tonal difference:

              Verb         Noun

    abafundi (LLHL)        HLHL  (they don't study/students)
    abadlali (LLHL)        HLFL  (they don't play/players)
    abasebenzi (LLLHL)     HLLHL (they don't work/workers)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
6)
Date:    Wed, 12 Apr 95 22:47 PDT
From: benji wald                           (IBENAWJ at MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU)
Subject: Re: 6.531 Words that are their opposites

I accept Eulenberg's answer that the point of the discussion is to
discover more and more ways that some words can have opposite inter-
pretations in different contexts (I'm paraphrasing, accurately I hope).
But I'm also starting to be persuaded by some of the examples that
language is a very imprecise way of communicating information (only
kidding?  I can't think of a better one for the kinds of things we're
saying.)    So do we now move on to "the man broke his glasses"?
Note that "his" can refer to the subject or it might have the "opposite"
meaning of the "other" person mentioned before (first the man talked to
the boy and then he broke his glasses).  Also what about the "opposite"
 meanings of "the man" or"the boy" or "he" for the one with blue-eyes
vs. the one with brown-eyes.  To get serious, are there criteria for
distinguishing ambiguity (the superclass of oppositeness) from
non-specificity?       Benji

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
7)
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 95 23:41:17 CST
From: GA5123 at SIUCVMB.SIU.EDU
Subject:  Words that are their own opposites

  As to whether auto-antonyms have provided a discussion of
record length, I don't know.  Some readers may be tiring of it,
while others are still enthusiastic, but I'm sure both sides will agree
that it's a hell of a topic!

Lee Hartman                         ga5123 at siucvmb.siu.edu
Department of Foreign Languages
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, IL  62901-4521  U.S.A.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-6-556.