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Chapter 14. Meaning between algebra and culture

Auto-antonyms in the Ewe verb lexicon
  • Felix K. Ameka
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Crossroads Semantics
This chapter is in the book Crossroads Semantics

Abstract

Semanticists continue to debate questions like: are meanings about “things in the world” or “things in the mind”? Are meanings about algebraic calculations or about cultural conceptions? How are multiple senses of a word related? This chapter explores some of these questions through a detailed semantic analysis of two verbs in Ewe (Gbe), a Kwa language of West Africa. I argue that the senses of the verbs involve directional opposition: mie ‘germinate/dry up’ and dró ‘put load up on/down from head’. As such they are auto-antonyms. From a logical point of view, the interpretations of the verb mie may not look antonymous, but from the perspective of cultural practices and conceptualisations the image schematic representations go in opposite direction. I propose Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM)-inspired semantic representations for the verbs which show the contrasts transparently.

Abstract

Semanticists continue to debate questions like: are meanings about “things in the world” or “things in the mind”? Are meanings about algebraic calculations or about cultural conceptions? How are multiple senses of a word related? This chapter explores some of these questions through a detailed semantic analysis of two verbs in Ewe (Gbe), a Kwa language of West Africa. I argue that the senses of the verbs involve directional opposition: mie ‘germinate/dry up’ and dró ‘put load up on/down from head’. As such they are auto-antonyms. From a logical point of view, the interpretations of the verb mie may not look antonymous, but from the perspective of cultural practices and conceptualisations the image schematic representations go in opposite direction. I propose Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM)-inspired semantic representations for the verbs which show the contrasts transparently.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Dedication v
  3. Table of contents vii
  4. Introduction 1
  5. Chapter 1. Bridging theoretical and experimental linguistic research 9
  6. Data and its use
  7. Chapter 2. Experimental research 23
  8. Chapter 3. Finding long-distance dependencies in the Lassy Corpus 39
  9. Chapter 4. How to compare speed and accuracy of syntactic parsers 57
  10. Chapter 5. Adposition clusters in Dutch 77
  11. Chapter 6. Polarity licensing and intervention by conjunction 93
  12. Chapter 7. Frequential test of (S)OV as unmarked word order in Dutch and German clauses 107
  13. Chapter 8. Kratzer’s effect in the nominal domain 125
  14. Chapter 9. Is bilingual speech production language-specific or non-specific? 139
  15. Chapter 10. Prosody of restrictive and appositive relative clauses in Dutch and German 155
  16. Chapter 11. Licensing distributivity 177
  17. Implementation and theory building
  18. Chapter 12. Extending categorial grammar to phonology 193
  19. Chapter 13. Stacking up for the long way down 207
  20. Chapter 14. Meaning between algebra and culture 227
  21. Chapter 15. Whether you like it or not, this is a paper about or not 249
  22. Chapter 16. Between desire and necessity 263
  23. Chapter 17. Inner aspect and the comparative quantifiers 281
  24. Chapter 18. The expressive en maar -construction 305
  25. Index 327
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.210.14ame

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Dedication v
  3. Table of contents vii
  4. Introduction 1
  5. Chapter 1. Bridging theoretical and experimental linguistic research 9
  6. Data and its use
  7. Chapter 2. Experimental research 23
  8. Chapter 3. Finding long-distance dependencies in the Lassy Corpus 39
  9. Chapter 4. How to compare speed and accuracy of syntactic parsers 57
  10. Chapter 5. Adposition clusters in Dutch 77
  11. Chapter 6. Polarity licensing and intervention by conjunction 93
  12. Chapter 7. Frequential test of (S)OV as unmarked word order in Dutch and German clauses 107
  13. Chapter 8. Kratzer’s effect in the nominal domain 125
  14. Chapter 9. Is bilingual speech production language-specific or non-specific? 139
  15. Chapter 10. Prosody of restrictive and appositive relative clauses in Dutch and German 155
  16. Chapter 11. Licensing distributivity 177
  17. Implementation and theory building
  18. Chapter 12. Extending categorial grammar to phonology 193
  19. Chapter 13. Stacking up for the long way down 207
  20. Chapter 14. Meaning between algebra and culture 227
  21. Chapter 15. Whether you like it or not, this is a paper about or not 249
  22. Chapter 16. Between desire and necessity 263
  23. Chapter 17. Inner aspect and the comparative quantifiers 281
  24. Chapter 18. The expressive en maar -construction 305
  25. Index 327
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