[YG Conlang Archives] > [ceqli group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
> A discussion on the Loglan newsgroup leads me to wonder about opposites. > Take young and old. We can have an 'opposite' preja to make 'un-' forms, > or we could be creative about picking the basic preja in the first place. > Suppose we picked a word that could be turned inside-out somehow, to make a > one syllable opposite. Say 'young' is 'sjan', and we turn the N's > (non-consonants) around to make 'old' 'snaj'. We'd have to pick a set of > phonemes that would, like this, sound considerably different when reversed. > Like the i and o endings, this will not be a rule, but a mnemonic. Comments? I don't like the idea having an opposite-forming word (that's one of my least favorite features of Esperanto). I think opposites should either be two different words or two different modifications of one root. So I like your second idea, but not your first. One problem that might pop up, although probably less likely with your second idea, is that one opposite in a pair of neutral words might have negative connotations: (using my horrid esperanto) if 'bona' is good and 'malbona' is bad, then is 'malgranda' the bad form of 'granda'? Not literally, but it seems like one concept is prefered over the other. -- Alexander Browne | alexbrowne@hidden.email Saint Paul, Minn., U.S. -- Alexander Browne | alexbrowne@hidden.email Saint Paul, Minn., U.S.