Auto-antonyms

[nijk]

I don't get how the geographical location of the language is relevant here. Also, the only Malayalam one I've seen is the math/nothing pair.

[vijayjohn]

I don't get how the geographical location of the language is relevant here.

Because depending on where you're from, you're going to come from a different culture. When you come from a different culture, you approach the meanings of words from a different standpoint.

Also, the only Malayalam one I've seen is the math/nothing pair.

I posted two others.

[nijk]

Because depending on where you're from, you're going to come from a different culture. When you come from a different culture, you approach the meanings of words from a different standpoint.

For sure, this can happen within Europe too.

So maybe you can help me understand why math and nothing are opposites.

[vijayjohn]

They are opposites in context. Either you're studying a complicated subject or you're studying nothing.

[nijk]

They are opposites in context. Either you're studying a complicated subject or you're studying nothing.

I still don't get it. For me the opposite of a complicated subject would be an easy subject.

Is any kind of either-or choice a pair of opposites for you?

[vijayjohn]

Just please accept that what I think of as opposites may not be what you think of as opposites.

[nijk]

Just please accept that what I think of as opposites may not be what you think of as opposites.

Yes, but I'm trying to understand what your idea of an antonym is.

I think we should try to have an (at least vaguely*) agreed-upon definition of "opposites", otherwise this thread would become quite meaningless IMO.

*I realize a precise definition is probably hard to find.

[vijayjohn]

Just please accept that what I think of as opposites may not be what you think of as opposites.

Yes, but I'm trying to understand what your idea of an antonym is.

And I don't know how to explain it anymore than I already have.

I think we should try to have an (at least vaguely*) agreed-upon definition of "opposites", otherwise this thread would become quite meaningless IMO.

Then it is meaningless already.

[nijk]

And I don't know how to explain it anymore than I already have.

I was curious to know whether you see any kind of either-or scenario as "opposites". Because I'm under this impression from your math/nothing example.

[Linguaphile]

I don't think the definition of "opposite" is nearly as clear-cut as either of you are positing.

I find it telling that problems with the definition of "opposite" arise as soon as I post a pair in a language that is clearly not European.

Every single pair I have posted in Malayalam has come into question except the one I explicitly said could be problematic. Tell me, how come both of you can post pairs in European languages but I cannot post one in Malayalam without it being necessarily called into question?

.... (many more) ...

Wow. Okay. Well, first of all, none of the words that have been posted in this thread are problematic or have been called into question as far as I'm concerned. I'm not saying that any particular meaning pairs should not be posted. I'm just asking why some have been posted, because I'd like to understand. And, to be honest, I probably would not have even done that, if it were not for this post:

тöв winter (cognate with talv)
тöв wind (cognate with tuul)

I don't see why winter is the opposite of wind 🤔

And this one:

ovvero - that is, in other words, namely
ovvero - or

These aren't really auto-antonyms, either, are they? Or are you thinking of them as opposites in the sense of explaining what was already mentioned vs. introducing a different thing that wasn't?

We've been asking about why someone considers a word to be an autonym, and discussing that, since the beginning of the thread. With Komi тöв, it was decided that it's not actually an auto-antonym, so h34 deleted it. Still I'm glad he posted it in the first place, because it's interesting to me, but for etymological reasons rather than "auto-antonym reasons".
With Italian ovvero, I think it was precisely my study of a non-Indo-European language that helped me to understand exactly what nijk was getting at, even though the same distinctions of opposite meanings apparently occurs in Italian (an Indo-European language) just as it does in Estonian. It seems to me that nijk tends to understand distinctions like that in general very quickly and doesn't assume that other languages will make the same distinctions, the way so many language-learners tend to make subconscious assumptions based on their own native languages, which is one of the things that I've enjoyed about nijk's posts. It was also a discussion between nijk and I that made me think of starting this thread.

And here's the thing. When I started this thread, even though it was Spanish distender that gave me the idea, I was initially thinking of auto-antonyms (also called contranyms or contronyms) that work a certain way, like these from my first post:


värvitud colorless
värvitud colored, painted


pilvitus cloudlessness
pilvitus cloudiness


أضب to speak
أضب to remain silent


اندمل to heal
اندمل to fester

and quotes from books I've read by Zora O'Neill and Tim Mackintosh-Smith, who both mentioned (rather tongue-in-cheek) a saying along the lines of "every word in Arabic is said to mean one thing, its own opposite, and a camel".
In Estonian they happen that way because of the way Estonian grammar works and in Arabic, I don't know the reason but they are common (both of these languages are non-Indo-European, if that matters to you, Vijay) and that is something that is interesting to me. I'm not aware of precisely that type of auto-antonym (or that high number of them) occuring in Indo-European languages. Maybe something similar is going on with Malayalam, and that's why I was asking. I'd like to understand. Trying to understand things like this is why I started the thread. Vijay, since you seem to think it has something to do with whether or not languages are European, I do want you to understand that: even though most of the words posted here have been Indo-European, it was Arabic (non European) and Estonian (non-Indo-European) that made me think to ask how this type of thing works in other languages and piqued my interest. I asked you about Malayalam precisely to understand it better. If I had not been interested in those, I would not have commented on your posts.

Quite early in the thread, you posted these, Vijay:

I suppose these examples are somewhat deliberately ironic, and I'm not quite sure whether these work in other varieties of English, but:

bad
bad - good

sick - disgusting
sick - awesome

And to be honest this type of deliberate irony wasn't what I had in mind. In fact I had thought of that usage of "bad" and discarded it (not posted it) because it wasn't what I was looking for here. But I knew that if I said that, people would start to question whether or not to post other ones, and that wasn't what I wanted either. I didn't want to be policing this thread which would discourage other posts. From what I hoped would be a long list, some would be what I was looking for and others wouldn't. I'd pick out the ones I wanted and say nothing about the others. I'm fine with that. And, when yours were different from the others, Vijay, I wanted to know if they might be exactly what I was looking for, but I also couldn't understand the connections, so I had to ask. Not to criticize, but to understand better.

For the same reason, even though I am the one that started it by posting Estonian laenama, I realized after the proliferation of borrow/lend, teach/learn, etc. pairs, that that wasn't really what I was looking for in this thread either. They aren't considered auto-antonyms in their own languages, just in translation. In their own languages they are considered two sides of a single transaction. That's interesting to know, but once I'd mentally sorted that out, we didn't need any additional examples of this type in this thread. Nevertheless, again because I didn't want to be policing this thread, I just went with it when others kept posting them, and I even posted several more of the same type here. Again, because even though it wasn't quite what I was looking for, I understood the logic and they are interesting too.

I would love to have a similar discussion, resulting in a similar understanding of the logic behind them, about your Malayalam examples. That's why I asked you about them.

I disagreed with you about chavo, and I do speak Mexican Spanish. I even think I figured out what happened and why you posted it, and could provide a counterargument that might be interesting to discuss. We can discuss that one further, or not, as you like.

Because depending on where you're from, you're going to come from a different culture. When you come from a different culture, you approach the meanings of words from a different standpoint.

Yes, exactly, and this is exactly one of the reasons why I love studying languages, and especially languages that are in different language families from mine (Estonian, Saami, Hmong, Iu Mien, Ga, Aymara, Zapotec, etc) and to know a little bit about every language or language family from every continent. It's also exactly why I posted my questions to you, Vijay. Let me state my intentions more explicitly: Can you help us understand the way you are approaching the meanings of these words in Malayalam, and why you consider them auto-antonyms? I'd like to understand that.

This (and a few other posts) were posted while I was writing this, so I'll make one last comment about it:

They are opposites in context.

My understanding of the term auto-antonym (or contranym) is that they should be words that are opposites in any context. I suppose this is why I didn't really like the inclusion of words like "bad" and "sick" (they are not natural opposites) and why I like the examples like distender or värvitud. Regardless of the context, those words always have two opposite meanings. If we found a dictionary definition for them (not possible for the Estonian examples because of how Estonian grammar works; that can be a discussion if anyone is interested, too) the dictionary definition would list two definitions and the two definitions would be opposites of each other. It works, for example, for distender. In the thread that started this whole thing, I even posted the dictionary definition:

distender
1. tr. Aflojar, relajar o disminuir la tensión de algo. U. t. en sent. fig.
2. tr. Med. Causar una tensión violenta en un tejido, una membrana, etc. U. t. c. prnl.

Context itself is not what makes them opposites. In fact, context must be relied on to sort out which of the two opposite meanings is intended.
To me a word that intrinsically has two opposite meanings is an auto-antonym. A word that only has opposite meanings in one particular context is a pun. If you have to provide the sentence in which they occurred in order to show how they can be opposites, then it's most likely the latter. They are both interesting phenomena, but they aren't the same phenomena.

(By that definition, as discussed above, languages that use a single definition for borrow/lend or teach/learn don't meet that definition either. The reason I questioned yours and didn't question the borrow/lend etc. posts was because I understood the relationship there (I even posted some of them myself) and I don't understand the relationship with yours.) If your thinking is different from mine, I would like to understand. I would learn from that. And that's why I asked.

[vijayjohn]

Look.

First of all, the Middle East is not unambiguously non-European, and Estonia is clearly part of Europe.

More importantly, I have no idea how either of you finds auto-antonyms. Maybe you use Wiktionary. Maybe you use some other online resource. Maybe you pick them out of a print dictionary. I don't know.

I cannot do that for Malayalam. Wiktionary does not have that much for Malayalam, and there is not much in the way of online resources for Malayalam. I should know, having desperately struggled for years to learn my own heritage language and having such bad luck I started making my own resources for teaching it instead.

So I don't use Wiktionary, I don't use another online resource, and I don't pick auto-antonyms out of a print dictionary. Because I can't. I could try pouring through my Malayalam-to-English dictionary, but I don't think I would find anything like what you are looking for, and I'm not sure such a thing exists in Malayalam or even any non-European language at all in the first place.

What I do instead is I try to think of something that is at least close that exists in Malayalam because I think they are interesting and they seem to fit the subject of the thread to me.

If you cannot handle the fact that I do that, or if you're not satisfied with how I personally explain my actions, then too bad. I cannot do anything about it. I tried to explain myself already. I can only do so much.

[Linguaphile]

More importantly, I have no idea how either of you finds auto-antonyms. Maybe you use Wiktionary. Maybe you use some other online resource. Maybe you pick them out of a print dictionary. I don't know.

I cannot do that for Malayalam. So I don't use Wiktionary, I don't use another online resource, and I don't pick auto-antonyms out of a print dictionary. Because I can't.

I was just posting the ones I thought of, actually, not using any "resource". I don't know what anyone else was doing. But my thought was just, post the ones you know, as you think of them or happen to come across them (kind of like what we've done for the "Last Word You've Learned" and various "Cognate" threads).
I didn't, and don't, expect anyone to pour through dictionaries to find them.
Yesterday, when I was starting to wonder if maybe I had misunderstood the meaning of the term "auto-antonym" myself, while searching on the internet I found that Wiktionary has a category for them. I posted that link, but not words from it. Maybe some curious person who speaks those languages will take a look and post the ones they think seem relevant. Maybe they won't. It's fine with me either way.
Wiktionary doesn't have any list like that for Estonian either. (They do for Arabic, though.) Theoretically there should be a lot more in Estonian (they are possible anytime there is a etymological noun/verb pair, and there are a lot of those) but there's no list of them, and to be honest I haven't yet come up with others besides the ones I've posted. Just like you said, there's no way to look them up somewhere.

I hope you didn't think we needed to have every language here. It's not the type of thing every language will necessarily even have - there's absolutely no reason any language should. (In fact, maybe it would be better if languages don't - they do cause ambiguity and confusion! So in a way it's better for a language to not have them, I guess.) I mean, if you'd posted to say "I don't think there are any in Malayalam", I might have thought, "hey, that's great! Malayalam tries to avoid that kind of ambiguity and it has been successful at that!"
I didn't post any for Hmong because I don't know any for Hmong. There are a gazillion homonyms in Hmong, but I personally don't know any that are auto-antonyms. I don't have time to pour through the dictionary looking for some, and I don't expect anyone else to do that (for Hmong or any other language), either.

What I do instead is I try to think of something that is at least close that exists in Malayalam because I think they are interesting and they seem to fit the subject of the thread to me.

Okay. Thanks for clarifying and for posting what you thought of. They don't seem to fit the subject of the thread to me, but that doesn't mean they aren't interesting to me. My questions to you were just based on thinking they'd be interesting to discuss.

[nijk]

Look.

First of all, the Middle East is not unambiguously non-European.

First of all, I still don't get why it matters whether a language is European or not. Second of all, what does it even mean to be unambiguosly non-European

More importantly, I have no idea how either of you finds auto-antonyms. Maybe you use Wiktionary. Maybe you use some other online resource. Maybe you pick them out of a print dictionary. I don't know.

I simply think of them... That's why virtually all of my entries come from my native language.

What I do instead is I try to think of something that is at least close that exists in Malayalam because I think they are interesting and they seem to fit the subject of the thread to me.

If you cannot handle the fact that I do that, or if you're not satisfied with how I personally explain my actions, then too bad. I cannot do anything about it. I tried to explain myself already. I can only do so much.

I'm having a hard time understanding why you seem to have gotten so worked up about this. It's not the first time that someone has questioned the status of antonyms of a pair. You did that too.

[vijayjohn]

Look.

First of all, the Middle East is not unambiguously non-European.

First of all, I still don't get why it matters whether a language is European or not.

She said it was not European, and she is wrong.

Second of all, what does it even mean to be unambiguosly non-European

It means to be clearly European, not Asian, not African, etc.

I simply think of them... That's why virtually all of my entries come from my native language.

Well, I am thinking of mine, too! And I don't care what you or Linguaphile or anyone else thinks. I will keep posting what I think of whether you like it or not, with or without any explanation whatsoever. I don't deserve to explain myself anymore than any of you do.

I'm having a hard time understanding why you seem to have gotten so worked up about this.

Because I am not white, I strongly suspect everyone else in this thread is especially since most of this forum is, and so requiring me and only me to give an explanation for every single goddamn pair I have written is racist!

It's not the first time that someone has questioned the status of antonyms of a pair. You did that too.

No, I questioned one pair. You and Linguaphile have questioned every single pair I have ever posted.

[nijk]

It means to be clearly European, not Asian, not African, etc.

I don't see what's European about the Middle East.

I don't deserve to explain myself anymore than any of you do.

but I did explain myself.

Because I am not white, I strongly suspect everyone else in this thread is especially since most of this forum is, and so requiring me and only me to give an explanation for every single goddamn pair I have written is racist!

As if I knew you aren't white. lol

No, I questioned one pair. You and Linguaphile have questioned every single pair I have ever posted.

I questioned two of them.

[vijayjohn]

It means to be clearly European, not Asian, not African, etc.

I don't see what's European about the Middle East.

Well, too damn bad for you. The Middle East is transcontinental.

I don't deserve to explain myself anymore than any of you do.

but I did explain myself.

Again, I questioned one (one!) pair. No one else questioned any other pair either of you wrote. Both of you, combined, questioned every single pair I posted.

Because I am not white, I strongly suspect everyone else in this thread is especially since most of this forum is, and so requiring me and only me to give an explanation for every single goddamn pair I have written is racist!

As if I knew you aren't white. lol

Oh, yes, I'm sorry, I forgot about all the white people whose heritage language is Malayalam.

No, I questioned one pair. You and Linguaphile have questioned every single pair I have ever posted.

I questioned two of them.

Do you never read anything? I said you and Linguaphile.

[h34]

alto - high
alto - when describing bodies of water, it can mean "deep" (alto mare - deep sea)

Also in Komi:
джуджыд - high, tall; as in
джуджыд керӧс - a high/tall mountain
джуджыд - deep: джуджыд ты - a deep lake; джуджыд ю - a deep river

When I first came across it, they seemed like auto-antonyms; but probably just because "hoch/high" and "tief/deep" can be regarded as antonyms in German and English, and only in some contexts...

[Linguaphile]

Thanks for the Komi examples, h34.
To continue getting back to auto-antonyms in various languages, I had been meaning to look up the quotes I remembered about Arabic, and found them. (I'm also in the process of looking up some information about the Estonian auto-antonyms, and will post that soon too.) Here's what I remembered reading about Arabic, which has had me thinking about auto-antonyms whenever I come across them (in any language) every since:

From Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land by Tim Mackintosh-Smith:

Somebody once said that every Arabic word means itself, its opposite or a camel.* But to me the world of the qamus, the dictionary (or 'ocean'), was even more bizarre. To do it justice called for the descriptive faculties of the pre-Islamic poet Ta'abbata Sharra, whose name means He Who Carried An Evil Under His Armpit. And this dictionary was a shadow of Lane's, which in ten folio volumes over a period of thirty-four years only got as far as the letter qaf....

* For example, nash, "to eat much/to eat little/a camel hairy behind the ears."

From All Strangers Are Kin by Zora O'Neill:

Many centuries ago, the Bedouin who roamed the Arabian Peninsula cultivated even more complex sounds. Back then, the dod, that ponderous, voice-of-God d, had been more of a dl sound, made by tucking the tongue up to one side, on an incisor - rather than behind the front teeth, as lazy city slickers did nowadays. I had always considered the heart-tugging, tear-inducing 'ayn to be the signature sound of Arabic, but early grammarians had been proudest of that complicated, asymmetrical dod. They dubbed Arabic lughat ad-dod, the language of the dod.
In a convenient bit of wordplay, lughat ad-dod sounds like lughat addod, language of opposites, which is equally true. English has a handful of double-edged words, such as cleave and inflammable, but Arabic is full of paradoxes, enough to inspire whole medieval treatises on the subject. Baseer means sharply insightful, but also blind. Sha'aba can mean both to gather and to disperse. A now-anonymous wag quipped that every word in Arabic means itself, its opposite, and a camel.

From that, though I have no idea of their accuracy or which variety of Arabic or the Arabic spelling (and don't claim to; maybe someone can correct them, or provide Arabic spelling if they are accurate), there are these three:

nash to eat a lot
nash to eat little

baseer sharply insightful
baseer blind

sha'aba to gather
sha'aba to disperse

[nijk]

Oh, yes, I'm sorry, I forgot about all the white people whose heritage language is Malayalam.

How exactly was I supposed to know that Malayalam is your heritage language?

[vijayjohn]

Oh, yes, I'm sorry, I forgot about all the white people whose heritage language is Malayalam.

How exactly was I supposed to know that Malayalam is your heritage language?

Again, do you never read?

I cannot do that for Malayalam. Wiktionary does not have that much for Malayalam, and there is not much in the way of online resources for Malayalam. I should know, having desperately struggled for years to learn my own heritage language and having such bad luck I started making my own resources for teaching it instead.