language

  • contranyms
  • semantic bleaching and semantic strengthening
  • ‘Depends on what is is’ on language predicates — complements needed way more - this is why I and other autistic ppl like me ask so many qs for clarification when it’s possible to do so
  • double negation in spoken language, or conflicting yes/no with different emphasis having different meanings with regional dialect.
  • eg ‘no yeah’ = yes, ‘yeah no’ = no, ‘yeah no for sure’ = definitely
  • ‘the Cherokee language has a verb tense that specifically notes the exclusion of a person in the conversation, ‘we’re going (but not you)’ --- ’ this is called “clusivity” and its found in a bunch of languages, including Chechen, Vietnamese, Samoan and Quechua” — find more sources on this — links to in The Art of Gathering the discussion of explicitly defining who isn’t invited as well as who is, in order to have defined purpose in gathering
    • all those unknown etymological roots eg milk or be milked, etymologists still don’t agree on which came first, the verb or the noun
  • wherewithal
  • club and club - to club together, a club is a stick with clump of stuff on end. Togetherness, ‘collect middle’ direct translation of ‘focus/concentration’ in Japanese
  • indentured and dentures - indent/notch/dent - tooth - zigzag - cut contract paper
  • language evidentiality, language where you can’t say a fact without saying where you for the information i.e. implied, hearsay etc/I heard that/It is obvious that/It seems that
  • language affecting outlook, we make language and language makes us
  • words and concepts often used casually as synonymous, but where the distinction can be important in certain context or all the time
  • Words not having meaning intrinsically but usage, which differs with context
  • constant evolution
  • a heterological word, does not apply to itself.
  • sound symbolism is the perceptual similarity between speech sounds and concept meanings. It is a form of linguistic iconicity
  • other pronouns eg first person dead, used only in suicide notes