The lexical-semantics tag has no wiki summary.
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28 views
Is the use of a word in a morphological gap technically a speech production error?
Typically, speech production errors such as phoneme or morpheme exchange, anticipation, etc. are the result of interference in the speech production process. However, the use of a word in a ...
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2answers
119 views
Which other languages have idiotmatic meaning for words meaning 'blue'? [closed]
I came across culture-specific meanings of concept 'blue' (that is, of a colour hue between green and violet) in various languages. We know its idiomatic meanings in Standard or American Englishes, ...
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3answers
152 views
Is there a term for when words that sound like antonyms are actually synonyms?
Seeded grapes are actually seedless
An inflammable object is really flammable
It seems to me that, superficially, the use of those affixes make the words sound like they should be antonyms, ...
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1answer
262 views
How common are the different semantic types of compounds?
According to the Wikipedia article, Compound (linguistic), compound words that occur in natural languages can be semantically grouped into four categories. Witness this quote from the article:
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6
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1answer
237 views
What is the reason for the semantic change bowl/pot/cup > head?
I was reading about problems with the assumption of basic vocabulary in Lyle Campbell, Historical Linguistics: An Introduction:
Some 'basic vocabulary' appears to change rather easily for cultural
...
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3answers
564 views
Identifying studies on how English language reflects sexism
Right now I'm looking for papers on how sexism is reflected in the English language. A lot of the literature is from the 1970's and is seen as a little out there and not empirical. Besides reading the ...
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2answers
345 views
How are languages deciphered?
How do archaeologists, cryptoanalysts and linguists decipher extinct languages? Has there been a case in history where this was successfully accomplished, without the means of something like the ...
10
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1answer
270 views
Why does “half” not follow the pattern of ordinal numbers across languages?
The cardinal "a half" is unrelated to "two", whereas "a third", "a quarter" (and certainly "a fourth"), etc. are related to "three", "four", etc. This seems to be true in other languages, too, in ...
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1answer
239 views
Are there languages which use the negation of 'odd' to denote 'even'?
This question is influenced by another one I found on the German SE, "Warum nennt man in Deutsch die Zahlen 0, 2, 4 … “gerade” Zahlen?". It asks "Why call Germans the numbers 0, 2, 2 "even".
The ...
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1answer
60 views
How to characterise set/assign-from/to
If I want to talk about moving information, I can use verbs "set" or "assign" in combination with nouns referring to source and target information containers, right?
My intuition/instinct is to ...
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2answers
360 views
Is there a single origin for the connection between time and weather?
There are several families of languages where the same word can mean either a concept closely related to time or a concept closely related to weather:
Romance root: French temps, Italian tempo, ...
