Ameka, Felix K. (2017). Meaning between algebra and culture: Auto-antonyms in the Ewe verb lexicon. In Hilke Reckman, Lisa L.S. Cheng, Maarten Hijzelendoorn, & Rint Sybesma (Eds.), Crossroads semantics: Computation, experiment and grammar (pp. 227-248). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/z.210.14ame
Are meanings about “things in the world” or “things in the mind”? Are they about algebraic calculations or about cultural conceptions? How are multiple senses of a word related? Questions like these continue to be debated by semanticists and are explored in this chapter through a detailed semantic analysis of two verbs in Ewe (Gbe), a Kwa language of West Africa. The two verbs are mie ‘germinate/dry up’ and dró ‘put load up on/down from head’. It is argued that the individual senses of each verb involve directional opposition and that, as such, the verbs are auto-antonyms. From a logical point of view, the interpretations of the verb mie may not look antonymous; however, from the perspective of cultural practices and conceptualizations, the image-schematic representations go in opposite directions. NSM-inspired semantic representations are adopted to show the contrasts in a transparent manner.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
