Chapter published in:
Crossroads Semantics: Computation, experiment and grammar
Edited by Hilke Reckman, Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng, Maarten Hijzelendoorn and Rint Sybesma
[Not in series 210] 2017
► pp. 227–248

Chapter 14
Meaning between algebra and culture

Auto-antonyms in the Ewe verb lexicon

| Department of African Languages and Cultures, Leiden University Centre for Linguistics
Semanticists continue to debate questions like: are meanings about “things in the world” or “things in the mind”? Are meanings about algebraic calculations or about cultural conceptions? How are multiple senses of a word related? This chapter explores some of these questions through a detailed semantic analysis of two verbs in Ewe (Gbe), a Kwa language of West Africa. I argue that the senses of the verbs involve directional opposition: mie ‘germinate/dry up’ and dró ‘put load up on/down from head’. As such they are auto-antonyms. From a logical point of view, the interpretations of the verb mie may not look antonymous, but from the perspective of cultural practices and conceptualisations the image schematic representations go in opposite direction. I propose Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM)-inspired semantic representations for the verbs which show the contrasts transparently.
Keywords: auto-antonymy, polysemy, meaning construction, three levels of meaning, placement verbs, directional opposition, converse, reversive, Ewe
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Background
    • 1.2Meaning construction: some assumptions
  • 2.Antonymy in language and thought
  • 3.Janus verb words in Ewe
    • 3.1What the Ewe dictionaries say
    • 3.2The verb mie
    • 3.3The verb dró
  • 4.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 April 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.210.14ame
References
Adzomada, Kofi J.
1969 A dictionary of Ewe homonyms. Accra: Waterville Press.Google Scholar
1991 Eʋe-Français gɔmeɖegbalẽ [Ewe-French Dictionary, Part Two of Dictionaire Français-Ewe] Fourth Edition. Lome, Togo: Editions HAHO.Google Scholar
Akotey, Klu
1988 Ku ɖi ƒo na wo. [Death satisfied them]. Accra: Bureau of Ghana Languages.Google Scholar
Ameka, Felix K.
2003 Prepositions and postpositions in Ewe: empirical and theoretical considerations. In Anne Zibri-Hetz & Patrick Sauzet (eds.) Typologie des langues d’Afrique et universaux de la grammaire, volume 2: benue-kwa, soninke, wolof, 41–67. Paris: L’Harmattan.Google Scholar
2006a Ewe serial verb constructions in their grammatical context. In A. Y. Aikhenvald & RMW Dxon (eds.), Serial verb constructions: a crosslinguistic typology, 124–143. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2006b Real descriptions: reflections on native speaker and non-native speaker descriptions of a language. In Ameka Felix K., Alan Dench & Nicholas Evans (eds.), Catching language: the standing challenge of grammar writing. 70–112. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ameka, Felix K. & James Essegbey
2006 Elements of the Ewe grammar of space. In Stephen C. Levinson & David P. Wilkins (eds.), Grammars of space. 362–402. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ansre, Gilbert
2000 The Ewe language. In Gavua, Kodzo (ed.), A handbook of Eweland. Volume 2: The northern Ewes of Ghana, 22–47. Accra: Woeli.Google Scholar
Asher, Nicholas
2011 Lexical meaning in context: A web of words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight
1975 Aspects of language. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Bureau of Ghana Languages (BGL)
1971 Đe modzaka 2 [Entertain yourself, Folk tales in Cartoons]. Accra: Bureau of Ghana Languages.Google Scholar
Chierchia, Gennaro & Sally McConnell-Ginet
2000 Meaning and grammar: An introduction to semantics. (2nd edn.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cruse, Alan
1986 Lexical semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
1992 Antonymy revisited: Some thoughts on the relationship between words and concepts. In A. Lehrer & E. F. Kittay (eds.) Frames, fields, and contrasts: new essays in semantic and lexical organization, 289–306. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
2011 Meaning in language: An introduction to semantics and pragmatics (3rd edn.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Essegbey, James
1999 Inherent complement verbs revisited: towards understanding argument structure in Ewe. Leiden: Leiden University dissertation.Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J.
1986 U-semantics, second round. Quaderni di semantica 7(1). 49–58.Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J. & Beryl T. Atkins
1992 Toward a frame-based lexicon: The semantics of RISK and its neighbours. In A. Lehrer & E. F. Kittay (eds.), Frames, fields, and contrasts: New essays in semantic and lexical organization, 75–102. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Geurts, Kathryn Linn
2002 Culture and the senses: Bodily ways of knowing in an African community. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Goddard, Cliff
(ed.) 2006 Ethnopragmatics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Goddard, Cliff, & Anna Wierzbicka
2004 Cultural scripts: What are they and what are they good for. Intercultural Pragmatics 1(2). 153–166. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Goddard, Cliff & Anna Wierzbicka
2014 Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across languages, cultures and domains. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2016 Explicating the English lexicon of “doing” and “happening”. Functions of Language 23(2). 214–256. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hill, Deborah
2016 Bride-price, baskets and the semantic domain of ‘carrying’ in a matrilineal society. Oceanic Linguistics (in press). CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Steven, M. Lynne Murphy, Carita Paradis, & Caroline Willners
2012 Antonyms in English: Construals, constructions, and canonicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kecskes, Istvan
2008 Dueling contexts: A dynamic model of meaning. Journal of Pragmatics 40(3). 385–406. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ladusaw, William A.
1988 Semantic theory. In Frederick Newmeyer (ed.), Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey Volume I, 89–112. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C.
2000 Presumptive meanings. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lyons, John
1977 Semantics (Vol. 1). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Levin, Beth
2015 Semantics and pragmatics of argument alternations. Annual Review of Linguistics 1. 63–83. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Levin, Beth, and Malka Rappaport Hovav
2005 Argument realization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mel’čuk, Igor
1988 Semantic description of lexical units in an explanatory combinatorial dictionary: Basic principles and heuristic criteria. International Journal of Lexicography 1(3). 165–188. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2006 Explanatory combinatorial dictionary. In Giandomenico Sica (ed.), Open problems in linguistics and lexicography, 225–355. Monza: Polimetrica International Scientific Publisher.Google Scholar
Moerdijk, A.
2007 Definities, frames en semagrammen. Betekenis-beschrijving in het ANW. In A. Moerdijk, A. van Santen & R. Tempelaars (eds.), Leven met woorden, 63–75. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill.Google Scholar
Murphy, M. Lynne
2003 Semantic relations and the lexicon: antonymy, synonymy, and other paradigms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Obianim, Sam J.
1964 Eʋegbe ŋuti nunya [Ewe grammar]. Gbadzeme: Obianim & Partners.Google Scholar
Ofori, Kafui A. G.
2014 Nominalisation in Ewe. In Adika, Gordon S. K., Charles C. Asante (eds.), Multilingualism, language in education, and academic literacy: Applied linguistics research in the language centre, 159–179. Accra: Subsaharan Press.Google Scholar
Pustejovsky, James
1995 The generative lexicon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Riemer, Nick
2011 Introducing semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ruhl, Charles
1989 On monosemy: A study in linguistic semantics. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Shmelev, Alexei
2016 Semantic shifts as sources of enantiosemy. In Päivi Juvonen & Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria (eds.), The lexical typology of semantic shifts, 67–94. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Talmy, Leonard
1985 Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description: Grammatical categories and the lexicon. Volume 3, 57–149. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
2007 Lexical typologies. In Timothy A. Shopen (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, Volume 3 Grammatical categories and the lexicon, 2nd edn., 66–168. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ye, Zhengdao
2014 Opposites in language and thought: A Chinese perspective. UK Cognitive Linguistics Conference, 320–338.Google Scholar
Westermann, Diedrich
1928 Ewe-English dictionary. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.Google Scholar
1954 Wörterbuch der Ewe-Sprache. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.Google Scholar
Wilkins, David P. and Deborah L. Hill
1995 When “GO” means “COME”. Cognitive Linguistics 6(2/3). 209–259. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Ameka, Felix K. & Deborah Hill
2020.  In Meaning, Life and Culture: In conversation with Anna Wierzbicka, ► pp. 33 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 march 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.