Meaningful words

[Skomakar'n]

Some words (be they actually several homonyms, or actually derived from the same meaning), tend to carry a lot of meaning. Let's think of such words.

One that just struck me in Swedish is bål. It can mean any of the following:

• A mix of drinks served in a great bowl, usually with fresh fruit floating in it, where guests can go to fill up their own cups. (c.)
• A fire. Often a particularly large bonfire. (n.)
• A chest. The upper part of the torso. There are at least two more words for this, both of which also begin with a bee; bringa and bröst – the latter of which also means breast. (c.)

[TomHChappell]

English "set" has the most meanings of any English word in any respectable dictionary of the English language. In a highly "complete and unabridged" one such as the OED it has about 400 meanings; especially if you let yourself take it as an alternate spelling of "sett".

The longest entry in the OED2 was for the verb set, which required 60,000 words to describe some 430 senses. As entries began to be revised for the OED3 in sequence starting from M, the longest entry became make in 2000, then put in 2007.

So "make" and "put" are also very "meaningful" English words.

I think there's more than one lexeme for each of them. Hold on while I go check.
Yes, "make" and "put" both have at least 5 lexemes, not counting compoundoids like "make out" and "put out". I didn't check "set".

Some are synchronically derived from the same word.
Some are diachronically-distinct homonyms.
Some are synchronically homonyms, but diachronically were derived from the same word; the derivations are now no longer transparent.

[Shrdlu]

Skomakar'n, what about "rör"?

[Ulrike Meinhof]

Skomakar'n, what about "rör"?

- 'pipe' (like an oil pipe, not a hash pipe)
- present tense of röra 'stir'
- present tense of röra 'touch'

rör sig is the present tense form of röra sig 'move (oneself)'.

All of the verb ones have the same origin, so I don't know if they really count.

[Radius Solis]

Dictionary.com lists 100 non-phrasal senses of "set". But many of them are valueless cases of separating out different situations to which the same core meaning has been applied. For example definitions 66-70, 78, 84a, 84b, and 85a are distinct sense only to the most extreme pedants. For the rest of us, those are only different situations that can be covered by the same meaning - "a collection of things that go together". Similarly, 1, 2, 3, 6, and 25 all share one common meaning, "to put". There don't seem to be more than about a dozen basic meanings at work in the whole list of definitions, even if we grant all the specialized technical ones. But even most of those are just applications of the basic few meanings, like #91, the mathematical definition of "set", which is still only a particularly narrow version of "a collection of things that go together".

So "set" does not have hundreds of meanings, it merely has meanings that are applicable to hundreds of situations. And that's really not saying much.

[Jipí]

- 'pipe' (like an oil pipe, not a hash pipe)
- present tense of röra 'stir'
- present tense of röra 'touch'

rör sig is the present tense form of röra sig 'move (oneself)'.

German has:

- Rohr/Röhre
- rühren
- sich rühren

rühren can mean both "to stir" (as with a spoon) and "to stir emotionally". The latter also exists with the preposition "an", so jmdn. anrühren "to touch s.o.; to stir s.o. emotionally".

[Skomakar'n]

- 'pipe' (like an oil pipe, not a hash pipe)
- present tense of röra 'stir'
- present tense of röra 'touch'

rör sig is the present tense form of röra sig 'move (oneself)'.

German has:

- Rohr/Röhre
- rühren
- sich rühren

rühren can mean both "to stir" (as with a spoon) and "to stir emotionally". The latter also exists with the preposition "an", so jmdn. anrühren "to touch s.o.; to stir s.o. emotionally".

Same goes for Swedish.

Nice signature, Shrdlu!

[Qwynegold]

Someone once mentioned led...

[----]

Lol Mandarin Chinese

[Bob Johnson]

Lol Mandarin Chinese

Oh, are we including homophones?

Japanese <kami>, the one everybody knows about:
紙 paper
上 top
神 god
髪 head hair
there's more of course, but I'd need to copy out of a dictionary

[Rui]

Lol Mandarin Chinese

I think it would be better to do characters rather than sounds for Mandarin. My favorite example would then be 了 (le5, liao3)

It indicates the completion of an action (forget if that's perfect or imperfect): 已经吃了 'I already ate'
It indicates past tense: 在北京住了5年 'I lived in Beijing for 5 years'
It indicates continuous actions: 在北京住了5年了 'I have been living in Beijing for 5 years'
It can mean 'understand': 了解 'understand'
It indicates a change in situation: 我们是朋友了 'we are now friends'

Probably others I'm forgetting.

I'll also point out that completion of action and past tense are different entities in this context because a) the completion of action one can be used for future events, and b) the sentence structure is different for the two (usually the past tense one has a time phrase)

[Davoush]

Lol Mandarin Chinese

Oh, are we including homophones?

Japanese <kami>, the one everybody knows about:
紙 paper
上 top
神 god
髪 head hair
there's more of course, but I'd need to copy out of a dictionary

Aren't these kind of distinguished by pitch accent though (at least in standard Japanese):

L= LOW H = HIGH

紙 LH
上 HL
神 HL
髪 LH

So actually there's only two homonyms to a native Japanese speaker.

[Davoush]

Some words (be they actually several homonyms, or actually derived from the same meaning), tend to carry a lot of meaning. Let's think of such words.

One that just struck me in Swedish is bål. It can mean any of the following:

• A mix of drinks served in a great bowl, usually with fresh fruit floating in it, where guests can go to fill up their own cups.
• A fire. Often a particularly large bonfire.
• A chest. The upper part of the torso. There are at least two more words for this, both of which also begin with a bee; bringa and bröst – the latter of which also means breast.

Oh that reminds me of 'punch' in English which can mean..

a mix of drinks as you described
to hit someone with a fist
or to pierce a hole in something (a hole-puncher...those things for paper)

[Ulrike Meinhof]

Oh that reminds me of 'punch' in English which can mean..

a mix of drinks as you described
to hit someone with a fist
or to pierce a hole in something (a hole-puncher...those things for paper)

Aren't the last two just variations of the same sense, though (like Swedish röra 'stir' and röra 'touch')?

[Davoush]

Probably...

[Herr Dunkel]

And why hadn't anyone brought up "doch"?
After all, surely, definitely, however, yet, nonetheless, just, really, certainly, yes (to negative question), contrarily, spitefully, and a truckload of untranslatable things expressable only by paraphrasing.

[finlay]

Lol Mandarin Chinese

I think it would be better to do characters rather than sounds for Mandarin. My favorite example would then be 了 (le5, liao3)

It indicates the completion of an action (forget if that's perfect or imperfect): 已经吃了 'I already ate'
It indicates past tense: 在北京住了5年 'I lived in Beijing for 5 years'
It indicates continuous actions: 在北京住了5年了 'I have been living in Beijing for 5 years'
It can mean 'understand': 了解 'understand'
It indicates a change in situation: 我们是朋友了 'we are now friends'

Probably others I'm forgetting.

I'll also point out that completion of action and past tense are different entities in this context because a) the completion of action one can be used for future events, and b) the sentence structure is different for the two (usually the past tense one has a time phrase)

Perfective, and given that 4 of the 5 involve some sort of aspect, I'd just say that the perfective just has a wide domain of usage. Number 4 above is the only one that's really different, because it's a lexical item.

If we take the spoken language, of course, your number of homonyms will shoot up.

[Ulrike Meinhof]

And why hadn't anyone brought up "doch"?
After all, surely, definitely, however, yet, nonetheless, just, really, certainly, yes (to negative question), contrarily, spitefully, and a truckload of untranslatable things expressable only by paraphrasing.

That's still just one basic meaning that just happens not to map 1:1 to any English word. Most words in any language will be like that.

[linguoboy]

Perfective, and given that 4 of the 5 involve some sort of aspect, I'd just say that the perfective just has a wide domain of usage. Number 4 above is the only one that's really different, because it's a lexical item.

I think most experts on Chinese grammar agree that there are two distinct aspectual uses of 了, "perfective" and "change of relevant state" (to use Li and Thompson's terminology). Obviously they're related, but I don't think it's helpful to consider them the same given that 了 can co-occur with the experiential perfective, 過, e.g. 這本書我看過了。

[finlay]

But couldn't you argue that since it uses the same word for both aspects, it considers them the same? It could just be that your 'change of state' is considered a part of the perfective for Chinese even though it's not normally considered under the generic uses of a sort of crosslinguistic perfective, if that makes sense. Mind you, I don't know Chinese, I'm just conjecturing from the data I've been given.

[Rui]

Read the description under the two examples here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_grammar#Mood

There's a syntactic difference between then in addition to a semantic (though similar) one, but in some cases, it can cause ambiguity...which means, to me, that they mean two different things. If they were blanketed under one usage, I feel like this ambiguity couldn't (or shouldn't) occur. The aspect one refers to the imperfective (thanks for the correction, btw), and the change-of-state one refers to the inceptive that is mentioned here.

Not to mention that linguists trace the two usages back to two different words that happen to now be written and pronounced the same. (Note: I did not know this when I posted originally, but I had a suspicion that they may have based on the different use, and knowledge that there didn't use to be so many homophones in Mandarin)

[Skomakar'n]

Oh. Forgot to note that the 'fire' sense is neuter gender while the other two are common gender (from masculine).

[Ulrike Meinhof]

Oh. Forgot to note that the 'fire' sense is neuter gender while the other two are common gender (from masculine).

Your edit disagrees with you.

[TomHChappell]

Read the description under the two examples here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_grammar#Mood
There's a syntactic difference between then in addition to a semantic (though similar) one, but in some cases, it can cause ambiguity...which means, to me, that they mean two different things. If they were blanketed under one usage, I feel like this ambiguity couldn't (or shouldn't) occur. The aspect one refers to the imperfective (thanks for the correction, btw), and the change-of-state one refers to the inceptive that is mentioned here.
Not to mention that linguists trace the two usages back to two different words that happen to now be written and pronounced the same. (Note: I did not know this when I posted originally, but I had a suspicion that they may have based on the different use, and knowledge that there didn't use to be so many homophones in Mandarin)

Those are clearly aspects, not moods. Why the hell does Wikipedia call them moods? They're aspects.

[Bob Johnson]

Those are clearly aspects, not moods. Why the hell

does it matter outside a philosophy class