Re: [tied] Re: Loans, Slavs, Church (it was : Walachians are placed

On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 11:54:41 +0000, willemvermeer
<wrvermeer@...> wrote:

>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
>
>
>> ... I wonder if there's a name for
>> this phenomenon: the confusion of binary categories where
>> the two members are of course completely opposite, but
>> nothing would really change of we inversed the categories
>> (or is it: the names for them). I always confuse left and
>> right, east and west, north and south, proterodynamic and
>> hysterodynamic...
>
>
>Add in my case: vowels and consonants, or rather, in Dutch, klinkers
>and medeklinkers, and also: perfective and imperfective (Slavic
>aspects), Glagolitic and Cyrillic (alphabets for writing Old Church
>Slavonic). I agree the phenomenon deserves a name, and more. The
>words probably must resemble each other more than two randomly chosen
>words. At least I don't think I ever use "vowel" for "consonant"
>whereas in Dutch I constantly mix up "klinker" and "medeklinker".

I probably have the advantage here that Dutch is
chronologically only my second (or third?) language.
Klinker is mapped to vocal and medeklinker to consonante,
and I don't recall ever mixing them up.

>(Tosk and Geg would qualify nicely here, and so would, for instance,
>Zhemaitian and Aukshtaitian or Gorenjski and Dolenjski.)
>
>
>> Although I usually have no trouble with
>> up and down, yesterday and tomorrow... Maybe because
>> physical law (gravity, thermodynamics) is involved in the
>> latter cases to help me tell them apart.
>
>
>OK, but there are two different effects involved. Lots of people find
>it difficult to tell left and right apart and have to think about it
>consciously to make correct decisions in real-life situations, e.g.
>my late father and my wife. But I've differentiated them
>unconsciously for as long as I can remember and just switch the names.

In my case, left-right-confusion is inherited (when my
maternal aunt drives, it's best to let my mother give her
directions, so that the mix-ups cancel out). I have to
consciously remember on which leg I have a scar, and the
very concepts "left" and "right" carry little meaning to me.

I agree that there are two separate phenomena: confusion of
the signifié (in my case: left and right) and confusion of
the signifiant (e.g. declension ~ conjugation), the latter
aggravated if the words sound similar (e.g. your klinker ~
medeklinker, or, in my case, "yin" and "yang" [I will never
remember which is which]).


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...