კონტრონიმების, ანუ ერთი სახის ლექსიკური ერთეულების, შესახებ ქართულში

Abstract

Contronyms or contranyms are polysemantic words containing two contradictory meanings at the same time. For instance, in English (and some other languages) “sanction” may mean both approve and penalize. Such words are denoted by numerous other terms such as enantiosems, enantionyms, auto-antonyms, autantonyms, Janus words and so on. There are several terms also for this phenomenon: enantiosemy, enantionymy, antilogy or autantonymy. Correlated words may be contronyms in several languages. For instance, the verbs: German ausleihen, Polish pożyczyć, Russian одолжить and Finnish lainata may denote both lending and borrowing. The meaning is identified by means of case forms, pronouns and verb person forms. Contronyms have been identified, characterized and registered in many languages. Naturally, the data of the Georgian language are also interesting in this regard. The following Georgian verb can serve as an example of a contronym: the verb სესხება [seskheba] may denote both lending and borrowing. Analysis of contronyms in any language requires significant efforts, because they must be separated from antonyms, homonyms and other polysemantic lexical units. All this requires special lexicological analysis. Naturally, a special study should be dedicated to the given issue with regard to Georgian as well. It is a matter of further research to outline a complete picture of Georgian contronyms. This time we add a couple of examples of contronyms in Georgian: შეუბრალებელი [sheubralebeli] – denotes both a person who has no compassion for others and a person who has been devoid of compassion from others. იგინება [igineba] – may denote both a person who scolds other people and a person who is scolded.