Intralingual and crosslinguistic enantiosemy as a communicative problem

There is an amazing phenomenon in languages: a combination of antonymy and homonymy, i.e. the expression of opposite meanings by one word. One of the best-known examples is Latin altus, meaning both ‘high’ (e.g. altus mons ‘high mountain’) and ‘deep’ (e.g. altus lacus ‘deep lake’). However, remarkable as this fact may seem, it does not impede communication.           
A phenomenon similar to this can also be observed between different languages, e.g. Polish czerstwy chleb ‘stale bread’ vs. Czech čerstvý chléb ‘fresh bread’, or English absolutely (as a reply) ‘yes, absolutely’ vs. Polish absolutnie ‘no, absolutely not’. Cases like these, however, can indeed produce severe misunderstandings. 
The difference between these two phenomena clearly lies in the different communicative situations. So how does “normal” communication among native speakers work, and what is communication in a second language lacking? An important role seems to be played by context and co-text, cultural background knowledge, redundancy, and strategies employed by the sender to prevent the receiver from misunderstanding the message.

Translated from “Ėnantiosemija vnutrijazykovaja i mežʺjazykovaja kak problema kommunikacii”. In Grabska, Marcelina (ed.), “Słowa, słowa, słowa”… w komunikacji językowej II, 207–212. Gdańsk: Fundacja Rozwoju Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego 2004. DOI: 10.18716/bun/enan.