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Can the signals of 2 antennas be combined using a splitter in reverse?
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Yes, BUT...
If you are interested in joining two identical antennas for the purpose of altering/improving the reception pattern of the antenna, a reversed splitter can work. In such case, the length of the coax from each antenna to the splitter is critical and based on the pattern you want to achieve. This also tends to make the whole combination ideal for only one channel.
http://forum.tvfool.com/showthread.php?t=1024
If you want to receive many signals from different directions, you may get some improvement on one or more channels, but you'll also make others worse. You are dealing with many signals that will interact to add or subtract from one another depending on the amplitude and phase of each as they arrive at the combiner.
Consider too, if you double the power of a signal (in this case by adding the power of two antennas together in phase) you have a gain of 3 dB. But, the combiner/splitter has 3.5 to 4.0 dB of insertion loss... So you end up with less total power at the combined output. If you add the sources together, but they're 180° out of phase, they will cancel each other leaving you with virtually no signal at the combiner output.
But hey, if all you have spent is the price of a passive 2-way splitter, not much lost in the experiment.