Re: Inchoactive in Jpn? (was: "Anticipatory" Tense)

Fan4 means most literally cooked rice (mi3 is
un-cooked rice, or rice as a grain).  However, fan4 by
extension also means simply "food" of any kind (rice
being of course the most important food ;).  So one
can say of the famine stricken land of the moment,
"Ta1men mei2you3 fan4 chi1," "They don't have food to
eat," even if it's a place where they've never seen
rice.  Shi2wu4 is a more explicit, but a bit less
colloquial, way of saying "food."

-Weiben


--- John Cowan <jcowan@...> wrote:
> Weiben Wang scripsit:
>
> > chi1fan4, read most literally as "to eat rice,"
>
> BTW, is it true that fan4 can mean "the locally
> staple starch",
> e.g. noodles in the North, rice in the South?
>
> I think in general that verb-verb compounds are
> pretty transparent,
> whereas v-o ones are pretty opaque.
>
> --
> John Cowan <jcowan@...>
> http://www.reutershealth.com
> I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,
> http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
> han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.
> --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_

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