Nik Taylor wrote:
>
> Laurie Gerholz wrote:
> > I'll point out a distinction here -- in my example of the frat party, I
> > was picturing the poor pledge being bodily held down, and his nose held
> > so he had to swallow the beer. The pledge did not voluntarily act to
> > take the liquid, so it was not "to drink".
>
> Hmm, interesting scenario. I really don't know what verb I'd use.
> Definitely not swallow, even tho I'd use "swallow" to mean accidentaly
> ingestion of water while swimming. I'd probably say "they forced beer
> down his throat" or something similar, completely avoiding putting the
> pledge into the subject role.
Yes. I agree here with both the swimming example and the beer example.
>
> This certainly is becoming a lot more complex. So, here's my revised
> definition for myself:
> To ingest a non-medicinal liquid substance with some degree of volition.
>
This is much closer to my definition. Maybe we're destined to disagree
on the liquid medicines. Now I'll have to go map out these verb
variations for my conlangs.
I've been finding it interesting how my mind creates out more and more
baroque scenarios to illustrate these fine points of semantics.
Laurie
milo@winternet.com