Re: verbs of eating

John Cowan wrote:
> While it's in another thread, I'll also mention that "sell" is a
> four-place verb [in Lojban]: A sells B to C at price D.  This also serves
for "buy"
> (C buys B from A at price D), "is the price of" (D is the price from A
> of B for C), and "cost" (vb) (B costs (from A for B) C), with appropriate
> particles or their equivalent prefixes.
>
Those certainly capture the essential meanings of buy and sell; but can't D
"price" in both cases be omitted if it's of no concern/irrelevant/unknown?
That's why I don't feel "price" is a core argument of these verbs, any more
than time ("yesterday") or place ("at an auction") is.

Let's see, how about "trade, swap"-- that would need
1. the person trading "I"
2. the thing offered in trade "(my) car"
3. the person traded to "Bill"
4. the thing received in trade "(Bill's) motorcycle"--
another 4-place predicate, but #3 is easily omissible.

Or maybe "trade" is more complex, since it involves both giving and
receiving objects. (I have no idea how it would be specified in Fillmore's
terms; I don't recall that he handled double objects (car/motorcycle) at
all......)

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