Re: verbs of eating

It all depends of the context. For ex, if you phone to
your stockmarket agent and tell him "Buy me 100
Vivendi Universal" (not a good idea), it's likely that
he will ask for ex: do you pay cash or delayed ? This
information is NEEDED in the case of buying on
stockmarket. (He could also ask: any price or which
maximal price ? etc.) It is impossible to buy or sell
on stockmarket with the only 4 arguments you quote
(and more here: if you sell, the buyer is not known;
if you buy, the seller is not known).

So the verbs "to buy / to sell" in a stockmarket
context seem not to have the same valence as the usual
ones. What does that mean ? It means that,
conceptually, they are not the same verbs. There are
general verbal concepts "to buy / to sell", and
specialized ones "to buy on stockmarket / to sell on
stockmarket". If a natlang (or conlang) uses the same
verb in both cases - and it usually does -  it means
that the natlang (or conlang) is ambiguous.

--- Roger Mills <romilly@...> wrote:
>
> 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.
>

=====
Philippe Caquant

"Le langage est source de malentendus."
(Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

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