Re: "Transferral" verb form in LC-01

On Wed, Jun 26, 2002 at 07:50:44AM -0400, John Cowan wrote:
> H. S. Teoh scripsit:
>
> > > This allows many words which have seperate roots in, say, English to
> > > be derived in LC-01.  For example, a verb "to kill" may be derived
> > > from the verb "to live", in the cessative aspect, plus a causative.
> >
> > Nice idea. Maybe I'll adapt it for Ebisedian :-)
>
> Unfortunately, there are straightforward counterexamples to this,
> which is why Lojban has a separate root for "kill".  If I shoot
> you on Friday and you linger for two days and then expire, I can
> say:
>
>         I shot you on Friday and caused you to die on Sunday.
>
> but not
>
>         *I shot you on Friday and killed you on Sunday.
[snip]

Good point, although you're using the English sense of "to kill" here
(i.e., the killer is present at the scene and effects the immediate
killing). But if you replace "to kill" with "to cause to die", then it
works in both cases: to shoot and kill somebody on the same day == "to
cause somebody to die" and to shoot someone causing him to die later ==
"to shoot someone and cause him to die Sunday."

Now, Ebisedian actually already has a verb for "to kill": _kheja're_. It
doesn't quite have the English sense of "to kill"; it's more a sense of
"to cause to die", or "to carry into death". But it doesn't quite have the
idea of ceasing to live; merely that one is "carried away into death".
(The dying person is put in the conveyant case; if the receptive case is
used at all, it would be the word for "death".) If there were a delay
between the shooting and the killing, the Ebisedi would say,
        The-act-of-shooting(org) caused-to-die him(cvy).

Or, to quote from an Ebisedian short story I wrote,
        miKa' uro gii'j3l0 zo n0 jhit3 di ch3d0'd khejww're jh3t3.
        "But this incident and her sickness killed/caused-to-die her."

Context: her house was broken into by a band of thugs while she was
deathly ill, and her visiting daughter was attacked. Although her
son-in-law saved the situation, all that excitement, added to her illness,
caused her passing. Her death was a little after the incident occurred;
nevertheless, the cause may still be thought of as the subject of the verb
"to kill", or, "to cause to die".


T

--
Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous? -- Hobbes

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