Re[2]: CHAT drinking soup: (was: Malat (on behalf of Garrett))

Hello Joel,

wtorek, 8 grudnia 1998, you wrote:

JMP> On Tue, 8 Dec 1998, Adam Walker wrote:

>>  I haven't paid any attention to this thread until just now so I may
>> have missed a previous reference to this or something similar, but in
>> Indonesian/Malay one "drinks" a cigarette!!  Smoke is definitely
>> non-solid, but also non-liquid.
JMP> Many African languages make a three-way distinction between "drink",
JMP> "eat something soft", and "eat something hard".  In some cases, the
JMP> choice between one or the other "eat" verb is idiosyncratic.  For
JMP> instance, in Nweh, the language I worked on, eating plantains is always
JMP> expressed using the "eat something hard" verb, whether the plantains
JMP> are cooked or not.

maybe it just depend how we eat things, and what we use eating...
maybe we eat using teeth (chewing) and drink without them...
do you chew smoke - no? - so you drink it...  :)
but this distinction is rather dead now and nobody knows why we use
such verbs...
--
lucasso