Re: Preventatives

Nik Taylor scripsit:

> Hmm ... an interesting concept.  I also can't think of any examples,
> although it seems quite useful.  You could have trios of
> base/causative/prevantative like "eat/feed/starve" or "die/kill/save"
Feeding is not really causing to eat, more like allowing to eat
(allowing seems to me the true antonym to preventing).  As the proverb
says, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it (= cause it
to) drink.

"Starve" has of course both a causative and a non-causative sense in
English:  he starved / she starved him.  The first generally is
perfective (it implicatures death), the latter is not.

Killing is also more than causing to die, as in Fodor's (I think) examples:

        I shot him on Thursday, which caused him to die on Friday.
        *I shot him on Thursday, which killed him on Friday.

These things are very tricky, as the Lojban community has discovered.

--
A mosquito cried out in his pain,               John Cowan
"A chemist has poisoned my brain!"              http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
        The cause of his sorrow                 http://www.reutershealth.com
        Was para-dichloro-                      jcowan@reutershealth.com
Diphenyltrichloroethane.                                (aka DDT)

Replies