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Re: Preventatives

From:takatunu <takatunu@...>
Date:Wednesday, June 9, 2004, 5:36
Date:    Tue, 8 Jun 2004 10:43:21 -0400
From:    John Cowan <cowan@...>
Subject: Re: Preventatives

John Cowan <cowan@...> wrote:

<<<
Yes, that wasn't very well worded.  Try these:
I shot him on Thursday; he died on Friday.
a) Therefore, I caused him to die on Friday. [true]
b) Therefore, I killed him on Friday. [false]
IOW, "kill" is not *simply* the causative of "die".
>>>
There is also the "factitive", which is different from vague causative and is used by natlangs to add the notion of acting specifically to prompt a specific reaction in pairs like "to teach" vs. "to learn", to kill/to die, to gather/to yield, to sell/to buy, to let/to rent, etc. Japanese, Khmer and Tahitian inter alia do make such difference (and so do I in my own conlang.)