Re: Trigger language?

John Cowan wrote:

> Au contraire.  I hold that that is a misuse of "lie"; lies
> are intentional, always.  Making false statements may be
> unintentional, but if so it is not lying.
>
> Is this a cross-language issue?
Hum. Good question. I thought about this briefly before
sending it. Haven't we had a discussion about this already?
I don't think it's a cross-language issue. Rather idiolectal.
Some people claim that you can't lie unintentionally and some
claim that you can. I guess my semantic field for "to lie"
is somewhat wider than yours. Perhaps. But I don't think it
has to do with me speaking Swedish. Or perhaps you're right.
Now I'm confused.

Anyway. In an active language it is possible to have a word
_tapa_ which means 'to not tell the truth'. If you use it
with the AGT affix, it means 'to intentionally lie'. If you
use it with the PAT affix, it means 'to unintentionally make
a false statement'. But it's basically the same word. That's
what I was trying to say.

So "to lie" might have been a bad example, but in a language
with the word _tapa_ it would work.

Daniel Andreasson

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