Re: Decomposed verbs (OOP-ish but applies to any lang)

John Cowan wrote at 2003-12-22 22:10:56 (-0500)
 > Javier BF scripsit:
 >
 > > Also, think about this: "be dead", "die", "kill".
 >
 > There's some evidence that "kill", at least in English, is not
 > "cause to die".  If I shoot you on Sunday and you linger till
 > Monday in extreme agony, then I can say "I caused you to die on
 > Monday", but "I killed you on Monday" is infelicitous.
 >

No, you killed him on Sunday, because it was on Sunday that you caused
him to die.

It's clear enough that "cause to die" is syntactically different to
"kill".  It's a complex phrase, and you can tack on oblique arguments
to either verb seperately.  I'm not sure that this has any bearing on
whether "kill" is semantically a causative of "die".

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