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

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.

In Lojban, which makes no claim to semantic primitivity, there are roots
for "(be) dead" and "kill".  The latter cannot take an instrumental
subject, so "The bullet killed him" has to be "Someone killed him with
a bullet".  The former can combine with "become" to form "become dead" =
"die".

--
In politics, obedience and support      John Cowan <jcowan@...>
are the same thing.  --Hannah Arendt    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan

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