Re: Natural Order of Events
From: | Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets <tsela.cg@...> |
Date: | Wednesday, January 28, 2009, 13:41 |
2009/1/28 caeruleancentaur <caeruleancentaur@...>
> > Veoler <veoler@...> wrote:
> >
> > And English uses the word 'drink' when the object is a liquid, and the
> > word 'eat' when the object is something else.
>
> And in English we "take" medicine.
>
> Charlie
>
While the Japanese "drink" it, even pills (and they "drink" cigarettes as
well, which is weird, since if I was "drinking" water the way they "drink"
cigarettes, that would be called "drowning" in English ;) ).
OK, so this kind of "classifier" verbs is actually more common than I took
it (still, the Athabaskan case *is* different). I guess to a Tagalog
speaker, the idea of using a single verb to render all the nuances of the
various "carry" verbs would look as weird as it would seem for us to use a
single verb for "eat"and "drink".
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
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