Re: USAGE: 'born'

Tommie L Powell wrote:
> > "...the city is still becoming. There may be arguments
> > as to what it's becoming, but no one can reasonably
> > doubt that the place is still giving birth to itself."
> >
> > "Giving birth to itself".  What kind of verb-form is
> > _that_?
> >
> > I'm not sure I could express it, at this point, in rtemmu.
> > How would other con/nat langs do it?
>
> Hmmm.  Let's look at that first quoted sentence first:
> "...the city is still becoming."  Since there's no object,
> what we have here is either an intransitive verb that
> isn't in my dictionary, or else a copula ("is") plus an
> adjective ("becoming").  As an adjective, "becoming"
> means attractive, so the sentence then means that the
> city hasn't yet lost its attractiveness.
"Becoming" means "attractive"?

Anyway, I think the author is using "become" to simply mean "change",
i.e., "The city is becoming [something]".  Look at the next sentence,
"... what it's becoming".

--
Cenedl heb iaith, cenedl heb galon
A nation without a language is a nation without a heart - Welsh proverb
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