Re: Not applicatives, but...?

On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 4:23 PM, Eugene Oh <un.doing@...> wrote:
> On 21/03/2008, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> wrote:
>  >
>  > Ah yes, that sounds  bit like German, where you'd have, for example,
>  >  "sprechen" (to speak), "ansprechen" (to address someone, i.e. to speak
>  >  to someone), and "besprechen" (to discuss, i.e. to speak about
>  >  something). (And also "versprechen", which can either be "mis-speak"
>  >  or "promise".)
>
>  Is that meant to be reflective of the culture/nature of the German
>  people in general? :-)
No, it was supposed to be reflective of the way German prefixes can
change the valency of a verb and can promote an oblique argument to a
direct one.

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>