tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Aug 23 00:44:05 1994

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Re: open can of worms



>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>Date: Mon, 22 Aug 94 10:17:00 EDT

>According to [email protected]:

>For THAT matter, what equivalent exists in English? "Feed him
>and give him something to drink!"? "Feed him and make him
>drink!"? "Feed him, and let him drink!"? While I do see this as
>an omission in Klingon, I think English has the same omission.
>I also know of no single verb for this in French or sign
>language. Okay, polyglots, there's a challenge for you. What
>languages have a liquid equivalent to the verb "feed"?

Um, well, Hebrew.  Hebrew's got a very productive causative, so "to feed"
is causative of "to eat" (cf. SopmoH).  Hmm, actually, the liquid
equivalent is not the causative of the usual verb "to drink", but another
root, though still in causative ("extensive" as some linguists call it, or
just hif`il as Hebrew grammar refers to it).  I imagine Esperanto too, with
its productive causative suffix could claim "trinkigi" as a liquid
equivalent of "to feed" as well.

Hell, just the distinction between "eat" and "drink" is interesting enough
as a problem.  I noticed that in my dialect, we "eat" soup, while a British
friend of mine "drinks" soup.  "Drinking" is obvious; after all, it;s
ingesting a liquid and isn't that drinking?  I think the reason I expect
"eating" is that soup is taken in little spoonfuls, "bites", and not sipped
directly out of a cup (in fact, if you picked up your bowl and slurped from
it I might complain to Mom that you're "drinking" you soup!)  "Drinking" to
me is more than just ingesting liquid, it's the *way* it's ingested,
continuously through properly-shaped lips, etc.  OK, that's off-topic, but
it goes to show you that this stuff isn't simple!  Lawrence is fond of
saying that language is the most complicated thing human beings do, and
we've pretty much mastered it by the time we're five.  Spooky.

>charghwI'


~mark



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