Dan Everett: ROOT in DM (reply to Mark Volpe)

[Martha McGinnis]

In Piraha die and kill are related syntactically. If one of the verb
roots meaning 'cease to be' (sort of means that) is used with an
object, it means kill, if no object, it means die. But there are many
other verb roots that can mean kill or die and are very specific as to
the manner of death.

Dan


On Saturday, November 16, 2002, at 07:37  pm, Martha McGinnis wrote:

>  Hi again listers,
>     In reference to your query Dan, if I recall
>  correctly, Haspelmath cites Georgian or at least one
>  of the languages of the Caucasian region, as one of
>  the rare languages which derive 'die' and 'kill' from
>  the same ROOT.
>     Perhaps if Karine Megerdoomian is reading, she
>  could tell us about the specifics of Armenian?
>  Although genetically unrelated, it's a lot closer
>  geographically. I don't think it's the case that
>  genetic relation has anything to do with it, but it
>  seems more intimately related to culture.
>                     Cheers,---Mark
>
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********************
Dan Everett
Professor of Phonetics and Phonology
Department of Linguistics
University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester, UK
M13 9PL
Phone: 44-161-275-3158
Department Fax: 44-161-275-3187
http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/