[Lexicog] sit vs. sit

Ron Moe ron_moe at SIL.ORG
Mon Mar 22 18:49:29 UTC 2004


Longman's Language Activator puts this meaning of 'sit' under their domain
'Place', although interestingly they don't list 'sit' as one of the words.
However I set up a separate subdomain for 'Be in a place', since PLACE is a
primitive in NSM and a major section heading in my system. LLA separates the
notion 'be in a place' into two lexical sets, (1) ways of saying that an
object is in a particular place, (be, stand, lie) (2) ways of saying that
something, such as a country, town, building, or organization is in a
particular place (be, lie, be situated, be located, be sited, stand, be
based). If you want a single English word to capture this idea, I think a
good option would be 'located' (as in 'be located', not 'has been located',
which means 'discovery the location of').

Ron

-----Original Message-----
From: Wayne Leman [mailto:wayne_leman at sil.org]
Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2004 7:20 AM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Lexicog] sit vs. sit


John Koontz asked:

> In the Siouan languages the analogs of the 'sit/set, 'lie/lay', 'stand'
> verbs are termed positionals.  Is that the term you're looking for, Wayne?

Not really, John. I just needed some English word to act as a keyword by
which I could extract from my lexical database the intransitive verbs
which have inanimate subjects and an ending (the Algonquian language
label is "final", from
Bloomfield). I was hoping for some simple synonym of 'sit' which I already
have in use for the morphologically corresponding intransitive verbs with
animate subjects and 'sit' finals. I suspect that the Sioun positionals may
not be as morphologically transparent as are the Algonquian finals for 'sit'
(or 'be at'), but, of course, there would be some functional similarities.

Thanks,
Wayne
-----
Wayne Leman
Cheyenne website: http://www.geocities.com/cheyenne_language




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