"hit in/on/to"

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:06 PM +0100 9/26/00, Lynne Murphy wrote:
>
>There is an exercise on this (which contact verbs can take "in") in
>both Thomas Hofmann's _Realms of Meaning_ (1993, Longman, p. 222),
>which is probably accessible to advanced ESL students (I used it in
>teaching English semantics to ESL speakers).

That's the late Ron Hofmann, a wonderful linguist and person
(officially Th. R. or Thomas Ronald Hofmann) from MIT and, later,
Japan, who died much too young.

>
>I think a cheap-and-easy way to explain the difference between
>
>I hit him on the head/arm
>and
>I hit him in the head/arm
>
>is that the 'on' one makes us think of the head as a surface.  If I'm
>hit on the head, you'd usually imagine that being 'on the top of' my
>head.  The 'in', on the other hand, makes us think of the head as a
>three-dimensional thing and we'd probably imagine the strike being
>somewhere in the middle of the head--either because the strike makes
>an indentation into the head, or because it's a part of the head
>that's not the top (say, by the ear or temple).  I think also if you
>hit someone on the head with a hand, it's probably an open hand
>(surface-surface contact), whereas 'in the head' would be with a fist
>(which has less surface and more force).  (This is not to say that
>these images can't be cancelled with further contextual information.)
>
so there is a predicted difference between

I punched him {in/on} the nose.

and

I slapped him {on/#in} the nose.

I think that's right.

larry