bath vs. bathe

[Mark A Mandel]

On Sat, 24 Aug 2002, Dennis R. Preston wrote:

#The determination of which "semantically depleted" verb to choose is
#complex, dialect-to-dialect and language-to-language. (Surely you
#remember your surprise in Spanish or German 101 at learning that you
#"have" hunger! You should have taken Polish.) "Take" does not obey a
#rule in which the following noun (the source of the semantic
#"content") refers necessarily to something "brief." (I took a long
#walk; I took Carol to be my wife, etc...). We don't "seize" (or
#"gobble" or other semantically full verbs) if the usual activity of
#the noun (dare I say "unmarked") activity is referred to.

A long walk is still less than a day long. OK, yes, well, you can take a
trip around the world. But *taking* a wife, ISTM, is the length of the
ceremony, though the resulting relationship is hopefully much more
enduring.

And I should have restricted my comment to deverbal nominals, although
the relationship may be historical rather than productive, as for
b(re)athe/b(re)ath ;-) . And that correctly excludes trip and wife,
while covering walk and nap and (coffee) break.

-- Mark Mandel