TV dialogue: "I paid for this and..."

[Galen Buttitta]

Sort of reminds me of the situation in PIE with the roots for "give" and "take". In a few branches the meanings got switched around w.r.t., say, English. Just different conceptualizations of the same act.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Apr 22, 2014, at 19:27, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      TV dialogue: "I paid for this and..."
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> "I'm bringing it!"
>
> Yet, in the scene, given that the object is already present in and a part
> of that scene, the speaker is clearly *taking* it.
>
> Well, why not get rid of every unnecessary distinction in the language?
> Does it actually *matter* whether a person uses "bring" or "take," in the
> real world, any more than it matters whether a person is an "actor" or an
> "actress," when either can simply be referred to as an "actress"?
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org