[Lexicog] accusatory observation?

[Kenneth C. Hill]

There's a major distinction for many languages that is not made in the
English "You dropped your pen": Did you drop your pen on purpose or not?
In the example, the teacher did it on purpose, so one wouldn't say to the
teacher, "Excuse me, you dropped your pen." I think the Spanish
distinction is "Dejaste caer la pluma" (purposive: [you-let fall the pen])
vs. "Se te cayó la pluma" (non-purposive: [itself you it-fell the pen],
i.e., the pen dropped, affecting you).

--Ken

--- Mike_Cahill at sil.org wrote:
> Hi all,
> This is only marginally related to lexicography, but then we've had some
> marginal discussions before...
>
> Someone wrote to me:
>
>    He (the teacher had one activity for us (the class) in which he
> dropped
>    a pen, and then he
>    asked us what we would say to him.  ("You dropped your pen")  Then he
>    asked
>    anyone who spoke another language how they would say it in another
>    language,
>    and what the direct translation was.  (Usually "the pen dropped").
> He
>    said
>    that only in English and in German you would say "You dropped the
> pen",
>    and
>    that ALL OTHER LANGUAGES would say "the pen dropped".  He then went
> on
>    to
>    say that we can learn things about the culture from the way we say
>    things,
>    and had us come up with words to describe the two types of cultures
>    represented by these two phrases.  The majority of responses had
> English
>
>    speakers being accusatory, or some other unsavory adjective, and the
>    other
>    speakers being much more polite and sensitive.
>
> Anytime someone claims a universal, my tendency is to say "Oh I bet I
> can
> find a counterexample." So my question to those of you who are native
> speakers of something other than English or German, what is the most
> NATURAL way to make an observation of someone dropping something, to
> call
> that person's attention to it? Not what is possible, but the most common
> way of saying it. Facts first, then interpretation...
>
> Mike Cahill
>
>


	
		
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