[Lexicog] accusatory?

[Pamela Munro]

I think Wayne made a very interesting observation, that 'you dropped
your pen' would not work in Cheyenne in the circumstance Mike described,
not because this isn't a fine way to say that someone dropped his pen,
but because the dropping was deliberate. Indeed, although I know other
indigenous American languages in which there is a way to say 'you
dropped your pen', often with a construction like the Cheyenne one, in
fact this is not felicitous if the dropping is done intentionally, as in
Mike's example. (One really cannot pretend to do something
unintentionally.) I'm curious if the people who said that they would say
'The pen fell' were considering this. In English, it seems very odd to
me to say "The pen fell" in the circumstance Mike described, where the
person deliberately let the pen go. As a native speaker of English, I
feel this is focusing on the deliberateness of the action (whether or
not any accusation is involved).

Pam Munro



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