[Lingtyp] languages where 'able, can' and 'until, up to' are polysemous/homophonous

[LIU Danqing]

 Dear Ian and Ellen:

  I feel it is difficult to get the 'able'  meaning from dào 到 in Mandarin.

  'V1de V2' is a construction exclusively for ability / possibility, and any verbs occurring in this construction will convey the meaning of able or can.
  chi1 de wan2   eat de  finish   can finish the food
  pa2 de  shang4 climb de  up       can climb up
  zou3 de  jin4  walk  de  enter   can walk in
We cannot say that all words occurring as V2  denote ability or possibility.
  Danqing


    On Tuesday, January 5, 2021, 08:19:39 PM GMT+8, JOO, Ian [Student] <ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk> wrote:  
 
 Dear Ellen,

in Mandarin (and many other Sinitic languages):
dào 到 `to, until, up to; to arrive, to be able to (similarly to French arriver à faire qqch)’

Example:

(1) 到 今 天
dào jīn tiān
until this day
`until today'

(2) 看 得 到
kàn de dào
see degree arrive
`able to see (something)'

I hope this helps.

>From Hong Kong,IanOn 5 Jan 2021, 8:12 PM +0800, Smith-Dennis, Ellen <E.Smith-Dennis at warwick.ac.uk>, wrote:

Happy New Year all!
Could you help?

I'm looking for languages where the word for 'able, can' is polysemous/homophonous with 'until, up to, for (X amount of time)'. This is the case in Papapana (Austronesian, Papua New Guinea) and Tok Pisin (pidgin/creole, PNG) so I'm especially (but not only!) interested in languages of the Pacific region.


Many thanks in advance,
Ellen
E.Smith-Dennis at warwick.ac.uk

Dr. Ellen Smith-Dennis, FHEAAssistant ProfessorWidening Participation/Schools Liaison Officer
Centre for Applied Linguistics, The University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7ALEmail: E.Smith-Dennis at warwick.ac.uk OR E.L.Smith at uon.edu.au Tel: (+44) (0)24 76 575912 (internal: 75912)



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