Cas LX 02 Semantics 3a. Word meaning 6ish Lexical semantics

Kharia (Austro-Asiatic, Binar, India, Nepal)

• nogtem ‘you eat’
• gilte ‘he beats’
• udtem ‘you drink’ (invented)
• obnogtem ‘you feed’
• obgilte ‘he causes to beat’
• obudtem ‘you cause to drink’

Causatives

• There are languages that have a causative morpheme that derives feed from eat.
• English has some too, which come out differently depending on the specific word:
• We enlarged the photograph.
• We modernized the house.
• We opened the door.

Open v. open

• How does open in The door opened relate to open in I opened the door?
• Perhaps there’s a “hidden causative” in I opened the door (like the “hidden plural” in I saw two deer). A prefix (or suffix) that has no pronunciation? I Ø-opened the door.

Kill vs. die

• Consider too the relation between kill and die. What do the semantic components of kill seem to be?
• The surface (pronounced) form of a word may not fully reveal its underlying semantic structure.

“Lexical decomposition”

• We might think of kill as CAUSE-die, of enter as CAUSE-BE-in, of give as CAUSE-HAVE.
• So semantically, Tracy gave Mary a book might really be Tracy CAUSE Mary HAVE a book.

Kicking the bucket

• Sometimes whole phrases (verb phrases) can have an idiomatic meaning: kick the bucket, buy the farm, … They have a meaning that is not derivable from the component parts.
• Usually, this is tied to both the verb (tap the bucket, rent the farm) and the object (kick the pail, buy the house) together.

Something to ponder

• Interestingly, there are some idioms that seems to allow a certain flexibility:
• Tracy gave Pat the boot.
• Pat got the boot.
• But it isn’t unlimited:
• Tracy gave the boot to Pat.
• Pat has the boot.
• Pat took the boot.
• The boot ruined Pat’s Christmas.
• We’ll kick off next time with a somewhat involved argument from this that give, get, have (, take), all have HAVE as a “silent component.”

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