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Re: Questions About Verbs



Hmmm.  My latest example is starting to answer my question.  Maybe.

When I think about it, there is a certain difference between "Mice
kill easily" and "Mice die easily."

The former could gloss as,

"Something - we ain't sayin' what - causes mice to experience the
state of being-dead easily."

The latter as,

"Mice experience the state of being-dead easily."

There is a tiny bit more emphasis on causality in the former sentence
- though presumably all mice die for a reason.  It's a subtle thing,
but it's there.

So one could imagine a language that treated P-x as P-x [-A];  it
wouldn't break anything.  But such a language would always be keeping
in view the idea that states are caused by *something*.  Languages
that don't treat P-x verbs that way, while not denying that states are
caused, just don't choose to remember it all the time.