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Article 6850 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: action verbs
Message-ID: <1992Sep9.204451.28108@spss.com>
Date: 9 Sep 92 20:44:51 GMT
References: <MELBY.92Sep9005959@dove.yk.Fujitsu.CO.JP> <1992Sep9.034138.15488@news.media.mit.edu> <1992Sep9.181132.13175@blaze.cs.jhu.edu>
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In article <1992Sep9.181132.13175@blaze.cs.jhu.edu> arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee) writes:
>In article <1992Sep9.034138.15488@news.media.mit.edu> minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:
>>That reminds me of once noticing that the English lexicon of verbs is
>>asymmetrical with respect to winning contests of bloody force.  You
>>can say in only three words that "Boston clobbered Philadelphia" or
>>"Martina defeated Chris".  But you cannot say "Chris (lost to)
>>Martina" in three words with Chris occupying the subject-case-slot.
>>This seems to show that there is a sinister psychological bias
>>concealed in the very lexicon (not grammar) of the language!  Winning
>>a contest is an "action" (that is, has an actual verb) on the part of
>>the subject of the sentence, whereas losing a contest cannot be
>>expressed as an action.  As though to win is to one's credit, whereas
>>when you lose, it is the act of someone else and not your own.
>
>We have the single word "lightbulb", but a fluorescent light has to be
>referred to with two words: "fluorescent light".  I think this obviously
>means that there is a clear bias against using fluorescent lights in the
>very language, since we must use two words to describe them.  Not.
>
>I'm not a linguist, and don't know what the proper term to use is, but I would
>claim that "lost to" is mostly treated in the human mind as a single unit,
>just like "defeat", even though when written on paper it happens to have a
>space in the middle.

How do you propose to test your claim?

Syntactically they certainly differ.  The guy you defeat is a direct 
object; the guy you lose to is an indirect object.  The behavior under
passivization is different: you can say "Fred was beaten by John", but not
"*John was lost to by Fred."  (Well, maybe you can; I couldn't.)  In some 
languages you'd need to use different cases: accusative for the direct object,
dative for the indirect.

In general it seems like the prototypical Indo-European verb has X doing
something to Y; if you want something to happen to the subject of the  
sentence you have to do something special, like use the passive, or an
intransitive or reflexive verb.


