Tags · Mechanism
Metonymy
A shift along contiguity, where a part, cause or outcome names the whole.
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Which verb makes a machine start working?
A lamp, an air conditioner, a tap, recorded music, an alarm clock, a vacuum cleaner and a washing machine each need a verb. Some languages reach for fire, some for opening or rotation, some for the plain act of putting a thing down. The choice also shifts from one thing to the next within a single language: Japanese attaches a light and hangs music, where Korean kindles the light and rotates the washing machine.
How does “listen” come to mean “obey”?
Verbs of hearing and listening repeatedly grow a sense of obeying. The pattern recurs from Mandarin tīnghuà and Japanese iu koto o kiku to Latin oboedīre, built on audīre “to hear”, behind French obéir and English obey.
How does “see” come to mean “try”?
Verbs of seeing repeatedly become markers of attempting. Japanese 食べてみる “eat and see”, Korean 먹어 보다, Mandarin 試試看, and the Turkic converb + kör- constructions all say “do it and see” for “try doing it”; Voinov (2013) traces the co-lexification across Eurasia, New Guinea, India, and West Africa.