Sacrifice to the Gods (good) or murder your father (bad)

Dear Friends,

   As a historian observer and not a linguist I hesitate to get involved in
such arcane structural arguments and you should not value my opinion too
highly as it is completely uninformed, that being said, it seems to me on
reading the comments below that it is possible that in a primitive society
where life was short and brutal that there may be seperate words for
different kinds of killing that might parallel the following English words as
both verbs and nouns:

to kill, to murder, to slay, to hunt, to sacrifice, Matricide, Paricide,
Suicide, Genocide, Infanticide, etc

   Would I be wron to suggest that there could be much earlier parallels
where distinctive verbal actions could have seperat words while types could
be based on a common modified root, even from another language?

   Has anyone attempted the comparative study of such a basic topic to
establish language parallels?

Best regards,   John Piscopo

In a message dated 8/23/01 2:30:18 PM Central Daylight Time,
proto-language@... writes:

Pat:
> Semantically, 'kill' is a two-participant verb. To 'kill' without
>someone doing it, is impossible. And someone must 'kill' >someone.

Yes, and don't forget to explore the reflexive sense of the verb, Pat.

[PCR]
Actually, this is, in my opinion, quite important.

I suspect that (at least, most) intransitive
verbs are, at origin, transitive reflexives.

The suggestion would be that, e.g. in ergative
languages, the reflexive object is expressed (in the absolutive) and the
redundant agent (which would be in the ergative) is
unexpressed.

For example: I go = I move myself away;

I sleep = I put myself into a sleeping position or state.

I am red = I have reddened myself.

In my opinion, early humans were very cause-effect oriented even when they
got the cause completely wrong.

Pat