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caal

21/4/2017

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[càːl]

​be reflected in, e.g. `Abac is reflected in her daughter'.


Shilluk – 175,000 speakers – Sudan and South Sudan

This verb is similar to English resemble, except the way we interpret subject and object is reversed: the subject is the source of the resemblance, not the reflection.

This can be seen from the following example, where Abac is the subject.


ábác     ɲāaar-ɛ̄           á-càaal-ɛ̀ 
Abac    daughter-3S    PAST-be.reflected-3SG
'Abac is reflected in her daughter.'


As Fillmore (1977:74) said "Languages, and lexical items, differ in interesting ways in the options they present in taking particular perspectives on complex scenes."

Credit: Bert Remijsen and Otto Gwado Ayoker (field notes)
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