Lexically and grammatically, sure, but a lot of the time people are
thinking more on the semantic and pragmatic levels. Pragmatically,
bus riders, prisoners, and conference listeners are all having something
inflicted upon them. :)
Glo points out that verbs tend in the pragmatics direction anyway.
To "noun" something is to use that noun in it's usual pragmatic way,
"knife" being the example usually trotted out as noun being used as
a verb. But it's also why we get grammatical opposites that mean the
same thing whenever the usual action of the object is removal.
I peeled the banana. I unpeeled the banana.
I skinned the rabbit. I unskinned the rabbit.
I cored the apple. I uncored the apple.
This pattern is still somewhat productive, at least as of the 20th century:
I pantsed my rival. I unpantsed my rival.
Note there has to be an underlying pragmatic assymetry where only one action
makes sense, or you can't do it. These really are opposites:
I corked the bottle. I uncorked the bottle.
Also of interest, if you knife someone, you are sticking a knife in, but
you wouldn't say that pulling the knife back out is "unknifing" them...
As for OT, everthing is OT here, since we're talking about Raku in a Perl 6
mailing list... :)
Larry
On Wed, Sep 02, 2020 at 10:25:52AM -0400, Parrot Raiser wrote:
: Possibly OT, the "-er/-ee" boundary has become corrupted in recent usage.
: I suppose "standees" in a bus might be tolerated, depending on your
: view of transit riders as active or passive, but when a jail-break
: occurs, the former prisoners should become "escapers", not "escapees".
: The prison authorities are the escapees. Similarly, the attendees at
: a conference are the people on stage, being attended-to by the
: attendants sitting down below them.
:
: </arrant pedantry>
:
: On 9/1/20, Larry Wall <la...@wall.org> wrote:
: > On Sun, Aug 30, 2020 at 03:12:26PM -0700, yary wrote:
: > : I have a quibble there. 1st & 2nd sentences disagree slightly by going
: > from
: > : active to passive voice. "Caller, the one who calls" vs "object on which
: > : that method is being called"
: > :
: > : Suggestion for 2nd sentence "The invocant of a method would be the object
: > : calling the method" ... if that is correct!
: >
: > I don't think it much matters, because Tom and I originally picked
: > "invocant" precisely because it was the least-marked affix available with
: > respect to active/passive voice, so that you could run your mental model
: > either way, depending on whether you think the object itself does the
: > method or the calling context does the method on behalf of the object.
: > There is no single right answer here. C++ programmers will think of it
: > very differently from Smalltalk programmers.
: >
: > Larry
: >
