6.4. ACKNOWLEDGING SOCIAL STATUS THROUGH SPEECH 315
sponsible for them being done for our benefit, which is why we can inter-
pret these verbs as expressing taking a liberty, too:
”(I) got aunty to return me that book that I lent her.””(I) got my father to buy me a new bicycle.”This may sound odd, but think of it this way: if the actions were
genuinley unprompted, they would have been gifts. And for gifts we use
very different verb constructions:
”Aunty gave me back the book (I) had lent her.””(My) father bought (me) a new bicycle.”Another good example of using or for taking a lib-
erty is the following short conversation:
A:
B:
A:
(A takes an apple)
A:A: Whose apples are these?
B: Oh, they’re Keiko’s.
A: I see...
A: Well then, I’ll just help myself to one.It should be fairly obvious what’s happening in this exchange: much
like how the verbs , and can mean ”give”,
and can be used to mean ”take”.