[Mihalic] 'Eating water' in Tok Pisin?

[Alexandra Aikhenvald]

Dear experts in Tok Pisin,

I have a quick question for you-all, regarding Tok Pisin. 

I am now writing a chapter on Semantics, for my Manambu grammar. Manambu
has one word, ke-, which covers eating, drinking (and also smoking)-
similarly to Kwoma a 'ingest' in Ross Bowden's dictionary. And I have
been able to find a similar type of polysemy in almost every Ndu
language (with the exception of Ngala (also known as Gala) and Yelogu). 

What struck me in a word list of Boikin (Yengoru dialect), compiled by
A. Freudenburg (1975; SIL archives), was a Tok Pisin equivalent of the
English verb 'drink': this was given as kaikaim wara.

Does it make any sense to any of you? Have you ever heard this used?
Could this reflect some regional variety?

All the best

Sasha 

Professor Alexandra Aikhenvald, PhD, DLitt, FAHA
Associate Director and Postgraduate Coordinator
Research Centre for Linguistic Typology
La Trobe University
Victoria 3086
Tel: 61-(0)3-9479 6402
Fax: 61-(0)3-9467 3053
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/rclt/StaffPages/aikhenvald.htm