Re: THEORY nouns and cases (was: Verbs derived from noun cases)

From: "Philippe Caquant" <herodote92@...>
(and in response to everyone else who's chimed in on the subject)

> I agree with "to dog" or "desum", and many more (in
> French we haven't a verb "to dog" (chienner ?), but we
> have "singer" (to imitate mockingly, like a monkey). I
> said that nearly anything could become a verb, but my
> question was: zachem ? as the Russians say, "what for
> ?" In order to hide under the carpet the fact there
> are such concepts as entities, properties, relations,
> temporary states, etc ? Why should we pretend that
> entities (choses-en-soi) are similar to action verbs,
> for ex ? What is the goal, except making it a pleasant
> game ? ("having fun" ?)
An example of how a noun like 'dog' can become a verb in a language:

The Arabic word for 'dog' is _kalb_. The verbal form Class I Passive is
_kaliba_, which means 'crave, covet' and also 'be(come) rabid'. The former
meaning could be interpreted as 'act like a dog', and anyone who's ever
owned a dog knows of the beast's tendency to beg for table scraps. In the
case of the latter meaning: dogs are not well-liked creatures in Semitic
cultures, for among other things, they're known to spread hydrophobia. This
is especially true in Islam; at least one Hadith in fact declares the
ownership of dogs as pets as _h.ara:m_ 'forbidden' (but not the use of dogs
for protection, rescue, pulling sleds and that sort of thing).

Remember, Arabic and other Semitic languages can turn many nouns into verbs
and vice versa.

I'm looking up _qitt_ 'cat' in the online Arabic dictionary
(http://dictionary.ajeeb.com/); the verb _qatta_ means 'cut' or 'trim', but
I doubt the words are related, since the word for 'cat' is probably a
loanword from a Nilo-Saharan language (as is English 'cat', French _chat_,
German _Katz_, Spanish _gato_, Russian _kotec_ etc. etc. etc.).
Incidentally, Muhammad was a cat lover, according to legend.

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