Re: Ideas for deriving verbs from nouns

On Wed, Apr 25, 2001 at 10:00:55PM -0700, jesse stephen bangs wrote:

> Heh, I have that problem, too.  Oh, well.  I figure that all of my lang
> sketches will sit around until I need them for something, since all of my
> langs thus far are someplace incorporateable into my fictional world of
> Aratasa.
I think, unfortunately, that once one of my sketches dies, it's dead :)
Attempts to revive them always lead to completely new things :)

> My true love conlang Yivríndil derives all verbs from nouns; my friend
> Brett made a language where all sentences are composed entirely of
> verb--*entirely* of verbs.  There were no nouns or adjectives, merely
> noun-like and adjective-like clauses, all coordinated with an elaborate
> system of subordination.  (Brett's a brilliant conlanger and got me
> started on it, but I haven't been able to convince him to join this
> group.)
Oooh, his language sounds fascinating!  I don't suppose he has a webpage on
it?

For that matter, do you have a webpage on Yivríndil?

> OK.  As I said, my main conlang Yivríndil works in exactly this way, and I
> wrestled with exactly this problem.  Eventually I came to the conclusion
> that I was trying to have a one-to-one correspondence between nouns and
> verbs, and this simply isn't possible.
This has occurred to me as well :)  It's nice to see we are in agreement :)

> After much consternation I
> realized that I would have to derive nouns with no direct verb correlates,
> and derive verbs with no noun correlates.  Thus, when choosing a noun to
> serve as the root for a particular verb, I just pick one according to my
> current tastes.
Do you try to avoid the associations of English (or your L1)?  I'm almost
afraid to do it by "what sounds right" for fear I would simply preserve
English biases.

A brief digression - it's fascinating to consider what roles English uses
as verbs.  Some are focus roles (which end up being direct objects in
English ditransitive verbs, as far as I can see) like "gift" and "to gift"
(ok, archaic usage).  Others seem to be utterly practical, highlighting
the aspect of an object that is most *useful* to us - "to fish", for example,
doesn't mean "to swim like a fish", but "to catch a fish".  (Is this a
focus role as well?)  The fish's primary meaning is as a food item, not as
(for example) an agent of swimming.

Is there any study of which roles other languages that verb their nouns <g>
associate with the verb?  Are there any natlangs that *don't* prefer the
focus role for verbs that have a focus role?

Ooh, I just thought of one in English that doesn't use the focus role for
the verb.  "To eye".  The direct object of "to eye" is in the focus role -
I guess the eye itself would be in the agentive or instrumental role?  Come
to think of it, there's a whole class of verbs made from nouns in instrumental
roles - anything involving a tool (to hammer, to shovel).

> The basic word is <rilda>, meaning "giver."  The choice of the agent as
> the root instead of the object "gift" or target "recipient" is entirely
> arbitrary, though I tend to prefer using the agent or the object.  The
> basic verb is <rildaya> meaning "to give."
Interesting, thanks.

> As for the lack of correspondence between nouns and verbs: I can form
> nouns <rildam> "gift" and <rildasí> "giving", but there are no verbs
> derived from those nouns--they would either be nonsensical or synonymous
> with <rildaya>, the verb derived from <rilda>.
Or they could be given subtle differences in meaning...

> As I said, it's messy and natlangish.
Which is good :)  I think a messy and natlangish system is more impressive,
because it's such a challenge to do well.

> I think so.  You also will have problems with transitive/intransitive,
> probably--what do you do with nouns like "beauty"?  Is the verb "to be
> beautiful" or "to become beautiful" or "to make beautiful"?
One could achieve interesting effects depending on which of "be", "become"
or "make" is the unmarked category.  For example, if one chose "to become
beautiful" as the basic word, then you could make "to be beautiful" from
"to have become beautiful".  Such a language would be unwieldy but poetic.

> The Yivríndil system actually has to distinguish three different classes
> of nouns to handle this properly:
That is a useful distinction, thanks.

> Well, I showed you quite a bit of the Yivríndil system.  I hope it was
> helpful!
Very!

Thanks,
Amanda

Reply