Re: Nouns from Verbs

Quoting Rob Haden <magwich78@...>:

> Hello everyone,
>
> I was wondering what your methods are for deriving nouns from verbs.
> More
> specifically, how to derive instances of verbal activities from verbal
> roots/stems -- i.e., "(a) kick" from "(to) kick".
Tairezazh don't have any consistent productive way to derive concrete nouns
from verbal roots. However, many verbal roots have corresponding conrete nouns
formed by the old nominalizer -stu. Examples include _kenist_ "a life" to _ken-
_ "to live", _theist_ "a hope" to _theiz-_ "to hope", _blast_ "a war" to
_melai-_ "to fight" and _grest_ "a thought" to _nerz-_ "to think". As should
be obvious from the later two, the relationship is not always phonetically
obvious.

In addition, every verb root has a verbal noun form I refer to as the gerund,
formed by the ending _-ent_. This is an abstract noun similar to English "-
ing" forms. With the above roots we thus have _kenent_ "living",
_theizent_ "hoping", _melaint_ "fighting" and _nerzent_ "thinking". Like for
abstracts in many languages, such forms not infrequently concretify,
especially when there is no other concrete noun with the appropriate meaning.
A good example is _tsheint_ "loving, love" from _tshei-_ "to love", which
covers both full abstract "love" and a concrete love for a specific person. Eg
_Tsheint tsai zvats ne dhekreneints kenistener tain_ "Love gives our lives
direction and motivation" (awfully romantic, innit?) vs _tsheint senar
senoi_ "his love for her".

There's also a couple of agental endings, the commonest being _-el_. With the
above roots, we get _theizel_ "one who hopes", _melaiel_ "fighter_,
_nerzel_ "thinker" and _tsheiel_ "lover". _Ken-_ appears not to give rise to
any useful agental noun.

                                                      Andreas

PS _Melaiel_ and _tsheiel_ would, phonologically, be expected to reduce to
**_melail_ and _tsheil_. They don't, however. It would appear that the forms
with intact _e_ are backformations from after the _Vje_>_Vi ceased to operate,
based on analogy with agentals where _-el_ is added to stems ending in
consonants. For some reason, no similar process restored the _e_'s in
_melaint_<_melajent_ and _tsheint_<_theijent_.