Re: Nouns from Verbs

On Sat, 2003-06-14 at 15:25, Rob Haden wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I was wondering what your methods are for deriving nouns from verbs.
In Pidse, it's (guess what) done irregularly. The correct way, of
course, is reasonably regular---take the Ygyde word, change it as
apropriate (which may involve replacing/adding affixes and compounding),
and wither* that. Note that withering doesn't necessarily mean applying
the Ygyde -> Pidse sound changes as these are somewhat haphazard. One
colloquial way is to take two of the three roots** from the verb in
question and zeroderiving them. Exactly which roots become which decides
what exact meaning the noun has (so there are generally six different
ways of doing it, I think), but for example tense root -> strong root,
modal root -> weak root would refer to a bad instance of x, but modal
root -> strong and tense root -> weak root would refer to instances of x
taken as a whole. (Of course, rare is the sentence that contains the
same word in both roots, so some derivations are used more than others.)
However, generally nouns and verbs have a different look-and-feel to
them, so another colloquial way involves making odd changes to them,
even to the degree of approximating the correct way. There are also some
prefixes and suffixes for different purposes, which tend to be applied
to the tensed root, but, of course, may be applied to other roots with
different meanings.

*The name 'Pidse', /wiD@/, puns on the non-rhotic pronunciation
'wither', /wID@/. Because it's a withered form of Ygyde. Puns are good.

** The root thing is complicated. Every noun has two totally different
roots and every verb has three. They're used in different contexts. I've
sent a nice post about them, I think, but I can't find it.

In Ancient and Old Føtisk, you have the normal popular Germanic
things---replacing the infinitive with something else, adding things
like -ing etc. In Middle and Modern Føtisk, there is a trend towards
zero derivation, though as the article fuses onto the noun and appears
to be a marker of class/gender and suchlike, this changes. But Middle
and Modern Føtisk are just rough ideas still, and Ancient and Old are
not much more.

--
Tristan.