Colors as verbsl

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Geoff Horswood <geoffhorswood@H...>
wrote:

>"Green" may be used as a noun.  Most words can stray from their
>specified part-of-speech role, so something that's technically an
>adjective can be used as a noun ("green is beautiful") or even as a
>verb ("the grass greens again after the drought").
Senyecan is language based primarily on verbs.  I'm trying to convert
all lexicon entries into verbs as the base words.  So far I've
managed to do this with about 3/4 of the lexicon.

This plan was obstructed briefly when I came to the names of the
colors which were adjectives.  Then I remembered that the names of
certain colors in English had been made into verbs with the -en
suffix: redden, blacken, and whiten.  Some of the colors use the
adjectival form for the verb, e.g., yellow, green, blue and gray.
And I was delighted to discover two forms I had not known previously:
embrown and empurple!

Thus, in Senyecan all the colors are originally verbs.  Since there
is no difference in form between transitive and intransitive verbs,
these verbs can mean, using rúúða as an example, transitively:
redden, make red; and intransitively: redden, become red, turn red.

This is used with all colors, even the intermediate shades, e.g.,
reddish-yellow, bluish-green, etc.

Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur

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