Re: verbs = nouns?

On Tue, 9 Jan 2001, H. S. Teoh wrote:

> Hmm. To me, hong2 and kuai4 are just plain & simple adjectives. To make
> them into nouns, you'd have to compound them with something like tu4
> (degree), eg.  kuai4tu4 (degree of fastness, ie., speed). I'm not sure how
> they may be used as verbs, except perhaps for something like "kuai4dian3"
> -- "hurry up!"; but I think of it as literally meaning "be more fast!" so
> "kuai4" would still be an adjective.
But what's the verb in that case?  Treating adjectives as a subclass of
verbs (stative verbs) allows us to account for sentences like kuai4 dian3
without having to posit a kind of sentence that doesn't contain a verb.
It also accounts neatly for the behavior of "Adj de Noun" constructions,
which are then just a noun modified by a relative clause.  We can then
explain that stative verbs are the ones which can omit "de", often
with idiomatic meaning.

As a verb, kuai4 means "be fast", of course.

But none of this means that Chinese nouns and verbs are interchangeable
in general.

--
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore
        --Douglas Hofstadter