Re: verbs = nouns?

From: "H. S. Teoh"

> On Mon, Jan 08, 2001 at 05:53:42PM -0600, Patrick Dunn wrote:
> > On Mon, 8 Jan 2001, Matthew Kehrt wrote:
> >
> > > Does anyone know of any lang, preferrably a natlang, in which the same
> > > words serve as nouns and as verbs?  I know it can be done with
> > > adjectives and nouns, but are nouns and verbs equivalent in any
> > > system?
> [snip]
> > Chinese, to a larger extent.
> [snip]
>
> Ermm... are you sure?
>
> AFAIK, most words in Mandarin are distinctly either nouns or verbs. Yes,
> practically every word is in its radical form, and there is next to no
> inflection (none at all if you discount the few particles like /de/ and
> /le/) -- so nouns and verbs have the same inflection pattern (i.e., none).
> But every word is distinctly a verb or a noun -- I can't think of any
> words that may behave like both. Even in compounds, a verbal root always
> retains its verbal meaning and a nominal root always retains its nominal
> meaning, though the compound itself may be either a verb or a noun.
I think what's being discussed here are words like "fa1zhan3". You can use
it as a verb:

fa1zhan3 guo2min2 jing1ji4
develop the national economy

a noun:

ge2ren2 de fa1zhan3
personal (individual) development

or an adjective (à la participle):

fa1zhan3 (de) guo2jia1
developing country

To be sure, which words can do that and which words can't may vary between,
say, English and Chinese; you can't "tree" a cat or "milk" a cow in Chinese,
but you can say, "gan1she4 ta1guo2 nei4zheng4" (intervene in the internal
affairs of another country) and "jun1shi4 gan1she4" (military intervention).
The perception that Chinese can do it "more" may come from the fact that
verbs, gerunds, and participles can be loosey-goosey categories in Chinese
(more so than English, don't you think?), but whether Chinese can really do
it "more" than English is statistical territory I won't venture into. The
fact remains, though, that these langs are more flexible across the
noun-verb divide than languages such as German (der Schlaf "sleep" (n.), but
schlafen "sleep" (v.)), French (la toux "cough" (n.), but tousser "cough"),
or Hungarian (nevetés "laugh" (n.), but nevet "laugh" (v.)), where endings
are requisite to distinguish between nouns and verbs. In Chinese and
English, these three examples free-form: sleep (n., v.) shui4jiao4 (n., v.);
cough (n., v.) ke2sou (n., v.); laugh (n., v.) xiao4 (n., v.). (Please note
that does *not* mean that you can't tell whether they're being used as a
noun or verb in a given sentence).

Then later ('cause I type too slowly) from E-Ching and H.S.:

> Thanks, H. S., I was wondering if I was the only person trying to make
> sense of that.  I've seen Chinese "adjectives" called stative verbs,
> because they do behave similarly in some ways.  Chinese nouns, as far as
> I know, behave completely differently from Chinese verbs.
[snip]

>Hmm. Do you have any specific examples of adjectives behaving like stative
>verbs? I can't seem to think of any... I must be missing something?
You're welcome to dispute that these ain't great examples, but:

hong2 (de) lian3  a red face (i.e. "a face which is red")
lian3 hong2 (le)  (your) face is red (from drink or embarrassment)

kuai4 (de) che1 a fast car ("a car which is fast")
che1 hen3 kuai4  the car is fast

etc., etc....

Kou