Re: verbs = nouns?

From: "H. S. Teoh"

> > As for the car turning red......unless it's a magical car, doesn't make
a
> > lot of sense in any language, no?
>
> :-) True. But in Chinese, you *could* say something like "che1 hong2le" to
> express the fact that somebody has finally finished painting the car red.
> OK, this is rather contrived, but I can see it happening :-)
Indeed. With color words, when used with the perfective particle, we
normally expect it to be a more natural, slower-going process. Leaves turn
green, sunburned skin turns red, sun-bleached linens turn white. But say you
put the blue car in the garage at night and the next morning it's red; "Che1
hong2le" is an okay utterance (though "Che1 bian4hong2 le is also possible
and more likely). Perhaps your car is on the beach, it's got some weird
chemical compound in its paint, and through it, triggered by heat, and as
the afternoon wears on, your car turns red. You can say, "Che1 hong2le".
Contrived? Perhaps. But there are times when setting up a future perfect in
English ("I will have ---ed") requires similar contortions to make a point.

[Malay stuff snipped 'cause it's out of my depth]

Kou