Re: verbs = nouns?

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.

E-Ching


At 10:19 PM 1/8/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>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.
>
>
>T
>
>--
>It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
>-- Sammy