Re: verbs = nouns?

Marcus Smith wrote:

>H.S. Teoh wrote:
>
>>Anyway, the copula-less sentences I have in mind are the noun--adjective
>>ones. I guess in these cases, the stative verb explanation does make
>>sense, after all. Oh, but wait... I think I thought of something. Here:
>>
>>         ta1 chu3 de fan4 wei4dao4 hen2 hao3
>>         he  cook    rice taste    very good
>>         "The rice he cooks has a very good taste."
>>
>>I'm not sure how to parse this using the stative verb theory. In fact, I'm
>>not sure how to formally parse this, period! :-) Perhaps if you treat it
>>as a topic/comment sentence, the comment part can be parsed with hao3 as a
>>stative verb with wei4dao4 as the argument? Not sure about this...
>
>The first three words are part of a relative clause modifying the rice.
>
>[ta1 chu3 de fan4] wei4dao4 hen2 hao3
>The rice which he cooks tastes very good
>
>A more literal translation would be:
>'The he-cooks-rice tastes very good.'>

Is _hen2_ 'very'? (I'll assume so)....And is wei4dao4 a noun or verb?. Can
we tell?   With appropriate changes, the Indonesian version is equivalent:
[Nasi yang dimasaknya (itu)]  rasa-nya enak sekali.
[(the) rice that is-cooked-by-him] taste-its good very.
Hmm, maybe not, since the Nasi clause is really a topic; rasanya (a noun)
would be the "subject" of enak sekali. But I wonder if that isn't true of
the Chin. sentence too?
More formally:  [nasi .......(itu)] berasa enak -- now the nasi clause IS
the subject of the verb be(r)+[rasa enak] 'to have a good taste'.

As for the car turning red......unless it's a magical car, doesn't make a
lot of sense in any language, no?  How about:
bunga merah 'a red flower', bunga merah itu 'the/that red flower' (phrase
intonation, main stress on merah/itu respectively
bunga merah with sentence intonation (some stress on bu-, rise/pause
on -nga, main stress on merah) would be a general statement: a flower is red
~ flowers are red. (Perhaps a little odd, but I'm not a native speaker; but
intonation is very important in Indonesian)
bunga itu merah 'the flower is red'
bunga memerah 'a/the flower is turning red' (meN+merah is definitely a
verb); one's face can also "memerah".
Ia memerahkan bunga 's/he reddened~made red the flower' ( a little odd,
perhaps she's a painter, or is coloring artificial flowers).  The dictionary
ex. for this form is "memerahkan bibirnya" 'reddened her lips (applied
lipstick)'