Re: verbs = nouns?

On Mon, Jan 08, 2001 at 11:17:27PM -0500, DOUGLAS KOLLER wrote:
[snip]
> 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
Aaaah. That's a good example :-)

[snip]
> 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
To my perception, English does this more often than Chinese. But then, to
my own embarrassment, my Chinese vocabulary is probably less than my
English vocab, so perhaps that's just a consequence of this :-)

> 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
      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Aha. I think this is probably what the original message was asking about.
Sure, in English, many words lack (distinct) endings whether they are
being used as a noun or a verb. I can see why Chinese would appear to be
"more free" in the sense that many words may be used as a
noun/verb/adjective in the same lexical form.

[snip]
> 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
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.


T

--
Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I've
forgotten this before.