Re: verbs = nouns?

On 9 Jan, Steg wrote:

>On Mon, 8 Jan 2001 18:44:49 -0500 Matthew Kehrt <matrix14@...>
>writes:
>> 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>

>Well, besides English (which everyone's said already, but i didn't
>realize myself) there's Hebrew.  Hebrew present tense verbs were
>originally nouns, or something like that.  So the sentence _hu shomeir_
>can mean "he guards" or "he is a guard" (since Hebrew doesn't really have
>a copula either).
    This is true, but I don't think that it is common. The only other
examples
(using the  _o_e_  vowel pattern like /Somer/) that I could think of
are  /boged/ , which means both "he betrays" and "a traitor", and
/Soter/ which means both "policeman" and  "he punishes"
(However, although the verb-sense is in the dictionary,
I've never heard anyone use it. People say /ma'aniS/ for
"he punishes" [ and the noun, "punishment", is  /'oneS/  ]  )

    Counter-examples are numerous. For example: (_o_e_ as verb)
    /loxets/ = he pressures    vs      /laxats/ = pressure
    /gonev/ = he steals           vs     /ganav/ = thief
    /'omed/ = he stands         vs     /'amud/ = pillar

                    and the opposite pattern (_o_e_ as noun)

    /kohen/ = priest                     vs   /mekahen/ = he officiates
   /golem/ = shapeless matter  vs  /megalem/ = he plays a part (in a play)

    And so on.  IME, modern Hebrew uses different vowel patterns/affixes
to distinguish present tense verbs from nouns in most cases.


Dan Sulani
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likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a.

A word is an awesome thing.