Re: verbs = nouns?

On Tue, Jan 09, 2001 at 07:46:38PM -0800, Marcus Smith wrote:
> H. S. Teoh wrote:
[snip]
> Doesn't acquisition of a property seem verb-like to you? That seems to be
> similar to what happens with English "became".
Yes, but I tend to think of the Chinese adjective as describing the final
state, not how it got there. But like I said, I don't know formal Chinese
grammar, and I'm just going by gut feeling, so I'm probably way off here.
:-)

Of course, now that I've cleared up with myself just what a stative verb
is, I think that's a reasonable explanation as well.

> The crucial question is whether "le" can be used with nouns? I don't know
> any Mandarin, but would it be possible to say the equivalent of "I student
> le."? If not, then "adjectives" pattern with verbs rather than nouns,
> suggesting that they are a subclass of verb.
But why can't "le" be a particle that can be used with more than one class
of words?

As for whether it can be used with nouns, I just remembered a pathological
twist to one of the words someone mentioned earlier in this thread: che1
(car) actually *can* be used as a verb, now that I think about it. I'm not
sure how to translate the verb che1, but it occurs in the idiom "che1 ta4
pao4", meaning, to exaggerate or brag without basis. (Literally, it means
something like "driving/pushing(?) a big cannon", with a sarcastic nuance,
like "yeah sure, and you drive a big tank too".)

So "le" can be used with "che1"... but of course, it still seems to apply
only to verbs and adjectives. So perhaps the stative verb explanation
really does make sense after all. (Of course, I could claim that "le" in
such cases simply modify the implicit copula, but I've trouble believing
myself for that one :-P) OTOH, if adjectives *were* stative verbs, how
would one explain using a verb with it? E.g.:
        che1 pien4 hong2le
        "The car turned red."
compared with:
        che1 hong2le
        Same meaning, less emphatic. ("Car has reddened"?)


T

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