Re: Verbal nouns

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2 Oct 2000, Mario Bonassin wrote:
>
> > I have a verb 'to vomit' and its being used as a noun as in 'the vomit
> > is on my shoe' should it be conjugated like a noun, or just have an
> > affix signifying its a noun, or would it be conjugated like a verb then
> > a noun.  I'm looking for common ways of doing it.
>
> I suppose it would depend on the language, which isn't a particularly
> helpful.  I think Korean uses a gerund-like construction but I could be
> completely wrong.  And we haven't gotten to this in German <G> but as far
> as I can tell, you can turn verbs into nouns and they *look* like they're
> usually assigned the neuter gender  after the infinitive-ending -en is
> stripped, but someone who knows more about German would have to tell you.
No.  Clipping off "-en" is not productive.

The nomen actionis is simply the upper-cased infinitive:

erbrechen - to vomit
das Erbrechen - the act of vomiting

You are right, though, that it is of neuter gender.

But the word "vomit" in the sentence "The vomit is on my shoe" is
a nomen productis (a noun referring to a product of an action).
In German, this is ususally the past participle treated as a noun:

Das Erbrochene ist auf meinem Schuh.

Jörg.