Re: Verbal nouns

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>I get the idea.  :-)  The example I *was* going to use myself was the
>morpheme that (depending on the form) means horse, wind, journey, run or
>race, but I'm still not sure what verbing "horse" would mean.  Your
>example's a lot better!>
This sort of thing is fun to play around with in Indonesian.  (and English
too-- you can get some very strange meanings):

e.g. pouch : to pouch (the mail, the tobacco)= put in a pouch
      winter:  to winterize
and many more.

INDONESIAN:   air 'water' :  meng-air-i 'to water (the lawn), irrigate (the
fields)'-- but it can also mean 'to pee on...'
terang (adj.) 'clear, bright':  menerang-kan 'to explain (caus. of clear);
menerang-i 'to brighten, illuminate'.

So kuda 'horse':  ?menguda-kan ?'to turn s.o. into a horse'; ?menguda-i ?'to
add horses to...', 'to put a horse on/in...'.  Maybe: ?mengudai tentara 'to
supply horses to the army'.
kerbau 'buffalo':  perhaps the old Halloween trick, ?mengerbau-i gereja
'(they) put a buffalo on the church' !?   (I started with sapi 'cow'-- but
you can't suffix -i to base-final /i/; interesting).