Re: Verbal nouns

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
><G>  I wish I knew Indonesian (or a great many languages, for that
matter).>

        Aren't you at Cornell? (Or am I mixed up?)  Take a course....one of
the best (and probably the first) departments in the nation.  John Wolff,
who may or may not still be there, wrote the grammar I learned from, as well
as the dictionary.

>> 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'.>
    ><pounce>  Supply horses to the army.  That's it!  That works.  May I
>steal that?>
Feel free.  If you ever meet a native speaker, you might ask what's his/her
take on my guesses.>

>> kerbau 'buffalo':  perhaps the old Halloween trick, ?mengerbau-i gereja
>> '(they) put a buffalo on the church' >
>Halloween trick?  <puzzled look>

    Ah me.  In more innocent times (19th, early 20th cent.) when the US was
still mainly a rural society, we are told that it was the habit of young men
to do naughty things on Halloween like putting a cow in the local church, or
on the roof (how???); or, dis-assembling a wagon or Model-T Ford and
re-assembling it on top of City Hall.  Nowadays, at least around here, they
just set fire to vacant buildings.