Re: noun forms of verbs

Hi!

nicole dobrowolski <fuzzybluemonkeys@...> writes:
...
> there are other verbs that this works for as well but my question
> is: would it be valid to say that "food" is a noun form of the verb
> "to eat"?
Valid?!  Of course, it's your language! :-)  You may define whatever
you wish to! :-)

In Tyl-Sjok, which has nouns as the only class of content words,
`food' can be used as a verb indeed meaning `to eat'.  The reason is
that Tyl-Sjok has a notion of default actions.  If it is clear what is
done to a thing, the thing can be used directly as a verb to denote
the action on that thing.  The full sentence for `I eat' in Tyl-Sjok
would still be `I ingest food'.  Because `ingest' is the default
action for `food', you can say `I food', too.

Other default nouns with default actions:
    car     to drive
    water   to drink, to wash, to water (depending on context)
    ...

Default actions are an open concept in Tyl-Sjok, meaning that they
depend so heavily on context that it is hard to list all
possibilities.  E.g. if the context is `to repair' (e.g. someone tells
you they repaired their lawnmower), you are allowed to say:
`I car, too' to mean `Yeah, and I repaired my car.'

If your language also has this, the coercion to a verb would be ok in
any case.  Otherwise, I'd use a real verb to make the meaning clear.
It would be a decision on how ambiguous/precise you want your language
to be.

**Henrik

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