Re: noun forms of verbs

From: "Henrik Theiling"

> laokou writes:
> > So, if expressions like "eat eats" don't make you squeamish, then go for
it.

> I see no problems.  And as I said, why not `I food' directly, instead
> of `I food food'.
I don't consider it a ~problem~, just stylistically somewhat redundant and
unaesthetic for my lang. Others have pointed out a point :-) I hadn't
considered -- the rôle of intransitive and transitive verbs. While "eat" can
be either intransitive or transitive, "wear", for example, is obligatorily
transitive. It is certainly conceivable to form a construction like "I am
wearing wearing(s)." [personal yuck]. (One strategy French has for this is
the pronominal verbs; you say, "Je me rase, "I shave myself" to distinguish
from your shaving someone else, "Je rase Louis." The non-sentence "Je
rase.", like "I wear." immediately elicits the question "vous rasez quoi?",
"wear what?". Pronominal verbs are one solution to that dilemma.).

Another strategy might be to distinguish transitive and intransitive verbs à
la japonaise "hajimaru/hajimeru" distinction (which might produce such
combos as "I'm feeding on food" (as opposed to "I'm fooding food").

At some point, though, even if one goes for "I food" (transitive and
intransitive), with this derivational system, I think one will have to
encounter expressions like, "I food good food.", "I fooded really bad food
last night.", "The food he fooded was poisonous..."

Your aesthetics may vary.

Kou

Reply