Re: noun forms of verbs

On Sat, Nov 17, 2001 at 09:46:10AM -0800, nicole dobrowolski wrote:
> ok suppose you take the verb "to sleep"... one way to turn it into a
> noun would be "sleeper" or "sleepers" referring to someone who sleeps
> but you could also use sleep as a noun as in "i didn't get any
> sleep"... 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"?
[snip]

I don't see why not :-) I suspect that the word for "eat" in many
languages derives from "food". Well, I don't know the direction of the
derivation, but either way, they are cognate.

On another note, don't feel that your conlang has to be limited by what
you see in the languages that you know. Many natlangs have things a lot
stranger than conlangs. As they say, "fact is stranger than fiction". :-)


T

--
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