Replying to LO26706 --
Dear Organlearners,
Jan Lelie <janlelie@wxs.nl>
>As always i feel the urge to "activate" the nouns.
>To process structures, to structure processes,
>processing structure, structuring processes,
>processing structuring, structuring processing.
>See the cat? See the cradle?
Greetings dear Jan,
Thank you for a thought provoking reply.
I am not so sure of English or Dutch, but in my mothertongue Afrikaans its
is easy to make nouns (used to name structures) from verbs (used to bame
processes). For example, from learn, teach and educate we derive learner,
teacher and educator, i.e. adding the suffix "-er" ("-or").
The reverse process of making a verb from a noun is rather different. It
is done by adding the suffix ("-ing") to form the gerund. For example iron
becomes ironing. But few are willing by a creative collapse to take the
"-ing" away to form the verb "(to) iron". It is as if they shudder to have
a single word like iron express both a noun and a verb.
In Afrikaans we can not only add the suffix "-ing" to form the gerund, but
also the prefix "ge-" to form the past participle. For example, from the
noun "bottel" (bottle) we can make the verb (past participle) "gebottel"
from which the follows the verb "bottel" by a creative collapse. Whether
the "bottel" now functions as a noun of a verb depends on the context of
the sentence.
On the one hand I like the way we do it in Afrikaans to make of LITERALLY
ANY verb a noun (with the suffix "-er") and LITERALLY ANY noun a verb
(with the prefex "ge-" or suffix "-ing"). But one the other hand I would
like a suffix doing to nouns what "-er" does to verbs. It would make the
becoming-being complementarity between verbs and nouns breathtakingly
clear.
However, one person cannot change the grammer (syntaxis and morphology) of
a language. Only all the speakers of that language can provided they have
reached the requisite level of complexity. Once this requisite level of
complexity has been reached (it may take centuries), the changes in the
grammer will come so spontaneously that no linguist will be able to
suppress it with force.
With care and best wishes,
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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