Comments on: Does Verbing Weird Things?

By: steve

steve — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 09:09:18 +0000

My personal gripe is the use of verbs as nouns – such as ‘build’ (as in “the new build is scheduled to begin this summer”) and ‘install’ (as in “the software install was carried out successfully”).

What is wrong with the correct nouns – i.e. ‘building’ and ‘installation’?

By: Guille

Guille — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 22:41:50 +0000

just for the record, it is Calvin who mentions such quote:

http://www.ourlocalstyle.com/images/uploadImages/2006/05/03/cnhVerbingWeirdsLanguage.gif

By: rbeard

rbeard — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:29:21 +0000

Of course, you are right. I have mentioned a few times in these blogs that English is losing affixes, which also indicates that it is moving toward an isolating language, one that uses separate words without affixes. That leaves us in an intermediate stage where a single affix has multiple functions, since all languages have the same set of funtions (subject, object, agent nouns, action nouns, etc.) whether they have affixes to mark them or not.

This is why the suffix -ing can now mark verbs (He is running), adjectives (running water causes problems), nouns (Running strengthens your body), and adverbs (I strained my thigh running). It is also why “they” is both singular and plural and why “than” can be a conjunction and a preposition.

By: Gregg

Gregg — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 07:20:35 +0000

The Chinese verb and noun all the time, so I don’t see why we shouldn’t. The point being, English is changing from an inflected Indo-European model to a more isolating one, similar to, among others, Chinese. Personally I’m rather fond of changing word form to indicate meaning, but using word order is just as legitimate.

By: Larry Brady

Larry Brady — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:30:58 +0000

‘Tis better that a language lose its affixations than it be asphixiated.

By: rbeard

rbeard — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 04:20:46 +0000

By the same token, the suffixes -ate and -ize don’t apply to “verb”, “fork”, “book”, weird”, etc. So why not accept these? Moreover, while the Latinate suffix -ation doesn’t apply to “hit”, “walk”, “swing”, the suffixes -er and -ing do. Why were these suffixes never added to the deverbal nouns with no endings? The lack of endings isn’t the problem.

The noun “cite” may be a clipping of “citation”, in the same category as “doc”, “math”, “bio”, etc.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:47:22 +0000

Oh my! What makes you say that affixation is generally called morphology? I have never heard a clumsy slip like that.

As for verbing, I never understood why people get upset about it. I do think, however, that there are a lot of clumsy ways to make nouns verbs and to make verbs nouns. As an example of the latter, I always cringe when I hear “invite” used for “invitation.” But at least “invite” is distinguished from the verb by its accent. Much worse are monosyllables like “cite,” which I have also heard used nominally. Nouns like swing, hit, and walk are fine because they are established and because the “-ation” ending doesn’t apply to them.