Forming Verbs from Other Parts of Speech

[Terra]

How do languages other than English form verbs from other parts of speech.? Are there multiple ways of doing so? Are all of them still productive?

In English, there are many ways...
1) -en (suffix)
awaken, blacken, brighten, broaden, dampen, darken, deaden, deafen, deepen, fasten (from the old meaning of fast), fatten, flatten, freshen, ladden, harden, hasten, hearten, heighten, etc

There's alot, and it's somewhat productive; it gets tagged onto words that already have en-/em-, so we end up with strange things like "embolden, enliven, enlighten, enharden", which have two affixes where one would do. It's only used with adjectives.

2) en-/em- (prefix)
enrich, enable, enlarge, endear, embitter; entrap, enjoy, encode, ensnare, enclose, encircle, enroll, enrage, enlist, empower

Most of the verbs that use this prefix seem to come from nouns instead of adjectives. It's very productive.

It also has a variant, "in-": impale, imbibe, incorporate, insure/ensure, impoverish. It's common with words that come straight from Latin, instead of taking a detour through French.

3) be- (prefix)
belittle, becalm, befuddle, bewitch, befriend

There's many more words with this prefix, but most of them don't add it to adjectives, but instead nouns or verbs, and they seem disconnected from their forms that lack the be-. It's not productive anymore.

German seems to have used this prefix more successfully: befreien (to free), beträuben (to deafen), begraben (to bury (to dig a grave for)), belasten (to encumber). Could a native Germanophone tell me if this is still productive in the modern day?

4) And of course, the null affix...
ready, numb, blind, dull, smooth, wet, dry

5) Using the adjective with the causative, "make"
make worthy, make dense, make frigid

6) -fy (suffix)
simplify, purify, intensify; classify, solidify, liquefy

Often takes nouns instead of adjectives. It's still productive and mainly used with words of Latin origins, since its the Latin version of adding "make".

7) And irregular forms...
warm, warm up; cold, cool/chill; round, round off; dumb, dumb down; low, lower; calm, calm down

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Looking at French, I have identified a couple patterns.

1) The "-ir" conjugation seems to attract verbs of this kind: rougir, blanchir, bleuir, brunir, doucir, salir, mûrir, vieillir, grandir, mollir

2) And so does the prefix "-a": allonger, abréger (cognate: "abridge"), aligner (cognate: "align")

3) Sometimes, a word will take both!: assourdir, alourdir, alentir, aplatir, arrondir, anoblir (strangely, cognate: "ennoble")

4) The prefix "-en": engraisser, embellir (cognate: "embellish"), emmaigrir?

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it does reveal the patterns present.

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Related Pages:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-en#Derived_terms_3
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/en-#Derived_terms
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/be-#Derived_terms
http://www.cnrtl.fr/lexicographie/a-
http://www.cnrtl.fr/lexicographie/en-

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Thoughts?

[Ngohe]

In Swedish one can make a verb of virtually any noun by adding -a.

For example:

hopp ---> hoppa (a jump (noun) --> to jump (verb))
öl ---> öla (beer ---> to drink beer)
kyss ---> kyssa (a kiss ---> to kiss)

[Khvaragh]

Standard and Classical Arabic were somewhat inconsistent in how they did this, though the typical way seems to have been to transform the word into a verb form, and then derive other forms via that verb. This is pretty much only for loanwords though. Theoretically, any verb could be formed by by isolating the root consonants and grafting them into the default 3rd person masculine singular perfect: for example, from the common phrase /bism ilhi r:aX\ma:ni r:aX\i:m/ "in the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate," is derived the verb /basmala/, which means to say the proceeding phrase. So: /basmalat/, /basmaltu/, /basmalta/, /basmalti/, /basmalna:/ (she said the basmala, I said the basmala, you masc. said the basmala, you fem. said the basmala, we said the basmala) etc. There are several other phrases that have been lexicalized as verbs in this way as well.

A more bizarre example (for Arabic) is the verb /?\an?\ana/, which in addition to being the only classical Arabic verb I know of with two /?\/ in this position, is formed from a reduplicated preposition /?\an/ "from, about," and means "to relate or be listed as being related using the word /?\an/." It's a technical term in religious (specifically hadith) studies.

[linguoboy]

Korean and Japanese make extensive use of light verb constructions. For Korean, the default verb is 하다 /hata/ (generally glossed as "do") although there are other possibilities as well. It's particularly useful for verbing borrowed nouns:

대답 /tay.tap/ [對答] "reply" > 대답하다 /tay.tap.hata/ "respond, reply"
볼링 /pol.ling/ ["bowling"] > 볼링하다 /bol.linghata/ "bowl, go bowling"
스키 /sukhi/ ["ski"] > 스키타다 /sukhi.thata/ "ski, go skiing" (타다 "to ride")

[linguoboy]

Incidentally, Language Log had an interesting post recently about the spread of the adversative passive coverb 被 bèi in contemporary Chinese. Now, this isn't a derivational prefix comparable to Germanic be-; Chinese doesn't really distinguish parts of speech morphologically, verbing nouns and nouning verbs even more freely than English. But 被 bèi helps signal innovative transitivisations like 被自殺 bèi zìshā "be suicided", 被工作 bèi gōngzuò "be employmented", etc.

[Terra]

In Swedish one can make a verb of virtually any noun by adding -a.

For example:

hopp ---> hoppa (a jump (noun) --> to jump (verb))
öl ---> öla (beer ---> to drink beer)
kyss ---> kyssa (a kiss ---> to kiss)

What about adjectives?

[...]

A more bizarre example (for Arabic) is the verb /?\an?\ana/, which in addition to being the only classical Arabic verb I know of with two /?\/ in this position, is formed from a reduplicated preposition /?\an/ "from, about," and means "to relate or be listed as being related using the word /?\an/." It's a technical term in religious (specifically hadith) studies.

Interesting. What are the other ways of creating verbs from things?

Korean and Japanese make extensive use of light verb constructions. For Korean, the default verb is 하다 /hata/ (generally glossed as "do") although there are other possibilities as well. It's particularly useful for verbing borrowed nouns:

I suspected so.

Incidentally, Language Log had an interesting post recently about the spread of the adversative passive coverb 被 bèi in contemporary Chinese. Now, this isn't a derivational prefix comparable to Germanic be-; Chinese doesn't really distinguish parts of speech morphologically, verbing nouns and nouning verbs even more freely than English. But 被 bèi helps signal innovative transitivisations like 被自殺 bèi zìshā "be suicided", 被工作 bèi gōngzuò "be employmented", etc.

Interesting. So then, does Chinese have a class of words that can be considered adjectives? Or are modifying words just nouns?

[linguoboy]

Interesting. So then, does Chinese have a class of words that can be considered adjectives? Or are modifying words just nouns?

Chinese adjectives aren't nominal in nature, they're a subclass of stative verbs. The general test for adjectivehood is whether or not a constituent accepts 很 hěn "very".

Pretty much anything--noun, verb (stative or active), verbal phrase, etc.--can be a modifier in Chinese. The only real distinction is whether the particle 的 de is required, optional, or unacceptable.

[prickly pear]

Usually this is done if Farsi with the auxiliary verb kardan:

qermez kardan "to make red"
xub kardan "to do good"
raast kardan "to straighten"
parvaaz kardan "to fly" (lit: to make flight)

Though Farsi has a quite a few auxiliary verbs, kardan (lit: "to do") and zadan (lit: "to hit") are the most common. Even I as a native speaker get them mixed up sometimes.

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

French can verbify pretty much anything with "-er". There are many other morphemes to give more precision. My Japanese teacher came up with :

Furiganiser = "To place furigana over characters" (X-iser = to turn into X)

[Morrígan]

In Chechen, verbs are a closed class, according to J. Nichols. IIRC, new verbs are formed with nouns + "do". One example that I read was that "shoot" was "do" + "gun".

[CaesarVincens]

In Chechen, verbs are a closed class, according to J. Nichols. IIRC, new verbs are formed with nouns + "do". One example that I read was that "shoot" was "do" + "gun".

Really? That's quite interesting. Looking at the Wikipedia page, it only mentions borrowings, but perhaps native innovations can occur?

[Niedokonany]

There are those Australian and New Guinean languages like Kobon which do everything with light verb expressions and only have like 100 real verbs, e.g. combining all sensory experiences into one verb similar to "perceive".

[Ngohe]

In Swedish one can make a verb of virtually any noun by adding -a.

For example:

hopp ---> hoppa (a jump (noun) --> to jump (verb))
öl ---> öla (beer ---> to drink beer)
kyss ---> kyssa (a kiss ---> to kiss)

What about adjectives?

It's more complicated with adjectives in Swedish. There is no "universal affix" or so, that could turn any adjective into a verb. Many adjectives, one can use the prefix för- and the suffix -a:

stor ---> förstora (large/big ---> enlarge/make big(ger))
ful ---> förfula (ugly ---> make ugly(ier))
kort ---> förkorta (short - make short(er))

Concerning some other adjectives, the suffix -na forms a verb with the meaning "to become..." or "to turn into...".

gul ---> gulna (yellow ---> to become yellow, to turn yellow)

Some adjectives have corresponding causative verbs:

glad ---> glädja (happy ---> to make happy, to cause someone to be happy).

For other adjective, one has to use a light verb, such as "göra" (do, make)

ledsen ---> göra någon ledsen (sad ---> to make someone sad).

[Miekko]

For other adjective, one has to use a light verb, such as "göra" (do, make)

ledsen ---> göra någon ledsen (sad ---> to make someone sad).

Is there any adjective that can take göra that can't take få?

(E.g. 'hur fick du henne så lessen?' vs 'hur gjorde du henne så lessen'? I'd, intuitively, claim the difference between these are mainly aspectualish?)

[Khvaragh]

[...]

A more bizarre example (for Arabic) is the verb /?\an?\ana/, which in addition to being the only classical Arabic verb I know of with two /?\/ in this position, is formed from a reduplicated preposition /?\an/ "from, about," and means "to relate or be listed as being related using the word /?\an/." It's a technical term in religious (specifically hadith) studies.

Interesting. What are the other ways of creating verbs from things?

This is not a common device (though the reduplication pattern is, see below); /?\an?\ana/ is an exceedingly rare word which you will not find in pretty much anything but hadith or fiqh (Islamic law) books. Most other prepositions are either isolated single-letter words. Some prepositions already have their own roots, such as /?\ala:/ "on" from 3ayn-lam-ya' (sometimes also with waw as the final letter), which has a corresponding verb /?ala:/ "to be high, to tower above," with derivates such as a verbal noun /?\uluww/ "height, proximity," /?a:lin/ "high," /a?\la:/ "higher, highest," etc. Though in my opinion, this is an extremely ancient root going back to PS, so it's hard to tell whether the verb paradigm formed from the preposition or vice versa. Typically, any verb or noun is part of an open class which can form an entire paradigm using a regular pattern from the verb. Particles typically can not. There are some [relatively] rare examples of the formation of nouns from pronouns, such as /huwij:ah~huwij:atun/ "identity" from /huwa/ "he," or /ananij:atun/ "selfishness" from /ana:/ "I," but the verb forms are rare (I've never seen them), they're usually just isolated nominalizations, rather than the typical derivation from a verb paradigm.

Loanwords can be made into proper Arabic verbs with an accompanying derivable paradigm by inserting vowels in the correct positions. For an old example: /fihris/ "index" comes from Persian (Middle I believe) "pehrest," which can and is fit into the verbal paradigm as /fahrasa/ "he indexed" i.e. the two middle consonants are treated as a single root constituent, analogous to native quadra-consonantal roots like /zalzala/ "to shake" or /rafrafa/ "to flutter, flow." One can thus derive a variety of words from the verb via regular derivation.

The above mentioned words /zalzala/ and /rafrafa/ are themselves derivations from (theorized) ancient bi-consonantal roots, which are then reduplicated into four-letter roots. This was a common Arabic (and Semitic in general) way of forming new roots, but is not productive today.

In dialectal Arabic, sometimes you have loanwords, such as from English, assimilated into Arabic verbs, i.e. in Egyptian /biyinirfas/ "he is nervous" from English "nervous," or /binshayar~binshayyar/ "we share" from "share."

[tatapyranga]

Portuguese (and, I think, Spanish) seems to prefer circumfixes for derivation from adjectives (not sure how many of this is inherited from Latin), and sometimes nouns:

duro 'hard' => endurecer 'to harden'
mole 'soft' => amolecer 'to soften'
vermelho 'red' => avermelhar 'to redden'

cara 'face' (noun) => encarar 'to face; to stare'
pedra 'stone' (noun) => apedrejar 'to stone'

So those are of the form a-X-cer, en-X-ecer, en-X-ar, en-X-ejar etc. The first element seems to vary unpredictably. Verbs formed from an adjective (X) mean both "to become X" (intransitive) and "to make Obj X" (transitive) (like 'his face softened' vs. 'he softened the mixture'). Those formed from nouns are more unpredictable, like encarar and apedrejar.

It seems a first element is not added if the word begins with a vowel:

azul 'blue' => azular (to *bluen?)
amarelo 'yellow' => amarelar (to *yellowen?)

except in some cases:

alto 'alto' => enaltecer 'to speak highly of' (not "to make tall", there's no verb for that).

[TomHChappell]

How do languages other than English form verbs from other parts of speech.? Are there multiple ways of doing so? Are all of them still productive?
-----
Thoughts?

AIUI, not only English but most other languages can "zero-derive" a verb from a noun.
In English, you can knife someone in the back.
In English, you can foot the ball. Or head the ball.
In English, you can hand somebody something.
In English, you can kneecap somebody. Or elbow somebody.

AIUI, this is still productive in English, and in most other languages.
In English, at least, this seems not to be available for every noun; but, in English, and AIUI in many other languages, it is productive for a large set of nouns.

[Terra]

AIUI, this is still productive in English, and in most other languages.
In English, at least, this seems not to be available for every noun; but, in English, and AIUI in many other languages, it is productive for a large set of nouns.

Indeed. I'd say it's the most productive way to make verbs in English.

Portuguese (and, I think, Spanish) seems to prefer circumfixes for derivation from adjectives (not sure how many of this is inherited from Latin), and sometimes nouns:

duro 'hard' => endurecer 'to harden'
mole 'soft' => amolecer 'to soften'
vermelho 'red' => avermelhar 'to redden'

cara 'face' (noun) => encarar 'to face; to stare'
pedra 'stone' (noun) => apedrejar 'to stone'

So those are of the form a-X-cer, en-X-ecer, en-X-ar, en-X-ejar etc. The first element seems to vary unpredictably. Verbs formed from an adjective (X) mean both "to become X" (intransitive) and "to make Obj X" (transitive) (like 'his face softened' vs. 'he softened the mixture'). Those formed from nouns are more unpredictable, like encarar and apedrejar.

It seems a first element is not added if the word begins with a vowel:

azul 'blue' => azular (to *bluen?)
amarelo 'yellow' => amarelar (to *yellowen?)

except in some cases:

alto 'alto' => enaltecer 'to speak highly of' (not "to make tall", there's no verb for that).

Interesting. What's the verb for "enhance"?

EDIT:

azul 'blue' => azular (to *bluen?)
amarelo 'yellow' => amarelar (to *yellowen?)

Neither "bluen" nor "yellowen" are words btw. Use "turn/become blue" and "turn/become yellow" instead. "redden", "blacken", and "whiten" are the "-en" verbs derived from colors.

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@Ngohe & Khvaragh: Thank you!

[Nortaneous]

How do languages other than English form verbs from other parts of speech.? Are there multiple ways of doing so? Are all of them still productive?
-----
Thoughts?

AIUI, not only English but most other languages can "zero-derive" a verb from a noun.
In English, you can knife someone in the back.
In English, you can foot the ball. Or head the ball.
In English, you can hand somebody something.
In English, you can kneecap somebody. Or elbow somebody.

AIUI, this is still productive in English, and in most other languages.
In English, at least, this seems not to be available for every noun; but, in English, and AIUI in many other languages, it is productive for a large set of nouns.

Are there any langs where any noun can be zero-derived into a verb, or vice versa?
If there are, what does the zero derivation do semantically?
For that matter, what are the most common crosslinguistic meanings of the zero derivation? (if there can be said to be one specific meaning in the language; this isn't true for English, as far as I can tell)

[TomHChappell]

Are there any langs where any noun can be zero-derived into a verb, or vice versa?
If there are, what does the zero derivation do semantically?
For that matter, what are the most common crosslinguistic meanings of the zero derivation? (if there can be said to be one specific meaning in the language; this isn't true for English, as far as I can tell)

I don't know, but I've tried to find out, and here's how far I got.
(First, of course, as you probably already realize, you need to know that "verbing weirds language".)
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/verbing.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion ... uistics%29 which says that there are thousands of examples in English, including many of the most common English words, and that nearly every page of nearly every English dictionary has at least one example on it.
So the answer to your question

Are there any langs where any noun can be zero-derived into a verb, or vice versa?

might be "maybe English?", but I still don't know.
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/jur/200309/pape ... arosa.html which was too dense for me to read right away. But it looks like it probably has something relevant to say, and may have some worthwhile references as well.
http://www.sil.org/linguistics/glossary ... ryid=15811 gives some ideas about other terms that are closely related.
http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/j.don/bes ... _skase.doc, at the very list, includes some references (e.g. "Lieber in her chapter on English word-formation processes (Lieber 2005) gives an excellent overview of a huge literature on this subject") which themselves include references which are comprehensive (according to Jan Don).
http://linguistlist.org/issues/12/12-3166.html#1 includes several links which are probably worth following up, but I'm not going to do so at this time.
this book probably came out of that conference.
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Words04 ... sms/h.htmlhas an awful lot of examples.
http://ling.uni-konstanz.de/pages/home/ ... k/fett.pdf thoroughly discusses one German word which is an adjective and a noun and a verb; and it's polysemous as an adjective, polysemous as a noun, and polysemous as a verb.
So I expect the answer to your question

For that matter, what are the most common crosslinguistic meanings of the zero derivation?

is probably "Polysemous".

-------------------------------

I know that didn't answer the question, but I hope some of it at least helps some.

[Radius Solis]

In English at least, zero-verbing of random nouns extremely commonly produces the meanings "use an X upon" and "make (into an) X". The first meaning is nicely exemplified by THC's examples:

In English, you can knife someone in the back.
In English, you can foot the ball. Or head the ball.
In English, you can hand somebody something.
In English, you can kneecap somebody. Or elbow somebody.

The second, by:
Verbing weirds language.
I friended him on facebook.
He niced up his room (before visitors came).
I spent all afternoon conlanging

Some don't fit either meaning:
We tabled the motion.
That mirrors my reaction.
Let's book a flight.


English definitely doesn't permit verbing all nouns and adjectives. Major classes of nouns that are difficult or impossible to verbify include:

- most for which there are already perfectly good morphologically related verbs (*He stronged it, *Cook until the sugar caramels, *Engineers heighted the building, *He golded the statue)
- many nouns that are derived from something else already (*He teachered for six years, *I warmthed my dinner, We are employeeing him)
- a great many foreign, technical, and Latinate words (?He sacramented it, *Stop ignorancing, *We tortillaed and ceilinged for hours, *Let's octopus it and get out of here, *I like how you speciesed that.)
- most compound nouns (*He heart attacked, *I was just cheeseburgering, *She blackboarded it for the class)

(There are exceptions in each group, of course. These are tendencies, not rules.)

[linguoboy]

- most compound nouns (*He heart attacked, *I was just cheeseburgering, *She blackboarded it for the class)

(There are exceptions in each group, of course. These are tendencies, not rules.)

I think the last group is the weakest. I'm pretty sure I've heard "he heart attacked" before and Google provides some decent attestations. I can easily imagine "Blackboarded" because here at my uni we use a programme called "Blackboard" and verbing names of software programmes, applications, formats, etc. seems pretty productive in contemporary English. At least, I wouldn't blink an eye at "We World of Warcrafted all weekend" or "Spreadsheet the data and then pdf it."

[TomHChappell]

... (whole last post) ...

Thanks! That's good information.

[tatapyranga]

azul 'blue' => azular (to *bluen?)
amarelo 'yellow' => amarelar (to *yellowen?)

Neither "bluen" nor "yellowen" are words btw. Use "turn/become blue" and "turn/become yellow" instead. "redden", "blacken", and "whiten" are the "-en" verbs derived from colors.

Sure. I guessed that those words did not actually exist.

...
alto 'alto' => enaltecer 'to speak highly of' (not "to make tall", there's no verb for that).

Interesting. What's the verb for "enhance"?

Hmm, "enhance" can be translated in many ways depending on context, but the most common are:
melhorar 'to make better, improve' < melhor 'better'
aprimorar 'to improve' < primor 'superior quality; perfection'
aperfeiçoar 'to improve, to perfect' < perfeito 'perfect' or perfeição 'perfection'

[Aszev]

Concerning some other adjectives, the suffix -na forms a verb with the meaning "to become..." or "to turn into...".

gul ---> gulna (yellow ---> to become yellow, to turn yellow)

Some adjectives have corresponding causative verbs:

glad ---> glädja (happy ---> to make happy, to cause someone to be happy).

Just adding that the inchoative -na and the causative umlaut were generally used to form new verbs from verbs as well, eg.

sova (ON sofa) 'to sleep'
somna (ON sofna) 'to fall asleep'
söva (ON sǿfa) 'to put to sleep'

None of these are productive anymore though.