LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 15:7 July 2015
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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God is Not a Noun But a Verb

Dr. D. Nagarathinam, M.E., Ph.D. & Prof. L. Lakshmanan, M.A., B.Ed.

Abstract

Verbalization is the common linguistic transformation of nouns into verbs. This is usually natural, fine, and practical. Noun is just like a man who is located on one spot, whereas the verb whose circumference is nowhere, but whose centre is everywhere. In other words, the Noun means ‘the name of anything’; but the Verb is used to describe ‘an action’, ‘state,’ or ‘occurrence’ and forming the main parts of the predicate of a sentence, such as ‘hear’, ‘become’, or ‘happen’. So, the Queen of the parts of speech ‘Verb’ is like a honey-Bee in the bee-hive.

The object of this paper is not to debate the supremacy of the noun and the verb. The main aim is to enrich the vocabulary and various usages of the verbal forms of the nouns - ‘Known to Unknown’. Now, we believe you can agree with the title ‘God is not a Noun, but a Verb’.

Keywords: verbalization, noun, verb, functions of verb

Introduction

The English language is in a constant state of flux. New words are formed and old ones fall into disuse. But no trend has been more obtrusive in recent years than the changing of nouns into verbs. The phenomenon of turning a noun into a verb is very common. Some are more well known, like "shouldering the blame" or "tabling a discussion," while others are newer and less known. I just came across "when it storms." This conversion of nouns to verbs is known as verbalization and it has been around for as long as the English language itself. Ancient verbs such as rain and thunder and more recent conversions such as access, chair, debut, highlight and impact were all originally used only as nouns before they became verbs. In his book, The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker tells us that ‘Easy conversion of nouns to verbs has been part of English grammar for centuries; it is one of the processes that make English.’(1,4) . The 'conversion' of nouns into verbs in English is viewed as a transformational operation or set of operations, mapping a specific sense of a basal noun into a specific sense of the derivative verb. Thus, each sense of a derivative verb has a different derivational history from each other sense of that verb.

Verbalizing exists essentially to make what we say shorter and snappier. It can also give a more dynamic sense to ideas. Conversion is easy and therefore common in English because, unlike in many other languages, the base form of the verb does not take a separate ending. Verbs converted from nouns are all regular.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.


Dr. D. Nagarathinam, M.E., Ph.D.
Principal
Theni Kammavar Sangam College of Technology
Theni–625 534
Tamilnadu
India
dnagarathinam1960@gmail.com


Prof. L. Lakshmanan, M.A., B.Ed.
Department of English
Theni Kammavar Sangam College of Technology
Theni–625 534
Tamilnadu
India
laxmanmegalai@gmail.com
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