Japanese note

[extrapenguin]

Not in any textbook, but I've so far noticed:

話す hanasu "to talk"
話し hanashi "conversation"

写す utsusu "to copy"
写し utsushi "copy"

写る utsuru "to be photographed, to be projected"
写り utsuri "image, projection"

So it seems that swapping the final -u to a -i turns the verb into a result-type noun. (The result of talking is a conversation, the result of copying is a copy, etc.) Japanese derivational morphology is incredibly well hidden by the fact they pasted Chinese characters all over their language – there's a few words I've spotted where multiple roots get the same kanji, and where one of the roots has its meanings split between two different kanji due to Chinese splitting the concept space differently – but it is there. And I will find it.

(quick phone ETA - wrt "root split between kanji" I mean frex
帰る kaeru "to return"
返す kaesu "to return (sth)"

Comments

[nnozomi]

Interesting to think of it as a result-type noun! I'm not sure that would have occurred to me, as opposed to thinking of it as just the noun form. Does that mean that ru-verbs (食べる、着る and so on) don't have results?

(Tangentially, you may also be amused to know that when my partner texts me to say he's coming home from work now, he sometimes just sends me a 🐸 [frog, in case it doesn't come out] emoji)

[extrapenguin]

TBH I haven't encountered very many yet (I think that, after the post, I have encountered another 3, doubling my examples) so I simply noticed that all were result-type nouns, and, well, Finnish has multiple ways of nouning verbs (which mean slightly different things*), so Japanese might as well and I wanted to keep my options open, so to speak. If it's simply the noun form for all verbs where the noun form is not the bare root, great!

(idk about ru verbs! Haven't noticed noun forms for those yet)

* frex, with juottaa "to make someone drink; to solder":
juottaminen "soldering (act of; concept)" MA-participle
juotto "soldering (compounding form)"
juote "soldering flux"

[nnozomi]

juottaminen "soldering (act of; concept)" MA-participle
juotto "soldering (compounding form)"
juote "soldering flux"
This is neat!

I feel like Japanese mostly has only one way of nouning verbs (I mean, you could say "hanashi" or "hanasu koto" or "hanasu no" and so on, but they're not really different in meaning, just usage), but I need to think about it!