Verbing questions

Barbara Need nee1 at MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU
Thu May 3 02:54:03 UTC 2001


>I had a discussion recently in which the topic of verbing (turning nouns
>into verbs) came up. Two questions were raised to which I'd be interested in
>knowing the answer:
>
>1. What is the oldest verbed noun that has survived into the present day?
>2. As anyone ever tried to figure out what percentage of verbed nouns become
>a permanent part of the language?

Do you mean the oldest verbed noun in which there is zero-derivation?
Or the oldest verb formed in any fashion from a noun?

Barbara Need
UChicago--Linguistics

>I'd appreciate any answers/pointers/speculations.
>
>Paul



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