Borrowing of verbs vs. nouns? [from LINGUIST list]

[Liland Brajant Ros']

>Bonjour Liland,

Konban wa, Yann-san, hazimemasite, nado nado...

>You're totally right about these numerous words in Japanese with the
>do-verb (suru) plus a borrowed element (originally Chinese or even
>English as 'chekku suru', 'gettu suru', 'imeeji daun suru', etc, etc). I
>think this is also the case in Hindi/Urdu with f ex Persian/Arabic words
>plus karna.
>But I think the text mentioned to by Dave was on 'real' verbs, not these
>'borrowed noun plus do' construction where eventually it is more about a
>borrowed noun than a verb.

Yes, I agree, but I was just pointing out that some languages have
mechanisms readily available for more or less automatically turning any
borrowed item (regardless of the part of speech of the original) into a
compound verb, which may make it even less likely that they would bother
trying to borrow verbs per se.

lilEnd

PS: Check out my Japanese page at
http://www.geocities.com/lilandr/lingvoj/japana/index_ja.html

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