Nouns & Verbs

[Linda Lee Lonning]

On Mon, 15 Feb 1999, Robert Ingram wrote:

> Are you absolutely sure about this? Is it possible that verbs such as WISH,
>  PLAN, THINK, BELIEVE, and LIVE, can only be verbs in ASL: i.e., they have no
>  noun form? Perhaps the "nominalization" of these forms is an influence from
>  English and not a
> natural characteristic of ASL.
>
> jmacfarl at unm.edu wrote:
>
> > I have some questions for the list regarding Noun/Verb pairs in ASL. (other
>  signed language examples are welcome too)
> >
> > Much attention has been paid to the double/single movement alternation
 between
>  N's and V's in ASL c.f. (Newport & Supalla).
> > I have noticed that there are some Noun/Verb pairs that do not reflect this
>  alternation, and show no difference in form between the noun and verb. These
>  might include pairs such as WISH/WISH, PLAN/PLAN, THINK/THOUGHT,
>  BELIEVE/BELIEF, LIVE/LIFE etc.
>
QUESTION:  ...is it not that lexicon like WISH and PLAN just are produced
basically the same way and are not necessarily inflected in any special
way to be used grammatically as a verb vs. a noun?

Linda L. Lonning, BS, CT
Univ. of Wisconsin--Milw.
Univ. interpreter and referral interpreter