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Wugmeister @lemmy.dbzer0.com

Word for a specific way we noun our verbs?

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/33025461

I'm doing some conlanging for a book and I'm having trouble finding the word for how we can take a verb, add -er at the end, and get a word for a person who does that thing. For example, a driver is someone who drives, a commander is someone who commands, a lawyer is someone who laws, and a finger is someone who fings. I am having trouble finding out how other languages noun their verbs in this way since I don't know what this thing is called. Pls halp.

8 comments

  • The process is called "agentive nominalisation", and the resulting noun an "agent noun".

    From what I've seen most languages with the concept of agent noun do it like English does: start with the verb, remove any potential verb-exclusive affix, add a specific affix for agent nouns. That seems to hold true even for non-IE languages; see Old Tupi and Cebuano. However there are plenty twists you can add to that, for the sake of conlanging:

    • It doesn't need to be after the root. A prefix, infix, or circumfix is fine too.
    • You could have multiple affixes instead, either for different semantic purposes or different phonetic environments. (I think Irish does the later.)
    • As typical for affixes they can also interact with the root; for example Old Tupi does this, if you plop that -sar (agent noun former) into the verb aûsub "to love", the result is not aûsubsar as you'd expect, but aûsupara (I think /bs/→/p/?)
    • Something akin to Arabic vowel alternations seems realistic IMO. Or even consonant mutations.
    • Instead of an affix, a separated word. It would be like saying "drive doer" in English, instead of "driver".

  • I don't know the specific name for this process, but the general term is derivation. A suffix added to a word which changes its meaning is derivational morphology (this is opposed to inflectional morphology, which is grammatical. So -er in driver is derivational, but the -s in drivers is inflectional) A noun which is made by adding -er to a verb is an agent noun, and a noun which is formed by adding derivational morphology to a verb is a deverbal (and the inverse is a denominal). Hope you find this helpful!

  • Spanish is not so different:

    cocinero - cook from cocina - kitchen ie. "kitchener"

    mesero - waiter from mesa - table ie. "tabler"

    • Romance languages are really messy in this aspect, and there are multiple competing suffixes:

      • -dor; see amar→amador, hablar→hablador(a). The OG agentive nominaliser, in Latin it was -tor/-tōrem. Eventually it got a feminine version, as Spanish -dora.
      • -triz; the original feminine of the above, from Latin -trix/-trīcem. I think it isn't productive any more.
      • -nte; see amar→amante, hablar→hablante. From Latin present active participles, like -āns/-antem. Originally it was a way to handle the verb as an agent adjective, and more conservative grammars still describe it only like this, but neither Latin nor the Romance languages care too much about the distinction between noun and adjective, so... so yeah.
      • -ero/-era, the one you listed. From Latin -ārius/-ārium, -āria/-āriam, -ārium/-ārium. Originally it formed nouns from adjectives, and rarely from other nouns (X-arium = "where you keep X"). People started spamming it in other parts of speech.

      I listed them as in Spanish but in the others it's the same deal. And the confusing part is that there's always some subtle semantic distinction; for example an hablador is someone who's talkative, but an hablante is whoever is speaking.

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