Re: Most hated neologisms/incorrect usage

On Wed, 5 Apr 2006 17:05:53 +0800, "Patricia Pasterham"
<gopuppygo1@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

HVS wrote:
<snip>

What was wrong with "to take a tour", and in what way can one
judge "to tour" as a reasonable and necessary verbing, but "to
trial" an unreasonable and unnecessary one?

Good points there, Harvey, but I will pick you up on 'verbing'. That's a
shocking verbification itself, or did you do it just to tease?

The word, and the process of, "verbing" is not new.
The article in Wikipedia prefers to call it Verbification.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbing

Stephen Pinker has words to say on verbing:
http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1994_01_24_thenewrepublic.html

Through the ages, language mavens have deplored the way English
speakers convert nouns into verbs. The following verbs have all
been denounced in this century: to caveat, to input, to host,
to nuance, to access, to chair, to dialogue, to showcase,
to progress, to parent, to intrigue, to contact, to impact,
As you can see, they range from varying degrees of awkwardness
to the completely unexceptionable. In fact, easy conversion of
nouns to verbs has been part of English grammar for centuries;
it is one of the processes that make English English. I have
estimated that about a fifth of all English verbs were originally
nouns. Considering just the human body, you can [head a
committee, scalp the missionary, eye a babe, stomach someone's
complaints], and so on -- virtually every body part can be verbed
(including several that cannot be printed in a family journal of
opinion).

What's the problem? The concern seems to be that fuzzy-minded
speakers are slowly eroding the distinction between nouns and
verbs. But once again, the person in the street is not
getting any respect.
...
The most remarkable aspect of the special status of
verbs-from-nouns is that everyone feels it. I have tried out
examples on hundreds of people -- college students, volunteers
without a college education, and children as young as four.
They all behave like good intuitive grammarians: they inflect verbs
that come from nouns differently from plain old verbs. So is
there anyone, anywhere, who does not grasp the principle?
Yes -- the language mavens.
--
Peter Duncanson
UK (posting from a.u.e)
.

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