Verbs as Nouns ?
Are there any tips or expression to help identify when a verbs is acting as a Noun. For example, when learning direct object pronouns we are told to ask ourselves " Who or what is being "verbed" ".
"Smoking" is Bad","Cooking healthily is important", " Hablar es prohibido".
These aforementioned words don't jump out to me as nouns.
Any advice would be great.
12 Answers
Maybe if you could substitute the word for the pronoun "it" then it is functioning as a noun.
Playing basketball is fun. It is fun.
I want to learn Spanish. I want it.
I don't know if this helps.
Are there any tips or expression to help identify when a verbs is acting as a Noun. For example, when learning direct object pronouns we are told to ask ourselves " Who or what is being "verbed" ".
Actually, a very simple method: if you can replace a "-ing" verb with "it" (or a infinitive with "eso" in Spanish), then it is functioning a noun:
Smoking is Bad = It is bad
Cooking healthily is important = It is important
Hablar está prohibido = Eso está prohibido
Hmmm, gerunds are used as nouns in English: they are the subject of the sentences, therefore they are nouns.
same happens in Spanish, we use the infinitive of the verb , subject of the sentence.
Yes it is lorenzo, it's an infinitive acting as a noun.
I want to learn Spanish.
The infinitive "to learn" is acting as a verb with the implied subject "I" and the direct object "Spanish." You could change the implied subject by inserting a direct object after the verb want:
I want him to learn Spanish.
You can consider the whole phrase follwing the verb want to be acting as the direct object in either case, but the infinitive "to learn" is acting as a verb in both cases.
Consider the case of the gerund vs. the present participle:
I like swimming. (gerund: it is a noun and has no subject)
I am swimming. (present participle: it is part of the present continuous verb and has a subject)
In general, verbs with subjects are not nouns. There is a big difference between a verb being in a phrase acting as a noun and the verb being a noun:
I want to learn how to get the whole world to see me speaking Spanish in various countries as I travel through South America over the course of the next twenty years.
The bold part acts as a noun since it is the direct object of want, but none of the verbs in it act as nouns.
In Spanish infintives can easily have subjects, though. - lazarus1907
They can in English too, but not when they are acting as nouns. - lorenzo9
Clipped from this article:
A verbal noun is a noun that is formed from a verb by a grammatical process.
Natural languages may have one or more grammatical processes for turning a verb into a noun. In many languages that have an infinitive, such as English, the infinitive form of a verb can be used as a noun; in English this use is known as the "supine" or "to-infinitive", in which the bare infinitive is preceded by the particle to:
"To err is human, to forgive divine."
In English, the supine functions as a mass noun. The English supine is a non-finite verb, that is, it cannot be inflected to mark person or tense. While it cannot have a grammatical subject, it may take an object: "His greatest desire was to serve his country."
back to our discussion:
I think the concept of implied subjects is erroneous.
I want to learn Spanish.
I think what we have here is the supine with its object forming a verbal noun.
It may be splitting hairs, but I don't think to learn should be referred to as acting as a verb in the phrase. It is a supine, not a verb, forming a verbal noun. Or if you insist on calling it a verb, qualify it and call it a non-finite verb, not simply a verb. And this non-finite verb is acting as a noun; not a verb.
However, what follows in the article discusses the other type of verbal nouns (gerunds) which seems to be what the original question was discussing.
They can in English too, but not when they are acting as nouns.
This could be a difference between the languages:
Creo que lo mejor es eso.
Creo que lo mejor es hacerlo nosotros mismos.
The bold parts are both the subject of the sentence, and in the second example, an infinitive with a D.O. pronoun and its own subject. I can see how this example would not accept a subject in English, though.
I am not persuaded. I believe that "to learn" is acting as a noun (for the same reasons suggested by Ian And Quentin) and that that the "implied" subject is based on semantics not syntax (syntactically, there is no "implied" subject nor is one needed).
The speaker wants someone to learn Spanish. That person is the subject of the verb to learn. I think you know who they are talking about, for the simple reason that the subject is implied. If they were talking about someone else learning Spanish, they would have to explicitly state the subject.
There seems to be a lot of confusion over something that is really simple. Actions are verbs and activities are nouns. There are very rare circumstances in which the infinitive of a verb can be used to refer to the activity rather than the action, but in those cases there is no subject for the verb. When you have a subject followed by a verb conjugated to match the subject, then followed by a verb in the infinitive, the verb in the infinitive is actng as a verb with the same subject, even though it is part (or all) of a phrase acting as the object of the conjugated verb.
I want to learn Spanish.
I want to fly a kite.
I want to go to Paris.
In each case, you want to perform an action, which means you are using a verb.
Perhaps it wouldbe easier to use "like", which can accept both the infinitive and the gerund, in order to see the difference.
I like motorcycle racing. = I like the activity of motorcycle racing--I may or may not race motorcycles myself, and most people described by this sentence do not in fact engage in this activity themselves other than as a spectator.
I like to race motorcycles. = I like to perform the action of racing on a motorcycle.
The first uses a noun, the second a verb.
You can substitute bullfighting for motorcycle riding if it makes it easier for you.
The sentence with the implied subject only makes sense if the infinitive has the same subject as the initial verb: that is why there is an implied subject.
If there were an "implied" grammatical subject for the infinitive, then your argument might have some validity. However, it is, precisely, that assertion to which I object.
Given the pattern "I like ..." / "I want ..." (and countless others) any normal speaker expects a noun (or some grammatical equivalent) to follow. This is the essence of Lazarus' suggestion (with context, one can always substitute a pronoun for a noun). English and Spanish (and other languages) support the use of verbal forms as nouns. (In the case of Spanish, only the infinitive can take on this function while, in the case of English both the infinitive and the present participle [which we then call the gerund] can adopt this role.) Although you did not mention this point, it is important to none that a verbal form, so used, retains some of its verbal characteristics (can take direct/indirect objects and can be modified by an adverb). One thing that it does not retain is the "finiteness" (sense of mood/tense/number/person)
Consider the sentences "I like Mozart." and "I like garlic." Grammatically and syntactically these are exactly the same constructions ("Mozart" and "garlic" are nouns.) Semantically we understand, of course, that I mean "to listen to the compositions of" in the first case and "to eat" in the second. However, this has nothing to do with the grammar of the sentences (which is identical). At the grammatical level there is no implied "to listen" in the 1st nor an implied "to eat" in the 2nd.
I want to learn Spanish.
The infinitive "to learn" is acting as a verb with the implied subject "I" and the direct object "Spanish."
You could change the implied subject by inserting a direct object after the verb want:
(Actually, there is already a direct object of "want" [the infinitive "to learn" , acting as a noun, which, in turn, has a direct object "Spanish" because it retains some of its verbal regimen].)
Consider the sentences "Cain slew Abel." and "Abel was slain by Cain." Semantically, they are equivalent (they both mean the same thing.) Grammatically, however, they are quite different. One is an active construction and the other a passive. The fact that they are semantically equivalent does not mean that one can assign the same grammatical function to each word in the two sentences.
"I want to learn Spanish." At the semantic level, of course I am talking about my learning Spanish (to suddenly start talking about someone else in the middle of a sentence would cause considerable confusion). That does not, however, justify, saying that there is a grammatically implied subject for "to learn".
Creo que lo mejor es hacerlo nosotros mismos.
The bold parts are both the subject of the sentence, and in the second example, an infinitive with a D.O. pronoun and its own subject. I can see how this example would not accept a subject in English, though.
Interesting example. The obvious translation into English would be "I believe that the best thing is to do it ourselves." I'm not sure how serious grammarians would categorize "ourselves" in this construction.
If one is willing to tolerate (slightly) old-fashioned English (say Dickens, rather than Shakespeare), this could be rephrased as "I believe that the best thing is to ourselves do it." In this construction, "ourselves" is clearly the subject of the verb "do".
I want to learn Spanish.
The infinitive "to learn" is acting as a verb with the implied subject "I" and the direct object "Spanish."
I am not persuaded. I believe that "to learn" is acting as a noun (for the same reasons suggested by Ian And Quentin) and that that the "implied" subject is based on semantics not syntax (syntactically, there is no "implied" subject nor is one needed).
"I want to learn Spanish" here the "to learn Spanish" can be considered as a noun phrase............
..........the reason being that it is what you want
for example "I want money" - money is the noun.
The sentence structure is the same.
Quite simple really.
I think the concept of implied subjects is erroneous.
I want to learn Spanish.
I think what we have here is the supine with its object forming a verbal noun.
I disagree. The sentence means that the subject of "want" is the same as the subject of "to learn"--the person isn't saying that they want anyone else to learn Spanish, only themselves. If a different subject were desired, it would have to be explicitly indicated. Neither are they speaking of the general practice of learning Spanish, which is what the supine does.
In English, the supine functions as a mass noun. The English supine is a non-finite verb, that is, it cannot be inflected to mark person or tense. While it cannot have a grammatical subject, it may take an object: "His greatest desire was to serve his country."
I would say that "to serve" is not acting as the supine in this case for the same reasons. In the following example it does:
To serve the country is a great honor.
The supine almost always acts as the subject of a verb, even if it is part of a phrase acting as the object of another verb.
