Tagged Questions
-2
votes
1answer
208 views
Does the suffix -ion in “invention” mean the same in “station”?
Is the suffix -ion in the word invention the same as in the words direction, nation, fiction, station?
3
votes
1answer
320 views
Forming occupational nouns: Why do you say “butcher” and not “butchian” or “butchor”?
Question: Occupational nouns (butcher, sailor, musician, etc.) have various suffixes in English (er, or, ee, ant, etc.). Is there a set of rules to form occupational nouns from the verbs or their ...
-1
votes
1answer
131 views
What term describes the relationship between 'collectivism' and 'collectivisation'?
What is collectivism, in terms of grammar, of collectivisation?
Put another way:
Collectivism is the [which word?] of collectivisation?
Another example word pair might be centralism and ...
0
votes
1answer
137 views
“Utilisability” vs. “usability”
I tried hard to find if we have the noun utilisability in dictionaries but it does not exist. But, when goolging, I found some articles that contain this word.
I know that we have the verb to use ...
5
votes
3answers
3k views
Which nouns can be used as verbs?
Someone told me that the English language is special (compared to German, at least) in the way that every noun could be used as a verb. I think this phenomenon is called supine. Is this correct?
...
3
votes
4answers
431 views
Adjective or noun when referring to plural citizenship
What is the right form to use when talking about plural citizenship?
"We are Italian" or "we are Italians"? (or American, Or German or any other ending with "*an")
Same issue for "Saudi" or "Saudies", ...
9
votes
3answers
563 views
Can we call a person who loses things a “loser”?
Think > Thinker
Draw > Drawer
Can we call a person who loses thing a loser?
Of course, I do not mean that they are not successful or failed but what should I call them?
8
votes
1answer
1k views
Rules for nominalizing a verb
To nominalize a verb, you sometimes use the gerund.
to happen --> a happening
Sometimes it's a different word.
to arrive --> an arrival
so we don't write
to arrive --> an *arriving
...
-3
votes
1answer
414 views
Origin of pluralisation of verbs and nouns in English
From this question, I was just wondering why plural nouns use the ending -s, while the exact same ending is used for the third person singular form of verbs.
How did we get into this weird situation? ...
