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I am a French learner in an intermediate stage and I want to know, what are the rules of morphing French verbs into nouns? Especially "intangible nouns", Or is there no pattern and are they irregular? Foe example, verbs like:
chanter{to sing} - chanson {song}
aimer {to love} - amour {love}
lutter {to wrestle} - lutte {wrestling}
voler {to fly} - vol {flight}
Very interesting question, indeed, but surely delicate to answer in an exhaustive manner. In French, there are suffixes that help to form a noun from a verb, especially in the domain of abstraction.
You will understand them easily because the English language has inherited most of these French suffixes. Here are the main ones:
-ment : raffiner->raffinement, engager->engagement, régler->règlement, confiner->confinement...
-tion : former->formation, expliquer->explication, animer->animation, fédérer->fédération...
-age : truquer->trucage, bander->bandage, garer->garage, porter->portage, mouler->moulage...
-ure : dorer->dorure, gager->gageure, peler->pelure, graver->gravure, mouler->moulure...
-ance : porter->portance, recouvrer->recouvrance(old), espérer->espérance
You will surely have noticed the interesting case of the verb mouler which has the particularity of being used with two different suffixes: a moulage is a piece being formed in a mould, and moulure is nearly the same, but only dedicated to architecture (for example, the edge of a ceiling).
You can also notice that the suffixes -age and -ure are rather dedicated to concrete objects, meanwhile -ment, -tion and -ance are mostly used for abstraction, -ance being the least used, mainly in very ancient forms.
Well, there is still a lot to say, but here you have most of the main cases. The fact is that you can't really guess which form you have to use, and you don't really know if the verb you need really exists. But theses days, in France, people don't hesitate to invent new nouns from verbs, new verbs from nouns, and even new verbs from adjectives! Some examples:
solution -> solutionner (a useless barbarism, since the verb résoudre exists!)
positif -> positiver (another barbarism)
Concerning solutionner I remember a word from Clemenceau (a famous French statesman of the early 20th century, who held various high positions in the French government during World War I, in particular as war minister) being shouted at by a deputy asking him:
Est-ce que le gouvernement va enfin solutionner ce problème ?!
Clemenceau answered:
Ne vous inquiétez pas, le gouvernement va s'en occupationner !
Of course, occupationner doesn't exist, since the verb is occuper, from which comes occupation. Clemenceau said that to mock the use of solutionner. Unfortunately, that ugly barbarism is still often used nowadays.
-ure usually refers to the result of the verb ( pelure, dorure, soudure etc) whereas -age is either the name of the process or the framework used (by metonymy I guess ? ), hence bandage, soudage etc. A more explicit example : the verb souder (to weld) leads to two nouns : soudage (the welding process) and soudure (a welding joint)
Oct 16, 2018 at 11:44
Le sujet est bien trop vaste pour être traité ici. C'est la morphologie constructionnelle qui étudie la formation des déverbaux.
La formation d'un déverbal se fait suivant différentes méthodes, parmi lesquelles :
Il est évidemment quelques règles qui se dégagent :
Bref, le sujet est vaste et a donné lieu à de nombreux travaux savants dont ceux de Florence Villoing que je t'invite à consulter... si... tu cherches autres chose que des recettes de cuisines... ;-)
