I'm not a linguist, Herb, but a philosopher, so I am learning from you.  You
acknowledge that words can be moved about as regards function, but you say
that there are 'strict conditions'.  Yet the conditions are not so strict
since anyone, given sufficient purpose and imagination, can wangle them into
another slot.  Take 'may':  "I wouldn't rely on him -- he's just a may."
But of course we still sense the oddity, so we remain aware of the customary
use in the game as it is played at this historical juncture.

The feel of words belonging primarily to one function surely comes from the
fact that these are the habitual usages within the 'rules' at this time.
Your 'seethe/sodden' example nicely shows how the sense of word-class can be
obvious and active at one time and be wholly abandoned at another -- the
usage of a word within the 'rules' has changed -- what started as an odd
'one-off' got picked up by others and became general (or, with 'sodden',
perhaps it was that the verb use just faded out).  I must concede that we
can abstract from these changes and note about the game that there are slots
apart from what fills them at any time:  thus surely we can distinguish verb
from noun in the abstract sense, in the relative placing of these slots in
syntax, but, as your example, well shows, we have to hold back from saying
that some word now used as a verb is intrinsically and eternally a 'verb' or
a 'noun' -- 'sodden' isn't a 'verb' anymore.

Edmond


Dr. Edmond Wright
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