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Nouns resembling a verb in spelling and meaning can often mean something else instead
FUNDAMENTAL FEATURES OF ACTION NOUNS
“Action noun” is my term for a noun that resembles a particular verb in both spelling and meaning. Examples are movement, spelt substantially like the verb MOVE and able to mean “moving”, and carriage, similar obviously to CARRY and able to mean “carrying” (see 131. Uses of “Action” Nouns).
“Alternative meanings” in the above title refers to the fact that many action nouns, but not all, can mean something that is not an action as well as something that is. This fact is indicated more than once elsewhere in this blog, particularly in 14. Action Outcomes, which shows how the same noun sometimes represents the outcome of an action rather than the action itself, and 246. Tricky Grammar Contrasts 2, #4, where prepositions are shown to differ when the noun is not expressing an action.
However, there is no systematic exposition of which action nouns can have a meaning that is not an action, and how the non-action usage differs. It is this objective that the present post pursues. In doing so, it complements the post 249. Action Noun Endings, which presents an exhaustive list of action nouns, but is more concerned with their forms than their meanings.
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ACTION NOUNS WITH STATIVE MEANING
A slight problem associated with the concept of action nouns is the existence of nouns derived from “stative” verbs – the kind that express a state rather than an action. They are by no means rare in English: to say that verbs are mostly “doing words” is to grossly misrepresent their nature (see 21. Active Verbs with Non-Active Meanings).
Some verbs have an almost exclusively stative meaning. Examples are KNOW, EXIST and REMAIN, along with verbs naming a property, such as COST, LAST, MEASURE and WEIGH (see the end of 163. Ways of Naming Properties). Many other verbs can express either an action or a state. For example, SUPPORT can indicate not just the momentary provision or initiation of support but also its ongoing presence. Similar verbs include RECOGNISE, JOIN, EXPRESS and STAND (see 66. Types of Passive Verb Meaning). See also CONFUSE in 261. Words with Complicated Grammar 3, #3.
What is striking about nouns derived from stative verbs is that, just like nouns derived from action-indicating (“dynamic”) verbs, they include both nouns whose meaning is almost the same as that of the related verb and nouns that are more distantly connected. They therefore seem relevant enough to this discussion to be included. They will be classified as “action” nouns if they have the same characteristic that identifies nouns with an action meaning: ability to be paraphrased in a particular context by the -ing (gerund) form of the related verb. To illustrate this characteristic in action nouns derived from dynamic verbs, compare the following two uses of introduction:
(a) Introduction of the topic will take about 15 minutes.
(b) The introduction is full of spelling mistakes.
In (a), introduction is easily replaced by the gerund introducing (without of) but in (b) it is not. Only the use in (a) is an action noun.
In the same way, some uses of the noun knowledge, derived from stative KNOW, are replaceable by the gerund knowing and some are not:
(c) Knowledge of (= knowing) a language can improve job prospects.
(d) Much knowledge is stored in libraries.
I would classify knowledge as an “action” noun in (c) but not in (d).
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ALTERNATIVES TO THE ACTION MEANING
Before considering the alternative meanings that many action nouns can express, it is useful to have an appreciation of both action nouns that only express an action and verb-derived nouns that only express an alternative to an action. An example of a noun in the first group is emergence:
(e) The emergence of railways resulted from growing use of coal.
Here, as in practically every other context, emergence only means the action of emerging (beware of confusing it with the stative emergency – see 157. Tricky Word Contrasts 5, #3). Other action nouns that seem to be like this include abstinence, break-out, collapse, dependence, discrimination, neutralization, pursuit, return, storage and summarization (those underlined are typically countable). There are also many nouns ending in -al, such as betrayal, disposal, removal and survival.
Examples of verb-derived nouns that do not express an action are a store (whose associated action is expressed by storage), advice, ailment, deceit, difference, edition, hypothesis, photograph, position, proposition, recovery, remainder and summary. Advice always means “advisory message(s)” rather than “action of advising”, while a hypothesis is a result of hypothesizing rather than the action itself. For details of edition, see 197. The Language of Bibliographies, #3. For more on proposition, see 317. Tricky Word Contrasts 13, #3.
The main types of alternative meaning that action nouns can express could be called “action outcomes” and “activity locations”.
1. Action Outcomes
An action outcome is a concrete or abstract consequence of the action. Advice and hypothesis have this meaning despite not also being able to express the action creating it.
Nouns that can express either the action or its outcome are very numerous, examples being apology, blockage, composition, creation, cutback, discovery, enclosure, fall, growth, infection, injury, insurance, marriage, possession, prediction, receipt and utterance. It usually happens that the action meaning is expressed by uncountable usage of the noun while the outcome meaning is shown by the countable usage (see 14. Action Outcomes).
However, there are some important exceptions. For example, nouns indicating an increase or decrease, such as fall in the list above plus increase, rise, drop and downturn, are always countable. This can make the action/outcome distinction harder to see, though the -ing-equivalence test still works. The outcome meaning of a fall could perhaps be described as a reduced quantity or a downward slope on a graph. For more increase/ decrease verbs, see 115. Surveying Numerical Data, #2.
There is a further way of recognising nouns that need to be countable when expressing an action: they tend to be either spelt the same as their related verb (like fall) or made by combining the two halves of a two-word verb into a single word (like downturn). For lists of nouns of both types, see 249. Action Noun Endings.
One other kind of exception to the variable countability trend is nouns that can only be uncountable, even when expressing an action outcome. Examples are destruction, information, legislation, punctuation and research. To be used like countable nouns, they need to be linked with a countable partner noun: a piece of legislation/ research, an area of destruction, a research project, a punctuation mark (see 180. Nouns that Count the Uncountable).
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2. Activity Locations
An activity location is an object, place or situation that involves a particular action. For example, a carriage is an object involving the action of carriage (= carrying), and a competition is a situation where competition takes place. Once again, it usually happens that the action meaning is expressed by uncountable usage of the noun while the location meaning is shown by the countable usage (see 19. Activity Locations).
The difference between an action outcome and an activity location is more clear-cut in some cases than others. A carriage is obviously only ever an activity location, and not a result of carriage, but many nouns derived from speech verbs, such as explanation, introduction and suggestion (see 287. Speech and Thought Nouns), could perhaps be as easily considered a result of the corresponding action as a place involving it.
Other action nouns adapted to express an activity location include an approach (= area before an entry or way of doing something), an assembly (= people gathered together for special business), an election (= vote-casting event), a contact (= an acquaintance known well enough to be contactable), an entrance (= place of entry), a fight (= boxing match), motivation (= desire: see 276. Tricky Word Contrasts 11, #3), photography (= all aspects of photographs), a residence (= home), a speech (= formal spoken monologue) and a use (= way of being used).
For more examples, see 19. Activity Locations and 214. Test your Command of Grammar 2, #21.
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3. Action Subtypes
Some nouns that typically express an action when uncountable and something else when countable can alternatively when countable express a slightly different kind of action from the uncountably-expressed one. This combines the idea of action with that of “type”. Take the noun injury. Uncountably, it always means “the action of injuring”. Countably, it typically means “injured body part”. The other possible countable meaning is “type of injuring action”, as in this sentence:
(f) Doctors had not seen such a gradual injury before.
Similarly, a marriage, which typically means “marital partnership” can be made to mean “type of marital ceremony”:
(g) The couple formalised their partnership with an extravagant church marriage.
With some nouns, the subtype meaning seems to be the predominant countable one. This is the case, for example, with birth and death. Used uncountably, these nouns tend to mean the general concept of being born or dying:
(h) Birth can be a drawn-out process.
By contrast, the countable forms births and deaths refer to specific occurrences of people being born or dying. This kind of contrast may actually be possible with all of the nouns that I listed earlier as only able to express an action – nouns like emergence, discrimination and pursuit. The implication was that they could not be countable, but in fact, they probably can with this subtype meaning.The subtype meaning is indeed possible with many more nouns than just action ones. For a general overview, see 23. Subtypes.
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