Secondary verbs

Secondary-a. Some derivations have the form of an Agent-nom but a specialized meaning. A beginner is not someone who habitually begins things but rather someone who is new and inexperienced at a particular task. Finisher can refer to a workman who performs the final task in a production process. A starter, based on the transitive sense of the verb, is someone who gives the signal for a race to start; this is a kind of Agent-nom. There is also starter (motor) in a car, which is an Inst-nom (and the quite different word starters, which describes the first course in a meal, and has had its meaning extended to refer to the first part of any reasonably complex activity). To describe someone as a trier implies that they don’t often succeed, but refuse to give up. Perhaps the only straightforward Agent-nom’s of Secondary-a verbs, maintaining the same focus of meaning as the verb, are manager, dawdler and venturer.

Most Secondary-a verbs do have a Unit-nom (which is countable). In the BEGINNING type we find beginning, start, finish, commencement, continuation, cessation, completion. In the TRYING type there are try, attempt, practice, repetition. Failure functions both as a Unit-nom and as a special kind of Agent-nom (someone who habitually, although not volitionally, fails). In the HURRYING type there is Unit-nom hesitation and Activity-nom’s hurrying, hastening, dawdling and hesitating. In the DARING type there is the noun dare, relating to the causative sense of the verb—He dared me to enter the lion’s den and I responded to his dare. There is also the Unit-nom venture.

Secondary-b. Only a couple of verbs in the WANTING type form an Agent-nom—planner and pretender. However, most of them have Unit-nom’s—wish, desire, hope, dread, craving, expectation, and so on. Needs and requirement are Object-nom’s, while plan and aim are Result-nom’s. Verbs in the POSTPONING type form Unit-nom’s—postponement, deferral, delay.

Secondary-c. Just a few verbs in the MAKING type form an Agent-nom— rescuer, tempter. The Agent-nom causer tends nowadays to be restricted to technical usage. This was not always so; in Act 1, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Richard III we find Is not the causer of the timeless death ... As blameful as the executioner? Here causer, like cause, refers to an indirect action to bring something about.

Verbs in the HELPING type readily form Agent-nom’s—helper, assistant, collaborator, supporter, opposer and opponent. They also form Activitynom’s—help, aid, assistance, cooperation, collaboration, hindrance, support, opposition.

Secondary-d. There are basically no nominalizations of these verbs. There are the nouns appearance, look, sound, feeling and matter, but these do not show any of the relationships to the underlying verbs which have been taken to be characteristic of the nine varieties of nominalization dealt with here.