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by rags2riches 400 days ago
Sure, you can say three nouns in a row in English. But can you then make them into a verb? Or and adjective? What happens when some of the three words in English already are in a form that also parses as a verb or an adjective?

English is a bastard language and it shows in its grammar.

2 comments

I have verbified nouns on several occasions.

My colleague this week took this a step further with this sentence: "We can model the data in [such and such way]. But then the user can PEBCAK their way into [impossible situation]." So close to poetry.

I was asking you to string three nouns together and verbify the resulting noun, like you effortlessly do in a language like German.

Also, note how your verbified noun is identical to the original noun. That's the lacking grammar of the bastardised English language showing.

The grammar isn't lacking, it's just that word function is determined by its position in the sentence and/or prepositions, rather than word mutation.

With respect to composite-noun-verbifying, it works so long as you use hyphens to make clear it's a single unit.

Buffalo buffalo buffalo.