halucigenia writes:
Why do we call a fist a fist, surely when we wave we call it waving, when we point we call it pointing, so a hand in the form of a fist is fisting (no crude jokes please).
The point, I think, is - a fist is not an object, but an eventand that we (in the west) tend to think in terms of objects rather than events.
Bad example. A fist is an object. "Making a fist" is the action.
But yes, we do rotate the temporal into the spatial to turn a physical object mov
ing into a physical object's move
ment. It's faster to use the noun form, as you have the beginning, middle, and end all there, all at once. It's also more useful, as you can disassociate the "movement" from any particular object that is moving, thus allowing you to mix and match.
People do occasionally get lost in the abstract, and think that because an act
ion is a noun, it has existence separate from any physical object act
ing, and so we end up with absurdities such as, "God is love;" but that's easily fixed by bringing the physical back into the picture.
™ Version 4.2