Green
green – verbo transitivo
greening – sostantivo non numerabile
In inglese, uno dei modi più comuni per creare nuovi significati è di partire da una parola esistente e cambiarne la funzione grammaticale. Nella maggior parte dei casi questo processo coinvolge un sostantivo (oppure un’altra parte del discorso) che diventa verbo, o un verbo (oppure un’altra parte del discorso) che diventa sostantivo. Queste trasformazioni si chiamano rispettivamente verbing e nouning.
Secondo alcuni queste trasformazioni grammaticali sono da evitare; sostengono infatti che le parole vadano usate solo nella loro categoria grammaticale originale, che questi nuovi usi siano brutti o poco naturali o non necessari. Questa opinione è soltanto un fraintendimento di base dei meccanismi della lingua inglese: verbing e nouning hanno radici antiche quanto la lingua inglese stessa.
Anche se queste trasformazioni grammaticali sono più frequenti con verbi e sostantivi, talvolta sono altre parti del discorso ad essere interessate; un aggettivo ad esempio può diventare verbo, come è successo con la parola green. Il verbo to green che significa to make something green o to become green, è in circolazione dai tempi dell’inglese medievale, ma nel XX secolo sono nati due significati nuovi. Il primo è quello di “rinverdire [un’area urbana o desertica]”:
This is the story of how permaculture methods helped green a small portion of hyper-arid desert.
Il secondo è quello sensibilizzare la gente ai principi ecologici o di rendere l’ambiente abitativo, lavorativo, ecc. più consono a tali principi, partendo dal significato di “ecologico” che l’aggettivo green ha assunto negli anni Ottanta:
So far about 23 events, festivals and destinations have been greened all over Ireland.
Many cities have attained high levels of excellence in greening their operations.
Can a company be green if it does not pay its workers enough so that they can afford to green their consumption habits and buy fresh, healthy food?
Questi nuovi usi verbali della parola green hanno poi dato origine a un nuovo sostantivo non numerabile, greening, che viene usato in senso letterale o fisico:
the greening of the Sahel
o in senso figurato:
the development of strategies for the greening of the urban economy
green – transitive verb
greening – uncountable noun
One of the most common ways of creating new meanings in English is to start using an existing word in a new word class. Most frequently this involves a noun (or other part of speech) starting to be used as a verb, or a verb (or other part of speech) starting to be used as a noun. These processes are known as verbing and nouning respectively.
Some people object to such changes in word class, maintaining that words should only be used in their original word class, or that these kinds of ‘new’ uses are ugly, or unnatural, or unnecessary. This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how language works: verbing and nouning have been going on for as long as the English language has been in existence.
Although changes in word class are most common with verbs and noun, sometimes other parts of speech perform the same trick, so an adjective can become a verb, as is the case with green. The verb green meaning to make something green or to become green has been around for a long time (in fact since the time of Old English) but two new meanings arose in the 20th century. The first is to plant an area with vegetation:
This is the story of how permaculture methods helped green a small portion of hyper-arid desert.
The second means to sensitize people to environmental principles or to change the way something is done or organized in accordance with those principles. This meaning springs from the environmental sense of the adjective green and started to be used in the 1980s:
So far about 23 events, festivals and destinations have been greened all over Ireland.
Many cities have attained high levels of excellence in greening their operations.
Can a company be green if it does not pay its workers enough so that they can afford to green their consumption habits and buy fresh, healthy food?
These new verb uses of green have in their turn given rise to a new uncountable noun, so we can talk about the (physical) greening of desert areas, or (figuratively) of places, systems, organizations, policies and so on:
the greening of the Sahel
the development of strategies for the greening of the urban economy
