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Specific English grammar question

Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 5:24 am
by Futatsu
Hello. Nice to meet you all. I'm new here, and it seems there a lot of skilled teachers here. I have a grammar question. One of my students asked me about when verbs turn into nouns as in the examples below:

narrate ---> narrator / narration

act ---> actor / action

adapt ---> adaptor / adaptation


Please note the "tion" endings. What is this process / phenomena called? Is there a set rule? Thanks!

Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2006 7:29 am
by rusmeister
Everything hinges on your suffix.

"-or" ("-er") is an agent (person or thing that does the action)

"-tion" is the concept or process of the action