Why talk and think about self as noun? We always talk and think about self as a noun. When reading Buddhist philosophy, I have never seen exceptions to this. Both "common sense looking" and "metaphysical looking" is looking for the self. 

For me, it has been helpful to think about the word 'self' as a verb. Something like this: Self is action, even the sheer directedness of mind is an action. "I" self therefore "I" am. Apart from that, "I" am not. There is no looker apart from the looking, no self apart from the selfing. To me, the question "what/where is the 'I' doing the selfing?" is redundant. 

The self is the (dependently arisen) selfing. If, and only if, the causes and conditions for selfing is present, there is selfing. If they're not present in the first place, or removed, there's no selfing.  

Why even assume or presuppose that there could be the slightest possibility of finding this “thing” self? Why look? It’s not helpful at all, in my opinion. 

Does anyone know thinkers/writers explicitly talking and thinking about self as action/verb?
I think it's conventionally useful to identify 'the agent' of an action, for example, &quot;Whose turn is it to wash the dishes?&quot; implies there's a someone who'll be doing that (more or less reliably).
People (or people's feelings) are also nouned when they're used as the object of a sentence, for example, &quot;I hurt him.&quot;
Personal identity (including family) are also important (in law/jurisprudence) in assigning ownership of property, for example, &quot;Who owns this land?&quot;, and inheritance etc.

Having nouns in sentences is partly grammar. For example, Chinese sentence structure allows sentences without verbs (Wikipedia calls it &quot;to some degree pro-drop or null-subject language&quot;),

Today hike up mountains, tomorrow camp outdoors.

Perhaps similarly, a nounal subject is optional/implied/unecessary in Latin, where the suffix of the verb is conjugated to indicate the person. So for example amo, amas, amat is (or must be) translated into English by adding pronouns (required by English grammar) as &quot;I love&quot;, &quot;You love, and &quot;He or She loves&quot;; but maybe you can think of it without a noun (or with less of a noun) as &quot;first person loving&quot;, &quot;second person loving&quot;, and &quot;third person loving&quot;.
I might have heard that linguists have theorized that there's a correlation between grammar and reality, but I haven't heard any details about that.
I don't know Pali well enough to include it in this answer, but look at an example of some Pali at the top of this page (which starts with the Pali atta for &quot;self&quot;, from which we then get anattā or &quot;non-self&quot;).

I found a comment about Sanskrit -- Jayarava said,

There’s nothing wrong with creating new verbs from nouns. We do it all the time. There’s even a technical term for such verbs: denominative. We also go the other way and create verbal nouns.
And it’s not just English that does this. Sanskrit is full of denominative verbs and verbal nouns.