CONVERSION IN DIFFERENT PARTS OF SPEECH

In this paragraph we present the types of conversion according to parts of speech and secondary word classes involved. By secondary word classes we mean lexico-grammatical classes, that is subsets within parts of speech that differ in meaning and functions, as, for instance, transitive and intransitive verbs, countable and uncountable nouns, gradable and non-gradable adjectives, and so on. We know already that the most frequent types of conversion are those from noun to verb, from verb to noun and from adjective to noun and to verb. The first type seems especially important, conversion being the main process of verb-formation at present. Less frequent but also quite possible is conversion from form words to nouns. E. g. He liked to know the ins and outs. I shan’t go into the whys and wherefores. He was familiar with ups and downs of life. Use is even made of affixes. Thus, ism is a separate word nowadays meaning ‘a set of ideas or principles’, e. g. Freudism, existentialism and all the other isms. In all the above examples the change of paradigm is present and helpful for classifying the newly coined words as cases of conversion. But it is not absolutely necessary, because conversion is not limited to such parts of speech which possess a paradigm. That, for example, may be converted into an adverb in informal speech: I was that hungry I could have eaten a horse. R. Quirk and his colleagues extend the notion of conversion to re-classification of secondary word classes within one part of speech, a phenomenon also called transposition. Thus, mass nouns and abstract nouns are converted into countable nouns with the meanings ‘a unit of N’, ‘a kind of N’, ‘an instance of N’. E. g. two coffees, different oils (esp. in technical literature), peaceful initiatives. The next commonest change is changing of intransitive verbs into transitive: to run a horse in a race, to march the prisoners, to dive a plane. Other secondary verb-classes can be changed likewise. Non-gradable adjectives become gradable with a certain change of meaning: He is more English than the English. We share a more traditional approach and treat transposition within one part of speech as resulting in lexico-semantic variation of one and the same word, not as coining a new one.

27. Shortening is one of the two types of w.-creation in English, when a part of a w.or a w.-group is substituded for a word. The causes of the process can be linguistic and extra-linguistic (e.g. – the demnd of rhythm/changes in the life of people). There are 2 main types of shortenings: graphical and lexical. Graphical abbreviations are the result of shortening ws./w.-groups only in written speech, while orally the corresponding full forms are used. – from Latin e.g. – exampli gratia, p.a. – a year – per annum, lb – pound – libra; gr.abbr.of native origin – Mon. – Monday, Apr. – April, Yorks – Yorkshire, Mr,Mrs, B.A. – Bachelor of Arts etc. Initialisms are the bordering case between gr.and lex.abbrev. it’s sometimes difficult to translate initialisms without special dictionaries. There are 2 types of init. –a) initialisms with alphabetic reading – UK, USA; b) – which are read as if they are ws. – NATO, UNESCO; c)- which coinsides with Engl/ws. in their sound form; such initialisms are called – acronyms – CLASS – Computor-based Laboratory for Automated School System. Lexical abbr.are classified acc.to the part of the w.which is clipped. Mostly the end is cliped, as the beginning in most cases is the root and expresses the lex.mean.of the w. – apocope. – disco, intro, expo. In other cases the beginning of a w.is clipped – syncope. – chute – parachute, copter – helicopter. Smt shortening influences the spelling – Coke- coca-cola, trank – tranquuilizer. There are some secondary ways of shortening. Such as blending – is a w.that is made by joining a w.-group or two synonyms into one word – branch – breakfast+lunch, slanguage, magalog (magazine+catalogue) Back formation the process relevant only diachronically. It’s the way of w.-creation when a w.is formed by dropping the final morpheme to form a new w. It’s opposed to suffixation. Beggar – french origin – an in Engl. Formed a verb to beg. Other examples – to bach from bachelor, to collocate – collocation, to televise – television, to compute – computer. Distinction should be made between shortening which results in new lex. items and a specific type of shortening prope r only to written speech resulting in numerous graphical abbreviations(restricted in use to written speech,occur. In various kinds of texts,articles,advertisments – e.g. Dr. =doctor, Mr. =mister, Oct. =October). Graphical abbreviations cannot be considered new lex voc. units. BUT: in the course of language graph.abbrev turned into self-contained lex. unit used both in oral and written speech – e.g. a.m. ”in the morning”; p.m. “in the afternoon”; S.O.S. 1) transformation of w-groups into words involve diff. types of lex. shortening: substantivation; syllable abbreviation (also referred to acronyms), blending. Substantivisation – dropping of the final nominal member of a frequent used attributive w-group (e.g: an incendiary – an incendiary bomb, the finals – the final examinations).It is accompanied by productive by productive suffixation as in a one-winger from one wing plane, a two-decker from two –deck bus or ship. Acronyms are regular vocabulary units spoken as words. They are formed in various ways: a) from the initial letters or syllables of a phrase,which may be pronounced differently: as a succession of sounds denoted by the constituent letters forming a syllabic(e.g. UNO,NATO,UNESCO; as a succession of the alphabetical readings of the constituent letters (e.g. BBC,YCL,MP); b) formed from the initial syllables of each word of the phrase (e.g. interpol =inter/national pol/ice; Capcome =Capsule Communicator); c) formed by a combination of the abbreviation of the first or the first two members of the phrase with the last member undergoing no change at all (e.g. V-day =Victory day, H-bomb =hydrogen bomb). All achronysms unlike letter abbreviations perform the syntactical functions of ordinary words taking on grammatical inflexions. Blendings are the result of conscious creation of words by merging irregular fragments of several words which are aptly called “splinters”(e.g. tramsceiver,medicare =medical care, smog,brunch).Blends are coined not frequently in scientific and technical language as a means of naming new things,as trade names in advertisments. 2)Clipping – shortening word of two or more syllables(us. nouns and adj.) without changing its class memebership.Clipped words function as independent lex. units with a certais phonetic shape and lex.m-ng of their own.Clipped words differ from other words in the emotive charge and stylistic reference,they are characreristics of colloquial speech.There do not seem to be any clear rules by means of which we might predict where a word will be cut,though there are several types of clipping; words shortened at the end “pocope”(ad,lab,mike); shortened at the beginning “aphaeresis”(car,phone,copter); in which some syllables or sounds have been ommitted in the middle “syncope”(maths,pants,specs); clipped both at the beginning and at the end(flu,tec =detective,fridge) Acronyms and clippings are the main ways of w-creation in pres,day Engl. The shortening of words involves the shortening of both words and word-groups. Distinction should he made between shortening of a word in written speech (graphical abbreviation) and in the sphere of oral intercourse (l exical abbreviation). Lexical abbreviations may be used both in written and in oral speech. Lexical abbreviation is the process of forming a word out of the initial elements (letters, morphemes) of a word combination by a simultaneous operation of shortening and compounding. Clipping consists in cutting off two or more syllables of a word. Words that have been shortened at the end are called apocope (doc-doctor, mit-mitten, vet-veterinary). Words that have been shortened at the beginning are called aphaeresis (phone-telephone). Words in which some syllables or sounds have been omitted from the middle are called syncope (ma'm - madam, specs - spectacles). Sometimes a combination of these types is observed (tec-detective, frig-refrigerator).

30.SPECIFIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH COMPOUNDS. There are two important peculiarities distinguishing compounding in English from compounding in other languages. Firstly, both immediate constituents of an English compound are free forms, i.e. they can be used as independent words with a distinct meaning of their own. The conditions of distribution will be different but the sound pattern the same, except for the stress. The point may be illustrated by a brief list of the most frequently used compounds studied in every elementary course of English: afternoon, anyway, anybody, anything, birthday, day-off, downstairs, everybody, fountain-pen, grown-up, ice-cream, large-scale, looking-glass, mankind, mother-in-law, motherland, nevertheless, notebook, nowhere, post-card, railway, schoolboy, skating-rink, somebody, staircase, Sunday. It is common knowledge that the combining elements in Russian are as a rule bound forms (руководство), but in English combinations like Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Soviet, Indo-European or politico-economical, where the first elements are bound forms, occur very rarely and seem to be avoided. They are coined on the neo-Latin pattern. The second feature that should attract attention is that the regular pattern for the English language is a two-stem compound, as is clearly testified by all the preceding examples. An exception to this rule is observed when the combining element is represented by a form-word stem, as in mother-in-law, bread-and-butter, whisky-and-soda, deaf-and-dumb, good-for-nothing, man-of-war, mother-of-pearl, stick-in-the-mud. If, however, the number of stems is more than two, so that one of the immediate constituents is itself a compound, it will be more often the determinant than the determinatum. Thus aircraft-carrier, waste-paper-basket are words, but baby outfit, village schoolmaster, night watchman and similar combinations are syntactic groups with two stresses, or even phrases with the conjunction and: book-keeper and typist. The predominance of two-stem structures in English compounding distinguishes it from the German language which can coin monstrosities like the anecdotal Vierwaldstatterseeschraubendampfschiffgesellschaft or Feuer- and Unfallversicherungsgesellschaft. One more specific feature of English compounding is the important role the attributive syntactic function can play in providing a phrase with structural cohesion and turning it into a compound. Compare:... we’ve done last-minute changes before...(Priestley) and the same combination as a free phrase in the function of an adverbial: we changed it at the last minute more than once. Cf. four-year course, pass-fail basis (a student passes or fails but is not graded). It often happens that elements of a phrase united by their attributive function become further united phonemically by stress and graphically by a hyphen, or even solid spelling. Cf. common sense and common-sense advice; old age and old-age pensioner; the records are out of date and out-of-date records; the let-sleeping-dogs-lie approach (Priestley). Cf.: Let sleeping dogs lie (a proverb). This last type is also called quotation compound or holophrasis. The speaker (or writer, as the case may be) creates those combinations freely as the need for them arises: they are originally nonce-compounds. In the course of time they may become firmly established in the language: the ban-the-bomb voice, round-the-clock duty. Other syntactical functions unusual for the combination can also provide structural cohesion. E. g. working class is a noun phrase, but when used predicatively it is turned into a compound word. E. g.: He wasn’t working-class enough. The process may be, and often is, combined with conversion and will be discussed elsewhere. The function of hyphenated spelling in these cases is not quite clear. It may be argued that it serves to indicate syntactical relationships and not structural cohesion, e. g. keep-your-distance chilliness. It is then not a word-formative but a phrase-formative device. This last term was suggested by L. Bloomfield, who wrote: “A phrase may contain a bound form which is not part of a word. For example, the possessive [z] in the man I saw yesterday’s daughter. Such a bound form is a phrase formative."¹ Cf.... for the I-don’t-know-how-manyth time (Cooper).

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