Conversion

Conversion is a characteristic feature of the English wordbuilding system. It is also called affixless derivation or zero-suffixation but it is not quite correct because there are other types of wordbuilding in which new words are also formed without affixes: compounds, contracted words, sound-imitation words etc. The term conversion first appeared in the book by Henry Sweet New English Grammar in 1891. Conversion is very productive way of worldbuilding. Its productivity is encouraged by the analytical structure of Modern Englisg which facilitates processes of making words of one category of part of speech from words of another. A great number of one-syllable words is also a factor in favour of conversion. Such words are more mobile and flexible than polysyllabic words.

Conversion is treated differently by different scientists. A.И. Смирницкий treats conversion as a morphological way of forming words when one part of speech is formed from another part of speech by changing its paradigm. For example, to form the verb to dial from the noun dial we change the paradigm of the noun a dial – dials for the paradigm of a regular verb I dial, he dials, dialed, dialing. A. Marchand treats conversion as a morphological-syntactical wordbuilding because we have not only the change of the paradigm, but also the change of the syntactical function. For example, in the sentence I need some good paper for my room the noun paper is an object in the sentence. In the sentence I paper my room every year the verb paper is the predicate in the sentence.

A word made by conversion has a different meaning from the meaning of the word from which it was made. Though both meaning can be associated. There are some regularities in these associations:

-the noun is the name of a tool or instrument, the verb denotes an action performed by the tool: to pencil, to nail, to pin;

-the noun is the name of an animal, the verb denotes an action or aspect of behaviour typical of this animal: to ape, to wolf, to fox;

-the name of a part of the human body – an action performed by it: to nose, to shoulder, to elbow;

-the name of a profession or occupation – an activity typical of it: to nurse, to maid, to groom;

-the name of a place – the process of occupying the place or of putting smth / smb in it: to room, to cage, to table;

-the name of a container – the act of putting smth within the container: to pocket, to bottle, to can;

-the name of a meal – the process of taking it: to lunch, to supper, to dinner.

In cases of conversion we have a question: which word is primary and which is converted from it? There are three approaches to this problem.

1.If the lexical meaning of the root morpheme and the lexico-grammatical meaning of the stem coincide the word is primary. For example, in cases pen – to pen, father – to father the nouns are names of an object and a living being. In the nouns pen and father the lexical meaning of the root and the lexico-grammatical meanings of the stems coincide. The verbs to pen and to father denote an action, a process. The lexico-grammatical meanings of the stems do not coincide with the lexical meanings of the roots. The verbs have a complex semantic structure and they were converted from nouns.

2. If we compare a converted pair with a synonymic word pair which was formed by means of suffixation we can find out which of the pair is primary. This criterion can be applied only to nouns converted from verbs. For example, chat as a noun and chat as a verb can be compared with conversation – converse.

3. We must take a word-cluster of relative words to which the converted pair belongs. If the root stem of the word-cluster has suffixes added to a noun stem, the noun is primary in the converted pair. For example, in the word-cluster hand n., hand v., handy, handful the affixed words have suffixes added to a noun stem, that is why the noun is primary and the verb is converted from it. In the word-cluster dance n., dance v., dancer, dancing we see that the primary word is a verb and the noun is converted from it.

What is relationship between conversion and substantivation? Some scientists refer substantivation of adjectives to conversion. But most scientists do not, because in cases of substantivation of adjectives we have quite different changes in the language. Substantivation is the result of syntactical shortening when a word combination with a semantically strong attribute loses its semantically weak noun: a grown-up person is shortened to a grown up. In cases of substantivation the attribute takes the paradigm of a countable noun: a criminal, criminals, a criminal’s, crimiunals’. There are also two types of partly substantivized adjectives:

c) those which have only the plural form and have the meaning of collective nouns: sweets, news, empties, finals, greens;

b) those which have only the singular form and are used with the definite article. They also have the meaning of collective nouns and denote a class, a nationality, a group of people etc.: the rich, the English, the dead.

These words are called partly substantivized because they do not get a new paradigm. Besides, they keep some properties of adjectives, they can be modified by adverbs: the enormously rich, the very unfortunate, the extravagantly jealous.

There is one more problem connected with convertion in English. In English there are a lot of word combinations of the type stone wall. For example: time table, homework, price rise, language teacher etc. If he first component of such units is an adjective converted from a noun, combinations of this type are free word-groups of the structure adjective + nouns. This point of view is proved by O. Yespersen by the following facts:

1. The word stone denotes some quality of the object named by the word wall.

2. The word stone stands before the word it modifies as adjectives do.

3. The word stone is used in the singular though its meaning may be plural, and adjectives in English have no plural form.

4. There are some cases when the first component is used in the comparative or the superlative degree, and adjectives can have degrees of comparison: the bottomest end of the scale.

5. The first component can have an adverb which characterizes it, and adjectives are characterized by adverbs: a purely family gathering.

6. The first component can be used in the same syntactical function with a proper adjective to characterize the same noun: lonely bare stone houses.

7. After the first component the pronoun one can be used instead of a noun: I shall not put on a silk dress, I shall put on a cotton one.

But other scientists say that these criteria are not characteristic of the majority of such units. They consider the first conponent of such units to be a noun in the function of an attribute because in Midern English almost all parts of speech and even word-groups and sentences can be used in the function of an attribute. For example: the then president (an adverb in the function of an attribute), out-of-the-way villages (a word-group in the function of an attribute), a devil-may-care speed (a sentence in the function of an attribute).

There are different semantic relations between the components of such combinations:

-time relation: evening paper,

-space relation: top floor,

-qualitative relations: winter apples,

-cause relations: war orphan etc.

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