and conversion seems to de able to produce words of almost any form class,
particularly the open form classes (noun, verb, adjective, adverb ). This
seems to suggest that rather than English having specific rules of
conversion (rules allowing the conversion of common nouns into verbs or
adjectives into nouns, for example) conversion is a totally free process
and any lexeme can undergo conversion into any of the open form classes as
the need arises. Certainly, if there are constraints on conversion they
have yet to de demonstrated. The only partial restriction that it is award
of is that discussed by Marchand. Marchand/10/ points out that derived
nouns rarely undergo conversion, and particularly not to verb. This is
usually because of blocking. To take one of Marchand’s/10/ examples, a
derived noun like arrival will not de converted into a verb if that verb
means exactly the same as arrive, from which arrival is derived. In cases
where blocking is not a relevant concern, even derived nouns can undergo
conversion, as is shown by the series a sign > to sign > a signal > to
signal and to commit > commission > to commission.
The commonness of conversion can possibly be seen as breaking down the
distinction between form classes in English and leading to a system where
there are closed sets such as pronouns and a single open set of lexical
that can be used as required. Such a move could be seem as part of the
trend away from synthetic structure and towards analytic structure which
has been fairly typical of the history of English over the last millennium.
This suggestion is, of course highly speculative.
Conversion as a syntactic process.
Conversion is the use of a form which is regarded as being basically
of one form class as though it were a member of a different form class,
without any concomitant change of form. There are, however, a number of
instances where changes of this type occur with such ease and so regularly
that many scholars prefer to see that as matters of syntactic usage rather
that as word-formation.
The most obvious cases are those where the change of form class is not
a major one (such as from noun to verb or adjective to noun ) but a change
from one type of noun to another or one type of verb to another. The
clearest example of this type is the use of countable nouns as uncountable
and vise versa. In some tea, tea is used as an uncountable noun, while in
two teas it is used as a countable noun; goat is normally a countable noun,
but if a goat is being eaten it is quite in order to ask for a slice of
goat, where goat is used as an uncountable noun. In general, given a
suitable context, it is possible to use almost any noun on either way: for
example, when the Goons took part in a mountain-eating competition, it
would have been perfectly possible to ask whether anyone wanted some more
mountain, using mountain as an uncountable noun. Similarly, proper nouns
can be easily used as common nouns as in Which John do you mean? or The
Athens in Ohio is not as interesting as the Athens in Greece. Intransitive
verbs are frequently used as transitive verbs, as in He is running a horse
in the Derby or The army flew the civilians to safety. Finally, non-
gradable adjectives are frequently used as gradable adjectives, as in She
looks very French or New Zealander are said to be more English. Such
processes are very near the inflectional end of word-formation.
Another case where it is not completely clear whether or not
conversion is involved is with conversion to adjectives. This depends
crucially on how an adjective is defined. For some scholars it appears to
be the case that the use of an element in attributive position is
sufficient for that element to be classified as an adjective. By this
criterion bow window, head teacher, model airplane and stone well all
contain adjectives formed by conversion formed by conversion. However, it
has already been argued that such collocations should be seen as compounds,
which makes it unnecessary to view such elements as instances of
conversion. Quirk suggest that when such elements can occur not only in
attributive position but also in predicative position, it is possible to
speak of conversion to an adjective. On the basis of:
*This window is bow
This teacher is head
*This airplane is model
This wall is stone
they would thus conclude that, in the examples above, head and stone
but not bow and model have become adjectives by conversion. But this
introduces a distinction between two kinds of modifier which is not
relevant elsewhere in the grammar and which masks a great deal of
similarity. It is therefore not clear that this suggestion is of any great
value. This is not meant to imply that conversion to an adjective is
impossible, merely that it is least controversial that conversion is
involved where the form is not used attributively. Where the form is used
attributively, criteria for concluding that conversion has taken place must
be spelled out with great care. Apart from those mentioned, possible
criteria are the ability to be used in the comparative and superlative, the
ability to be modified by and very, the ability to be used as a base for
adverbial -ly or nominal -ness suffixation. It must be pointed out that
very few adjectives fit all these criteria.
Marginal cases of conversion.
There are cases of change in form class from a verb to a noun and from
a verb to an adjective which do not involve any affixation, but which are
not clearly instances of conversion. These are cases there is a shift of
stress, frequently with a concomitant change in segmental form, but no
change in the morphophonemic form (or in the orthography). Established
examples of verb >noun shift kind are abstract, discount, import, refill,
transfer Gimson/2/, and of verb > adjective shift: abstract, frequent,
moderate, perfect. There is a certain amount of evidence that, at least in
some varieties of English, these distinction are no longer consistently
drawn, and such examples are becoming clear cases of conversion.
Nevertheless, the pattern is still productive, particularly so in the
nominalization of phrasal verbs: established examples are show off, walr-
over and recent examples are hang-up, put-down.
There is also a kind of partial conversion where a noun ending in a
voiceless fricative (but excluding / /) is turned into a verb by replacing
the final consonant with the corresponding voiced fricative. The process is
no longer productive. Examples are belief / believe, sheath / sheathe,
advice / advise.
Clear cases of conversion.
The least clear cases of conversion have been considered first, but
there are innumerable perfectly clear cases. For many types a variety of
subclassifications is possible. Thus instances of noun > verb conversion
can be classified according to whether the noun shows location (to garage
the car ) or instrument ( to hammer a nail ) and so on, or according to
formal criteria of whether the base is simplex or complex and so on. No
attempt is made below to distinguish of these kinds.
The major kinds of conversion are noun > verb, verb >noun, adjective >
noun and adjective >verb. Established examples of noun > verb conversion
are to badger, to bottle, to bridge, to commission, to mail, to mushroom,
to skin, to vacation. Recent examples are to chopper, to data-dank, to
leaflet, to network, and to trash. Established examples of verb >noun
conversion are a call, a command, a dump, a guess, a spy and recent
examples are a commute, a goggle, and an interrupt. Established examples of
adjective > verb conversion are to better, to dirty, to empty, to faint, to
open, to right and a recent example is to total (a car). Established
examples of adjective >noun conversion are relatively rare and are
frequently restricted in their syntactic occurrence. For example, the poor
cannot be made plural or have any other determiner. Less restricted
examples are a daily, a regular, a roast. This type seems to have become
much more productive recently, and recent examples includes a creative, a
crazy, a double, a dyslexic, a gay, a given, a nasty.
Prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs, interjections and even affixes
can all act as bases of conversion, as in shown by to up (prices), but me
no buts, the hereafter, to heave-no (a recent example) and a maxi (this
might be a case of clipping). Moreover, most of these form classes can
undergo conversion into more than one form class, so that a preposition
down, for example, can become a verb (he downed his beer), a noun (he has a
down on me) and possibly an adjective (the down train).
Extrocentric phrase compounds might also be classified here as
instances of conversion of whole phrase. Established examples where the
phrase acts as a noun are an also-ran, a forget-me-not, a has-been and a
recent examples as a don’t-know. An established example where the phrase
acts as an adjective is under-the-weather.
Derivation by a zero-morpheme.
The term ‘zero-derivation’.
Derivation without a derivative morpheme occurs in English as well as
mother languages. Its characteristic is that a certain stem is used for the
formation of a categorically different word without a derivative element
being added. In synchronic terminology, they are syntagmas whose
Страницы: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
