Conversion

One of the principal ways of fanning words in Modem English is conversion. Conversion is highly productive in replenishing the English word-stock with new words. The term conversion refers to the following cases: work - to work, paper - to paper, brief - to brief, wireless - to wireless. If we regard such word-pairs as doctor - to doctor, water - to water from the angle of their morphemic structure, we see that they are all root-words. However, on the derivational level, one of them should be referred to derived words, as it belongs to a different part of speech and is understood through semantic and structural relations with the other, i.e. is motivated by it. The question arises: what serves as a word-building mean's in these cases? The two words differ in the paradigm. A paradigm is defined as the system of grammatical forms characteristic of a word, e.g. son, son's, sons, sons'. Thus it is the paradigm that is used as a word-building means, Hence, we may define conversion as the formation of a new-word solely through changes in its paradigm. Thus, the change of paradigm is the only word-building means of conversion. As a paradigm is a morphological category, conversion can be defined as a morphological way of forming words.

The following indisputable cases of conversion have been discussed in linguistic literature: 1) formation of verbs from nouns and more rarely from other parts of speech, and 2) formation of nouns from verbs and rarely from other parts of speech.

"Stone-wall" problem

1) In the so-called "stone wall" complexes the first members are regarded by some linguists as adjectives formed from the corresponding noun-bases by conversion;

2) other linguists consider the first members (stone) to be nouns in an attributive function;

3) still other linguists regard "stone" as a substantival base and treat the whole combination as a compound word.

H. Sweet was the first to use the term "conversion" in his "New English Grammar" ID 1891. The essential difference between affixation and conversion is that affixation is characterised by both semantic and structural derivation (friend-friendless), whereas conversion displays only semantic derivation (hand ~ to hand); the difference between the two classes of words in affixation is marked both by a special derivational affix and a paradigm, whereas in conversion it is marked only by paradigmatic forms.

Typical Semantic Relations

As one of the two words within a conversion pair is semantically derived from the other, it is of great theoretical and practical importance to determine the semantic relations between words related through conversion.

We can enumerate the following typical semantic relations.

1. Verbs converted from nouns (denominal verbs).

If the noun refers to some object of reality (both animate and inanimate), the converted verb may denote:

1) action characteristic of the object, e.g. ape n - ape v - "imitate in a foolish way", butcher n - butcher v - "kill animals for food, cut up a killed animal";

2) instrumental use of the object e.g. whip n - whip v - "strike with a whip";

3) acquisition or addition of the object, e.g. fish n - fish v "catch or try to catch fish";

4) deprivation of the object, e.g. dust n - dust v - "remove dust from smth".