13. Convertion.

Conversion is one of the principal ways of forming words in Modern English and it is highly productive. Conversion consists in making a new word from some existing word by changing the category of a part of speech, the morphemic shape of the original word remaining unchanged. The new word has a meaning which differs from that of the original one though it can more or less be easily associated with it: work — to work; love — to love; paper — to paper; brief — to brief, etc.

Conversion can be described as a morphological way of forming words. The following indisputable cases of conversion have bееn discussed in linguistic literature:

2. formation of verbs from nouns and more rarely from other parts of speech, and

3. formation of nouns from verbs and rarely from other parts of speech.

The treatment of conversion as a morphological way of forming words was suggested by prof. Smirnitsky. Other linguists define conversion as a non-affixal way of forming words pointing out that the characteristic feature is that a certain stem is used for the formation of a different word of a different part of speech without a derivational affix being added. Others hold the view that conversion is the formation of new words with the help of a zero-morpheme. There is also a point of view on conversion as a morphological-syntactic word-building means, for it involves both a change of the paradigm and a change of the syntactic function of the word. Besides, there is also a purely syntactic approach commonly known as a functional approach to conversion. They define conversion as a shift from one part of speech to another contending that in Modern English a word may function as two different parts of speech at the same time. The two categories of parts of speech especially affected by conversion are nouns and verbs. Verbs made from nouns are the most numerous amongst the words produced by conversion: e. g. to hand, to back, to face, to eye, to mouth, to nose, to dog, to wolf, to monkey, to can, to coal, to stage, to screen, to room, to floor, to blackmail, to blacklist, to honeymoon, and very many others. Nouns are frequently made from verbs: do (e. g. This is the queerest do I've ever come across. Do — event, incident), go (e. g. He has still plenty of go at his age. Go — energy), make, run, find, catch, cut, walk, worry, show, move, etc.

Basic Criteria: the problem of the criteria of semantic derivation: which of the two words within a conversion pair is the derived member? The first criterion makes use of the non-correspondence between the lexical meaning of the root-morpheme and the part-of-speech meaning of the stem in one of the two words making up a conversion pair. In cases like pen n — pen v, father n — father v, etc. The second criterion involves a comparison of a conversion pair with analogous word-pairs making use of the synonymic sets, of which the words in question are members. For instance, in comparing conversion pairs like chat v — chat n; show v — show n; work v — work n, etc. with analogous synonymic word-pairs like converse — conversation; exhibit — exhibition; occupy — occupation; employ — employment, etc. we are led to conclude that the nouns chat, show, work, etc. are the derived members.

Of more universal character is the criterion based on derivational relations within the word-cluster of which the converted words in question are members. It will be recalled that the stems of words making up a word-cluster enter into derivational relations of different degrees. If the centre of the cluster is a verb, all derived words of the first degree of derivation have suffixes generally added to a verb-base. The centre of a cluster being a noun, all the first-degree derivatives have suffixes generally added to a noun-base

Of very wide application is the criterion of semantic derivation based on semantic relations within conversion pairs. It is natural to conclude that the existence within a conversion pair of a type of relations typical of, e.g., denominal verbs proves that the verb is the derived member.

Of late a new criterion of semantic derivation for conversion pairs has been suggested.¹ It is based on the frequency of occurrence in various utterances of either of the two member-words related through conversion.The most universal are the semantic and the frequency criteria of semantic derivation.

Conversion is a convenient and "easy" way of enriching the vocabulary with new words. The high productivity of conversion finds its reflection in speech where numerous occasional cases of conversion can be found.