Conversion as a syntactic process.
Contents.
I. Introduction_______________________________2.
II. Theoretical part___________________________4.
III. Practical part_____________________________32.
IV. Conclusion______________________________36.
V. Bibliography_____________________________37.
VI. Appendix I______________________________39.
VII. Appendix II_____________________________40.
VIII. Appendix III____________________________43.
IX. Appendix IV_____________________________46.
X. Appendix V ______________________________48.
XI. Appendix VI_____________________________51.
XII. Appendix VII____________________________53.
I. Introduction.
This diploma paper is the logic continuation of course paper. The choice of a theme of this paper is caused by the small studying of this question by way of teaching it in primary school. The word-formation, as one of branches of lexicon, is a difficult and volumetric question, therefore requires the careful studying. The basic theme of this paper is the question on conversion, as the most productive way of a word-formation however the other kinds of formation of new words: prefix and suffix word-formation, also are mentioned. The special place is allocated for productivity of adjectives of a colourmarking. Having the rather large ability to formation the new words it is interesting the fact, that formed from them by any of ways of a word, it is more often nouns, formed on conversion, have a tendency to enter into the structure of various phraseologies, phraseological word combinations, that speaks about connection between phraseological and word-formation systems of the language.
The paper consists of two basic parts: theoretical and practical ones, which examine one problems, but from the different corners of sight. The theoretical part includes some subitems. At first it is necessary to tell some words about the term "word", which is the main one in the paper and should be definite. The term "word" is taken to denote the smallest independent unit of speech susceptible of being used in isolation. Also it is impossible to disregard the definition of the field of word-formation. The mention about affix (suffix and prefix) word-formation in the paper is not casual, the conversion is more productive way, in comparison with them, because the formation of new words on conversion is possible practically from any part of speech, including prepositions and proper names. Speaking about the abilities to a word-formation of colourmarking adjectives, it is necessary to note three ways, on which this process passes: The suffix, conversion word-formation and the word addition way , though the more often English language prefers a word combination. Also the formation of derivative verbs on conversion is typical for the English language.
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Having analysed some courses of studying the foreign language it was interesting to find out, that the conversion is not mentioned at all there, though, being one of the most productive ways of a word-formation, could be a good way of updating the child’s active and passive vocabulary. Taking into account the opportunities, which are given by the knowledge of this way of formation the new words, it is easy to estimate a role of studying this material at school, it is natural that the beginning of presenting some items of this phenomenon to children is necessary to start from that moment, as soon as the children would have the sufficient lexical base for this purpose. It is possible to consider the third year of training as the most successful moment for the beginning of presenting the essence of this phenomenon to children. For confirmation of this hypothesis three experiments were spent: ascertaining, forming and control ones, with group of children studying the English the third year. By the purpose of all these experiments was to establish: have the children a representation about this phenomenon, can they acquire the offered information, is it possible to develop the skill of using such words in their speech .
It would be desirable to note the works of some authors, which were used in this work, such as: “English word-formation” by L. Bauer, “The categories and types of present day word-formation” by H. Marchand, “The word-formation abilities of colourmarking adjectives in modern German languages” by M. Jirmunskaya.
II. Theoretical part.
The term «word».
The term «word» should be defined. It is taken to denote the smallest independent, indivisible unit of speech, susceptible of being used in isolation. A word may have a heavy stress, thought, some never take one. To preceding the ‘infinitive’ never has a heavy stress, but it is a word as it can be separated from the verbal stem by an adverb (as in to carefully study). A composite may have two heavy stresses so long as it is not analyzable as a syntactic group. There is a marked tendency in English to give prefixes full stress thought they do not exist as independent words. Indivisible composites such as arch-enemy, crypto-communist, unlucky, therefore are morphological units whereas combination, like stone, wall, gold watch, are syntactic groups. As for the criterion of indivisibility, it is said that the article a is a word as IT can interpolate words between article and substantive (a nice man, a very nice man, an exceptionally gifted man). But a as in aglitter can’t be separated fromthe verb stem with which it forms a group and therefore is not a free morpheme (word). With regard to the criterion of usability, it must not be assumed that all words can be used by themselves, in isolation. It is in the very nature of determiners like the article the to be used in conjunction with the word they determiners.
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Definition of the field of word-formation .
Word-formation is that branch of the science of language which studies the patterns on which a language forms new lexical units, i.e. words. Word-formation can only treat of composites which are analyzable both formally and semantically. The study of the simple words, therefore, insofar as it is an , unmotivated sign, has no please in it. It is a lexical matter. A composite rests on a relationship between morphemes though which it is motivated. By this token, do-er, un-do, rain-bow are relevant to word-formation, but do, rain, bow are not.
Conversion.
Conversion is the change in form class of a form without any corresponding change of form. Thus the change whereby the form napalm, which has been used exclusively as a noun, came to be as a verb (They decided to napalm the village) is a case of conversion.
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The exact status of conversion within word-formation is unclear. For some scholars (Marchand/10/) conversion is a brunch of derivation, for others (Koziol /Marchand/10/) it is a separate type of word-formation, on a level with derivation and compounding. Whether this distinction has any real effect on the structure of a theory of word-formation is not clear.
Conversion is frequently called zero-derivation, a term which many scholars prefer (Adams, Jespersen, Marchand/1,5,8/). Most writers who use both terms appear to use them as synonyms (although Marchand/10/ is an exception). However, as Lyons/9/ points out, the theoretical implications of the two are rather different. Cruber/2/, for example, argues that to treat ordinary derivation and zero-derivation differently in the grammar is to lose a generalization, since both involve changes of form class, but claims that they can only by treated the same way, if a zero-affix is permitted. Otherwise, he says, derivation can be treated as a rule-governed process, but zero-derivation can’t be; that is, the relation between some napalm and to napalm and other similar pairs must be, considered to be totally coincidental Lyon’s/9/ own view (as noted by Matthews) is that in cases of so-called zero-derivation, an identity operation can be said to have been carried out between the base and the new lexeme. This means that there is a process linking the two lexeme, napalm, lent that this process defines the form of the derived lexeme as being identical to the form of the base. This is also more or less the line taken by Matthews himself, when he speaks of a ‘formation involving zero operation’. The theoretical dubiousness of speaking of zero affixes in language leads Bauer/2/ to prefer the theoretical position enshrined in the term ‘conversion’, especially when this can be given a dynamic interpretation, and that term will be used exclusively from now (on in this book). It should, however, be noted that this is an area of dispute in the literature. For a comprehensive review of the literature on conversion and a discussion of the implication of talking in terms of zero-derivation, the reader is referred to Pannanen.
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Productivity.
Conversion is an extremely productive way of producing new words in English. There do not appear to be morphological restrictions on the forms can undergo conversion, so that compounds, derivatives, acronyms, blends, clipped forms and simplex words are all acceptable inputs to the conversion process. Similarly, all ford classes seem to be able to undergo conversion, 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 determinatum is not expressed in the significant (form). The significate (content) is represented in the syntagma but zero marked (i.e. it has no counterpart in form): loan vb ‘(make up) loan’, look substantive is ‘(act, instance of) look(ing)’. As the nominal and verbal forms which occur most frequently have no ending end (a factor which seems to have played a part in the coining of the term ‘conversion’ by Kruisinga/8/) are those in which nouns and verbs are recorded in dictionaries, such words as loan, look may come to be considered as ‘converted’ nouns or verbs. It has become customary to speak of the ‘conversion’ of substantive adjectives and verbs. The term ‘conversion’ has been used for various things. Kruisinga/8/ himself speaks of conversion whenever a word takes on function which is not its basic one, as the use of an adjective as a primary (the poor, the British, shreds of pink, at his best). He includes quotation words (his «I don’t knows») and the type stone wall (i.e. substantives used as preadjuncts). One is reminded of Bally’s ‘transposition’. Koziol/10/ follows Kruisinga’s/8/ treatment and Biese/4/ adopts the same method. Their standpoints is different. The foregoing examples illustrate nothing but syntactic patterns. That poor (presented by the definite article, restricted to the plural, with no plural morpheme added) can function as a primary, or that government, as in government job, can be used as preadgunct, is a purely syntactic matter. At the most it could be said, with regard to the poor, that an inflectional morpheme understood but zero marked. However inflectional morphemes have a predominantly function character while the addition of lexical content is of secondary importance. As for government job the syntactic use of primary as a preadjunct is regularly unmarked, so no zero morpheme can be claimed. On the other hand, in government-al, -al adds lexical content, be it ever so little: ‘pertaining to characterizing government’. Therefore governmental is a syntagma while government (job) is not. That the phrase jar-off can be used as a preadjunct is again a syntactic matter. Characterized adverbs do not develop such functions in any case. We will not therefore, used the term conversion. As a matter of fact, nothing is converted, but certain stem are used for the derivation of lexical syntagmas, with the determinatum assuming a zero form. For similar reasons, the term ‘functional change’ is infelicitous. The term itself doesn’t enter another functional category, which becomes quite evident when it is considered the inflected forms.
Endings and derivation.
In inflected languages the derivant and derivative usually have a characteristic nominal or verbal ending. But, ending are not derivative morphemes. When English was still a more amply inflected language, the present type existed, but inflectional differences were more in evidence. Cf. the OE verbs besceopian, fugelian, gamenian, hearmian, freon (freogian), dernian and their respective bases besceop, fugol, and the weakening of ending was little bearing on this subject. With regard to denominate derivation, however, it is interesting to note that the levelling of endings brought about the loss of distinction in ME between the OE conjugations. The -an of ryth-an as well as the -ian of loc-ian resulted in -en. This reducted the number of patterns for denominal verbs to one.
Derivation connection between verbs and nouns.
With respect to both denominal verbs (type loan verb f. loan substantive) and deverbal substantives (type look substantive f look verb) it can be seen that as early as Old English a derivational connection existed between the present-infinitive stem of weak verb on the one hand and the stem of nouns on the other. As for deverbal substantive, there was some competition in the early stages of the language. Like other Germanic languages, Old English had strong verbs that were connected with substantives containing an ablaut vowel of the verb (ridan/rad, bindan/bend, beran/bora). However , this derivational type was unproductive so far back as Old English. The present-infinitive stem of strong verbs came to be felt to represent the derivative basis for deverbal substantives in exactly the same way as did the corresponding stem of weak verbs: ride verb/ride substantive=look verb/look substantive. But this contention of Biese’s/4/ needs qualification: ‘these facts indicate the resistance should by strong verbs to the process of converting them into nouns before, owing to the introduction of weak inflections, a distinct idea of a universal verb-stem had been developed’. Many of the verbs had weak forms that derived substantives at an early date have either never had weak forms are rare or later than the substantives. Verbs such as bite, fall, feel, fold, freeze, have, grind, hide make steal, tread are cases in point. This goes to show that the existence of weak verb forms is incidental to the rise of a derivational connection between the present infinitive stem of strong verbs and the stem of substantive.
This derivational connection is partly due to class where a strong verb and a substantive of the same root existed in OE and where phonetic development resulted in closely resembling forms for both in ME. OE for, faru was fare by the end of the 12th century while the corresponding OE verb faran had reached the stage of faren or fare about the same time. Other examples of pairs are bidan ‘stay’/bid ‘delay, dwelling place’, bindan ‘bind’/bind ‘band, tie’, drincan ‘drink’/drinc, drinca ‘drink’, fleotan ‘float’/fleot ‘place, where water flows’, helpan ‘help’/help, hreowan ‘rue’/hreow ‘rue’, slepan ‘sleep’/sl p, slep ‘sleep’. The derivational relation as it have been described them were fully established around 200.
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