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The treatment of conversion as a morphological way of forming words accepted in the present book was suggested by the late Prof. A. I. Smirnitsky in his works on the English language.

Other linguists sharing, on the whole, the conception of conversion as a morphological way of forming words disagree, however, as to what serves here as a word-building means. Some of them 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.

The treatment of conversion as a non-affixal word-formation process calls forth some criticism, it can hardly be accepted as adequate, for it fails to bring out the specific means making it possible to form, for instance, a verb from a noun without adding a derivational affix to the base. Besides, the term a non-affixal word-formation process does not help to distinguish between cases of conversion and those of sound-interchange, e.g. to sing — song; to feed — food; full — to fill, etc. which lie outside the scope of word-formation in Modern English.

The conception of conversion as derivation with a zero-morpheme, however, merits attention. The propounders of this interpretation of conversion rightly refer to some points of analogy between affixation and conversion. Among them is similarity of semantic relations between a derived word and its underlying base, on the one hand, and between words within a conversion pair, e.g.:

1. action — doer of the action: to walk — a walker (affixation) to tramp — a tramp (conversion);

2. action — result of the action: to agree — agreement (affixation), to find — a find (conversion), etc.

They also argue that as the derivational complexity of a derived word involves a more complex semantic structure as compared with that of the base, it is but logical to assume that the semantic complexity of a converted word should manifest itself in its derivational structure, even though in the form of a zero derivational affix.

There are also some other arguments in favour of this interpretation of conversion, which for lack of space cannot be considered here. If one accepts this conception of conversion, then one will have to distinguish between two types of derivation in Modern English: one effected by employing suffixes and prefixes, the other by using a zero derivational affix.

There is also a point of view on conversion as a morphological-syntactic word-building means,1 for it involves, as the linguists sharing this conception maintain, both a change of the paradigm and a change of the syntactic function of the word, e.g. I need some good paper for my rooms and He is papering his room. It may be argued, however, that as the creation of a word through conversion necessarily involves the formation of a new word-stem, a purely morphological unit, the syntactic factor is irrelevant to the processes of word-formation proper, including conversion.

Besides, there is also a purely syntactic approach commonly known as a functional approach to conversion. Certain linguists and lexicographers especially those in Great Britain and the USA are inclined to regard conversion in Modern English as a kind of functional change. 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. If we accept this point of view, we should logically arrive at the conclusion that in Modern English we no longer distinguish between parts of speech, i.e. between noun and verb, noun and adjective, etc., for one and the same word cannot simultaneously belong to different parts of speech. It is common knowledge, however, that the English word-stock is subdivided into big word classes each having its own semantic and formal features. The distinct difference between nouns and verbs, for instance, as in the case of doctor — to doctor discussed above, consists in the number and character of the categories reflected in their paradigms. Thus, the functional approach to conversion cannot be justified and should be rejected as inadequate.

Diachronic Approach

A diachronic survey of the present-day stock of conversion pairs reveals, however, that not all of them have been created on the semantic patterns just referred to. Some of them arose as a result of the disappearance of inflections in the course of the historical development of the English language due to which two words of different parts of speech, e.g. a verb and a noun, coincided in pronunciation. This is the case with such word-pairs, for instance, as love n (OE. lufu) — love v (OE. lufian); work n (OE. wēōrc) — work v (OE. wyrcan); answer n (OE. andswaru) — answer v (OE. andswarian) and many others. For this reason certain linguists consider it necessary to distinguish between homonymous word-pairs which appeared as a result of the loss of inflections and those formed by conversion. The term conversion is applied then only to cases like doctor n — doctor v; brief a — brief v that came into being after the disappearance of inflections, word-pairs like work n — work v being regarded exclusively as cases of homonymy.

Other linguists share Prof. Smirnitsky’s views concerning discrimination between conversion as a derivational means and as a type of word-building relations between words in Modern English. Synchronically in Modern English there is no difference at all between cases like taxi n — taxi v and cases like love n — love v from the point of view of their morphological structure and the word-building system of the language. In either case the only difference between the two words is that of the paradigm: the historical background is here irrelevant. It should be emphatically stressed at this point that the present-day derivative correlations within conversion pairs do not necessarily coincide with the etymological relationship. For instance, in the word-pair awe n — awe v the noun is the source, of derivation both diachronically and synchronically, but it is quite different with the pair mould v — mould n: historically the verb is the derived member, whereas it is the other way round from the angle of Modern English (cf. the derivatives mouldable, moulding, moulder which have suffixes added to verb-bases).

A diachronic semantic analysis of a conversion pair reveals that in the course of time the semantic structure of the base may acquire a new meaning or several meanings under the influence of the meanings of the converted word. This semantic process has been termed reconversion in linguistic literature. There is an essential difference between conversion and reconversion: being a way of forming words conversion leads to a numerical enlargement of the English vocabulary, whereas reconversion only brings about a new meaning correlated with one of the meanings of the converted word. Research has shown that reconversion only operates with denominal verbs and deverbal nouns. As an illustration the conversion pair smoke n — smoke v may be cited.

Synchronic approach

Synchronically we deal with pairs of words related through conversion that coexist in contemporary English. The two words, e.g. to break and a break, being phonetically identical, the question arises whether they have the same or identical stems, as some linguists are inclined to believe. It will be recalled that the stem carries quite a definite part-of-speech meaning; for instance, within the word-cluster to dress — dress — dresser — dressing — dressy, the stem dresser — carries not only the lexical meaning of the root-morpheme dress-, but also the meaning of substantivity, the stem dressy- the meaning of quality, etc. These two ingredients — the lexical meaning of the root-morpheme and the part-of-speech meaning of the stem — form part of the meaning of the whole word. It is the stem that requires a definite paradigm; for instance, the word dresser is a noun primarily because it has a noun-stem and not only because of the noun paradigm; likewise, the word materialise is a verb, because first and foremost it has a verbal stem possessing the lexico-grammatical meaning of process or action and requiring a verb paradigm.

What is true of words whose root and stem do not coincide is also true of words with roots and stems that coincide: for instance, the word atom is a noun because of the substantival character of the stem requiring the noun paradigm. The word sell is a verb because of the verbal character of its stem requiring the verb paradigm, etc. It logically follows that the stems of two words making up a conversion pair cannot be regarded as being the same or identical: the stem hand- of the noun hand, for instance, carries a substantival meaning together with the system of its meanings, such as:

1. the end of the arm beyond the wrist;
2. pointer on a watch or clock;
3. worker in a factory;
4. source of information, etc.;

the stem hand- of the verb hand has a different part-of-speech meaning, namely that of the verb, and a different system of meanings:

1. give or help with the hand,
2. pass, etc.

Thus, the stems of word-pairs related through conversion have different part-of-speech and denotational meanings. Being phonetically identical they can be regarded as homonymous stems.

A careful examination of the relationship between the lexical meaning of the root-morpheme and the part-of-speech meaning of the stem within a conversion pair reveals that in one of the two words the former does not correspond to the latter. For instance, the lexical meaning of the root-morpheme of the noun hand corresponds to the part-of-speech meaning of its stem: they are both of a substantival character; the lexical meaning of the root-morpheme of the verb hand, however, does not correspond to the part-of-speech meaning of the stem: the root-morpheme denotes an object, whereas the part-of-speech meaning of the stem is that of a process. The same is true of the noun fall whose stem is of a substantival character (which is proved by the noun paradigm fall — falls — fall’s — falls’, whereas the root-morpheme denotes a certain process.

It will be recalled that the same kind of non-correspondence is typical of the derived word in general. To give but two examples, the part-of-speech meaning of the stem blackness — is that of substantivity, whereas the root-morpheme black- denotes a quality; the part-of-speech meaning of the stem eatable- (that of qualitativeness) does not correspond to the lexical meaning of the root-morpheme denoting a process. It should also be pointed out here that in simple words the lexical meaning of the root corresponds to the part-of-speech meaning of the stem, cf. the two types of meaning of simple words like black a, eat v, chair n, etc. Thus, by analogy with the derivational character of the stem of a derived word it is natural to regard the stem of one of the two words making up a conversion pair as being of a derivational character as well. The essential difference between affixation and conversion is that affixation is characterised by both semantic and structural derivation (e.g. friend — friendless, dark — darkness, etc.), whereas conversion displays only semantic derivation, i.e. hand — to hand, fall — to fall, taxi — to taxi, etc.; 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.

 

Типичные семантические отношения  между членами конвертируемых пар (синхронический подход)

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. Summing up the findings of the linguists who have done research in this field we can enumerate the following typical semantic relations.

I. Verbs converted from nouns (denominal verbs)

This is the largest group of words related through conversion. The semantic relations between the nouns and verbs vary greatly. 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. screw n — screw v — ‘fasten with a screw’; 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’; coat n — ‘covering of paint' — coat v — ‘put a coat of paint on’;
4. deprivation of the object, e.g. dust n — dust v — ‘remove dust from something’; skin n — skin v — ’strip off the skin from’; etc.

II. Nouns converted from verbs (deverbal substantives)

The verb generally referring to an action, the converted noun may denote:

1. instance of the action, e.g. jump v — jump n — ’sudden spring from the ground’; move v — move n — ‘a change of position’;
2. agent of the action, e.g. help v — help n — ‘a person who helps’; it is of interest to mention that the deverbal personal nouns denoting the doer are mostly derogatory, e.g. bore v — bore n — ‘a person that bores’; cheat v — cheat n — ‘a person who cheats’;
3. place of the action, e.g. drive v — drive n — ‘a path or road along which one drives’; walk v — walk n — ‘a place for walking’;
4. object or result of the action, e.g. peel v — peel n — ‘the outer skin of fruit or potatoes taken off; find v — find и — ’something found,” esp. something valuable or pleasant’; etc.

In conclusion it is necessary to point out that in the case of polysemantic words one and the same member of a conversion pair, a verb or a noun, belongs to several of the above-mentioned groups making different derivational bases. For instance, the verb dust belongs to Group 4 of Denominal verbs (deprivation of the object) when it means ‘remove dust from something’, and to Group 3 (acquisition or addition of the object) when it means ‘cover with powder’; the noun slide is referred to Group 3 of Deverbal substantives (place of the action) when denoting ‘a stretch of smooth ice or hard snow on which people slide’ and to Group 2 (agent of the action) when it refers to a part of an instrument or machine that slides, etc.

 

Проблема субстантивации

Nouns converted from adjectives

The question now arises whether such cases when words with an adjective stem have the paradigm of a noun should also be classified as conversion, e. g. a private, the private's uniform, a group of privates. Other examples of words that are completely substantivized (i.e. may have the plural form or be used in the Possessive case) are captive, conservative, criminal, female, fugitive, grown-up, intellectual, male, mild, native, neutral, radical, red, relative and many more. Completely substantivized adjectives may be associated with determinatives, e. g.: Swinton combed out all the undesirables (Lindsay).

There is no universally accepted evaluation of this group. E. Kruisinga speaks of conversion whenever a word receives a syntactic function which is not its basic one.

The prevailing standpoint among Leningrad linguists is different. L.P. Vinokurova, I.P. Ivanova and some other scholars maintain that substantivation in which adjectives have the paradigm and syntactic features of nouns differs from conversion, as in substantivation a new word arises not spontaneously but gradually, so that a word already existing in the language by and by acquires a new syntactic function and changes its meaning as a result of a gradual process of isolation. There are other scholars, however, who think this reasoning open to doubt: the coining of a new word is at first nothing but a fact of contextual usage, be it a case of recognized conversion or substantivation. The process of conversion is impossible outside a context. No isolated word can ever be formed by conversion.

L.P. Vinokurova distinguishes two main types of substantivation:

1. it may be the outcome of ellipsis in an attributive phrase, e. g. the elastic (cord)
2. it may be due to an unusual syntactic functioning. E.g.: I am a contemplative, one of the impossibles.

It may be argued, however, that there must be a moment of the first omission of the determined word or the first instance when the adjective is used in speech in a new function.

There is one more point to be considered, namely a radical difference at the synchronic level: whereas words coined by conversion form regular pairs of homonyms with words from which they are derived, no such regular pattern of modelled homonymy is possible in substantivation of adjectives. It has already been emphasized that in nouns and verbs it is the morphologically simple words that form the bulk of material used in conversion. The predominance of derived adjectives prevents this class of words from entering modelled homonymy.

The degree of substantivation may be different. Alongside with complete substantivation of the type already mentioned (the private, the private’s, the privates), there exists partial substantivation. In this last case a substantivised adjective or participle denotes a group or a class of people: the blind, the dead, the English, the poor, the rich, the accused, the condemned, the living, the unemployed, the wounded, the lower-paid.

We call these words partially substantivised, because they undergo no morphological changes, i.e. do not acquire a new paradigm and are only used with the definite article and a collective meaning. Besides they keep some properties of adjectives. They can, for instance, be modified by adverbs. E.g.: Success is the necessary misfortune of human life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that it comes early (Trollope). It was the suspicious and realistic, I thought, who were most easy to reassure. It was the same in love: the extravagantly jealous sometimes needed only a single word to be transported into absolute trust (Snow).

Besides the substantivised adjectives denoting human beings there is a considerable group of abstract nouns, as is well illustrated by such grammatical terms as: the Singular, the Plural, the Present, the Past, the Future, and also: the evil, the good, the impossible. For instance: “One should never struggle against the inevitable,” he said (Christie)/ It is thus evident that substantivation has been the object of much controversy. Some of those, who do not accept substantivation of adjectives as a variant of conversion, consider conversion as a process limited to the formation of verbs from nouns and nouns from verbs. But this point of view is far from being universally accepted.

 

Словосложение в английском языке. Классификация сложных слов

Word-composition

Compounding or word-composition is one of the productive types of word-formation in Modern English. Composition like all other ways of deriving words has its own peculiarities as to the means used, the nature of bases and their distribution, as to the range of application, the scope of semantic classes and the factors conducive to productivity.

Compounds, as has been mentioned elsewhere, are made up of two ICs which are both derivational bases. Compound words are inseparable vocabulary units. They are formally and semantically dependent on the constituent bases and the semantic relations between them which mirror the relations between the motivating units. The ICs of compound words represent bases of all three structural types. The bases built on stems may be of different degree of complexity as, e.g., week-end, office-management, postage-stamp, aircraft-carrier, fancy-dress-maker, etc. However, this complexity of structure of bases is not typical of the bulk of Modern English compounds. In this connection care should be taken not to confuse compound words with polymorphic words of secondary derivation, i.e. derivatives built according to an affixal pattern but on a compound stem for its base such as, e.g., school-mastership ([n+n]+suf), ex-housewife (prf+[n+n]), to weekend, to spotlight ([n+n]+conversion).

Classification

COMPOUND NOUNS

Within the class of compound nouns we distinguish

1. endосentriс compounds
2. exocentric compounds.

In endocentric nouns the referent is named by one of the elements and given a further characteristic by the other. In exocentric nouns only the combination of both elements names the referent. A further subdivision takes into account the character of stems.

• The sunbeam type. A noun stem is determined by another noun stem. This is a most productive type, the number of examples being practically unlimited.
• The maidservant type also consists of noun stems but the relationship between the elements is different. Maidservant is an appositional compound. The second element is notionally dominant.
• The looking-glass type shows a combination of a derived verbal stem with a noun stem.
• The searchlight type consisting of a verbal stem and a noun stem is of a comparatively recent origin.

In exocentric compounds the referent is not named. The type scarecrow denotes the agent (a person or a thing) who or which performs the action named by the combination of the stems. In the case of scarecrow, it is a person or a thing employed in scaring birds. The type consists of a verbal stem followed by a noun stem. The personal nouns of this type are as a rule imaginative and often contemptuous: cut-throat, daredevil ‘a reckless person’, ‘a murderer’, lickspittle ‘a toady’, ‘a flatterer’, pickpocket ‘a thief, turncoat ‘a renegade’.

A very productive and numerous group are nouns derived from verbs with postpositives, or more rarely with adverbs. This type consists chiefly of impersonal deverbal nouns denoting some action or specific instance. Examples: blackout ‘a period of complete darkness’ (for example, when all the electric lights go out on the stage of the theatre, or when all lights in a city are covered as a precaution against air raids); also ‘a temporary loss of consciousness’; breakdown ‘a stoppage through accident’, ‘a nervous collapse’; hangover ‘an unpleasant after-effect’ (especially after drink); make-up, a polysemantic compound which may mean, for example, ‘the way anything is arranged’, ‘one’s mental qualities’, ‘cosmetics’; take-off, also polysemantic: ‘caricature’, ‘the beginning of a flight’, etc. Compare also: I could just imagine the brush-off he’d had (Wain). Some more examples: comedown, drawback, drop-out, feedback, frame-up, knockout, set-back, shake-up, splash-down, take-in, teach-in, etc.