Verb and a noun, coincided in pronunciation, e.G.

} love n (OE. lufu) — love v (OE. lufian);

} work n (OE. wēōrc) — work v (OE. wyrcan);

} answer n (OE. andswaru) — answer v (OE.

Andswarian).

Productivity of conversion

Conversion is not an absolutely productive way of

forming words because it is restricted both semanti-

cally and morphologically. With reference to semantic restrictions it is as-

sumed that all verbs can be divided into two

groups: a) verbs denoting processes that can be

represented as a succession of isolated actions from

which nouns are easily formed, e.g. fall v — fall n;

run v — run n; jump v — jump n, etc.; b) verbs

like to sit, to lie, to stand denoting processes that

cannot be represented as a succession of isolated

actions, thus defying conversion. However, a careful

examination of modern English usage reveals that it

is extremely difficult to distinguish between these

two groups. This can be exemplified in such pairs as

to invite — an invite, to take — a take, to sing

— a sing, to bleed — a bleed, to win — a win,

etc. The possibility for the verbs to be formed from

nouns through conversion seems to be illimitable.

The morphological restrictions suggested by cer-

tain linguists are found in the fact that the complex-

ity of word-structure does not favour conversion. It

is significant that in MnE. there are no verbs con-

verted from nouns with the suffixes -ing and -

ation. This restriction is counterbalanced, however,

by innumerable occasional conversion pairs of

rather complex structure, e.g. to package, to

holiday, to wireless, to petition, to reverence,

etc. Thus, it seems possible to regard conversion as

a highly productive way of forming words in Modern

English.

COMPOUNDING

WORD-COMPOSITION

Compounds, as has been mentioned elsewhere,

are made up of two intermediate constituents (ICs)

They are formally

and semantically dependent on the constituent

bases and the semantic relations

Structure

Compound words like all other inseparable vo-

cabulary units take shape in a definite system of

grammatical forms, syntactic and semantic fea-

tures. Compounds, on the one hand, are generally

clearly distinguished from and often opposed to free

word-groups, on the other hand they lie astride the

border-line between words and word-groups and

display close ties and correlation with the system of

free word-groups. The structural inseparability of

compound words finds expression in the unity of

their specific distributional pattern and specific

stress and spelling pattern.

Structurally, compound words are characterised

by the specific order and arrangement in which

bases follow one another. The order in which the

two bases are placed within a compound is rigidly

fixed in Modern English and it is the second IC that

makes the head-member of the word, i.e. its struc-

tural and semantic centre.

Phоnetiсallу, compounds are also marked by a

specific structure of their own. No phonemic

changes of bases occur in composition but the com-

pound word acquires a new stress pattern, different

from the stress in the motivating words, for exam-

ple words key and hole or hot and house each

possess their own stress but when the stems of

these words are brought together to make up a new

compound word, ‘keyhole — ‘a hole in a lock into

which a key fits’, or ‘hot-house — ‘a heated build-