Conversion

Conversion is one of the most productive ways of modern English word-building. 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. Normally, a word changes its syntactic function without any shift in lexical meaning. It has also paradigm peculiar to its new category as a part of speech.

nurse, n.	to nurse, v.
Substantive paradigm -s, pl. -‘s, poss. c., sg. -s’, poss. c., pl.	Verbal paradigm -s, 3^rd p.sg. -ed, past indef., past part. -ing, pres. part., gerund

The new word automatically acquires all the properties of the new category, so that if it has entered the verb category, it is now regularly used in all the forms of tense and it also develops the forms of the participle and the gerund.

The two categories of parts of speech especially affected by conversion are nouns and verbs. Verbs made from nouns are the most numerous among the words produced by the conversion: to back, to face, to eye, to room, to stage.

Nouns are frequently made from verbs: do – event, incident; go – energy. Verbs can also be made from adjectives: to yellow, to pale, to cool.

A word made by conversion has a different meaning from that of the word from which it was made though the two meanings can be associated. There are certain regularities in these classifications which can be classified. For example, in the group of verbs made from nouns some of the regular semantic associations are the following:

1. The noun is the name of a tool or implement (инструмент), the verb denotes an action performed by the tool: to hammer, to brush, to comb, to pencil.

2. The noun is the name of an animal, the verb denotes an action or aspect of behaviour considered typical of this animal: to dog, to wolf, to monkey, to fox, to rat.

3. The name of a part of the human body – an action performed by it: to hand, to leg, to eye, to nose, to shoulder.

4. The name of a profession or occupation – an activity typical of it: to nurse, to cook, to maid.

5. The name of a place – the process of occupying the place or of putting smb./smth. In it: to room, to house, to place, to table.

6. The name of a container – the act of putting smth. within the container: to can, to bottle, to pocket.

7. The name of a meal – the process of taking it: to lunch, to supper.

These groups do not include all the great variety of words made from nouns by conversion. They just represent the most obvious cases.

Composition

This type of word-building, in which new words are produced by combining two or more stems, is one of the three most productive types in Modern English; the other two are conversion and affixation. There are three types of compounds: neutral, morphological and syntactic.

In neutral compounds the process of compounding is realized without any linking elements, by a mere juxtaposition (наложение, соприкосновение) of two stems: bedroom, sunflower, blackbird.

Morphological compounds are few in number. This type is non-productive. It is represented by words in which two compounding (соединять) stems are combined by a linking vowel or consonant: Anglo-Saxon, spokesman, statesman.

Syntactic compounds are formed from segments of speech, preserving in their structure numerous traces of syntagmatic relations typical of speech: articles, prepositions, adverbs: Jack-of-all-trades, mother-in-law, good-for-nothing (бездельник).