22. Conversion. Definition of conversion. Semantic relations between pairs of words related through conversion.

We have productive and unproductive types of word-formation. There also exist major and minor w-building means. Major are affixation, composition and conversion and minor all the other (abbreviation, reversion, clipping,etc)

The process of affixation consists in coining a new word by adding an affix or several affixes to some root ‘morpheme.

Composition is a type of word-building in which new words are produced by combining two or more stems.

Conversion is a morphological (newly-coined w. has a new paradigme, which is a morphological categorie), syntactic (syntactical position in the sent. is different) and semantic (the word acquires a new meaning) word-building means.

Henry Sweet was the first to use the term conversion in 1892.

Every time we have a case of C. we have two different parts of speech because every word/part of speech has its own paradigm. It is a shift from one part of speech to the other.

e.g. smb doctored our papers. (внес изменения)

the idea that the word ‘doctor’ may be used as both a noun and a verb is wrong.the noun ‘doctor’ exists as a unity with grammatical forms and lexical meanings. We should say the same about the verb.

So C. is a morphological, syntactic ans semantic word-building means. If we have a case of conversion the meaning of a word changes and the syntactical position in a sentense is different.

The semantic rell-s in conversion are at first sight somewhat chaotic. A closer investigation, however, shows some signs of patterned rell-s.

Verbs based on nouns denoting some part of a human body will show a regularity of instrumental meaning, e.g. eye – ‘to watch carefully’ (with eyes); finger – ‘to touch with the finger’

The same type of instrumental rells will be noted in the stems denoting various tools, machines and weapons: to hammer, to knife.

Sometimes the noun names the agent (agential rells) of the action expressed in the verb: to crowd, to flock.

The group of verbs based on the names of animals may be called metaphorical, as their meaning implies comparison, they are also agential, because the verb denotes the behaviour considered characteristic of this or that animal: to dog, to mouse, to ape.

With nouns denoting places, buildings, containers the meaning of converted verb will be locative: to bag – to put in bag, to can, to bottle.

Verbs with adj. stems, such as blind, empty, idle denote change of state.

Deverbal nouns formed by conversion fall under the categories of process (go, hiss, hunt), result (burn, catch, offer), place (drive, walk, stand) or agent (they are mostly derogatory, e.g. bore, cheat, tease).

Conversion is not only a highly productive but also a particularly English way of word-building. Its immense productivity is considerably encouragedby certain features of the English language in its modern stage of development. They are: analytical structure of the lang (fixed word-oder, different prep-s and conj-s instead of inner flexia); simplicity of paradigms of English parts of speech; a great number of monosylabic words, which are more mobile and flexible.

The high productivity of C. finds its reflection in speech where numerous occasional cases of C. can be found, which are not registered by dictionariesand which occur for the particular situation (nonse-words) (e.g. “If anybody oranges me again tonight, I’ll knock his face off” says a hero of O’Henry when a shop-assistant offeres him oranges instead of peaches for the 10^th time).

There exist cases of false conversion in the language as well (love-to love, work-to work, drink-to drink) – these pairs of words have the same morhpemic shape not due to the process of conversion, but as a result of certain historical processes (dropping of endings, simplification of stems), when before that they had different forms (e.g. O.E. lufu, n. – lufian, v.).

The two categories of parts of speech especially affected by conversion are nouns and verbs. Verbs made from nouns are the most numerous (to hand, to face, to mouse, to blackmail). Nouns are frequently made from verbs (He has still plenty of go at his age. Go=energy). Verbs can also be made from adj. (to pale, to yellow). Other parts of speech are also capable of C. (to down, the ups and downs, the ins and outs).