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.

Zero-derivation as a «specifically English process».

It is usually assumed that the loss of ending gave rise to derivation

by a zero morpheme. Jespersen/7/ gives a somewhat to simplifying picture of

its rise and development . ‘As a great many native nouns and verbs

had...come be identical in form..., as the same things happened with

numerous originally French words..., it was quite natural that the speech-

instinct should take it as a matter of course that whenever the need of a

verb arose, it might be formed without any derivative ending from the

corresponding substantive’. He called the process ‘specifically English’.

As a matter of fact, derivation by a zero morpheme is neither specifically

English nor does it start, as Jespersen’s/7/ presentation would make it

appear when most ending had disappeared. Biese’s/4/ study shows quit

clearly that it began to develop on a larger scale at the beginning of the

13th century , i.e. at a time when final verbal -n had not yet been

dropped, when the plural ending of the present was not yet -en or zero, and

when the great influx of French loan words had not yet started. Bauer/2/

doesn’t think that the weakening of the inflectional system had anything to

do with the problem of zero derivation. Stems are immediate elements for

the speaker, who is aware of the syntagmatic character of an inflected

form. He therefor has no trouble in connecting verbal and nominal stems

provided they occur in sufficiently numerous pairs to establish a

derivational pattern. In Latin which is a highly inflected language,

denominal verbs are numerous: corona/coronare, catena/catenare,

lacrima/lacrimare; cumulus/cumulare, locus/locare, truncus/truncare, nomen,

nomin-/nominare; sacer/sacrare. In Modern Spanish there are full sets of

verbal ending (though in the declension only gender and number are

expressed) both types of zero-derivation are very productive. The weakening

of the inflectional system in English, therefor , can’t have much to do

with development of zero-derivation.

On the other hand, it cannot be denied that despite the relative

productivity of corresponding derivational types in other languages, the

derivative range the English patterns, that of denominal verbs, is still

greater. The explanation of this seems to de that English, unlike Latin,

French, Spanish, or German, never had any competitive types. So, whenever

a derivation was made nouns, it followed the one pattern that existed, i.e.

derivation by zero morpheme. The only derivative morphemes PE has for

denominal verbs are -ate, -ize, -ify. They have restricted range of

derivative force: -ate is latinizing and leaned, -ify is learned while -ize

is chiefly technical. All three derive almost exclusively on a Latin

morphologic basis. The suffixal type dark-en was not originally a

deadjectival pattern; in any case, it would have to a certain extent

rivaled the type idle verb f. Idle adjective only. Derivation by a

morpheme, esp. The type loan verb f. Loan substantive, must therefore be

considered the norm and is quite naturally very strong in English. In

German, there are many competitive types. It is bath mutated and unmutated

verbs (faul-en, hart-en, draht-en, haut-en). There are also denominal verbs

with a derivative morpheme ( stein-ig-en, rein-ig-en; with a foreign

morpheme telefon-ier-en, lack-ier-en ). In addition, German makes use of

the prefixes be-, er-, ver-. Such types as ver-rohen, ver-jung-er,

vergrosser-n; er-kalt-en, er-leichter-n; be-end-ig-en, be-herz-ig-en, ver-

eid-ig-en have no counterparts in English. English be- has never played a

serious role in denominal derivation. Nor has the type em-bed ever become

productive to any larger extent. The productivity of the type loan verb f.

Loan substantive seems to be thus reasonably for. The deverbal type look

substantive f. Look verb has been less prolific and is partly bound up with

certain syntactic patterns of grouping. For this, it is do had competitive

patterns. There are the suffixal types arriv-al, break-ade, guid-ance,

improve-ment, organiz-ation and the verbal substantive type writ-ing though

the latter has now chiefly role of deriving action nouns proper. This is

Страницы: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7