CONVERSION COMPOSITION Lecture 4 CONVERSION Conversion consists

CONVERSION. COMPOSITION Lecture 4

CONVERSION 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 remains unchanged. The new word acquires a meaning, which differs from that of the original one though it can be easily associated with it. The converted word acquires a new paradigm and a new syntactic function, which is peculiar to its new category as a part of speech.

I took a taxi. They taxied to the station. They ran in and out. He knows the ins and outs of our town. He went home then. The then word will be mad they say. Two noes make a yes. I will take no no for an answer. She mothered Betty to the point of hysteria. We tea at four. There is a constant struggle between the haves and the have-nots. But me no buts if me no ifs.

Linguistic study of conversion 1891 - H. Sweet: Conversion is not a type of word-building but a functional change only. A. I. Smirnitsky : Conversion is a morphological way of forming new words solely through changes in the paradigm (a paradigm is a set of grammatical forms of this or that word proper to it as a part of speech) – morphological definition. I. V. Arnold, V. N Yartseva: Conversion is a combined morphological and syntactic way of word-building, as a new word appeared not in isolation, but in a definite environment of other words, and it involves both a change of the paradigm and the change n the syntactic function.

The problem of the first component of the ‘stone wall’. speech sound, rose garden, cannon ball, log cabin, price rise Otto Jesperson : ‘stone’ denotes some qualities of the noun ‘wall’ as adjective in the function of attributes usually do; ‘stone’ stands before the word it modifies as adjectives in the function of attribute do; ‘stone’ is used in singular although the meaning can be plural and adjectives in English have no plural; there are cases when ‘stone’ is used in degrees of comparison (the bottomest end of the scale); ‘stone’ sometimes have adverbs which characterize it: a purely family gathering; ‘stone’ may be used side by side with proper adjectives to characterize the same noun: the lonely bare stone houses.

Prof. Yartseva, Ilyish, Zhugadlo, Sweet: ‘Stone’ is characteristic of English as it is poor in morphological forms. Other parts of speech and even word combinations and whole sentences can be used in the function of an attribute in English: then President out-of-the-way places a devil-may-care spend

Types of Conversion 1) verbalization (the formation of verbs), e. g. ape →to ape 2) substantivation (the formation of nouns), e. g. let (v. ) let (n) 3)adjectivation (the formation of adjectives), e. g. down (adv. ) down (adj. ) 4) adverbalization (the formation of adverbs), e. g. home (n. ) home (adv. )

Denominal verbs action characteristic of an object: ape n. ape v. instrumental use of an object: whip n. whip v. acquisition or addition of an object: fish n. fish v. deprivation of an object: dust n. dust v. ‘ location: pocket n. pocket v.

Deverbal substantives instance of the action: jump v. jump n. agent of an action: help v. help n. place of the action: drive v. drive n. result of the action: peel v. peel n. object of the action: let v. let n.

Conversion vs. Substantivization of Adjectives Substantivization of adjectives is not the result of changing the paradigm, it is the result of the slow process of changing the syntactical function of a word. In cases of substantivization of adjectives, we primarily have word combinations of an adjective with a noun, where the adjective is much stronger semantically because the noun expresses some general notion (e. g. a native man, a captive man, a conservative man). Later on, the noun is dropped as it is less important semantically, and the attribute is now used in the function and with the meaning of the whole combination.

a native man – a native a captive man – a captive a conservative man – a conservative a criminal man – a criminal a dear man – a dear an equal man – an equal a female being – a female a grown-up person – a grown-up an intellectual person – an intellectual.

Diachronic approach to conversion Loss of endings identity in noun and verb forms: e. g. : Carian (v), caru (n) care (v, n) Lufian (v) , lufu (n) love (v, n) Crier (v), cri (n) cry (v, n) From the diachronic point of view distinction should be made between homonymous types of word-pairs, which appeared as a result of a loss of inflexions, and those formed by the conversion.

Basic criteria of semantic derivation in conversion The criterion of the non-correspondence between the lexical meaning of the root-morpheme and the part-of-speech meaning of the stem in one of the two words in a conversion pair. In the pair father (n) – father (v), the noun is the name for a being. The lexical meaning of the root-morpheme corresponds to the part-of-speech meaning of the stem. The verb to father denotes a process, therefore, the part-of-speech meaning of its stem does not correspond to the lexical meaning of the root which is of a substantive character. The synonymity criterion. This criterion is based on the comparison of a conversion pair with analogous synonymous word-pairs. For example, comparing the conversion to chat (v) – chat (n) with the synonymous pair of words to converse – conversation, it becomes obvious that the noun chat is the derived member as the semantic relations in the case of to chat – chat are similar between to converse – conversation. The criterion of derivational relations. In the word-cluster, for instance, hand (n) – hand (v) – handful – handy the derived words of the first degree of derivation have suffixes added to the nominal base: handful, handy. Thus, the noun hand is the centre of the word-cluster. This fact makes it possible to conclude that the verb to hand is the derived member under conversion pair under analysis.

The criterion of semantic derivation. The existence of relations typical of denominal verbs within a conversational pair proves that the verb is the derived member, the existence of relations typical of deverbal substantives marks the noun as the derived member. For example, the semantic relations between crowd (n) – crowd (v) are perceived as those of ‘an object and an action characteristic of the object’. The criterion of the frequency of occurrence. According to this criterion a lower frequency value testifies to the derived character of the word in question. For example, according to M. West’s “A General Service List of English Words”, the frequency value of the following verb-noun conversion pair is estimated as follows: to answer (63%) – answer (35%). Thus, the noun answer is the derived member. The transformation criterion. The application of transformation procedure may be illustrated by a range of a predicative syntagma into a nominal syntagma: Roy loves nature Roy’s love of nature. This transformation is made by analogy with the transformation of The committee elected John into John’s election by the committee in which the word election is a derived one. This makes it possible to conclude that the noun love is a derived member. Failure to apply this transformational procedure proves that nouns cannot be regarded as derived from the corresponding verbal base, e. g. She bosses the establishment *Her boss of the establishment.

WORD-COMPOSITION Word-composition is the type of the wordformation, in which new words are produced by combining two or more Immediate Constituents, which are both derivational bases.

The ICs of compound words represent bases of all three structural types: 1. bases that coincide with morphological stems 2. bases that coincide with word-forms 3. bases that coincide with word-groups. The bases built on stems may be of different degree of complexity: 1. simple, e. g. week-end 2. derived, e. g. letter-writer 3. compound, e. g. aircraft-carrier

Meaning components The meaning of a compound word is made up of two components: structural and lexical. The structural meaning of compounds is formed on the base of: 1) the meaning of their distributional pattern and 2) the meaning of their derivational pattern.

Distributional pattern The distributional pattern of a compound is the order and arrangement of the ICs that constitute a compound word. A change in the order and arrangement of the same ICs signals the compound words of different lexical meanings, cf. : a fruit-market and market-fruit. The distributional pattern of a compound carries a certain meaning of its own which is largely independent of the actual lexical meaning of their ICs.

Derivational pattern The meaning of the derivational pattern can be abstracted and described through the interrelation of their ICs. N+Ven : duty-bound, wind-driven, mud-stained ‘instrumental or agentive relations’ Derivational patterns in compounds may be monosemantic or polysemantic. N+N N 1) the purpose (bookshelf); 2) resemblance (needle-fish); 3) of instrument or agent (windmill, sunrise).

Lexical meaning The lexical meaning of compounds is formed on the base of the combined lexical meanings of their constituents. The semantic centre of the compound is the lexical meaning of the second component modified and restricted by the meaning of the first. The lexical meanings of both components are closely fused together to create a new semantic unit with a new meaning, which dominates the individual meanings of the bases, and is characterized by some additional component not found in any of the bases. handbag

Classification of compound words 1. According to the relations between the ICs compound words 2. According to the part of speech compounds represent 3. According to the means of composition 4. According to the type of bases that form compounds

According to the relations between the ICs 1. Coordinative compounds – the two ICs are semantically equally important. reduplicative compounds which are made up by the repetition of the same base, e. g. pooh-pooh, fifty-fifty; compounds formed by joining phonically variated rhythmic twin forms, e. g. chit-chat, zig-zag (with the same initial consonants but different vowels); walkie-talkie, clap-trap (with different initial consonants but the same vowels); additive compounds which are built on stems of the independently functioning words of the same part of speech, e. g. actor-manager, queen-bee. 2. Subordinative compounds - the components are neither structurally nor semantically equal in importance but are based on the domination of the head-member which is, as a rule, the second IC, e. g. stone-deaf, age-long. The second IC preconditions the part-ofspeech meaning of the whole compound.

According to the part of speech compounds represent 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. compound nouns, e. g. sunbeam, maidservant; compound adjectives, e. g. heart-free, far-reaching; compound pronouns, e. g. somebody, nothing; compound adverbs, e. g. nowhere, inside; compound verbs, e. g. to offset, to bypass, to massproduce.

Pseudo-compounds From the diachronic point of view many compound verbs of the present-day language are treated not as compound verbs proper but as polymorphic verbs of secondary derivation. verbs formed by means of conversion from the stems of compound nouns, e. g. to spotlight (from spotlight); verbs formed by back-derivation from the stems of compound nouns, e. g. to babysit (from baby-sitter). Synchronically, compound verbs correspond to the definition of a compound as a word consisting of two free stems and functioning in the sentence as a separate lexical unit.

According to the means of composition 1. 2. 3. compounds composed without connecting elements, e. g. heartache, dog-house; compounds composed with the help of a vowel or consonant as a linking element (morphological compounds), e. g. handicraft, speedometer, statesman, Anglo-Saxon, electro-motor, sportsman, kinsman, heartsease, boatsman, huntsman, crowsfeet; compounds composed with the help of linking elements represented by preposition or conjunction stems (syntactical compounds), e. g. son-in-law, pepper-and-salt, hook-andladder, man-of-war, cat-of-nine-tails, touch-me-not, hideand seek, penny-in-the-slot, well-to-do person, up-to-day tendencies, out-of-the-way village.

According to the type of bases that form compounds 1. compounds proper that are formed by joining together bases built on the stems or on the word-forms with or without a linking element, e. g. door-step, street-fighting; 2. derivational compounds that are formed by joining affixes to the bases built on the word-groups or by converting the bases built on the word-groups into other parts of speech, e. g. long-legged (long legs) + -ed; a turnkey (to turn key) + conversion. derivational compounds mainly formed with the help of the suffixes –ed and –er applied to bases built, as a rule, on attributive phrases, e. g. narrow-minded, doll-faced, left-hander, honeymooner, weekender, teenager; derivational compounds formed by conversion applied to bases built, as a rule, on three types of phrases – verbal-adverbial phrases (a breakdown), verbal-nominal phrases (a kill-joy) and attributive phrases (a sweet-tooth).

Correlation types of compounds N+N (story-teller, watch-maker) reflect the agentive relations proper to free phrases of the N who V+N type (one who tells stories, one who makes watches). Correlation is a regular interaction and interdependence of compound words and certain types of free phrases, which condition the potential possibility of appearance of compound words, their structure and semantic type. The description of compound words through the correlation with variable free phrases makes it possible to classify them into four major classes: 1. adjectival-nominal 2. verbal-nominal 3. nominal 4. verbal-adverbial

structural pattern corresponding free phrase semantic relations Compound adjectives proper n+a a) snow-white b) care-free as+A+as+N as white as snow A+prep+N free from cre care of resemblence n+ven duty-bound Ven +prep+N bound by duty instrumental (locative, temporal) num+n two-day Num +N two days quantitative adverbial Derivational compound adjectives long-legged one-sided doll-faced with/having +A+N with/having+Num+N with+N+of+N possessive

structural pattern corresponding free phrase semantic relations Compound adjectives proper Compound nouns proper n+a as+A+as+N verbal-nominal compoundsof resemblence a) snow-white(n+v + -er) as to fight for peace white as snow peace-fighter agentive b) care-free (n+(v+-ing) A+prep+Nrocket adverbial rocket-flying to fly a price-reduction (n+(v+- free from creprices to reduce tion/-ment) n+ven wage-cut duty-bound (n+(v+conversion) Ven +prep+N to cut wages bound by duty instrumental (locative, temporal) nominal compounds num+n Num +N quantitative two-day two days n 2+n 1 ash-tray for ashes of purpose Derivational compound adjectives country-house in the country of location long-legged with/having +A+N possessive Derivational compound nouns (verbal-adverbial) one-sided with/having+Num+N (v+adv) +conversion V+Adv of result doll-faced with+N+of+N a break-down to break down a run-away to run away