6. Word-building 17. Modern English phraseology 3

Conversion (to convert=превращать) – is highly productive in replenishing (пополнение) the English word-stock with new words. The term “conversion” refers to numerous cases of phonetic identity of two words belonging to different parts of speech. E.g. paper – to paper, work to work.
So conversion is the formation of a new word through changes in its paradigm.
There are 2 main cases of conversion:
Formation of verbs from nouns and rarely from other parts of speech: noun (doctor – to doctor); adjective (thin – to thin).
Formation of nouns from verbs and rarely from other parts of speech: verb (to cut – a cut).
Shortening of words is the way of the formation of new words by means of substituting a part of the word for a whole. This process affects both words and word-groups. Therefore, the term “shortening of words” is to be reguarded as conventional.
Shortening:
Graphical abbreviations (a.m; Oct.; B.C.); Lexical abbreviations (a V.I.P. – a very important person; NATO); Clippings – cutting iff of one of several syllables of a word (sis – sister; doc –doctor; Sam_Samuel); Letters (St – Street; Mr.; Mrs.) etc.

17. Modern English phraseology

The basic features of word-groups are the lexical valency and the grammatical valency. Words are used in certain lexical context, i.e. in combinations with other words. E.g. the noun “question” is often combined with such adjectives as vital, pressing, urgent, etc. this noun is a component of other word-groups. E.g. to raise a question (not to lift a question of the hour). The aptness (готовность) of a word to appear in various combinations is described as its lexical valency. The range of the lexical valency of words is delimited by the inner structure of the E. words. Thus “to raise” and “to lift” are synonyms but only the former is collocated with the noun. Words habitually collocative in speech tend to form a cliché. The lexical valency in different languages is not identical because it depends on the inner stricture of the vocabulary. E.g. both the E. “flower” and the R. “цветок” may be combined with a number of similar words (garden flowers / hot house flowers – садовые цветы/оранжерейные цветы). But “pot flowers” – “комнатные цветы”.
The aptness of a word to appear in specific grammatical (or other syntactical structures) is called grammatical valency. E.g. the adjective “heavy” can be followed by a known: heavy food, heavy storm, heavy box, but we can not say heavy to lift, to carry. The gr. valency of words may be different. It is delimited by the part of speech the word belongs to. E.g no E. adjective can be followed by a finite form of a verb. The gr. val-cy is also delimited by the inner structure of the language. E.g. “to suggest” – “to propose”. Both can be followed by a noun but only “to propose” can be followed by the infinitive – “to propose to do smth”.