Ta’lim sohasi: 110000 Pedagogika Ta’lim yo`nalishi

Lecture № 9. Conversion
Outline:
1. Productive way of forming words
2. Non – productive way of wordformation
3. Noun converted form

Although conversion, the term first used by Henry Sweet (1898, p. 38), is one of the most productive means of coining new words in Modern English, scholars still argue whether this phenomenon should be studied within syntax, morphology, word-formation, or even semantics. Georgious Tserdanelis and Wai Yi Peggy Wong take a syntactic approach to conversion. They believe that conversion is the creation of new words “by shifting the part of speech to another part without changing the form of the word” (2004, p.430), contending that in Modern English, there is no distinction between parts of speech, i.e. between a noun and a verb, noun and adjective, and others. Thomas Pyles and John Algeo (1993, p.281) use the term ‘functional shift’ to refer to the same process to highlight that words are converted from one grammatical function to another without any change in form, e.g., paper (n)--paper (v). This functional approach to conversion cannot be justified and should be rejected as inadequate because one and the same word cannot simultaneously belong to different classes of words, or parts of speech. We defend a position that conversion is a word-forming process and should be studied within word-formation because conversion deals with forming new lexical units and perfectly fits the definition of word-formation as the process of coining new words from the existing ones.

The major kinds of conversion are noun verb, verbnoun, adjective noun, and adjective  verb. For example:
Noun verb: bottle (n)—bottle (v), network (n)—network (v), father (n)—father (v), mother (n)—mother (v), eye (n)—eye (v), head (n)—head (v), paper (n)—paper (v), taxi (n)—taxi (v), and trash (n)—trash (v).
Verbnoun: call (v)—call (n), command (v)—command (n), impact (v)—impact (n), commute (v)—commute (n), blackmail (v)—blackmail (n), e-mail (v)—e-mail (n), and fax (v)— fax (n).
Adjective  verb: better (adj)—better (v), savage (adj)—savage (v), and total (adj)— total (v).
Adjective noun: crazy (adj)—crazy (n) and poor (adj)—the poor (n). Such conversions are relatively rare. Some scholars believe that they are not conversions at all but substantivized adjectives.
Adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections may act as bases for conversion, e.g. up (adv)—up (v) and down (adv)—down (v).
Although some scholars (Jackson & Ze Amvela, 2005) believe that conversion may occur within the same word class, e.g., walk (v) and walk (v) a dog, we do not consider them as conversions because they have different meanings of one and the same word, and these meanings are realized in the context. We do not recognize the class of marginal cases of conversion (Bauer, 1983), or partial cases of conversion. If any change is made in the structure, spelling, or pronunciation while new words are formed from the existing ones, we do not recognize them as conversions.
Used literature

1. 
   Мўминов A. English Lexicology. T.2006
   
2. 
   Гинсбург. Р.Й., Хидекил.С.С.,Князева.Г.Й.,Санкин.А.А.; A course in Modern
   
3. 
   English Lexicology «М»1979й
   
4. 
   Арнолд.И.В. The English Word «М»1986.