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Conversion is a characteristic feature of the English word-building system. It is sometimes referred to as an affixless way of word-building. But there are other types of word-building in which new words are also formed without affixes (most compounds, contracted words, sound imitation words, etc.). So what is peculiar for this way of word-building? The term conversion first appeared in the book by Henry Sweet ‘New English Grammar’ in 1891. Conversion is treated differently by different scientists, e.g. Prof. Smirnitsky treats conversion as a morphological way of forming words when one part of speech is formed from another part of speech by changing its paradigm,
e.g. to form the verb to dial from the noun dial we change the paradigm of the noun (a dial, dials) for the paradigm of a regular verb (I dial, he dials, dialed, dialing)
A. Marchand in his book ‘The Categories and Types of Present-day English’ treats conversion as a morphological-syntactical word-building because we have not only the change of the paradigm, but also the change of the syntactic function,
e.g. I need some good paper for my room. (The noun paper is an object in the sentence).
I paper my room every year. (The verb paper is the predicate in the sentence).
The historical development of conversion has deep roots. After the Scandinavian conquest, due to the fact that the conquerors and the conquered were people of the same origin, same cultural level, customs and traditions and their languages were alike, Scandinavians and Englishmen could easily communicate. The fact that the languages were alike made communication much easier for them: the roots as it happens to languages of the same origin were mostly alike and differences were in affixes and inflexions. While communicating the English and Scandinavians stressed the parts of words
that were alike and neglected those which differed, so as we know in middle English there began a ‘levelling’ of endings, one of the reasons
of which was the Scandinavian conquest.
Due to the leveling of endings forms of nouns and verbs coincided: Old English lufian (v), lufu (n) – Modern English love (n, v), Old English drinkan (v), drinka (n) – Modern English drink (n, v). More rarely it is the prefix that was dropped: Old English bemynd – Modern English mind. Words borrowed from other languages underwent the same process, for example, French borrowings:
Old French eschequier(v), eschec(n) – Modern English check (n, v), Old French crier (v), cri (n) – Modern English cry (n, v). Nowadays, new pairs of converted words are built on the analogy with those already in the word-stock: to phone, to wire, to can etc.
Conversion is now one of the main way of forming verbs in Modern English. As one of the two words within a conversion pair is semantically derived from the other, it is of great theoretical and practical importance to determine the semantic relations between the words related through conversion. Verbs can be formed from nouns of different semantic groups and gave different meanings because of that, e.g.:
a)verbs have instrumental meaning if they are formed from nouns denoting parts of a human body, e.g. to eye, to finger, to elbow, to shoulder etc. They have instrumental meaning of they are formed from nouns denoting tools, machines, instruments, weapons, e.gto hummer, to machine-gun, to rifle, to mail.
b)verbs can denote an action characteristic of the living being denoted by the noun from which they have been converted, e.g. to crowd, to wolf, to ape.
c)verbs can denote acquisition or deprivation if they are formed from nouns denoting an object, e.g. to fish, to dust, to peel, to paper.
d)verbs can denote an action performed at the place denoted by the noun form which they have been converted, e.g. to park, to garage, to bottle, to corner, to pock
e)verbs can denote an action performed at the time denoted by the noun from which they have been converted, e.g. to winter, to weekend.
Verbs can be converted from adjectives, in such cases they denote the change of the state, e.g. to tame (to become or make tame), to clean, to slim etc.
Verbs can be also converted from other parts of speech, e.g. to down (adverb), to pooh-pooh (interjection).
Nouns can also be formed by means of conversion from verbs. Converted nouns can denote:
a) Instant of an action, e.g. a jump, a move.
b) Process or state, e.g. sleep, walk.
c) Agent of the action expressed by the verb from which the noun has been
converted e.g. a drive, a stop, a walk.
Many nouns converted from verbs can be used only in the singular form and denote momentaneous actions. In such cases we have partial conversion. Such deverbal nouns are often used with verbs: to have, to get, to take, etc., e.g. to have a try, to give a push, to take a swim.
Sometimes nouns are formed from adverbs, e.g. ups and down, and even from affixes, e.g. ‘ism’- a set of particular or religious ideas or principles (socialism, communism, and all other ‘isms’ of modern world).
In cases of conversion the problem of criteria of semantic derivation arises: which of the converted pair is primary and which is converted from it. The problem was analyzed by many linguists and the following criteria have been developed:
1. If the lexical meaning of the root morpheme and the lexico-grammatical meaning of the stem coincide the word is primary, e.g. in cases pen-to-pen, father-to-father the nouns are names of an object and a leaving being. Therefore in the nouns pen and father the lexical meaning of the root and the lexico-grammatical meaning of the stem coincide. The verb to pen and to father
denote an action, a process, therefore the lexico-grammatical meanings of
the stems do not coincide with the lexical meanings of the roots. The verbs have a complex semantic structure and they were converted from nouns.
2. If we compare a converted pair with a synonymic word pair which was formed by means of suffixation we can find out which of pair is primary. This criterion can be applied only to nouns converted from verbs, e.g. chat n. and chat v. can be compared with conversation-converse.
3. The criterion based on derivational relations is of more universal character. In this case we must take a word-cluster of relative words to which the converted pair belongs. If the root stem of the word-cluster has suffixes added to noun stem the noun is primary in the converted pair and vice versa, e.g. in the word-cluster: hand n., hand v., handy, handful the affixed words have suffixes added to a noun stem, that is why the noun is primary and the verb is converted from it. In the word-cluster: dance n., dance v., dancing, dancer we see that the primary word is a verb and the noun is converted from it.
Another productive type in word building in Modern English is shortening which is represented as various types of subtraction, in which part of the original word or word group is taken away. Shortening differs from derivation, composition and conversion in being not a new arrangement of existing morphemes, but often a source of new ones.
Thus, shortening is the process and the result of forming a word out of the initial elements (letters, morphemes) of a word combination.
Shortenings are produced in 2 ways:

• 
  Making a new word from a syllable (rarer two) of the original words. The latter may lose its beginning (telephone – phone, defence — fence), it’s ending (holidays – hols, advertisement- ad), or both the beginning and the ending (influenza – flu, refrigerator — fridge);
  
• 
  Making a new word from the initial letters of a word group: UNO – United Nation Organization, BBC, ATM, MS, RSVP, and others.
  

As a type of word-building, shortening of words can be represented by clipping or curtailment. Curtailment may be regarded as caused, partly at least, by analogical extension, i.e. modification of form on the basis of analogy with existing and widely used patterns. Thus, the three homonyms resulting from abbreviation of three different words, van ‘a large covered vehicle’, ‘a railway carriage’, the short for caravan; van ‘the front of an army’, the short for vanguard which in its turn is a clipping of the French word avant-garde; and van — a lawn tennis term, the short for advantage, all sound quite like English words.
Shortening of spoken words or curtailment consists in the reduction of a word to one of its parts (whether or not this part has previously been a morpheme), as a result of which the new form acquires some linguistic value of its own.
The part retained does not change phonetically, hence the necessity of spelling changes in some of the examples above (dub : : double, mike : : microphone, trank : : tranquillizer, etc.).
Unlike conversion, shortening produces new words in the same part of speech. The bulk of curtailed words is constituted by nouns. Verbs are hardly ever shortened in present-day English. Rev from revolve and tab from tabulate may be considered exceptions. Such clipped verbs are in fact converted nouns. Consequently the verbs to perm, to phone, to taxi, to vac, to vet and many others are not curtailed words diachronically but may be regarded as such by right of structure, from the synchronic point of view. As to the verbs to pend, to mend, to tend and a few others, they were actually coined as curtailed words but not at the present stage of language development.
Shortened adjectives are very few and mostly reveal a combined effect of shortening and suffixation, e.g. comfy : : comfortable, dilly : : delightful, imposs : : impossible, mizzy :: miserable, which occur in schoolgirl slang.
According to whether it is the final, initial or middle part of the word that is cut off, we distinguish:
1) f i n a 1 clipping (or apocope), from Greek apokoptein ‘cut off, e.g. ad, advert : : advertisement; coke : : coca-cola; ed ; : editor; fab : : fabulous; gym: : gymnastics or gymnasium; lab : : laboratory; mac : : mackintosh; ref : : referee; vegs : : veggies or vegies, vegetables, 
2) initial clipping (or a p h e s i s, i.e. a p h e r e s i s), from Greek aphairesis ‘a taking away’ e.g. cute a, n (Am) : : acute; fend v : : defend; mend v : : amend; story n : : history; sport n : : disport; tend v : : attend. Cases like cello : :violoncello and phone : : telephone where the curtailed words are stylistic synonyms or even variants of their respective pro totypes are very rare. Neologisms are few, e.g. chute : : parachute. It is in this group that the process of assimilation of loan words is especially frequent.
3) medial clipping (or syncope), from Greek syncope ‘a cutting up’.They may be further subdivided into two groups: (a) words with a final-clipped stem retaining the functional morpheme: maths : : mathematics, specs : : spectacles; (b) contractions due to a gradual process of elision under the influence of rhythm and context. Thus, fancy : : fantasy, ma’am : : madam may be regarded as accelerated forms.
4) Mixed type (also called fore-and-aft clipping) in which final and initial clipping may be combined and result in curtailed words with the middle part of the prototype retained. These are few and definitely colloquial, e.g. flu : : influenza; frig or fridge : : refrigerator; tec : : detective.