Conversion as a productive type of English word building

The process of coining a new word in a different part of speech and with a different distribution
characteristic but without adding any derivative element, so that the basic form of the original and the basic
form of the derived words are homonymous, is variously called conversion, zero derivation, root formation,
transposition or functional change ( Arnold I.V.) This phenomenon can be illustrated by the following cases:
work – to work, love – to love, water – to water.

History of the term

The term conversion was introduced by Henry Sweet in his New English Grammar. First cases of conversion
registered in the 14th c. imitated such pairs of words as love, n – love, v (O.E. lufu, n – lufian, v) for they were
numerous and thus were subconsciously accepted as one of the typical language patterns.
Let us consider the following sentences:
He was knocked out in the first round.
Round the number off to the nearest tenth.
The neighbors gathered round our barbecue.
The moon was bright and round.
People came from all the country round.
In each sentence round is used as different part of speech — noun, verb, preposition, adjective, and adverb.
Lexemes are made without the addition of an affix. The items produced in this way are especially the verbs
which come from nouns (to bicycle, to oil, to milk, to bottle) and the nouns which come from verbs (a swim, a
doubt, a hit). Conversion is a process that assigns an already existing word to a new syntactic category. Even
though it does not add an affix, conversion is often considered to be a type of derivation because of the change
in category and meaning that it brings about. For this reason, it is sometimes called zero derivation.

Different approaches to conversion

Various opinions have been expressed on the nature and character of conversion. For example, prof.
Smirnitsky in his works on the English language treats conversion as a morphological way of forming words,
where a word is transferred from one paradigm to another, and it is the paradigm that is used as a word-forming
means. Therefore, we may define conversion as the formation of a new word through changes in its paradigm.
As a paradigm is a morphological category, conversion may be described as a morphological way of forming
words. Other linguists (H. Marchand, V.N. Yartseva, I.V. Arnold and others) treat conversion as a combined
morphological and syntactic way of word-building, as a new word appears not in isolation but in a definite
environment of other words, and it involves both a change of the paradigm and a change of the syntactic
function, i.e. distribution, of the word. There is also a purely syntactic approach known as a functional approach
to conversion. It’s popular with linguists in Great Britain and the USA. They define conversion as a kind of
functional change.

Conversion in present-day English

 As a type of word-formation, conversion exists in many languages. The study of conversion in present-day
English is of great theoretical interest because it clearly displays the interdependence of vocabulary and
grammar and the systematic character of language. The main reason for the widespread development of
conversion in present-day English is no doubt the absence of morphological elements serving as classifying
signals, or, in other words, of formal signs marking the part of speech to which the word belongs. The fact that
the sound pattern does not show to what part of speech the word belongs may be illustrated by the following
table.

The historical development of conversion

The causes that made conversion so widely spread are to be approached diachronically. Firstly, nouns and
verbs have become identical in form first as a result of the loss of endings. More rarely it is the prefix that is
dropped: mind < OE zemynd.
When endings have disappeared phonetical development resulted in the merging of sound forms for both
elements of these pairs.

So, from the diachronic point of view distinction should be made between homonymous word-pairs, which
appeared as a result of the loss of inflections, and those formed by conversion.

Semantic relationships in conversion

The two categories of parts of speech especially affected by conversion are nouns and verbs.
1. Verbs converted from nouns are called denominal verbs. If the noun refers to some object of reality
(animate or in animate) the converted verb may denote:
1) action characteristic of the object: ape n. > ape v. “imitate in a foolish way”;
2) instrumental use of the object: whip n. > whip v. “strike with a whip”;
3) acquisition or addition of the object: fish n. > fish v. “catch or try to catch fish”;
4) deprivation of the object: dust n. > dust v. “remove dust from smth.”;
5) location: pocket n. > pocket v. “put into one’s pocket”.
 2. Nouns converted from verbs are called deverbal substantives. If the verb refers to an action, the
converted may denote:
1) instance of action: jump v. > jump n. “sudden spring from the ground”;
2) agent of the action: help v. > help n. “a person who helps”;
3) place of the action: drive v. > drive n. “a path or road along which one drives”;
4) result of the action: peel v. > peel n. “the outer skin of fruit potatoes taken off”;

Conversion in different parts of speech

Types of conversion
- Verbalization (the formation of verbs)
- Substantivation (the formation of nouns)
- Adjectivation (the formation of adjectives)
- Adverbalization (the formation of adverbs)

If one considers the particular cases, then the three most common ones in English are
- verbs derived from nouns (verbalization) (to butter, to ship)
- verbs derived from adjectives (to empty, to cool)
- nouns derived from verbs (a survey, a call, a walk, a move)
Less frequent but also quite possible is conversion from form words to nouns. E. g. He liked to know the ins
and outs. He was familiar with ups and downs of life.
Use is even made of affixes. Thus, ism is a separate word nowadays meaning 'a set of ideas or principles',
e.g. freudism, existentialism and all the other isms.
Other Ways of Conversion:
Adjective > Noun, e.g. a bitter, a wet, a regular etc.;
Adjective > Verb, e.g. to dirty, to calm, to empty etc.;
Noun > Adjective, e.g. a stone wall, a cotton cloth etc.;
Modal verb > Noun, e.g. a must;
Function word > Noun, e.g. too many ifs and buts;
Function word > Verb, e.g. to down, to up etc.;

There are also such conversion varieties as

Partial conversion is a kind of a double process when first a noun is formed by conversion from a verbal
stem and next this noun is combined with such verbs as to give, to make, to take to form a separate phrase: to
have a look, to take a swim, to give a whistle.
There is a great number of idiomatic prepositional phrases as well: to be in the know, in the long run, to get
into a scrape. Sometimes the elements of these expressions have a fixed grammatical form, as, for example,
where the noun is always plural: It gives me the creeps (jumps). In other cases the grammatical forms are free
to change.
 Reconversion is the phenomenon when one of the meanings of the converted word is a source for a new
meaning of the same stem: cable (кабель) – to cable (телеграфировать) – cable (телеграмма).