Conversion as a purely English way of word-formation

Conversion is a highly productive way of word formation by means of phonetic identify of two words belonging to different part of speech, e.g., work – to work, love – to love, paper – to paper, brief – to brief, wireless – to wireless etc.

Synchronically it is of the great theoretical and practical importance to determine the semantic relations between words related through conversion.

There are following typical semantic relations:

- Verbs converted from nouns (denominal verbs);

- Nouns converted from verbs (deverbal nouns).

Denominal verbs.

The converted verb may denote:

1)Action characteristic of the object, e.g., ape – to ape (imitate in a foolish way), butcher – to butcher (kill animals for food, cut up a killed animal);

2)Instrumental use of the object, e.g., screw – to screw (fasten with a screw), whip – to whip (strike with a whip);

3)Acquisition or addition of the object, e.g., fish – to fish (catch or try to catch fish), coat (covering of paint) – to coat (put a coat of paint on);

4)Deprivation of the subject, e.g., dust – to dust (remove dust from something), skin – to skin (strip off the skin from), etc.

Deverbal nouns.

The converted noun may denote:

1)Instance of the action, e.g., to jump – jump (sudden spring from the ground), to move – move (a change of position);

2)Agent of the action, e.g., to help – help (a person who helps), to switch (make or break an electric circuit) – switch (a device for making or breaking an electric circuit);

3)Place of the action, e.g., to drive – drive (a path or road along which one drives), to walk – walk (a place for walking);

4)Object or result of the action, e.g. to peel – peel (the outer skin of fruit of potatoes taken off), to find – find (something found esp. something valuable), etc.

Substantivation of adjectives.

Substantivation of adjectives is conversion of adjectives into nouns.

- Full substantivation: the adjective becomes the noun and possesses all its

categories, e.g., relative, a – relative, n; criminal, a – criminal, n.

- Partial substantivation: the adjective has only some features of the noun.

E.g., the adjective may be used with the article the without any endings in the plural: old – the old, young – the young

29.Syntactic way of word-formation in the English and Ukrainian languages: compounding.

Compound words are words consisting of at least two stems which occur in the language as free forms. In a compound word the immediate constituents obtain integrity and structural cohesion that make them function in a sentence as a separate lexical unit.

C o m p o u n d i n g or w o r d -c o m p o s i t i o n is one of the productive types of word-formation in Modern English. Compounds are made up of two ICs which are both derivational bases. Compound words are inseparable vocabulary units. They are formally and semantically dependent on the constituent bases and the semantic relations between them which mirror the relations between the motivating units. The ICs of compound words represent bases of all three structural types. The bases built on stems may be of different degree of complexity as, e.g., week-end, office-management, postage-stamp, aircraft-carrier, fancy-dress-maker, etc. However, this complexity of structure of bases is not typical of the bulk of Modern English compounds.