Топик: Конверсионное словообразование прилагательных цветообозначения. Методика преподавния в нач.классах
Conversion is the use of a form which is regarded as being basically of one form class as though it were a member of a different form class, without any concomitant change of form. There are, however, a number of instances where changes of this type occur with such ease and so regularly that many scholars prefer to see that as matters of syntactic usage rather that as word-formation.
The most obvious cases are those where the change of form class is not a major one (such as from noun to verb or adjective to noun ) but a change from one type of noun to another or one type of verb to another. The clearest example of this type is the use of countable nouns as uncountable and vise versa. In some tea, tea is used as an uncountable noun, while in two teas it is used as a countable noun; goat is normally a countable noun, but if a goat is being eaten it is quite in order to ask for a slice of goat, where goat is used as an uncountable noun. In general, given a suitable context, it is possible to use almost any noun on either way: for example, when the Goons took part in a mountain-eating competition, it would have been perfectly possible to ask whether anyone wanted some more mountain, using mountain as an uncountable noun. Similarly, proper nouns can be easily used as common nouns as in Which John do you mean? or The Athens in Ohio is not as interesting as the Athens in Greece. Intransitive verbs are frequently used as transitive verbs, as in He is running a horse in the Derby or The army flew the civilians to safety. Finally, non-gradable adjectives are frequently used as gradable adjectives, as in She looks very French or New Zealander are said to be more English. Such processes are very near the inflectional end of word-formation.
Another case where it is not completely clear whether or not conversion is involved is with conversion to adjectives. This depends crucially on how an adjective is defined. For some scholars it appears to be the case that the use of an element in attributive position is sufficient for that element to be classified as an adjective. By this criterion bow window, head teacher, model airplane and stone well all contain adjectives formed by conversion formed by conversion. However, it has already been argued that such collocations should be seen as compounds, which makes it unnecessary to view such elements as instances of conversion. Quirk suggest that when such elements can occur not only in attributive position but also in predicative position, it is possible to speak of conversion to an adjective. On the basis of:
*This window is bow
This teacher is head
*This airplane is model
This wall is stone
they would thus conclude that, in the examples above, head and stone but not bow and model have become adjectives by conversion. But this introduces a distinction between two kinds of modifier which is not relevant elsewhere in the grammar and which masks a great deal of similarity. It is therefore not clear that this suggestion is of any great value. This is not meant to imply that conversion to an adjective is impossible, merely that it is least controversial that conversion is involved where the form is not used attributively. Where the form is used attributively, criteria for concluding that conversion has taken place must be spelled out with great care. Apart from those mentioned, possible criteria are the ability to be used in the comparative and superlative, the ability to be modified by and very, the ability to be used as a base for adverbial -ly or nominal -ness suffixation. It must be pointed out that very few adjectives fit all these criteria.
Marginal cases of conversion .
There are cases of change in form class from a verb to a noun and from a verb to an adjective which do not involve any affixation, but which are not clearly instances of conversion. These are cases there is a shift of stress, frequently with a concomitant change in segmental form, but no change in the morphophonemic form (or in the orthography). Established examples of verb >noun shift kind are abstract, discount, import, refill, transfer Gimson/2/, and of verb > adjective shift: abstract, frequent, moderate, perfect. There is a certain amount of evidence that, at least in some varieties of English, these distinction are no longer consistently drawn, and such examples are becoming clear cases of conversion. Nevertheless, the pattern is still productive, particularly so in the nominalization of phrasal verbs: established examples are show off, walr-over and recent examples are hang-up, put-down.
There is also a kind of partial conversion where a noun ending in a voiceless fricative (but excluding / /) is turned into a verb by replacing the final consonant with the corresponding voiced fricative. The process is no longer productive. Examples are belief / believe, sheath / sheathe, advice / advise.
Clear cases of conversion .
The least clear cases of conversion have been considered first, but there are innumerable perfectly clear cases. For many types a variety of subclassifications is possible. Thus instances of noun > verb conversion can be classified according to whether the noun shows location (to garage the car ) or instrument ( to hammer a nail ) and so on, or according to formal criteria of whether the base is simplex or complex and so on. No attempt is made below to distinguish of these kinds.
The major kinds of conversion are noun > verb, verb >noun, adjective > noun and adjective >verb. Established examples of noun > verb conversion are to badger, to bottle, to bridge, to commission, to mail, to mushroom, to skin, to vacation. Recent examples are to chopper, to data-dank, to leaflet, to network, and to trash. Established examples of verb >noun conversion are a call , a command, a dump, a guess, a spy and recent examples are a commute, a goggle, and an interrupt. Established examples of adjective > verb conversion are to better, to dirty, to empty, to faint, to open, to right and a recent example is to total (a car) . Established examples of adjective >noun conversion are relatively rare and are frequently restricted in their syntactic occurrence. For example, the poor cannot be made plural or have any other determiner. Less restricted examples are a daily, a regular, a roast. This type seems to have become much more productive recently, and recent examples includes a creative, a crazy, a double, a dyslexic, a gay, a given, a nasty .
Prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs, interjections and even affixes can all act as bases of conversion, as in shown by to up (prices), but me no buts, the hereafter, to heave-no (a recent example) and a maxi (this might be a case of clipping). Moreover, most of these form classes can undergo conversion into more than one form class, so that a preposition down , for example, can become a verb (he downed his beer ), a noun (he has a down on me ) and possibly an adjective (the down train ).
Extrocentric phrase compounds might also be classified here as instances of conversion of whole phrase. Established examples where the phrase acts as a noun are an also-ran, a forget-me-not, a has-been and a recent examples as a don’t-know. An established example where the phrase acts as an adjective is under-the-weather.
Derivation by a zero-morpheme.
The term ‘zero-derivation’.
Derivation without a derivative morpheme occurs in English as well as mother languages. Its characteristic is that a certain stem is used for the formation of a categorically different word without a derivative element being added. In synchronic terminology, they are syntagmas whose determinatum is not expressed in the significant (form). The significate (content) is represented in the syntagma but zero marked (i.e. it has no counterpart in form): loan vb ‘(make up) loan’, look substantive is ‘(act, instance of) look(ing)’. As the nominal and verbal forms which occur most frequently have no ending end (a factor which seems to have played a part in the coining of the term ‘conversion’ by Kruisinga/8/) are those in which nouns and verbs are recorded in dictionaries, such words as loan, look may come to be considered as ‘converted’ nouns or verbs. It has become customary to speak of the ‘conversion’ of substantive adjectives and verbs. The term ‘conversion’ has been used for various things. Kruisinga/8/ himself speaks of conversion whenever a word takes on function which is not its basic one, as the use of an adjective as a primary (the poor, the British, shreds of pink, at his best ). He includes quotation words (his «I don’t knows» ) and the type stone wall (i.e. substantives used as preadjuncts). One is reminded of Bally’s ‘transposition’. Koziol/10/ follows Kruisinga’s/8/ treatment and Biese/4/ adopts the same method. Their standpoints is different. The foregoing examples illustrate nothing but syntactic patterns. That poor (presented by the definite article, restricted to the plural, with no plural morpheme added) can function as a primary, or that government , as in government job , can be used as preadgunct, is a purely syntactic matter. At the most it could be said, with regard to the poor, that an inflectional morpheme understood but zero marked. However inflectional morphemes have a predominantly function character while the addition of lexical content is of secondary importance. As for government job the syntactic use of primary as a preadjunct is regularly unmarked, so no zero morpheme can be claimed. On the other hand, in government-al, -al adds lexical content, be it ever so little: ‘pertaining to characterizing government’. Therefore governmental is a syntagma while government (job) is not. That the phrase jar-off can be used as a preadjunct is again a syntactic matter. Characterized adverbs do not develop such functions in any case. We will not therefore, used the term conversion. As a matter of fact, nothing is converted, but certain stem are used for the derivation of lexical syntagmas, with the determinatum assuming a zero form. For similar reasons, the term ‘functional change’ is infelicitous. The term itself doesn’t enter another functional category, which becomes quite evident when it is considered the inflected forms.
Endings and derivation.
In inflected languages the derivant and derivative usually have a characteristic nominal or verbal ending. But, ending are not derivative morphemes. When English was still a more amply inflected language, the present type existed, but inflectional differences were more in evidence. Cf. the OE verbs besceopian, fugelian, gamenian, hearmian, freon (freogian), dernian and their respective bases besceop, fugol, and the weakening of ending was little bearing on this subject. With regard to denominate derivation, however, it is interesting to note that the levelling of endings brought about the loss of distinction in ME between the OE conjugations. The -an of ryth-an as well as the -ian of loc-ian resulted in -en. This reducted the number of patterns for denominal verbs to one.
Derivation connection between verbs and nouns.
With respect to both denominal verbs (type loan verb f. loan substantive) and deverbal substantives (type look substantive f look verb) it can be seen that as early as Old English a derivational connection existed between the present-infinitive stem of weak verb on the one hand and the stem of nouns on the other. As for deverbal substantive, there was some competition in the early stages of the language. Like other Germanic languages, Old English had strong verbs that were connected with substantives containing an ablaut vowel of the verb (ridan/rad, bindan/bend, beran/bora ). However , this derivational type was unproductive so far back as Old English. The present-infinitive stem of strong verbs came to be felt to represent the derivative basis for deverbal substantives in exactly the same way as did the corresponding stem of weak verbs: ride verb/ride substantive=look verb/look substantive. But this contention of Biese’s/4/ needs qualification: ‘these facts indicate the resistance should by strong verbs to the process of converting them into nouns before, owing to the introduction of weak inflections, a distinct idea of a universal verb-stem had been developed’. Many of the verbs had weak forms that derived substantives at an early date have either never had weak forms are rare or later than the substantives. Verbs such as bite, fall, feel, fold, freeze, have, grind, hide make steal, tread are cases in point. This goes to show that the existence of weak verb forms is incidental to the rise of a derivational connection between the present infinitive stem of strong verbs and the stem of substantive.
This derivational connection is partly due to class where a strong verb and a substantive of the same root existed in OE and where phonetic development resulted in closely resembling forms for both in ME. OE for, faru was fare by the end of the 12th century while the corresponding OE verb faran had reached the stage of faren or fare about the same time. Other examples of pairs are bidan ‘stay’/bid ‘delay, dwelling place’, bindan ‘bind’/bind ‘band, tie’, drincan ‘drink’/drinc, drinca ‘drink’, fleotan ‘float’/fleot ‘place, where water flows’, helpan ‘help’/help, hreowan ‘rue’/hreow ‘rue’, slepan ‘sleep’/sl p, slep ‘sleep’. The derivational relation as it have been described them were fully established around 200.
Zero-derivation as a «specifically English process».
It is usually assumed that the loss of ending gave rise to derivation by a zero morpheme. Jespersen/7/ gives a somewhat to simplifying picture of its rise and development . ‘As a great many native nouns and verbs had...come be identical in form..., as the same things happened with numerous originally French words..., it was quite natural that the speech-instinct should take it as a matter of course that whenever the need of a verb arose, it might be formed without any derivative ending from the corresponding substantive’. He called the process ‘specifically English’. As a matter of fact, derivation by a zero morpheme is neither specifically English nor does it start, as Jespersen’s/7/ presentation would make it appear when most ending had disappeared. Biese’s/4/ study shows quit clearly that it began to develop on a larger scale at the beginning of the 13th century , i.e. at a time when final verbal -n had not yet been dropped, when the plural ending of the present was not yet -en or zero, and when the great influx of French loan words had not yet started. Bauer/2/ doesn’t think that the weakening of the inflectional system had anything to do with the problem of zero derivation. Stems are immediate elements for the speaker, who is aware of the syntagmatic character of an inflected form. He therefor has no trouble in connecting verbal and nominal stems provided they occur in sufficiently numerous pairs to establish a derivational pattern. In Latin which is a highly inflected language, denominal verbs are numerous: corona/coronare, catena/catenare, lacrima/lacrimare; cumulus/cumulare, locus/locare, truncus/truncare, nomen, nomin-/nominare; sacer/sacrare. In Modern Spanish there are full sets of verbal ending (though in the declension only gender and number are expressed) both types of zero-derivation are very productive. The weakening of the inflectional system in English, therefor , can’t have much to do with development of zero-derivation.
On the other hand, it cannot be denied that despite the relative productivity of corresponding derivational types in other languages, the derivative range the English patterns, that of denominal verbs, is still greater. The explanation of this seems to de that English, unlike Latin, French, Spanish, or German, never had any competitive types. So, whenever a derivation was made nouns, it followed the one pattern that existed, i.e. derivation by zero morpheme. The only derivative morphemes PE has for denominal verbs are -ate, -ize, -ify. They have restricted range of derivative force: -ate is latinizing and leaned, -ify is learned while -ize is chiefly technical. All three derive almost exclusively on a Latin morphologic basis. The suffixal type dark-en was not originally a deadjectival pattern; in any case, it would have to a certain extent rivaled the type idle verb f. Idle adjective only. Derivation by a morpheme, esp. The type loan verb f. Loan substantive, must therefore be considered the norm and is quite naturally very strong in English. In German, there are many competitive types. It is bath mutated and unmutated verbs (faul-en, hart-en, draht-en, haut-en). There are also denominal verbs with a derivative morpheme ( stein-ig-en, rein-ig-en; with a foreign morpheme telefon-ier-en, lack-ier-en ). In addition, German makes use of the prefixes be-, er-, ver-. Such types as ver-rohen, ver-jung-er, vergrosser-n; er-kalt-en, er-leichter-n; be-end-ig-en, be-herz-ig-en, ver-eid-ig-en have no counterparts in English. English be- has never played a serious role in denominal derivation. Nor has the type em-bed ever become productive to any larger extent. The productivity of the type loan verb f. Loan substantive seems to be thus reasonably for. The deverbal type look substantive f. Look verb has been less prolific and is partly bound up with certain syntactic patterns of grouping. For this, it is do had competitive patterns. There are the suffixal types arriv-al, break-ade, guid-ance, improve-ment, organiz-ation and the verbal substantive type writ-ing though the latter has now chiefly role of deriving action nouns proper. This is the reason why so many zero-derivatives from verbs of Latin and French origin, coined the 15th and 16th centuries, were subsequently replaced by suffixal derivatives in -al, -age, -ance, ment. «After 1650 the suffix formation have completely gained the upper hand of the direct conversion of the disyllabic and trisyllabic words derived from French and Latin verbs»(Biese/4/).
Zero-derivation with loan-words .
As for Latin and French words and derivation from, there are comparatively few derivatives before (Biese/4/). French words were for some time felt to be foreign elements and were not «converted» with the same ease as native stems were. The phenomenon is in no way different from the one it is observed with derivation by suffixes. Loan words remain strangers for a time, and it usually takes time before a derivation type is applied to a heterogeneous class of words. Zero - derivation was facilitated by the eo-existence of borrowed substantives and verbs., as anchor substantive a 880 (=L) / anchor verb e 1230 (the OED has doubts, but F ancrer is recorded in the 12th e., as Bloeh ). Account substantive 1260/verb 1303, change substantive 1225/verb 1230, charge substantive1225/verb 1297, cry substantive1275/verb 1225, dance substantive 1300/verb 1300, double adjective 1225/verb 1290, doubt substantive 1225/verb 1225, poison substantive 1230/verb 13.., rule substantive 1225/verb 1225.
There are quite a few verbs with French roods for which no French verbs are recorded and which may accordingly be treated as zero derivatives: feeble verb 1225/adjective 1175, hardy verb 1225/adjective 1225, master verb 1225/substantive a 1000, pool verb 1275/adjective 1200, saint verb 1225/substantive 1175. On the other hand, the substantive grant 1225 may be derived from the verb grant 1225. It is only after 1300 that the process of zero-derivation is as firmly rooted with French as with native words. Though French originals for later English words may occur, it is just as safe to consider them as derivatives, as centre verb 1610 fr, centre substantive 1374, combat verb 1564 fr, combat substantive 1567 (or the reverse), guard verb 1500 fr, guard substantive 1426 and others.
Words of Scandinavian origin were more easily incorporated than French words, and derivation occurs as early as the 13th c.: trist «trust», boon «ask as a boon, pray for», brod «shoot, sprout», smithy «make into a smithy» a.o. (see Biese /4/).