Учебное пособие: Lectures in Contrastive Lexicology of the English and Ukrainian Languages

e.g.: maiden (N), darken (V), woollen (A), often (Adv).

O. Jesperson points out that the causes that made conversion so widely spread are to be approached diachronically. The noun and verb have become identical in form firstly as a result of the loss of endings. More rarely it is the prefix that is lost (mind < gemynd). When endings had disappeared phonetical development resulted in the merging of sound forms for both elements of these pairs.

e.g.: OE carian (verb) and caru (noun) merged into care (verb, noun); OE drinkan (verb) and drinca, drinc (noun) merged into drink (verb, noun).

A similar homonymy resulted in the borrowing from French of pairs of words of the same root but belonging in French to different parts of speech. These words lost their affixes and became phonetically identical in the process of assimilation.

Prof. A. Smirnitsky is of the opinion that on a synchronic level there is no difference in correlation between such cases as listed above, i.e. words originally differentiated by affixes and later becoming homonymous after the loss of endings (sleep – noun :: sleep – verb) and those formed by conversion (pencil – noun :: pencil – verb).

Prof. I. Arnold is of the opinion that prof. Smirnitsky is mistaken. His mistake is in the wish to call both cases conversion, which is illogical if he, or any of his followers, accepts the definition of conversion as a word-building process which implies the diachronistic approach. Prof. I. Arnold states that synchronically both types sleep (noun) – sleep (verb) and pencil (noun) – pencil (verb) must be treated together as cases of patterned homonymy. But it is essential to differentiate the cases of conversion and treat them separately when the study is diachronistic.

Conversion has been the subject of a great many discussions since 1891 when

H. Sweet first used the term in his New English Grammar. Various opinions have been expressed on the nature and character of conversion in the English language and different conceptions have been put forward.

The treatment of conversion as a morphological way of forming words was suggested by A.I. Smirnitsky and accepted by R.Z. Ginzburg, S.S. Khidekel,

G.Y. Knyazeva, A.A. Sankin.

Other linguists sharing, on the whole, the conception of conversion as a morphological way of forming words disagree, however, as to what serves here as a word-building means. Some of them define conversion as a non-affixal way of forming words pointing out that its characteristic feature is that a certain stem is used for the formation of a categorically different word without a derivational affix being added

(I.R. Galperin, Y.B. Cherkasskaya).

Others hold the view that conversion is the formation of new words with the help of a zero-morpheme (H. Marchand).

There is also a point of view on conversion as a morphological-syntactic word-building means (Y.A. Zhluktenko), for it involves, as the linguists sharing this conception maintain, both a change of the paradigm and of the syntactic function of the word.

e.g.: I need some paper for my room : He is papering his room.

Besides, there is also a purely syntactic approach commonly known as a functional approach to conversion. In Great Britain and the United States of America linguists are inclined to regard conversion as a kind of functional change. They define conversion as a shift from one part of speech to another contending that in modern English a word may function as two different parts of speech at the same time.

The two categories of parts of speech especially affected by conversion are the noun and the verb. Verbs made from nouns are the most numerous among the words produced by conversion.

e.g.: to hand, to face, to nose, to dog, to blackmail.

Nouns are frequently made from verbs: catch, cut, walk, move, go.

Verbs can also be made from adjectives: to pale, to yellow, to cool.

A word made by conversion has a different meaning from that of the word from which it was made though the two meanings can be associated. There are certain regularities in these associations which can be roughly classified. In the group of verbs made from nouns some regular semantic associations are the following:

- A noun is a name of a tool – a verb denotes an action performed by the tool: to knife, to brush.

- A noun is a name of an animal – a verb denotes an action or aspect of behaviour typical of the animal: monkey – to monkey, snake – to snake. Yet, to fish does not mean to behave like a fish but to try to catch fish.

- A noun denotes a part of a human body – a verb denotes an action performed by it : hand – to hand, shoulder – to shoulder. However, to face does not imply doing something by or even with one’s face but turning it in a certain direction.

- A noun is a name of some profession or occupation – a verb denotes an activity typical of it : a butcher – to butcher, a father – to father.

- A noun is a name of a place – a verb denotes the process of occupying this place or putting something into it: a bed – to bed, a corner – to corner.

- A noun is the name of a container – a verb denotes an act of putting something within the container: a can – to can, a bottle – to bottle.

- A noun is the name of a meal – a verb denotes the process of taking it: supper – to supper, lunch – to lunch.

The suggested groups do not include all the great variety of verbs made from nouns by conversion. They just represent the most obvious cases and illustrate the great variety of semantic interrelations within the so-called converted pairs and the complex nature of the logical associations which underlie them.