Conversion is a highly productive way of coining new words in modern English. It is often referred to as an affixless way of building words. Or a process of making new words from some existing root by changing the category of a part of speech without changing the morphemic shape of the original root-word. Conversion is expanded by the analytical structure of modern English. e.g.: to buy — a buy.
The question of conversion has, for a long time, been a controversial one in several aspects. The very essence of this process has been treated by a number of scholars e. g. H. Sweet, not as a word-building act, but as a mere functional change. From this point of view the word hand in Hand me that book is not a verb, but a noun used in a verbal syntactical function, that is, hand me and hands in She has small hands are not two different words but one. But this case cannot be treated as word formation means due to the fact that no new word is built. Nowadays this theory finds increasingly fewer supporters, and conversion is universally accepted as one of the major ways of enriching English vocabulary with new words. One should guard against thinking that every case of noun and verb, verb and adjective, adjective and noun, etc. with the same morphemic shape results from conversion. There are numerous pairs of words e. g. love, n. — to love, v.; work, n. — to work, v.; drink, n. — to drink, v., etc. which did not occur due to conversion but coincided as a result of certain historical processes dropping of endings, simplification of stems when before that they had different forms. On the other hand, it is quite true that the first cases of conversion imitated such pairs of words as love, n. — to love, v. for they were numerous in the vocabulary and were subconsciously accepted by native speakers as one of the typical language patterns. The two categories of parts of speech especially affected by conversion are nouns and verbs. Verbs made from nouns are the most numerous amongst the words produced by conversion: e. g. to hand, to back, to face, to eye etc. Nouns are frequently made from verbs: do, go, make etc. Verbs can also be made from adjectives: to pale, to yellow, to cool, to grey etc. 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.
--
Conversion is a characteristic feature of the English word-building system. It is also called affixless derivation or zero-suffixation. 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. A.I. Smirntitsky 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).
Conversion is the main way of forming verbs in Modern English. Verbs can be formed from nouns of different semantic groups and have 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 if they are formed from nouns denoting tools, machines, instruments, weapons, e.g. to hammer, to machine-gun, to rifle, to nail,
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, addition 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 from which they have been converted, e.g. to park, to garage, to bottle, to corner, to pocket,
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 week-end .
Verbs can be also 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.
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 help, a flirt, a scold ,
d) object or result of the action expressed by the verb from which the noun has been converted, e.g. a burn, a find, a purchase,
e) place 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 such verbs as : to have, to get, to take etc., e.g. to have a try, to give a push, to take a swim .
