engleski

English denominal conversion to verb, with special regard to the semantic pattern 'to put in/on N' and its Croatian equivalents

Conversion is a non-affixational derivative word-formation process that can be defined as the derivation of a new word without any overt marking. It is typical of the English word formation, but we hardly find it in Croatian. Different types of conversion can be distinguished, in particular noun to verb (an axe → to axe), verb to noun (to download → a download), adjective to verb (open → to open) and adjective to noun (good → the good). Other types can also be found, but seem to be more marginal (e.g. the use of prepositions as verbs, as in to down the can). This type of change is not a new thing in the development of English, it is found in all periods of the history of English, from the Old English period to the present day. Today, conversion seems to be very productive, especially in the computer terminology. Conversion raises four major theoretical problems: the problem of directionality, the problem of zero-morphs, the problem of the morphology-syntax boundary, and the problem of unexpected meanings. The question of directionality of conversion is the question of which member of a pair is derived from the other. The properties relevant for the determination of directionality: history of the language, semantic complexity, inflectional behaviour, stress/accentuation, and frequency of occurrence. Still, some cases are hard to decide upon (e.g. love – to love). Some linguists regard conversion as zero-affixation. They argue that in case of conversion there is a zero-affix added to the base (e.g. bottle=>to bottle&Oslash ; ; ). However, most morphologists usually think that a zero form is justified only in those cases where there is also an overt (i.e. non-zero) form that expresses exactly the same meaning or function. This constraint has also been called the overt analogue criterion. The application of the overt analogue criterion seems to give evidence against the assumption of zero-derivation and in favour of non-affixational conversion. One of the problems about conversion is the question whether it is a morphological, i.e. lexical process or a purely syntactic mechanism. The best way to solve this problem is to see what distinguishes in general syntactic processes from morphological ones, and then look again at conversion and see which properties (syntactic or lexical/morphological) hold. In view of these arguments it makes sense to conceive of conversion as a lexical, i.e. morphological process, and not as a syntactic one. Dirven and Verspoor view the process of conversion in the traditional way, as zero-derivation, adding a new element to this, namely metonymical extension (e.g. to bank is based on a part for whole metonymical concept).

conversion; word formation; morphology; zero affix; metonymy; metaphor

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