Everything about Conversion Linguistics totally explained
In
linguistics,
conversion, also called
zero derivation, is a kind of
word formation; specifically, it's the creation of a
word from an existing word without any change in form. Conversion is more
productive in some languages than in others; in
English it's a fairly productive process.
Often a word of one
lexical category (part of speech) is converted to a word of another lexical category; for example, the
noun green in golf (referring to a putting-green) is derived ultimately from the
adjective green. Conversions from adjectives to nouns and vice versa are both very common and unnotable in English; much more remarked upon is
verbing, the creation of a
verb by a converting a noun or other word (for example the
adjective clean becomes the
verb to clean).
The boundary between conversion and
functional shift (the extension of an existing word to take on a new
syntactic function) isn't well-defined.
Verb conversion in English
Verbification, or
verbing, is the creation of a
verb from a
noun,
adjective, or other word. Verbification is a type of
functional shift. It is also a form of
derivation, and may involve any of the various derivational processes. In English, verbification typically involves simple conversion of a non-verb to a verb. The verbs
to verbify and
to verb are themselves products of verbification, and — as might be guessed — the term
to verb is often used more specifically, to refer only to verbification that doesn't involve a change in
form. (Verbing in this specific sense is therefore a kind of
anthimeria.) However, neither term is in general technical use; in discussing
word formation, linguists commonly use terms that describe the process of formation (such as
coining or
suffixation) rather than the lexical category of the new word.
Verbification may have a bad reputation with some English users because it's such a potent source of
neologisms. Although most products of verbification are regarded as neologisms, and may meet considerable opposition from
prescriptivist authorities, they're extremely common in
colloquial speech, particularly specialized
jargon, where words are needed to describe common actions or experiences.
Verbification is by no means confined to
argot, and has furnished
English with countless new expressions, for example "access", as in "access the file", which was previously a noun, as in "gain access to the file". Similar mainstream examples include "host", as in "host a party", and "chair", as in "chair the meeting". Other formations, such as "gift", are less widespread but nevertheless mainstream. Examples of verbification in the
English language number in the thousands, including some of the most common words, such as
mail and
e-mail,
strike,
beer,
talk,
salt,
pepper,
switch,
bed,
sleep,
ship,
train,
stop,
drink,
cup,
lure,
mutter,
dress,
dizzy,
divorce,
fool,
merge, and many more, to be found on virtually every page in the
dictionary. Often it's impossible to tell which form arose first.
Verbification is sometimes used to create
nonce words or joking words. Sometimes these jocular constructions gain favor and become used in serious discourse, due to a subtle shade of meaning which is present in the neologism but absent from similar standard verbs, for example
speechify. In other cases, simple
conversion is involved, as with formations like
beer, as in
beer me ("give me a beer") and
eye, as in
eye it ("look at it"). Sometimes, a verbified form requires an adverb, for example
sex as in
sex it up ("make it sexier").
In other languages, such as
Japanese and the
Semitic languages, verbification is a more regular process. In
Esperanto, any word can be transformed into a verb, either by altering its ending to
-i, or by applying suffixes such as
-igi and
-iĝi.
Popular culture
A
Calvin and Hobbes strip dealt with this phenomenon, concluding with the statement that "Verbing weirds language", demonstrating the verbing of both
verb and
weird. (The former appears in its use as a
gerund.)
Further Information
Get more info on 'Conversion Linguistics'.
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