Comparative Analysis of Word Building in Prose and Poetry on the basis of E.A. Poe's works
Дипломная работа - Иностранные языки
Другие дипломы по предмету Иностранные языки
, con-act as prefixes and -tain, -ceive can be understood as roots. But in English these combinations of sounds have no lexical meaning and are called pseudo-morphemes. Some scientists treat such words as simple words, others as derived ones. [11, 56]majority of prefixes affect only the lexical meaning of words but there are three important cases where prefixes serve to form words belonging to different parts of speech as compared with the original word. These are in the first place the verb-forming prefixes be-and en-, which combine functional meaning with a certain variety of lexical meanings. Be-forms transitive verbs with adjective, verb and noun stems and changes intransitive verbs into transitive ones. Examples are: belittle (v) to make little, benumb (v) to make numb, befriend (v) to treat [3, 182]
1.2.2 Conversion
Conversion is the derivational process whereby an item changes its word class without the addition of an affix. [1,89 ] Thus, when the noun sign shifts to the verb sign(ed) without any change in the word form we can say this is a case of conversion. However, it does not mean that this process takes place in all the cases of homophones [3, 68]. Sometimes, the connection has to do with coincidences or old etymological ties that have been lost. For example, mind and matter are cases of this grammatical sameness without connection by conversion-the verbs have nothing to do today with their respective noun forms in terms of semantics.is particularly common in English because the basic form of nouns and verbs is identical in many cases. It is usually impossible in languages with grammatical genders, declensions or conjugations. [11, 43]status of conversion is a bit unclear. It must be undoubtedly placed within the phenomena of word-formation; nevertheless, there are some doubts about whether it must be considered a branch of derivation or a separate process by itself (with the same status as derivation or compounding). [5, 88]this undetermined position in grammar, some scholars assert that conversion will become even more active in the future because it is a very easy way to create new words in English. There is no way to know the number of conversions appearing every day in the spoken language, although we know this number must be high. As it is a quite recent phenomenon, the written evidence is not a fully reliable source. We will have to wait a little longer to understand its whole impact, which will surely increase in importance in the next decades.is a characteristic feature of the English word-building system. It is also called affixless derivation or zero-suffixation. Saying that, however, is saying very little because there are other types of word building in which new words are also formed without affixes (most compounds, contracted words, sound-imitation words, etc.). [3,150] the notion of conversion is to re-classification of secondary word classes within one part of speech, a phenomenon also called transposition.consists in making a new word from some existing word by changing the category of a part of speech, the morphemic shape of the original word remaining unchanged. The new word has a meaning, which differs from that of the original one though it can more or less be easily associated with it. It has also a new paradigm peculiar to its new category as a part of speech. 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) [1, 90]from the perhaps more obvious possibility to derive words with the help of affixes, there are a number of other ways to create new words on the basis of already existing ones. We have already illustrated these in the first chapter of this book, when we briefly introduced the notions of conversion, truncations, clippings, blends, and abbreviations. In this chapter we will have a closer look at these non-concatenative processes. We will begin with conversion. Conversion can be defined as the derivation of a new word without any overt marking. In order to find cases of conversion we have to look for pairs of words that are derivationally related and are completely identical in their phonetic realization.can be seen from the organization of the data, different types of conversion can be distinguished, in particular noun to verb, verb to noun, adjective to verb and adjective to noun. 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). Conversion raises three major theoretical problems that we will discuss in the following: the problem of directionality, the problem of zero-morphs and the problem of the morphology-syntax boundary. [11, 92]question of conversion has, for a long time, been a controversial one in several aspects. The 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. Hence, the саsе cannot be treated as one of word-formation for no new word appears. [15,128]to this functional approach, conversion may be regarded as a specific feature of the English categories of parts of speech, which are supposed to be able to break through the rigid borderlines dividing one category from another thus enriching the process of communication not by the creation of new words but through the sheer flexibility of the syntactic structures.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 of the major arguments for this approach to conversion is the semantic change that regularly accompanies each instance of conversion. Normally, a word changes its syntactic function without any shift in lexical meaning. E. g. both in yellow leaves and in the leaves were turning yellow the adjective denotes color. Yet, in the leaves yellowed the converted unit no longer denotes color, but the process of changing color, so that there is an essential change in meaning. The change of meaning is even more obvious in such pairs as hand - to hand, face - to face, to go - a go, to make -a make, etc. [15,180]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, to mouth, to nose, to dog, to wolf, to monkey, to can, to coal, to stage, to screen, to room, to floor, to blackmail, to blacklist, to honeymoon, and very many others.are frequently made from verbs: do (e. g. This is the queerest do Ive ever come across. Do - event, incident), go (e. g. He has still plenty of go at his age. Go - energy), make, run, find, catch, cut, walk, worry, show, move, etc.can also be made from adjectives: to pale, to yellow, to cool, to grey, to rough (e. g. We decided to rough it in the tents as the weather was warm), etc.can be formed from nouns of different semantic groups and have different meanings because of that, e.g.) 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,) 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,) 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,) 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,) 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. [11, 94]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.nouns can denote:) instant of an action e.g. a jump, a move,) process or state e.g. sleep, walk,) agent of the action expressed by the verb from which the noun has been converted, e.g. a help, a flirt, a scold,) 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,) 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