1

Vladimir Ž. Jovanović
English Department
University of Niš

WORD CONVERSION IN
ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

1. INTRODUCTION

English has a very rich repository of lexical items. Certain authorities even contend that
up to a million words exist in the language,1 thus rendering English vocabulary probably
as the crucial factor in successful learning of English as a foreign language and students’
command of the language. This conspicuous lexical abundance may be a direct
consequence of a variety of productive word formation mechanisms, and the majority of
the words in the language can be accounted for by any of the 12 primary and secondary
word formation processes. This presentation has conversion (or zero derivation,
functional shift, category change) as its focus, one of the most productive word formation
processes in English. As for the objectives of this presentation, we shall consider some of
the basic characteristics of this process which, as S. Valera (2004:20) has put it
succinctly, “...is traditionally a matter of same form and different word-class”. Then, we
shall briefly refer to the most important kinds of conversion, stressing the importance of
conversion for the overall command of the language with non-native speakers and
learners of English. The greatest segment of the presentation is dedicated to different
approaches and possible modalities of practicing with conversion in EFL classes or for
self-study purposes. Instances of many exercise types and strategies have been offered as
potential to create resource material for primary and secondary teachers of English.

2. WHAT IS WORD CONVERSION?

WORD CONVERSION can be defined as a characteristic word formation phenomenon which

involves a change in the word class, function and meaning of a particular lexical unit
without any corresponding change in the form of that word in terms of adding or
subtracting any derivational affixes. This, however, does not mean that in the process the
original word stops existing, but only that its functional pair is obtained.

(1) Four inches of unmarked snow blanketed the ground.

He forked steak into his mouth.
When Joanna Trollope swanned into my living room, I was still grumpy...

As opposed to affixation and composition, this is a non-combinatory process whereby a

stem belonging to one class is simply taken over into another class as in (1). The novel
verb stems blanket, fork, and swan in this example are not complex in the same sense as a

1
Robert McCrum, William Cran, & Robert MacNeil (1992) The Story of English. New York: Penguin, p. 1
 2

compound or suffixation-based derivative would be; i.e., these are not made up of two
discrete structural units. Strictly speaking, as I. Plag (2003:134) defined it, conversion is
derivation of a new word without any overt marking.

I insisted on labelling the term in the title as word conversion, with the intention of
separating this phenomenon from another in word formation, the products of which are
phrasal compounds, and which are sometimes perhaps injudiciously viewed as
conversion words.

(2) So, for his birthday present, I gave him an all-expenses-paid visit to the tattoo...2
It sounds eery like the old southern they-are-happy-being-slaves excuse. 3

This could be treated as a process of obtaining compound words the bases of which are
phrases or even clauses of different kind. In linguistics this phenomenon has been more
broadly determined as lexicalization - a process by which a word group comes to be
fixed by usage and to behave as a single lexical entity.

The above definition of conversion incorporates one aspect of conversion which has been
quite often neglected in literature, namely that along with class and function words
change their meaning as well. One kind of semantic change is almost omni-present in
conversion, and that is the change of the prototypical, lexical word-class meaning (e.g.,
from that of nouns to that of verbs). The meaning of the words honeymoon and to
honeymoon is simply not the same. However, with a certain number of cases the
conversion-word retains only one of the many senses of a word, or one of the entire
gamut of possible interpretations. The noun paper has various meanings, such as
newspaper, or material to wrap things, etc. The denominal verb only contains the sense
of putting that material on places like walls. (Bartolomé / Cabrera, 2004:3) Another
remark about meaning is that often the meaning changes in the domain of implication,
since certain conversion-words have rather negative meaning, while their counterparts
may be rather neutral. The noun total and the verb to run around do not imply anything
negative, but if someone totals your car, and the insurance company of this person gives
you the run-around, you become aware of the negative meanings of both.

3. CONVERSION KINDS

3.1. COMPLETE CONVERSION

Complete conversion means that the word is completely adapted to a new class and
obtains all the characteristics of that class (including inflection): Yes, on some nights it
really is becoming difficult to find an original programme among the repeats.4
Sometimes conversion can be accompanied with minor changes in the form, basically in
terms of voicing and stress shift: abuse > to abuse, to trans'port > 'transport

2 The Sunday Times Magazine, March 24, 1996, p.7.

3
The Sunday Times Magazine, April 7, 1996, p. 39.
4 Financial Times, August 20, 1997, p.7.
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3.2 PARTIAL CONVERSION

With partial conversion, words do not stop belonging to the original word class, and they
obtain only particular characteristics of the new word class, so that we say that they
belong to two classes at the same time: adjective > noun, the ignorant, the wealthy, the
accused, the wounded, the kind, the Welsh. Sometimes adjectives refer to an abstract
quality and can be found in nominal positions: You must take the rough with the smooth.

3.3 SECONDARY CONVERSION

Otherwise known as change of secondary word-class, this is a conversion of uncountable
into countable nouns and vice-versa, transitive verbs into intransitive, etc.

(3) beer > two bottles of beer > Two beers for us, please!
bread > a bread > This is a better bread than the one I bought.
read trans. > read intrans. > Your book reads well.

4. CONVERSION TYPES
4.1 NOUN > VERB

The most numerous type of conversion in English. There are plenty of different syntactic and
semantic relationships between the original word and the form obtained by conversion. Both
affixed forms and compound nouns can serve as base for conversion

(4) to pocket to honeymoon to captain to cub

to inconvenience to winter to father to sandwich
to mirror to ear to referee to drum
to bone to sum-total to volunteer to pipe
to weekend to tailor to parrot to machine-gun

Conversion-verbs can be employed in a variety of verbal functions, the majority of them

serving as the past participle, past tense or infinitive form.

(5) She had managed to give her heavily rouged and mascara’d face a suitability and
femme-fatale look… 5
They were given Iraqi targets in an objective area known as Tungsten, but later
radioed back that they had attacked… 6
…she could metamorphose into… 7

5 John Fowles, The Magus, Pan books, London, 1977, p. 523.

6 The Guardian, 14.05.1992, p.2
7 Ian McEwan, The Child in Time, Pan Books, London, 1988, p. 54.
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4.2 VERB > NOUN

This is a productive type of conversion, second only to the type noun into verb.

(6) from transitive verbs bore cheat spy

from intransitive verbs flirt stray sneak

Concrete object or result of the action: answer, drink, reject, suspect, meet, bet
State of mind or senses: desire, love, dismay, taste, doubt, want
Event, activity, result of action: acclaim, hit, release, attempt, search, employ
Location of action: from transitive verbs dump, haunt
from intransitive verbs divide, pass, rise, lounge, retreat, turn
Instrument of action: cover, lift, wrench, sting, cure, permit, wrap

Results of one-time activities can often be expressed by means of conversion. Usually, the
verbs engaged in such creations are to give, to have, to make, to take, and the indefinite
article precedes: give a shudder, wriggle; make a laugh, dive; take a look, turn, stroll, peep;
have a look, swim, ride, try.

4.3 ADJECTIVE > NOUN

The so-called deadjectival nouns are often treated as parts of phrases where the noun is
missing:

(7) bitter (beer), natural (talent), comic (actor), regular (customer), daily (newspaper), roast
(beef), final (game, race).

4. 4 ADJECTIVE > VERB

This pattern is not so well developed. Several semantic groups could be identified among
deadjectival verbs:
Bring to this state: to bare, to free, to still, to blind, to calm, to ready, to dirty
Obtain the quality of: to mellow, to sober, to narrow, to yellow, to empty, to slim, to weary
Ways of performing an action:
transitive verbs to brave, to savage, to jolly, to gentle, to shrill
intransitive verbs to level, to shy
Bring to the state or become: to lower, to best, to better, to worst.

4.5 ADVERB > VERB

A limited number of examples, not productive:

(8) near > to near, west > to west

further > to further, south > to south, east > to east.
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4.6 ADVERBIAL PARTICLE > VERB

A very restricted type, aside from the examples in (9) only instances with out could be
registered:

(9) The merchant upped the prices of fish or twenty thousand colliers have downed tools.

4.7 TRANSPOSITION (CONVERSION-LIKE USE OF WORDS)

Transposition is the use of a word in other than its normal function, assuming that there are
normal or typical syntactic functions for particular word classes. This is a rather frequent
phenomenon in English and presents a clear manifestation of the great analogical force of
conversion. The formations in these examples cannot be treated as conversion-words, either
due to the fact that there do not exist full inflectional paradigms, i.e., the words do not
become full-fledged members of the new word class, or because they are short-lived, one-
time formations which may not be listed in dictionaries as separate entries or even word
forms. Some instances may even involve the use of interjections as verbs:

(10) Not having dressed a date before, the question threw me – I um’d and ah’d and
stuttered until the voice on the end of the line got tired…8

Other possible transpositions may involve:

NOUN > ADJECTIVE tax evasion stone wall

ADVERB > ADJECTIVE an up/down train an off day the then secretary
CONJUNCTION > NOUN It tells you about the how and the why of flight.
CONJUNCTION > VERB But me no buts.
AFFIX > NOUN Give it to your ex.
ACRONYM > VERB N.A.T.O > to NATO

5. WHY IS WORD CONVERSION IMPORTANT IN TEFL?

Conversion is an important feature of English. This non-affixational process has

been often referred to as "...typically English..."9 or "specifically English".10 Furthermore,
some 30.000 conversion-words in English that Y. M. Biese claimed to have been in
existence by 1940s, must have doubled in number by now.
Next, conversion is a lexicological phenomenon with significant syntactic and
semantic implications for the language as a whole and is therefore certainly worth
studying and viewed as an important constituent part of TEFL. Actually, a competent and

8 Financial Times, April 29, 2005, p. 8.

9
Y. M. Biese, (1941) Origins and Development of Conversions in English, Helsinki: Annales Acadeiae
Scientiarum Fennicae, B 45, 2, p. 9.
10
O. Jespersen (1965) A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles, Vol. 6 - Morphology,
London/Copenhagen: George Allen & Unwin/Ejnar Munksgard, str. 85.
 6

proficient speaker of English cannot be envisaged without the ability to respond

adequately both in terms of comprehension and language production to any
recombination of language units based on the principles of conversion. Even though there
is still certain dispute among scholars concerning some of the main issues in conversion,
many agree that conversion will become even more active in the future because it is a
very easy way to create new words in English (Cannon, 1985:415). Along with
enhancing language economy, this process is an effective device for maintaining sentence
cohesion and bridging syntactic gaps.
Furthermore, many authors have claimed so far that conversion is a free process,
that there seem to be no morphological (formal) restrictions to converting of words in
English. Compounds, derivatives, acronyms, abbreviations and even borrowed words can
obtain functions other than their original, as shown by the illustrations in (11):

(11) Drawing the curtain is still popular with many people, but during daylight hours it is
an obvious giveaway.
On Thursday, the nation that had burnt books in a fire practice for the great European
inferno was being précis-ed for the benefit of neighbours still inclined to pour cold water
on its advances.

On the other hand, conversion in Serbian which is a synthetic language with a

highly developed inflectional system is almost always partial and may therefore present a
difficulty to Serbian learners of English. As Serbian, the mother tongue of the majority of
the speakers in our country does not have the propensity for easy word conversion, it can
be justly assumed that at the intermediate level of studying English, students are not all
that well aware of the different expression potentials of English in terms of employing
varying word classes or syntactic patterns, particularly in terms of conversion, as in the
example:

(12) It was from there on the night of 10 March 1945 that 67 prisoners tunnelled to
freedom, instead of It was from there on the night of 10 March 1945 that 67 prisoners
escaped through the tunnel to freedom.

That the relation of English and Serbian is imbalanced in terms of conversion, and
therefore a potential cause of difficulty in TEFL may be shown by the results of a
research project I have conducted. The empirical data have shown that in translation from
English into Serbian up to 40% of cases of conversion-words would be translated with a
different word class translation equivalent than the original word.

(13) ...the Noahs had him casseroled one Embarkation Sunday. (JB16)
= ...Nojevi su, na godišnjicu ukrcavanja, napravili od njega paprikaš.

The process of conversion has obtained in intensity particularly in this century, in

English more than perhaps in any other language. This is supported by the fact that as
many as 21 different types of word class change or transition can be registered in English.
Thus, studying it to a proper degree may facilitate translation and further enhance
learning of the language with most of the non-native speakers.
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6. WORD CONVERSION IN EFL CLASSROOM

This section is aimed at presenting several practice techniques and a series of

exercise tasks which could be devised to the purpose of drawing greater attention on the
part of the students in the EFL classroom to the process of productive converting of
words. The models of task assignments presented here could be incorporated in course
textbooks, language teaching material, or exercise books.
The activities with conversion in English could be undertaken in seven steps and
the assignments can be presented separately within each of the several groups:

STEP ONE The first thing to do is get the students introduced to the phenomenon of
conversion in English, i.e., help them recognize the fact that this mechanism exists in
English. Without this initial step, the students can’t be expected to understand correctly
the syntactic matrix of English, nor learn the language properly and come to appreciate
its combinatory potential. Thus, their overall ability to avoid misunderstanding and
misinterpreting English language texts would be significantly improved.

The first exercise task is meant for young elementary level learners of English. In a text
with conversion-based pairs, as in the one that follows, the students are asked to take
notice of the same words that appear in different sentences. Consequently, the students
obtain an adequate explanation of this language feature, and encouraged to be on the
lookout for any future cases. This also introduces students to the two major types of word
conversion. The second task is for more advanced students who have already had lectures
on conversion. The assignment presupposes personal engagement and prior knowledge of
basic functional relations and intuition.

TASK 1 In the following text detect all the examples of identical words that appear in
different sentences. State whether they play the same grammatical role.

My brother and I got a puppy dog as a present. It was presented to us by our

uncle Kevin for Christmas. The first thing we did was to give the dog a name. We named
it "Rusty" after a comic-book hero. Next, we opened a can of dog food to feed him, but he
didn't seem to like canned food, and so the can left open. When we wanted to chain him,
uncle Kevin said it was too young a puppy to be on a chain, and that we'd better make
him a house. Thus, from that day on, an old vacuum-cleaner box has been housing our
new family pet.

TASK 2 In the following text detect all the examples of word conversion and
determine the direction of conversion with the help of a good dictionary with
etymological explanations for the entries. Recommended dictionaries are Oxford
English Dictionary or Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary.

Once, it was enough just to unwrap a bar of chocolate and eat it. Now, you must
understand it. Note the glossy shine that indicates the strong bond between the cocoa
butter and the cocoa mass, instruct the makers of Vosges Haut Chocolat on the
 8

packaging of their Barcelona Bars. Release its complex aromas by rubbing your thumb
across the top, and savor the smell. Only then should you finally taste it, feeling the
chocolate melt around your tongue.

Like coffee before it, chocolate is going complex and upscale. This holiday
season, look for Tasmanian honey wrapped in dark chocolate from Godiva and custom-
made boxes tied with double-faced satin ribbon at exclusive Manhattan specialty store
Bergdorf Goodman. Christmas is the peak time for premium chocolate sales, and big
candy companies and small chocolatiers alike are rolling out some of their most high-end
products to date.

STEP TWO The second stage which is closely tied to the first one is based on
determining the word class of concrete words, thus focusing on the feature of English to
have formally identical word forms perform different grammatical jobs in sentences.
Conversion is largely an issue of determining the interface of form and function. To be
able to distinguish between word classes, students have to rely on morphological
structure to a certain extent, but to a certain extent on syntactic position of words.

The task which is directed to word class recognition is aimed at developing an ability of
grammatical function distinction, in particular with pairs with identical phonemic status.
The students are asked to underline specific words in sentences (verbs, nouns, or
adjectives formed on the grounds of conversion), and then answer the questions in
relation to the class they belong, to state the uninflected form, etc. After determining the
meaning of the word, the students could be expected to translate the sentence without
particular difficulties into Serbian.

TASK 1 In the following sentences underline the words which have functions other
than their usual. State the function they have in the sentences and translate them into
Serbian.

1) He buttoned her shirt, helped her put the socks on and laced her boots.
2) There is a wooden sign with the name of the town lettered on it.
3) The comfortable calm of the peasants was rudely disturbed.
4) It is not hard to see the parallels between these two poets.

TASK 2 Use the following words in sentences of your own so that they perform
various grammatical functions:
example: lock
I always lock the door at night. This door needs a new lock.

1. joke _______________________________________________________________
2. light _______________________________________________________________
3. escape ______________________________________________________________
4. costume ____________________________________________________________
 9

STEP THREE The next step of practicing with conversion is focused on appropriate use
of conversion-words in sentential and other contexts, with the particular intention of
making the students think “conversion-wise” while learning English and ways of
expressing their ideas in the language.

For English learners of higher level, sentences and so-called cloze tests could be
designed, but such as to contain empty slots to be filled with conversion-words, and
which the students could be asked to fill relying on the grammatical and situational
context. Newspaper and magazine articles or other kinds of texts could be employed to
this end, particularly well-written ones preferably teeming with clear examples of
conversion. The tasks could range from simpler to more complicated, depending on the
complexity of the text.

TASK 1 Use the words from the group below to complete the listed sentences. The
words should be adjusted in form to the grammatical and semantic context:
Example: The book ____________ to the top of the bestseller list. = to rocket 
rocketed

to weekend to blanket
to adventure to windmill

1. She was ____________ with relatives down in a town by the sea.

2. We had ____________ our lives and liberties for the cause.
3. The boy in the water ____________ his arms, obviously giving us some kind of sign.
4. The yellow leaves that ____________ the ground, made our way through a bit
difficult.

TASK 2 Fill in the blanks in the following sentences with adequate conversion
words.
example: The two players ______________ each other suspiciously.
The two players ____eyed______ each other suspiciously.

1. She was ______________ Sunny because of her happy nature.

2. He ______________ his previous best time for a marathon.
3. The ship was ______________ the harbor.
4. Hyde Park is one of my favourites _____________ in London.

TASK 3 The gaps in the text below are to be filled with adequate conversion-words,
based on the grammatical and situational context. Please observe the hint provided by
the initial letter.

The self-styled Mardi Gra bomber t(argeted) two Sainsbury's stores yesterday in his
campaign to extort cash from business. One device exploded but no one was injured...
 10

TASK 4 The gaps in the text below are to be filled with corresponding conversion-
words. After close reading of the text, the form of the word is to be determined on the
grounds of the grammatical and situational context, paying attention to the hints given
after the text.

This is a time of great crisis. Global warming threatens our ecosystem, while theocratic
ideologies clash across the continents. Above all, one issue has generated more column
inches in our newspapers and ___________ (1) the finest minds on our TV screens than
any other and that is: is the sit-com dead? Sorry to add to the nation-sized carpet of
newsprint that's been generated by this topic by now asking that question myself.

I think one of the main reasons the British sitcom is felt to be in a rut is because the
method by which sitcoms were made between, say, the 1960s and 80s became very fixed.
A writer ___________ (2) in a room for six months or so, writing six half-hour scripts.
These were ___________ (3) to a producer in London, whose job was to count the pages,
suggest ___________ (4), pass the script on to a casting director and ___________ (5)
lunch with the writer to talk about the next series. Meanwhile, the casting director cast
the parts from a well-established repertory of comic actors. He then went and had lunch.

A month or so later, everyone met in a ___________(6) room on a wet Monday morning,

had cups of coffee, read the scripts out loud, ___________(7) the scenes for a studio
director, had lunch, made cuts to get the reading time down to roughly half an hour and
went for a costume ___________(8). These were usually awkward affairs since everyone
was a stone and half heavier than when they were previously measured. Everyone then
went into a studio on a wet Thursday night and recorded the episode once in front of a
___________ (9) audience that had been ___________(10) by a man from the north.

Hints:
1. to make someone think about a subject or problem and consider how to deal with it 2.
to work very hard 3. to send a letter or parcel by post 4. a reduction in the size or amount
of something 5. to make arrangements to stay in a place, eat in a restaurant, go to a
theatre etc at a particular time in the future 6. an occasion when you practise for the
performance of a play, concert, opera etc. 7. to prevent anything moving through a space
by being or placing something across it or in it 8. an occasion when someone puts on a
piece of clothing that is being made for them to see if it fits 9. travel by bus 10. to make
someone or something warm or warmer, or to become warm or warmer.

STEP FOUR This phase of practicing is aimed at taking into account the meaning the
words obtained in the process of conversion and any semantic change which may
originate therefrom. This exercise model is based on the ability of students to paraphrase
sentences on the basis of a previously quoted example in which target words will be
 11

replaced with their functional counterparts. Thus, the meaning of the conversion-based
form will be practically established.

A task which aims at introducing students to the ways of converting adjectives into verbs
and pointing out the more or less prominent cases in this domain could consist of the
entire phrase matrix, i.e., the paraphrase of the meaning of the verb. On the basis of these
instructions, the students would be asked to produce new verbs and thus even learn new
vocabulary. The exercise could be extended to other types of conversion and the opposite
direction of analysis.

TASK 1 Provide a verb which would incorporate the meaning of the action stated in
the each of the phrases:
example: to make one's socks wet ________to wet socks__________

to make a bottle empty ________________________

to do better than someone ________________________
to become ripe ________________________
to be sick with pills and throw them up ________________________

TASK 2 The following conversion-words (left hand side) are to be linked to

corresponding definitions for the given words (right hand side):
example: a re-count A”an additional count”

1. a facial A “to watch over, nourish, and protect

maternally”
2. to police B “an act or instance of wandering”
3. a rove C “a treatment for the face, consisting of a
massage and the application of cosmetic
products”
4. to mother D “to regulate, control, or keep in order with or
as if with a law enforcement agency”

TASK 3 Detect conversion-words in the sentences below and supply as detailed and
precise an interpretation of their meaning as possible:
example: The girls chorused 'Hurry up!'
to chorus = to say something together and at the same time, like a chorus of singers

1. The girls wolfed down the sandwiches in minutes.

…………………………………………………………………………………………….
2. Joanna toyed with the idea of going back to Scotland.

…………………………………………………………………………………………….
3. An experiment has been carried out on the work of four representative moderns.

…………………………………………………………………………………………….
 12

4. Brown the meat before adding the vegetables.

…………………………………………………………………………………………….

TASK 4 Some of the verbs in the following sentences have been converted from
adjectives. Mark them in the form they have in the sentences and explain their
meaning on the line.
example: John fell off the fence and muddied his trousers.
muddied = to make something dirty as by covering it with mud

1. My mother wanted me to tidy my room before going out.

…………………………………………………………………………………………….
2. The enormous cold numbed her toes before long.
…………………………………………………………………………………………….

3. The fir trees thinned as the group moved closer to the top of the high mountain.
…………………………………………………………………………………………….
4. Parents who absent themselves from the lives of their children can face different
consequences.

…………………………………………………………………………………………….
TASK 5 Try to establish the underlying grammatical or sentence patterns which would
correspond to the paraphrase of the meaning of the converted compounds.
example: to childproof __to make safe against misuse by children______

1. to machine-gun _______________________________________________
2. to headline __________________________________________________
3. to brainstorm __________________________________________________
4. to video-tape ___________________________________________________

STEP FIVE The fifth section is dedicated to the most important complete conversion
types, i.e., putting the most numerous types to the foreground. As obtaining nouns from
verbs is the commonest type of conversion in English, this feature is to be emphasized
and practiced to the greatest extent. Aside from pointing out the basic characteristics of
conversion-nouns, EFL students can be presented with the specificities of such verbs in
sentential contexts, as in the example The ship was manned by galley slaves. The
 13

teaching would continue by bringing up the rest of the different types of conversion, at
which the types would be presented according to their importance, i.e., the order
established by a corpus analysis of English language text samples. After the two largest
types, the students can practice adjective to noun conversion. General descriptions of
English already contain certain basic instructions on how to combine the definite article
and adjectives, as in the dead, the rich, the wounded, etc. The existence of the same
pattern in Serbian may considerably facilitate the comprehension of this type of
converting words.

TASK 1 In the following pair of sentences, the first contains a verb which can serve as
a starting point for conversion into a noun. Thus, obtained noun is to be used in the
second sentence.
example: a) I'm still waiting for you to answer my first question.
b) This is a difficult problem and I don't know what the answer is.

1. a) Nudging the door open with his knee he carried the tray in.
b) The man next to him winked at him and gave him a …………….
2. a) I learnt to swim when I was about 5 years old.
b) I went for a ……………. before breakfast this morning.
3. a) The woman was sitting quietly reading in the garden.
b) It's not brilliant but it's worth a ……………..
4. a) She fell backwards but he caught her in his arms
b) Finally, they got home with a huge ……………. of fish.

TASK 2 Use the following words in sentences of your own so that their meaning suits
the sentential context:
example: to empty
Being bored, his wife emptied out the ashtray often.

1. v. to carpet

…………………………………………………………………………………………….
2. n. a meet
…………………………………………………………………………………………….
3. v. to general
…………………………………………………………………………………………….
4. n. a say
…………………………………………………………………………………………….
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TASK 3 The sentences given below should be rewritten, but in such a way that the
adjectives in italics function as nouns in the paraphrased sentences:
example: Old people, and also sick people, enjoy being in places with mild winters.
The old and the sick enjoy being in places with mild climates.

1. Hardship brings out only the best and the worst things in people.

…………………………………………………………………………………………….

2. They wanted to organize games for disabled sportsmen.

…………………………………………………………………………………………….

3. Only strong individuals could survive in this wilderness.

…………………………………………………………………………………………….

4. The French nationals wanted to communicate with him in English.

…………………………………………………………………………………………….

STEP SIX Here, the students are asked to recognize the minor changes in the
suprasegmental form of the words that occur in the process of converting. They are
introduced to the distinctive character of the stress in the cases of converting nouns into
verbs and vice versa.

TASK 1 Practice adequate pronunciation of the word pairs, paying particular

attention to the position of the primary stress in the words.
example: import /'ɪmpɔːt/ to import /ɪmˈpɔːt/

1. perfect /ˈpɜːfɪkt/ to perfect /ˌpəˈfekt /

2. record /ˈrekɔːd / to record /riˈkɔːd /
3. process /ˈprəʊses/ to process /prəˈses/
4. to construe /kənˈstruː/ a construe /ˈkɔnˌstruː/

TASK 2 Determine the syllable which takes the primary stress in the following pairs of
words.
example: noun ‘torment verb tor’ment
Noun Verb
1. complement complement
2. recount recount
3. protest protest
4. digest digest
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STEP SEVEN The last segment of practicing with conversion would be to get the
students to know the kinds of conversion, the minor types of complete conversion, the
characteristics of secondary conversion, as well as the possible restrictions that exist in
connection to conversion. Even though it is possible to convert certain adjectives into
verbs, as illustrated in "He has frequented that bar since the end of prohibition", or "A
similar blunder occurred with Kenneth Branagh, who is snapped browning himself on a
sunbed",11 the number of conversion-verbs of this type is limited, so that it is not possible,
or at least not still to use it in sentences like.

(14) *He pinked his jacket.

TASK 1 The words given in the list below have been obtained by means of conversion.
State the kind of conversion on the first line next to the word, and the type of
conversion on the second.
example: a) a divide ___complete________________verb > noun________________

1. Please, bring me a juice. ___________________ ___________________

2. to floor _______________ ___________________
3. I can tell it was an excellent buy. ___________ ___________________
4. to idle away the time. ___________ ___________________

TASK 2 Establish the instances of secondary conversion in the following sentences.

Underline the words and determine the direction of conversion.
example: I ran the dishwasher even though it wasn't full.
to run verb intransitive > to run something verb transitive

1. Why don’t we go to a pub and have a beer?

2. Their company has purchased recently an early Picasso.
3. I am sorry to tell you but your report reads awkwardly.
4. This shop sells a wide range of first-class Italian cheeses.

REFERENCES:

1. ADAMS, Valerie (1976) An Introduction to Modern English Word-Formation, London: Longman

group.
2. BARTOLOMÉ, A. I. H./ CABRERA, G. M. (2004) “Grammatical Conversion in English: Some New
Trends in Lexical Evolution”, Valladolid: University of Valladolid, Internet presentation.
3. BAUER, Laurie (1984) English Word-Formation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4. BIESE, Y. M. (1941) Origin and Development of Conversions in English, Helsinki: Annales
Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, B 45, 2.
5. BRINTON, L. J. /TRAUGOTT, E. C. (2005) Lexicalization and Language Change, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

11
Evening Standard, October 17, 1995, p. 8.
 16

6. CANNON, G. (1985). "Functional Shift in English." Linguistics, 23, pp. 411-431.

7. CLARK, E. V. / CLARK H. H. (1979) “When Nouns Surface as Verbs” in: Language, vol. 55, number
4, pp 767-811.
8. KATAMBA, Francis (1994) English Words, London and New York: Routledge.
9. KATAMBA, Francis (1993) Morphology, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave.
10. MARCHAND, Hans (1969) The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation,
Munich: C. H. Beck.
11. PENNANEN, Esko V. (1971) Conversion and Zero-derivation in English, Tampere: Acta Universitatis
Tamperensis, ser. A, vol. 40.
12. PLAG, Ingo (2003) Word-Formation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
13. VALERA, Salvador (2004) “Conversion vs. unmarked word-class change”, Skase Journal Of
Theoretical Linguistics, I, No.1, pp 20-42.