Approaches to Conversion/Zero-derivation 3830914563, 9783830914563

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Laurie Bauer, Salvador Valera (Eds.)

A p p roa ch e s to Co nv e r s i on / Ze ro D e r i v ati on

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Laurie Bauer & Salvador Valera (Eds.)

Approaches to Conversion / Zero-Derivation

Waxmann Münster / New York München / Berlin

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Contents

Laurie Bauer and Salvador Valera Conversion or zero-derivation: an introduction .........................................................7 Laurie Bauer (Victoria University of Wellington) Conversion and the notion of lexical category .........................................................19 Dieter Kastovsky (University of Vienna) Conversion and/or zero: word-formation theory, historical linguistics, and typology .............................................................................................................31 Ferenc Kiefer (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) Types of conversion in Hungarian............................................................................51 Stela Manova and Wolfgang U. Dressler (University of Vienna) The morphological technique of conversion in the inflecting-fusional type ...........67 Martin Neef (University of Cologne and University of Brunswick) On some alleged constraints on conversion ...........................................................103 Doris Schönefeld (Ruhr University of Bochum) Zero-derivation – functional change – metonymy .................................................131 Author Index.......................................................................................................... 161 Subject Index ......................................................................................................... 164

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© Waxmann Verlag GmbH. For private use only.

Laurie Bauer and Salvador Valera

Conversion or zero-derivation: an introduction 1.

Introduction

The papers that are collected here come from two sources. On the one hand we have papers which were presented by invited speakers at a Symposium of Conversion/Zero-Derivation which was held in conjunction with the 10th International Morphology Conference in Szentendre, Hungary, in May 2002. On the other hand we have papers from scholars who could not attend that symposium but indicated their interest in contributing to the debate on Conversion/Zero-Derivation by means of this thematic publication. Since it is already clear that we cannot go on talking about conversion/zeroderivation, if only for reasons of economy, we shall use the term conversion in this introduction except where the alternative cannot be avoided for reasons of content. Scholars seem to have returned periodically to the study of conversion. From the records we know, the subject was not especially prominent at the time when, allegedly, Sweet (1891) coined the term conversion. Since then, and leaving aside Biese’s (1941) substantial work, the issue has been dealt with continually in occasional papers and references found in grammars and manuals on word-formation. Some of these, like Clark and Clark’s (1979), Pennanen’s (1971, 1984), or Lieber’s (1981), have become classics in the study of conversion. But the subject really developed in the 1960s thanks to studies such as those of Marchand (1960, 1963, 1964, 1966), Kastovsky (1968) or Dokulil (1968a, 1968b, 1968c). Now, after a gap of some three decades, the topic has returned with the recent studies by Cetnarowska (1993), Don (1993), Vogel (1996), Štekauer (1996), and Twardzisz (1997). It is not entirely clear to us why conversion should apparently have gone out of fashion for a short time or why it has apparently come back into fashion, although the contribution of Eastern European researchers who have recently joined the mainstream discussion has stirred up the interest in the issue. While there is always the challenge of testing new theories against old data, this would not explain the brief loss of interest, and there are some theories which do not appear to have

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Conversion or zero-derivation: an introduction

tested themselves against the data of conversion yet (Optimality Theory, Cognitive Linguistics, for example – though see Schönefeld this volume). But in some ways the renaissance of conversion studies seems to go deeper than that. As will be seen from some of the papers collected here, scholars are no longer satisfied with the ‘old’ data on conversion, they are questioning the fundamentals, revisiting old problems and discovering new ones. All of this makes the field an exciting one for the researcher to be considering at the moment. When we invited scholars to present papers on the topic of conversion, we had not tried to speculate about the topics they might cover. Had we done so, we would no doubt have looked back at the standard problems confronting conversion. These start with a definition of conversion, but also cover topics such as what it means to change category, whether all category change without affixation is necessarily conversion, how one can discover the directionality of conversion and the very vexed question of whether an analysis in terms of conversion is or is not to be preferred over one in terms of zero-derivation. All of these questions were canvassed at the symposium, but so were others which we had not expected (sometimes in the discussion as much as in the papers themselves): questions of typology, the distinction between word-formation and figurative extension, and the question of how far the meaning of conversion is predictable. The participants in the symposium were as interested as we were to find that with so many people discussing conversion there was so little overlap in the kinds of areas addressed. Conversion is a bigger area of study than even we knew. In what follows we have attempted to tease out what we see as being the major themes which were discussed at the symposium and in the other papers presented here. We present a certain amount of background discussion as well as looking at the current developments.

2.

Definition

Conversion is usually defined as a derivational process linking lexemes of the same form but belonging to different word-classes. Virtually all of this has been questioned at one point or another, and yet the concept of conversion remains in use, very much as the conventional system of word-classes does in languages for which it is theoretically inadequate. As is so often the case in linguistics, we need to ask whether conversion is best seen as a process by which lexemes are formed or whether it is best seen as a relationship between lexemes. This controversy surrounds the whole of the field of word-formation, and is not special to conversion although it can be held responsible for a large part of the obscurity that surrounds the process. The controversy gains special weight in the discussion of conversion when the notion of a lexical entry

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neutral between word-classes is raised, as can be seen recently in Farrell (2001). This notion, raised for modern linguistics by Chomsky (1970), leads to the idea that distinctions between word-classes are relatively superficial, perhaps more superficial than the lexeme itself. If we follow this idea through, we find that the relationship between nouns and verbs of related form (e.g. a bridge and to bridge) is no more than a matter of inflection, and this has been proposed in recent literature (Myers 1984; Josefsson 1997; Giegerich 1999). This reading is not generally accepted among scholars of word-formation, but its intuitive appeal is clear. Even if we refuse to accept such a conclusion, we have to ask whether forms which have traditionally been termed inflected forms are or are not related by conversion. The classic case is the present participle and the gerund in English. If every gerund of every verb has precisely the same form as the present participle of that same verb, we need to know what the relationship between these two forms is. They are excluded from the field of conversion by the usual definition given at the head of this section, and yet it is not necessarily clear why they are different from other things which are treated as derivation. The field is muddied rather than clarified by a distinction between inherent and contextual inflection (Booij 1993, 1996) or by talk of class-changing inflection (Haspelmath 1996). It is not helped by those who conclude that there are two distinct -ing suffixes, one of which is inflectional and one of which is derivational (Allen 1978). This subject is reviewed by Neef for German and by Kiefer for Hungarian (all this volume). The discussion of derivation vs. inflection is in any case more central for the study of conversion than could be initially assumed when we are dealing with a process that requires formal identity. It would be extremely rewarding to be able to give principled reasons for accepting or rejecting the various options open to us here, rather than having to adhere to a definition which, while it may be fully justified, has come down to us leaving these questions apparently open. A separate problem is how we are to distinguish between the process or relationship of conversion and the process or relationship of figurative extension. Neef (this volume) cites Paul Simon in extenso. An example of the type he cites is provided by He Groucho Marxed his eyebrows (Levin 1997: 50). Is this a matter of a figurative reinterpretation, or do we have simply a matter of conversion? And if it is different from another example such as On the back was felt-tipped a Lisbethogram (Ripley 1991: 13), in what, precisely should we say the difference lies? Of course, most instances of figurative extension stay within the same word-class: consider the various uses of freeze in You can freeze most vegetables, That cold statement froze her heart, The common response of a rat or mouse to stress is to freeze and become immobile, At the end of January the government froze the prices of 14 staple goods […] (examples taken from the British National Corpus). This

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Conversion or zero-derivation: an introduction

may well be part of the difference, but it raises yet another question, because, finally, in terms of definition, we need to know what it means to say that two lexemes belong to different word-classes. This is the subject of the next section.

3.

Word-class

There are nouns and there are verbs and there are adjectives, and if we change from one to another we are changing word-class. This deliberately crude representation of what word-class means, in effect reflecting the result of classical scholarship with no intervening up-dating, is surprisingly close to the one that appears to be adopted within studies of conversion. The necessity for taking a rather more nuanced approach to the whole notion of word-class is taken up by Bauer (this volume). There are at least two distinct but inter-related questions to be considered here. The first is just how narrowly a word-class is to be defined. It is well-known that the class of nouns, for example, can be cross-classified in a number of ways: there are common and proper nouns, there are animate and inanimate nouns, there are countable and uncountable nouns, there are concrete and abstract nouns, and so on. Similar cross-classifications can be established for the rest of the open word-classes according to a number of variables. What we need to know is whether there is any principled reason for treating all these classes as ‘the same’ as far as conversion is concerned, or whether a change from one of these subclasses to another (and if so, which of them?) is also, within the meaning of the act, a change of word-class. This has been sometimes described as secondary word-class conversion. Note that there are, for example, derivational affixes which will change a concrete noun into an abstract noun (consider king/kingdom, girl/girlhood, devil/devilry and the like). If one of the crucial determinants of what counts as conversion is its parallelism with other derivational processes, then it might be argued that changes between concrete and abstract nouns with no change of form should also fall within the purview of conversion. There are such instances, such as (my) love and love, a drink and (drive someone to) drink, a beauty and beauty, even if they are fairly rare. If any pair of these subclasses can be argued to be linked in terms of conversion, then the others are all potential grist to the mill (and equally, the equivalent categories for other word-classes, e.g. to walk/to walk a dog; to turn/to turn black; British/very British; old man/old friend). The second question that needs to be considered is the distinction between unmarked change of word-class and multifunctionality or multiple class membership. The discussants at the symposium were in agreement that this was a crucial distinction to make, and a first step towards making it was also suggested. If it is the case that any member of the set of words which can function as if being part of word-

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class w can also be used, under appropriate semantic circumstances, as if it were a part of word-class x (x ≠ w), then there is a case of multifunctionality. The relationship between ethnic names and adjectives falls under this heading in many languages, and references on Hungarian can be found in Kiefer (this volume): irregular forms like Greek and Swiss automatically belong to both categories. By implication, then, conversion is limited to those instances where there is a relationship between lexemes which is in some way non-automatic and thus, in some ill-defined sense, lexical. It is important in discussing such instances to ensure that lack of automaticity is not argued for on the basis of pragmatic effects which happen to make an alternative use of a particular set of words unlikely. The discussion here links back to the discussion in the previous paragraph, and the mention there of countable and uncountable nouns. It can be variously argued that there is or is not an automatic link of the relevant type between countable and uncountable nouns in English. A proponent of the argument that there is no automatic link might wish to say that a noun like chair must be a countable noun. But the counter-argument is that in the context of a children’s story about a family of termites at dinner, one could easily imagine Mother Termite asking the children if they would like more chair. It is the pragmatics of chair which makes an uncountable use unlikely, but the language system does not prohibit such a use. Thus considering the potentiality of the system rather than the probabilities provided by real-world pragmatics provides us with the kind of solid argument we need for excluding the distinction between countable and uncountable nouns as a distinction of word-class.

4.

Directionality

The issue of directionality is implicitly present in many of the papers collected here. There are basically two approaches to how to assess directionality in conversion, three if we count the view that directionality cannot be ascertained. One is based on historical evidence and uses etymological information to tell base from derived (as in Biese 1941). The other rejects diachronic data as relevant for analysis of present-day material and rests primarily on the semantic relation between the terms linked by conversion (Marchand 1963, 1964). Others appeal to native intuition also (Adams 1973). As it is now, we seem to have reached an impasse, with neither of these two main approaches being capable of proving its correctness across the board. Where the two contradict each other (which happens not infrequently) we have no way to choose between them – which means, in effect, that the question of directionality is currently unresolved and irresolvable. But even in synchronic studies, the question of directionality can be important, as is shown by Kiparsky (1982). Kiparsky argues that in English noun to verb conversion and verb to noun conversion occur on different levels in a level-ordered

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Conversion or zero-derivation: an introduction

morphology, verb to noun on Level I, noun to verb on Level II. This has a number of implications, among them that noun to verb conversion is more productive and that while verb to noun conversion can feed noun to verb conversion (as in to sur'vey > a 'survey > to 'survey), the opposite is not the case. This has implications for the semantics of conversion, since if we have clearly distinct processes, we might expect the semantic results of each process to be distinct. Note that directionality implies a process, and thus in any system which sees conversion as directional it is automatically assumed that conversion is more than just a relationship between static lexemes. Thus some of the questions raised in section 2 above may be resolved by other theoretical stances.

5.

Form and Meaning

The characteristic lack of formal marking relating pairs such as a bridge and to bridge has been explained as zero-derivation and as conversion. Zero-derivation has the advantage of being a relatively perspicuous process: as reviewed in Manova and Dressler (this volume), it is a derivational process of affixation and, parallel to other derivational processes of affixation, should be subject to precisely the same kinds of constraints and regularities. Conversion is slightly mysterious: presumably it involves some kind of identity operation (Bauer 1983: 32; assuming, that is, that we accept conversion as a process, see sections 2 and 4 above). But it is not clear whether such identity operations are subject to the same kinds of constraints that operate elsewhere in word-formation, or whether new powers are associated with new processes. Neither is it clear whether conversion is a subtype of derivation, or a completely separate type of word-formation. Despite this, it is the zero analysis which is currently out of favour, probably in view of the problems inherent in the notion of derivational zero. It is thus good to be reminded, as we are by Kastovsky (this volume), of the advantages of the zero analysis. Not so that we will necessarily abandon the conversion analysis (it is to be hoped that the current preference for conversion rests on firmer ground than that) but so that we may be aware of what the differences are and what they entail. A third option is to see conversion simply as lexical relisting (Lieber 1981). This avoids the need for any zeroes, but may or may not be equivalent to the conversion view. Both imply a directionality, but the conversion view seems to imply some pseudo-morphological process, while the relisting view sees conversion as something outside morphology. Meaning is crucial to the system of word-classes (see Bauer this volume), as it is to the recognition of instances of conversion. Even if it were not for the homophonous noun plane ‘carpenter’s tool’, we would not wish to relate to plane ‘smooth a piece of wood’ and a plane ‘aircraft’ by conversion, because their meanings are not sufficiently close. What is a sufficiently close meaning (and how it can

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be defined) remains an open question. A slightly dubious example is to bank ‘turn an aircraft’ and a bank ‘side of a hill’ which, despite their etymological relatedness, may no longer be close enough semantically for us to wish to say that the same relationship holds between them as between to bridge and a bridge. Somehow, then, we need to operationalise the notion of related in meaning to a sufficient degree to allow us to recognise potential instances of conversion. But meaning is also important in another way. If we are to assume that conversion is a word-formation process on a par with other word-formation processes, then we will expect it not only to consist in a formal relationship (a relationship of homonymy at some level), but also in a systematic semantic relationship. It is not clear to what extent conversion can be said to instantiate a single semantic relationship rather than a set of semantic relationships. This is particularly important for those scholars who wish to talk of zero-derivation rather than conversion. The notion of contrasting zeroes (and even of zeroes contrasting with a lack of a zero) has been presented as a strong argument against this analysis (e.g. Bauer 1988). If there is a single zero morpheme for use in these cases, the case for that zero is much stronger than if there are several contrasting zero morphemes. An apparently important contribution to this debate is given by Štekauer (forthcoming) when he shows that the meaning of the derived member in a process of conversion may be predictable. No doubt further work is required to clarify this claim, but for there to be a single meaning to conversion it has to be the case that the meaning relationship between base and converted lexeme is predictable.

6.

Bases for conversion

Virtually all derivational processes apply to a restricted set of bases rather than to all bases of the appropriate word-class. If conversion is a morphological process, there is no reason to suppose that conversion should be any different from any other process in this regard. Indeed, the evidence of works like Plag (1999) is that verb→noun conversion may be in complementary distribution with nominalisation by overt suffix. We would also expect to find semantic restrictions on possible bases, such as that illustrated by the common English relationship between instruments (such as whisk) and the action of using the instrument. But we should also expect to find formal restrictions on possible bases, and Neef (this volume) suggests that these may be more important (at least in German) than has hitherto been acknowledged.

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7.

Conversion or zero-derivation: an introduction

Typology

Since at least the time of Bloomfield (1935: 225), much has been made of the difference between word-based and stem-based inflectional systems. Kastovsky (1989, 1990, 1994) argues that the passage from Old English to Modern English is a typological shift from stem-based to word-based. This difference has important implications for conversion. In word-based systems the lexemic stem is typically a potentially free form and it is thus possible for a word to change from one wordclass to another via this unmarked form. In stem-based systems, however, the stem typically cannot occur in isolation, and thus any change between major wordclasses has to be marked inflectionally. Accordingly, while word-based morphology allows for conversion of words, stem-based morphology demands conversion of stems, if, indeed, we can talk of conversion at all. It can be argued in such systems that it is the inflectional marker which determines which word-class is present, and that stems are inherently word-class neutral, very much as was described in section 2 above in relation to Chomsky (1970) or Farrell (2001). Fundamental morphological typology thus raises a number of questions: • Is conversion found in all morphological types? • Does conversion function in essentially the same way in all morphological types? • Does conversion typically begin with whole-word conversion and pass to stem-conversion in languages which display both types, or is the progression the other way round? Inevitably, some of these questions take us back to questions of definition, with which we began. Kiefer (this volume), by considering conversion in languages of different types, brings these typological questions to the fore. Manova and Dressler go deeper into the issue by furnishing their paper with examples from a wealth of languages.

8.

Conclusion

At the end of this brief tour d’horizon, it seems difficult to draw any conclusion other than that there is much uncertainty about conversion and that scholars are still questioning the concept of conversion. The doubts surrounding the issue in over a century of research bear witness to the difficulty of the task of sorting out precisely how conversion works, and explain why it is still an interesting area. Perhaps the first step, and maybe one of the contributions of this volume, if any, is to show in

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the papers collected here that the notion of conversion can change radically not only according to different theoretical positions (in favour of derivational zero or not), but also according to morphological type, whether we view the problem diachronically or synchronically, the notion of word-classes (and their subclasses), and a number of others. It seems from the papers contained in this volume that it is difficult to set out a concept of conversion valid for all the standpoints derived from the variables above in less ambiguous and problematic terms than the ones given in section 2 at the beginning of this introduction. As we said earlier, it would be extremely rewarding to be able to give principled reasons for accepting or rejecting the various options open to us, rather than having to adhere to a definition which, while it may be fully justified, has come down to us leaving these questions apparently open. We believe that the papers collected here provide a good starting point for considering such problems in the future.

References Adams, Valerie (1973). An Introduction to Modern English Word-Formation. London: Longman. Allen, Margaret R. (1978). Morphological Investigations. Doctoral dissertation, University of Connecticut: Storrs. Bauer, Laurie (1983). English Word-Formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bauer, Laurie (1988). Introducing Linguistic Morphology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bauer, Laurie (this volume). Conversion and the notion of lexical category. Biese, Y.M. (1941). Origin and development of conversions in English. Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae B XLV(2). Bloomfield, Leonard (1935). Language. London: G. Allen & Unwin. Booij, Geert (1993). Against split morphology. In Yearbook of Morphology 1993, Geert Booij and Jaap van Marle (eds.), 27–49. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Booij, Geert (1996). Inherent versus contextual inflection and the split morphology hypothesis. In Yearbook of Morphology 1995, Geert Booij and Jaap van Marle (eds.), 1–16. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Cetnarowska, Bożena (1993). The Syntax, Semantics and Derivation of Bare Nominalisations in English. Katowice: Uniwersytet Śląski. Chomsky, Noam (1970). Remarks on nominalization. In Readings in English Transformational Grammar, Roderick A. Jacobs and Peter S. Rosenbaum (eds.), 184–221. Waltham, Massachusetts: Ginn. Clark, Eve V. and Clark, Herbert H. (1979). When nouns surface as verbs. Language 55, 767– 811.

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Dokulil, Miloš (1968a). Zur Frage der Konversion und verwandter Wortbildungsvorgänge und -beziehungen. Travaux linguistiques de Prague 3, 215–239. Dokulil, Miloš (1968b). Zur Frage der sog. Nullableitung. In Wortbildung, Syntax und Morphologie, Herbert E. Brekle and Leonhard Lipka (eds.), 55–64. The Hague: Mouton. Dokulil, Miloš (1968c). Zur Theorie der Wortbildungslehre. Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Karl-Marx-Universität Leipzig, Gesellschafts- und sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe 17, 203–211. Don, Jan (1993). Morphological Conversion. OTS Dissertation Series. Utrecht: Research Institute for Language and Speech. Farrell, Patrick (2001). Functional shift as category underspecification. English Language and Linguistics 5(1), 109–130. Giegerich, Heinz (1999). Lexical Strata in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haspelmath, Martin (1996). Word-class-changing inflection and morphological theory. In Yearbook of Morphology 1995, Geert Booij and Jaap van Marle (eds.), 43–66. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Josefsson, Gunlög (1997). On the Principles of Word Formation in Swedish. Lund: Lund University Press. Kastovsky, Dieter (1968). Old English Deverbal Substantives Derived by Means of a Zero Morpheme. Esslingen/N.: B. Langer. Kastovsky, Dieter (1989). Typological changes in the history of English word-formation. In Anglistentag 1988, Göttingen: Vorträge, Heinz-Joachim Müllenbrock and Renate Noll-Wiemann (eds.), 281–293. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer. Kastovsky, Dieter (1990). The typological status of Old English word-formation. In Papers from the 5th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, Sylvia Adamson, Vivien Law, Nigel Vincent and Susan Wright (eds.), 205–223. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 65. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. Kastovsky, Dieter (1994). Typological differences between English and German morphology and their causes. In Language Change and Language Structure: Older Germanic Languages in a Comparative Perspective, Toril Swan, Endre Mørck and Olaf Jansen Westvik (eds.), 135–157. Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 73. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kastovsky, Dieter (this volume). Conversion and/or zero: word-formation theory, historical linguistics, and typology. Kiefer, Ferenc (this volume). Types of conversion in Hungarian. Kiparsky, Paul (1982). Lexical morphology and phonology. In Linguistics in the Morning Calm: Selected Papers from SICOL-1981, Linguistic Society of Korea (ed.), 3–91. Seoul: Hanshin. Levin, Ira (1997). Son of Rosemary. New York: Dutton. Lieber, Rochelle (1981). On the Organization of the Lexicon. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Linguistics Club. Manova, Stela and Dressler, Wolfgang U. (this volume). The morphological technique of conversion in the inflecting-fusional type. Marchand, Hans (1960). The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation. A Synchronic-Diachronic Approach. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz.

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Marchand, Hans (1963). On a question of contrary analysis with derivationally connected but morphologically uncharacterized words. English Studies 44, 176–187. Marchand, Hans (1964). A set of criteria for the establishing of derivational relationships between words unmarked by derivational morphemes. Indogermanische Forschungen 69, 10–19. Marchand, Hans (1966). On attributive and predicative derived adjectives and some problems related to the distinction. Anglia 84, 131–149. Myers, Scott (1984). Zero-derivation and inflection. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 7, 53–69. Neef, Martin (this volume). On some alleged constraints on conversion. Pennanen, Esko V. (1971). Conversion and Zero Derivation in English. Acta Universitatis Tamperensis, series A. Vol. 40. Tampere: Tampere Yliopisto. Pennanen, Esko V. (1984). What happens in conversion. In Proceedings from the Second Nordic Conference for English Studies, Hanasaari/Hanaholmen, 19th–21st May 1983, Håken Ringbom and Matti Rissanen (eds.), 79–93. Meddelanden Från Stiftelsens for Åbo Akademi Forskningsinstitut 92. Åbo: Åbo Akademi. Plag, Ingo (1999). Morphological Productivity. Structural Constraints in English Derivation. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Ripley, Mike (1991). Angels in Arms. New York: St. Martins Press. Schönefeld, Doris (this volume). Zero-derivation – Functional change – Metonymy. Štekauer, Pavol (1996). A Theory of Conversion in English. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang. Štekauer, Pavol (forthcoming). On the meaning predictability of novel context-free converted naming units. Linguistics. Sweet, Henry (1891–98). A New English Grammar. Logical and Historical. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Twardzisz, Piotr (1997). Zero Derivation in English. A Cognitive Grammar Approach. Lublin: Lublin Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej. Vogel, Petra M. (1996). Wortarten und Wortartenwechsel. Zu Konversion und verwandten Erscheinungen im Deutschen und in anderen Sprachen. Studia Linguistica Germanica 39. Berlin and New York: W. de Gruyter.

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Laurie Bauer (Victoria University of Wellington)

Conversion and the notion of lexical category Of the various factors usually used to define conversion, change of lexical category is one which stands out as requiring some clarification. In this paper I consider some examples of apparent conversion, showing that the change in lexical category can work in several different ways: features of two lexical categories can cooccur, some of the features of the new lexical category may be missing. Further, there are places where lexical categories appear curiously deficient, not showing all their prototypical features. It is suggested that a closer consideration of precisely what is gained and what is lost in conversion may help explain the process of conversion better, as well as helping us to clarify the notion of lexical category.

According to Bauer (1983: 32): ‘conversion is the change in form class of a form without any corresponding change of form’.

Katamba (1994: 70) says: ‘in English very often lexical items are created not by affixation but by CONVERSION or ZERO DERIVATION, i.e. without any alteration being made to the shape of the input base. The word-form remains the same, but it realises a different lexical item’.

And Coates (1999: 30) says that: ‘some lexemes may belong to different lexical categories without having that relationship marked in any way in their structure’.

Assuming that these three are all addressing the same phenomenon, we can deduce the following: 1. Conversion is a relationship between lexemes (lexical items) or is the process whereby one lexical item is derived from another.

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Conversion and the notion of lexical category

2. Conversion is a relationship between homophones. 3. The lexemes (lexical items) related by conversion belong to different form classes (lexical categories). Any one of these three might be questioned. For instance, with reference to (1) it might be held that syncretism or inflectional homonymy was just another case of conversion, so that German homophony between der (DEFINITE.ARTICLE.MASC.SG. NOM) and der (DEFINITE.ARTICLE.FEM.SG.GEN) could be regarded as a matter of conversion. If this position were taken, conversion would be a relationship between word-forms. This point takes on some importance for English when we start considering relationships such as that between present participle and gerund – apparently a relationship between word-forms rather than between lexemes. Alternatively, we might argue with Myers (1984) that conversion is an inflectional process. With relation to (2), it might be argued that the precise span of the homophony needs to be determined. While English, with its poor inflectional system, regularly provides homophonous citation forms in this way, the same may not be true of a more richly inflected language. Thus the relationship between German LiebeN and liebenV might be precisely the same as between the corresponding English words loveN and loveV, but the German citation forms are not homonymous, the stems are. Finally, with regard to (3) consider the relationship between Swedish en öl ‘a (bottle of) beer’ and ett öl ‘a (type of) beer’ or between en fax ‘a fax machine’ and ett fax ‘a fax message’. There is no obvious reason why such gender-shift pairs should not be related by the same relationship as links ett fax ‘a fax message’ and faxa ‘to fax’. I make this point not because I want to quibble with the fundamentals of what we might mean by conversion, but because I wish to make explicit that the theory that lies behind the observation of conversion still has a long way to go. We cannot simply assume that we all know what we are talking about, or that there are certain points on which we will all agree. Indeed, some recent publications have gone so far as to suggest that conversion in the sense defined by (1)–(3) does not exist, and that single undifferentiated stems may take on the inflection required to make them nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. (Josefsson 1997, Giegerich 1999). Against such a background, some care is required to make sure we are explicit about what we believe and about what beliefs we share. The issue that I want to take up in this paper is the one relating to lexical categories. We have various pieces of quasi-synonymous terminology available to us here, each carrying its own set of presuppositions: part of speech, form class, wordclass, lexical category. I shall here accept Coates’s lexical category which implies that the category is associated primarily with a lexeme (a position I myself am

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happy with, though I realise that others may not be). In the present context, this has the benefit of ensuring that a change in lexical category will be consistent with a relationship between lexemes ((1) above). There are three things which are usually taken to correlate with or determine part of speech: form, function and meaning (Paul 1995: 352; Jespersen 1924: 60; Hopper and Thompson 1984). Form can be read as including the presence of certain derivational affixes which occur exclusively or predominantly with one particular lexical category: -al, -ic, -able, -ish for English adjectives, for example. But form is more usually interpreted in terms of inflection: a noun has a noun’s form to the extent that it takes nominal inflections. In English, this is less weighty than it might be in a flectional language like Classical Latin or modern Russian. In some languages, form might include phonological form (see Welmers 1973: 118–119 on tonal correlates of lexical categories in some languages), but that will not be considered further here. Function involves the syntactic use to which a particular word is put: adjectives can occur in attributive position before a noun or in predicative position, for example; they can typically be sub-modified by words such as very, so and other adverbs. Meaning has often been seen as the core of the distinction between parts of speech, and is still used this way in school grammar: a verb is a doing word, a noun is a naming word, and so on, however inaccurate they may be, are still used in schools to get the fundamental distinctions across. Discussions of meaning and lexical category have been made much more workable with the added notion of prototypicality. Prototypical nouns denote objects (i.e. things which have timestability in the term of Givón 1979: 320–321), while prototypical verbs denote events which lack such time-stability. It is not difficult to find counter-examples, such as fist which is a noun lacking time-stability (Hopper and Thompson 1984: 706), but that is the whole point of invoking prototypicality. We must also ask what kind of word any lexical category applies to. I have answered this above by saying (without any evidence) that a lexical category is associated with a lexeme. Other possible answers would be a listeme, a word-form, a stem or a morpheme. Alternatively, we could say ‘the word as a semantic entity’, ‘the word as a morphological entity’, ‘the word as a syntactic entity’ (with further specification at each of these levels). I take it, controversially, that the lexeme implies the paradigm of inflectional forms to which a particular word-entity belongs, and thus that lexical category and inflectional patterning are just two sides of the same coin. Any of this is open to debate. The question I wish to ask here is whether shift in form inevitably means shift in function and shift in meaning or not. That is, is lexical category a unitary notion

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Conversion and the notion of lexical category

or something perhaps better seen as the accumulation of various value-features so that a clear-cut noun like car might be viewed as: phonological form: /ka/

 form : + N  lexical category:  function : + N   meaning : + N  meaning: ‘…’

If this is the case, we would expect to find some cases of conversion which lead only to conversion of part of the matrix rather than to conversion of the full matrix. While I am reluctant to immediately draw parallels with established labels such as full and partial conversion, I would like to suggest that such a view might allow us a way to understand some of the awkwardnesses involved in discussions of conversion. Consider, for example, the difference between verb to noun conversion and noun to verb conversion in English. In a case like to fall > a fall, the noun has a meaning which we may gloss approximately as ‘an instance of the action of the verb’. In a noun to verb conversion like a bridge > to bridge, on the other hand, the verb has a meaning which we may gloss approximately as ‘cause something which functions as a noun to be constructed over’. It seems to me, just intuitively, that the derived verb bridge has a much more verby meaning, than the derived noun fall has a nouny meaning, and that we could distinguish these two in terms of the meaning feature for lexical category: a fall has still the meaning fundamentally attached to the verb; to bridge has acquired verbal meaning. In these cases, though, the derived form (a fall, two falls; bridge, bridges, bridged, bridging) and the derived function are as would be expected. Consider next the vexed example of The poor are always with us. The construction is much more productive than grammar books sometimes imply: as far as I can make out, virtually any adjective can be used in this way, taking plural concord if the implied reference is to people, singular concord if the implied reference is to things (The unexpected is always happening). Adjectival inflection may be maintained (The luckier always mock those less fortunate), but nominal inflection is not possible (*The poors are always with us; *The luckiers always mock those less fortunate). So what we have here is a case where the form is still adjectival, although the function (rightmost element in a noun phrase, and thus – since postmodification is not involved – the presumed head of that phrase) is nominal. In terms of meaning we can argue about whether the meaning elements ‘people’ or ‘things’ are latent (‘understood’ in old-fashioned terminology) or whether they

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have become part of the meaning of the converted form. In either case, we can see why such instances are frequently dealt with as partial conversion. I have not found instances of an apparently derived word not having a new function but belonging to a new inflectional paradigm. This may indicate the centrality of the function criterion (as most modern syntacticians seem to believe) or it may indicate that the question is meaningless: why would an adjective take nominal or verbal inflection if it were not in a position which otherwise demanded a noun or a verb? Alternatively, perhaps the Swedish gender-shift pairs mentioned above fit into this category. So an approach with the notion of lexical category being split up in this way seems to have something to recommend it as a way of explaining some of the less straightforward data we meet. However, there are some points which suggest that this is not a good way to consider the problem, because it does not allow us to explain some of the even less straightforward data we meet. Some of this less straightforward material is admirably illustrated by infinitives. Infinitives are traditionally recognised as a locus where the categories of noun and verb intersect (cf. the definition given by Kennedy 1962: 58 of the infinitive as ‘a Verb Noun expressing a verbal activity in general without limit of person or number’). While this clearly implies that infinitives are neither prototypical nouns nor prototypical verbs, it does mean that they provide us with a place to look for the kinds of criteria that show them acting as nouns and the kinds of criteria that show them acting as verbs. Consider first the infinitive in Old French. Among its nominal features the Old French infinitive can be used as the subject of a sentence (1)

Tencier, fet il, est laide chose (Moignet 1973: 196) quarrel.INF, said he, is terrible thing

and in such usage can carry nominal inflection (2)

Car chanters estoit li mestiers qu’elle fessoit plus volentiers (Moignet 1973: 196) For sing.INF.NOM.SG was the task.NOM.SG which she carried.out most willingly

and can take determiners (3)

Jusqu’au mien partir (Foulet 1923: 160) until the mine leave.INF

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Conversion and the notion of lexical category

At the same time – sometimes in the same phrase – the infinitive can have verbal features such as the ability to take its own arguments and even to be modified by adverbs: (4) (5)

Ja vos cuidions nos trover a Kamaalot (Moignet 1973: 196) already we thought you find.INF at Camelot Son sagement parler (Paul 1995: 365) his wisely speak.INF

(Compare modern Italian – Renzi et al. 1991: 560–561) (6) (7)

il modificare istantaneamente il loro atteggiamento the modify.INF instantaneously the their attitude il pensare a lui the think.INF PREP him

Note also modern English (as noted by Myers 1984): (8)

The truly beautiful are… *The true beautiful are…

What such examples show is that a particular word may show the form of more than one part of speech and have the functions of more than one part of speech at the same time. It is not, thus, simply a matter of a feature which says [Function: +N], but rather any such feature would have to allow for at least two values – perhaps with weightings attached – for any word. Next consider what happens in predicative position. In this position, we can find words from any lexical category (or phrases whose heads are from any lexical category).

(9)

The professor was

delighted an interesting speaker rude out of breath

The conclusion must be that predicative position is not associated with any particular lexical category in particular. This provides an argument for saying that lexical category is not simply something which is given by the syntactic tree: in predicative position we do not know what lexical category will occur until we have seen

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the form of the phrase, and the lexical category must percolate up from the head of the phrase. Crucially, though, the function of predicative does not impose any lexical category, and so it must be possible for the function node (at least) to have no value at all. Moreover, if we look at some of the features associated with predicative position, we find that: • Nouns in this position are not referential, and as such lose some of their nounness (Hopper and Thompson 1984: 716). • Correspondingly, nouns in predicative position often do not carry a full range of markers: for example, in French nouns in predicative positions cannot carry indefinite articles (Hopper and Thompson 1984: 717). (10) Jean est (*un) étudiant J. is (*a) student • German predicative adjectives do not agree for number and gender as attributive adjectives do. (11) Die Lehrerin ist jung/*junge; contrast Die *jung/junge Lehrerin ist schon da The teacher.FEM is young/*young.FEM.SG; contrast The *young/young.FEM.SG teacher.FEM is already here • In Russian it is possible to form short forms of some adjectives which can occur only predicatively. These short forms are morphologically abbreviated, occur in a reduced set of cases (productively, only in the nominative) and although the precise semantic distinction between long and short forms of adjectives is a matter of some dispute, it is clear that short forms are semantically restricted (Ward 1965: 190–203). What this shows is that nouns and adjectives occurring in predicative position often fail to show all the prototypical qualities that one would expect from such a lexical category. In other words, lexical categories are not neat little boxes, each welldefined and without overlap; they are conflicting and fluctuating norms with a set of expected but not necessarily obligatory features. As an example of what this means in practice consider infinitival constructions in a number of European languages. We have already seen that the infinitive is sometimes taken to be changed into a noun by conversion. What I have done here is take a number of constructions which could be taken to represent the varied use of infinitive forms of verbs, and show that they correlate in different ways with fea-

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Conversion and the notion of lexical category

tures which might be taken to show nouniness or verbiness. The data I have comes out as showing what looks like an implicational scale, but I would not want to attach too much importance to that without a much more thorough investigation – and without considering a wider range of features including semantic ones. I begin by taking a number of examples (in languages other than English all attested, albeit in exemplificatory material in grammars), whose features are then analysed in the following table. Table 1. Examples of infinitival constructions from a range of European languages.

A B C

D

E

F

G H

J

Examples The fierce attacks on other members of parliament Les devoirs (French: ‘must.INF.PL = homework’); wezens (Dutch: ‘be.INF.PL = persons, beings’) Het substantiveren van infinitieven (Dutch: ‘the nominalise.INF of infinitives’)/Het diepe nadenken (Dutch ‘the deep consider.INF’)/eine inniges Vertiefen in ihre Schönheiten (German: ‘an inner absorb.INF in her beauties’) Het mit je hoofd leren van werkwoorden (Dutch: ‘the with your head learn.INF of verbs’)/Het snel optreden van de politie (Dutch: ‘the quickly arrive.INF of the police’) Früh aufzustehen ist etwas Schreckliches (German: ‘early get.up.INF is something terrible’)/Karl bat Ulrike, ihn mitzunehmen (German: K. asked U. him.ACC take.along.INF) Car chanters estoit li mestiers qu’elle fessoit plus volentiers (Old French: ‘For sing.INF.NOM.SG was the task.NOM.SG which she carried.out most willingly’)/Son sagement parler (Old French: ‘his wisely speak.INF’) To travel hopefully is better than to arrive/I’ll hope to see you tomorrow Fela ic hæbbe eow to secganne (Old English: ‘much I have you.PL.DAT to say.INF.DAT’)/ūs is suīðe geornlīce tō gehīēranne (Old English: ‘us is necessary attentively to listen.INF.DAT’) Ne Þurfe wē ūs spillan (Old English: ‘not need we us destroy.INF’)/we need not drive dangerously

Sources

de Haas and Trommelen 1993: 240 Geerts et al. 1984: 727; Schutter 1994: 470; Curme 1922: 282

Donaldson 1984: 158; Geerts et al. 1984: 727

Durrell 1991: 249–250

Moignet 1973: 196; Paul 1995: 365

Mitchell 1985: 390; Quirk and Wrenn 1957: 87

Quirk and Wrenn 1957: 86

In class A, I put the English noun attack. This is not usually considered to be an infinitive, but a noun derived by conversion from a verb. We must ask (non-

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trivially) what part of the verb it is derived from. If the answer is the infinitive rather than the stem, my case is made. This is the most nominal of the types discussed. In Class B I put some minor cases of lexicalised infinitive-nouns which denote concrete objects. These can accordingly be pluralised, and thus show nominal inflection as well as verbal (infinitival) inflection. Class C contains the most nominal of the infinitive nouns, those which take definite articles and are modified by adjectives, both of which show them to be nominal in nature to some extent. Class D is like Class C except that the modification is by adverbs rather than by adjectives, indicative of some degree of verbal nature. In Class E, the infinitives take their own arguments, and these are marked as verbal arguments, not with prepositional phrases (which allow argument-like NPs to be attached to things other than verbs). The examples in Class F have been previously discussed for showing both nominal and verbal characteristics. The English examples in G show the modern English to-infinitive, and are unremarkable until we see how they fit in with the wider range of types. It is not clear whether to should be taken as an infinitive marker in English; I believe not, although it is often used that way. It is certainly different from the paradigmatic verbal marker which indicates infinitiveness elsewhere in these examples. The Old English examples in Class H show the Old English to-infinitive, which imposed dative-marking on the infinitive. Other Germanic languages, such as Old Saxon, have infinitives which take a rather wider range of case-markers (Prokosch 1939: 205). The question mark for grammatical modifier refers to the question raised by the construction The man you are to send to Wellington, a construction which was also available in Old English. If be is acting as an auxiliary here – a controversial analysis, though presumably not an impossible one – then these infinitives look even more like verbs. Finally Class J has Old and Modern English examples with no to-marking on the infinitive, where modals rather than determiners act as grammatical modifiers to the infinitive. The tests used in Table 2 below have been discussed in this explanation of the examples, and should be self-explanatory (except perhaps for the label grammatical modifier intended to distinguish between determiners and auxiliaries). This table has been arranged to allow degrees of nouniness or verbiness to appear, and to show that infinitival constructions are not all equal in this regard.

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Conversion and the notion of lexical category

Table 2. Nominal and verbal features associated with infinitival examples.

A B C D E F G H J

Inflection

Grammatical modifier

Syntactic function

NP or PP for arguments

N N – – – N – N –

N N N N – N – ? V

N N N N N N N V V

N N N N V V V V V

Lexical modifier (Adj or Adv) N N N V V V V V V

Infinitival marker – V V V V V ? V V

So what does this mean for dealing with lexical categories? It means that we must take it that any theory that deals with such unsophisticated categories as Noun and Verb (or even [±N], [±V]) does not provide an accurate picture of the complex reality, but is an abstraction away from the data. While this can have its advantages at times, the data on infinitival constructions given above suggests that syntactic functions will not correlate simply with these rough-and-ready category labels. The question then becomes one of how best to analyse the variable data; we must determine what features are fundamental and how they may cluster. Fundamentally, we must revisit a question that has been taken as solved since the time of the Ancient Greeks. And what does this mean for conversion? It means that simply talking of a change from one lexical category to another is at best inexact. I suspect that in the past, saying that a particular adjective or verb has converted into a noun has been a short-hand for saying that is no longer a prototypical instance of what we expect it to be. This sloppy use has proved valuable in the past, and will no doubt continue to provide a first approach in the future. But in principle it ought to be possible to be rather more precise about what conversion to a noun means. In particular, we might want to think not only about what a word gains in such a conversion process (e.g. the ability to cooccur with determiners and relevant nominal inflections) but what it gives up (the ability to take arguments and to cooccur with finite verbal inflections). The examples I have cited suggest that it is not always the same things which are gained or given up, and that a closer look might have the effect of clarifying some of the processes for us. Is this directly relevant in the discussion of conversion, though? If we look just at English it is mainly useful in pointing out some exceptions to general patterns. For example, there is a set of nouns created by conversion from verbs of producing

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a sound, most of which inflect for number in their nominal capacity: bleat, croak, hiss, laugh, growl, whimper, etc. Crow appears to be an exception, not allowing plural marking. There are a number of verbs formed by conversion from nouns which mean ‘to attack or wound (possibly fatally) with N’ where N is the original noun: belt, bomb, cane, club, dynamite, gas, guillotine, knife, machinegun, shell, spear, stone, torpedo. Yet gun does not (any longer) sanction such a transitive use. If we look at instances where we have less than complete conversion, this kind of analysis allows us to see just where the gaps lie. Consider the data in (12), for example, which seems to show that a nominal premodifier is neither a prototypical noun nor a prototypical adjective. (12) the night watchman the *this night watchman the *nights watchman the *nighter/nightest watchman the *lengthy night watchman the *lengthily night watchman It seems likely that if we want to understand conversion cross-linguistically, one of the factors we will have to consider carefully is what it means to change grammatical category, and whether different languages do this to different degrees or in different ways. This paper provides a first step for considering such matters.

References Bauer, Laurie (1983). English Word-Formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coates, Richard (1999). Word Structure. London and New York: Routledge. Curme, George O. (1922 [1913]). A Grammar of the German Language, 2nd revised ed. New York: Ungar. Donaldson, Bruce C. (1984). Dutch Reference Grammar. Leiden: M. Nijhoff. Durrell, Martin (1991 [1971]). Hammer’s German Grammar and Usage, 2nd revised ed. London, etc.: E. Arnold. Foulet, Lucien (1923 [1919]). Petite syntaxe de l’ancien français, 2nd ed. Paris: Champion. Geerts, Guido; Haeseryn, Walter; de Rooij, Jaap and van den Toorn, Maarten C. (1984). Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst. Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff and Leuven. Giegerich, Heinz (1999). Lexical Strata in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Givón, Talmy (1979). On Understanding Grammar. New York: Academic Press. Haas, Wim de and Trommelen, Mieke (1993). Morfologische Handboek van het Nederlands. The Hague: SDU. Hopper, Paul J. and Thompson, Sandra A. (1984). The discourse basis for lexical categories in universal grammar. Language 60, 703–752.

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Jespersen, Otto (1924). The Philosophy of Grammar. London: G. Allen and Unwin. Josefsson, Gunlög (1997). On the Principles of Word Formation in Swedish. Lund: Lund University Press. Katamba, Francis (1994). English Words. London and New York: Routledge. Kennedy, Benjamin H. (1962). Kennedy’s Revised Latin Primer. Edited and revised by J. Mountford. Harlow: Longman. Mitchell, Bruce (1985). Old English Syntax. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moignet, Gérard (1973). Grammaire de l’ancien français. Paris: Klincksieck. Myers, Scott (1984). Zero-derivation and inflection. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 7, 53–69. Paul, Hermann (1995 [1880]). Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte, 10th ed. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer. Prokosch, Eduard (1939). A Comparative Germanic Grammar. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Quirk, Randolph and Wrenn, Charles L. (1957 [1955]). An Old English Grammar, 2nd ed. London: Methuen. Renzi, Lorenzo; Salvi, Giampaolo and Cardinaletti, Anna (1991). Grande grammatica italiana di consultazione. Bologna: Il Mulino. Schutter, Georges de (1994). Dutch. In The Germanic Languages, Ekkehard König and Johan van der Auwera (eds.), 439–477. London and New York: Routledge. Ward, Dennis (1965). The Russian Language Today. London: Hutchinson. Welmers, William E. (1973). African Language Structures. Berkeley etc.: University of California Press.

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Dieter Kastovsky (University of Vienna)

Conversion and/or zero: word-formation theory, historical linguistics, and typology I will raise the following questions: 1. Is conversion (as a syntactic process, e.g. the black, das Schwarze) the same as conversion interpreted as a genuinely lexical-derivational process (e.g. cleanADJ > cleanV, cookV > cookN, kochen > Koch), or are these different processes? 2. Is conversion (in the sense of a lexical process = zero-derivation) just a shift of lexical category or is it a binary syntagmatic process? 3. Is there historical evidence with regard to the preceding question, which suggests the employment of zero? 4. What is the demarcation between inflection and derivation and how is this related to language typology? Here evidence will be used from the history of the IndoEuropean languages.

1. Zero in mathematics is uncontested, and we could not do without it: after all, whether one has to pay 1, 10, 100 or 1,000 Euros for a desired object clearly makes a difference. Here, zero functions as a place-holder for any of the numbers from 1 to 9, signalling at the same time that the position it occupies is not filled, and that the number is of a different category than the one without zero, i.e. there is a functional difference between 1, 10 or 100. In linguistics, on the other hand, zero has been regarded as suspicious or even objectionable by many scholars (e.g. most recently by Pavol Štekauer 1996), whereas others, e.g. Marchand (1960: 293–308, 1969: 359–389) or myself (e.g. Kastovsky 1968), regard it as a useful technical device, no better and no worse than in mathematics, for indicating a functional change of the base to which it is attached. The present paper will investigate some of the pros and cons for recognising zero-derivation as a variant of suffixation, especially looking at some arguments that come from historical linguistics and language typology.

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2.1 There seem to be two main objections to zero. The first is that once one allows for this theoretical construct, there seems to be no way of restricting the number of zeros. This argument is certainly not unjustified, unless certain precautions are taken. A case in point is Frei (1950), where the existence of a zero element is based on a simple opposition between something and nothing. Thus Frei analyses père ‘father’ as a syntagma with zero in initial position because of its being opposable to grand-père, i.e. he postulates an opposition grand-père : Ø-père. Similarly, he assumes a zero element in the present tense je marche-Ø ‘I walk’, because it is opposable to je march-ais ‘I walked’, je march-erai ‘I’ll walk’. And je Ø chante ‘I sing’ would also contain a zero sign denoting assertion, since it is only because of its contrast with the negation je ne chante pas ‘I don’t sing’ that it is affirmative. Note, by the way, that, although for different reasons, in the earliest version of generative-transformational grammar (e.g. Chomsky 1957, Lees 1960) a zero morpheme was postulated for singular nouns and the non-past of verbs (with the exception of the 3rd person singular, where there is an overt agreement morpheme) in order to provide the right environment (i.e. a trigger) for the agreement transformation deriving the correct verb form. Frei’s definition of zero is based on a privative opposition, which will necessarily lead to establishing a zero in such instances, even though this may be unsatisfactory from the point of view of descriptive economy. Moreover, zero here does not really serve any recognisable semantic function. Therefore, it would be preferable to interpret the examples discussed by Frei in terms of markedness, which would not involve any zero at all. In such a framework, the affixless form can be treated as an unmarked base form, the other form(s) as marked. No zero is necessary. This is why Godel (1953) in his criticism of Frei’s approach rejected privative oppositions as a basis for establishing zero and suggested that zero should only be admitted if it could be based on a proportional opposition. In this case the functional difference between the terms a and a/Ø (or Ø/a), i.e. two overtly homonymous forms, one without and one with zero, would be matched by equivalent pairs where the functional difference is also characterised by a formal one, i.e. in cases such as cat : cat-s vs. sheep : sheep-Ø or wet : wett-ed vs. bet : bet-Ø. It is this assumption that forms the basis of the notion of zero-derivation in word-formation as elaborated in Marchand (1960, 1969) and my own work, cf. Kastovsky (1968 and elsewhere). 2.2 The second objection has to do with the concept of the linguistic sign as a form/meaning combination (cf. Kastovsky 1997): signs without a form are obviously problematic in such a framework. On the other hand, in Saussurean linguistics signs are conceived of as being relational, i.e. as being based on oppositions, in which case the absence of a formal exponent can itself become meaningful, cf.

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Saussure’s example of the genitive plural žen-Ø in Czech. This is of course also the basis for postulating zero allomorphs of the plural morpheme in fish, sheep or the preterite and past participle in verbs like bet, let, etc. In these instances, zero is an alternant, i.e. an allomorph, of a morpheme otherwise expressed by overt allomorphs, i.e. it can be justified paradigmatically. Moreover, at least in some instances such as the preterite/past participle hit, etc., the zero can be derived by fairly general morphophonemic rules from an underlying representation /d/, which produce both the overt allomorphs /ιd/, /d/, /t/ as well as zero (cf. Kastovsky 1980). The latter arises by exceptionally not allowing vowel insertion between identical consonants on account of the presence of a special morphological feature characterising these verbs as semi-irregular, with subsequent degemination of the final geminate cluster, which with regular verbs is broken up by vowel-insertion.1 Such a relatively simple morphonological alternation, however, does not seem to be operative with certain word-formation processes, where a semantic change is not matched by a corresponding formal change in contradistinction to regular affixation, i.e. with instances such as (1)

sawN swimV cleanADJ

> > >

sawV swimN cleanV

Such instances have been given various labels such as conversion, functional change, affixless derivation, multiple word-class membership, and, finally, also zero-derivation. The latter interpretation has primarily been advocated by Marchand and his pupils (including myself). Marchand had adopted it from Bally, who had taken it over from Saussure and developed it further (cf. Kastovsky 1999). 2.3 Marchand’s decision to treat such formations as zero-derivations has to be seen in connection with his overall theory of word-formation, which is based on the concept of motivation and thus has its roots in Saussurean structuralism. The basic assumption in these related theories is that the results of word-formation processes have to be analysable both semantically and formally as syntagmas involving a determinatum (head) and a determinant (modifier), cf. Kastovsky (1999: 31), whose order is language-specific. This morphosemantic transparency distinguishes them from simple lexical items and forms the basis of the productivity of word-formation patterns. It is not unlikely that this binary pattern has a cognitive basis related to 1

This relates to certain historical developments, which caused the loss of phonological material that had morphological significance and was therefore ‘replaced by zero’ both in inflectional and derivational morphology.

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categorisation and conceptualisation processes, which seem to involve a matching between something known and something unknown, cf. Marchand’s remark about the principle underlying compound formation: ‘to see a thing identical with another one already existing and at the same time different from it’ (Marchand 1969: 11). It would seem that this observation does not just apply to compounding, however, but to categorisation in general, and word-formation is of course intimately linked to the lexical categorisation of the perception of extralinguistic reality, since it creates designations for what speakers perceive as separate and therefore independently identifiable chunks of this extralinguistic reality. The syntagma principle is derived from instances where the constituents are clearly recognisable on a formal-morphological basis, as is the case with compounds, prefixations or suffixations. These would seem to represent the majority patterns.2 If we take the syntagma principle as axiomatic, which can of course only be done if one accords meaning and form equal importance, by the way, it automatically follows that formations such as oilV ‘put oil on something’, cleanV ‘make clean’, cheatN ‘someone who cheats’, swimN ‘act of swimming’ must necessarily also be treated as binary, and thus interpreted as derivatives containing a zero morpheme instead of an overt suffix. If one does not make the syntagma principle axiomatic, other options would of course exist, but to me they seem to be less attractive, because they would disregard the functional unity of word-formation processes. Analysing the formations in question as instances of zero-derivation thus implies: 1. a change of word-class, i.e. a functional difference between the two homonymous items, and 2. a semantic analysis that matches patterns represented by overt binary syntagmas (i.e. a proportional opposition). Note, by the way, that zero in such a framework, although here regarded as a morpheme in its own right, might in fact be interpreted as a member of a suffix family in the same way a zero allomorph is sometimes treated as a member of an allomorph family, where the other allomorphs are represented overtly.3 This can also 2

3

Note, however, that this does not seem to be the case with denominal verbs in the Germanic (and possibly also many if not most Indo-European) languages, where affixless derivation (zero-derivation) dominates, provided we discount inflectional endings, which have no derivational function (cf. Kastovsky 1996: 100, 113). Cf. Kastovsky (1968: 29f., 49ff.), where I suggested a relationship between an underlying semantic-syntactic category called tagmeme (for syntax) and categoreme (for word-

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be justified by the fact that in the history of English we sometimes have rival formations with and without a suffix but with the same meaning, e.g. to orphanise : to orphan, and others.

2.4 But not every apparent change of word-class or category shift should be treated as zero-derivation. This had already been pointed out by Bally, who distinguished purely syntactic transpositions from genuine derivations. Examples where an analysis as zero-derivation is questionable would be adjective to noun conversions such as German der Schwarze/ein Schwarzer ‘the/a negro’/das kleine Schwarze ‘a short black evening dress’ (note the preservation of the adjectival inflection), or English the black, the poor (which often do not have an overt plural). For these the term conversion might indeed be more appropriate. Many of these instances can be treated as ellipses of a noun (e.g. person, people, Kleid), and some of these have undergone lexicalisation, but they usually do not adopt the properties of genuine derivatives. Consequently, they are indeed better regarded as representing a basically syntactic, and not a morphological phenomenon. If such formations become entrenched in the lexicon, it is a consequence of their having become lexicalised/institutionalised, but not the result of any word-formation process. 2.5 As already mentioned, zero-derivation is also sometimes referred to as conversion or functional shift (functional change), terms which simply imply the shift formation) with functions such as Subject/Agent, Object/Patient, etc. and alternative formalmorphological exponents such as lexical items as determinata in compounds, or suffixes like -er, -ee, etc. as determinata in suffixation, which would somehow correspond to the morpheme/allomorph relationship in inflectional morphology. This was a combination of the slot/filler technique of tagmemics and some ideas suggested by Coseriu for his framework of structural semantics, and, as it turned out, it also shared some features with Fillmore's case grammar, with which I had not been acquainted at the time, but later on adopted as a basic framework, because it combined these two aspects (cf. Kastovsky 1973, 1974). I still think that it makes sense to relate word-formation categories and their morphological exponents to some basic underlying syntactic-semantic categories (comparable to Fillmore's case categories, which have been developed into the notion of thematic grid in generative syntax), but the approach applied in Kastovsky (1968) was certainly far too simplistic. In any case, assuming that such an approach is viable, there does seem to be some kind of parallelism between the morpheme/allomorph relationship in inflection and the basic deverbal and denominal semantic-syntactic categories and their surface realisations in word-formation, although with the latter no phonological conditioning could be invoked. The problem here is primarily the many semantic and idiosyncratic restrictions governing the overt morphological realisation of such underlying general concepts. Interestingly, Pavol Štekauer in a section on Productivity in Word-Formation at the ESSE Conference in Strasbourg, August 30th–September 3rd, 2002, also suggested that semantic categories such as Agent, Instrument, Patient, etc. are relevant as onomasiological bases for different, competing morphological word-formation patterns, thus supporting this assumption.

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from one word-class to another. I don’t regard such term as appropriate, however, because they imply that the process only involves a change of word-class. But in the instances at issue this category change is always accompanied by the addition of a semantic category such as inchoation, causation (in the case of denominal derivation), agent, affected object, instrument, action, act, etc. (in the case of deverbal derivation). This addition of a semantic category – making the resulting formation semantically binary, i.e. involving a determinatum/determinant structure characteristic of a syntagma – has its exact morphosemantic parallel in suffixal derivation. This is more obvious in deverbal derivation (i.e. nominalisation) than in denominal derivation (i.e. verbalisation), since the Modern English verbalising suffixes are limited to -ate, -en, -ify and -ise, each of which has a somewhat limited productivity. The only really productive verbalising process in fact is zeroderivation in Modern English (as it had already been in Germanic and also is in the other Germanic languages). For deverbal nominalisation, on the other hand, many different native and non-native overt suffixes compete with zero. Nevertheless, the main point is the fact that all these processes share the same semantic domains, whether these are expressed overtly or covertly. The synchronic structure of English word-formation (and that holds for other Indo-European languages as well), thus provides numerous arguments for treating the process in question as a binary syntagmatic process involving a zero morpheme, which has the same morphological function as an overt suffix, rather than just treating it as simple conversion or functional change. But there are also other arguments that support this analysis. These come from the historical development of the IndoEuropean, and especially the Germanic languages and involve typological considerations relating to the shift in the delimitation of inflection and derivation, which happened during the emergence of Germanic in general and later on of the individual Germanic languages. More precisely, they involve the question as to what happens to a linguistic system when a formal exponent of a morphological category is lost due to phonological processes, viz. by phonetic erosion.

3.1 In the following I will try to show that the history of the Germanic (and many other Indo-European) languages is characterised by a shift from root-based to stem-based and finally (at least partly) to word-based inflectional morphology. I will argue that this shift necessarily had repercussions for derivational morphology: originally inflection and derivation where partly overlapping sub-systems, but this shift resulted in a relatively clear-cut separation of these two morphological subdomains at least in the Germanic languages. And this separation in turn together with the phonologically conditioned loss of morphological exponents (mainly stemformatives) or their functional reinterpretation established zero as a derivative category.

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Root-based morphology starts out from an abstract lexical element which may or may not be word-class-specific, and which in order to combine with the inflectional system proper has to first undergo certain stem-formative processes. Whether these should count as derivational or inflectional or both is not always clear, hence there is a functional ambivalence. Stem-based morphology is also characterised by the fact that the inputs to the morphological processes are always bound, i.e. they cannot occur as words in an utterance unless they are accompanied by an inflectional ending. Such stems may be simple or complex, and they are always affiliated to a specific word-class, either inherently, or on account of a word-classdetermining morphological element, e.g. a stem-formative. This makes derivational processes necessarily directional. Finally, in word-based morphology the inputs to the morphological processes are free lexical items, i.e. in an inflectional paradigm there is at least one word-form which can appear without any inflectional ending in an utterance; this form acts as an unmarked base form which is itself a word, from which all other word-forms are derived. No stem-formative element is needed, but there are formal means to derive one lexical item from another. These formal means include zero as a place-holder for overt affixes having a similar function.

3.2 In Indo-European morphology, the starting-point of morphological processes always seems to have been a root, which is usually represented as a consonantal skeleton, the vowel being supplied by morphologically-phonologically conditioned ablaut alternations, cf., for example, Kuryłowicz (1968: 200ff.), Szemerényi (1990: 102ff.): (2)

Vd- ‘eat’ (cf. Old English (OE) etan) *mVd- ‘measure’ (cf. OE metan) *trV- ‘tremble’ (? cf. OE þrēat) *dhrVug- ‘cheat’, etc. (with V standing for the ablaut vowel)

This consonantal skeleton could be followed by so-called root-determinatives, which probably had some kind of derivational or word-class-specifying function, but whose actual meaning cannot really be reconstructed. For our purpose, we can treat them as integral parts of the Indo-European roots. The actual nominal, adjectival or verbal inflectional paradigms arise by first adding stem-forming elements and then inflectional endings proper to these roots, i.e. the basic structure of IndoEuropean morphology is: root (+ root determinative) + stem-formative + (± secondary stem-formative elements) + inflection proper The lexical status of the Indo-European roots is far from clear, especially as to whether they were word-class-specific or not. Terms such as (verbal) roots (Kury-

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Conversion and/or zero

łowicz 1968: 204) would seem to indicate that they were, with verbal roots making up the core of the vocabulary. This may well be correct for Indo-European as it is traditionally reconstructed. But in view of the overall structure of the morphology with the pervasive presence of root determinatives and the obligatoriness of stemformatives, I have the feeling that many of these roots might at least originally have been word-class-neutral semantic nuclei, comparable to Semitic or Finno-Ugric roots (cf. also Lass 1994). As such they could oscillate between a verbal and a nominal interpretation, and word-class-specific properties were added to them by the various morphological processes which derived word-class-specific stems. Hence the ambivalence of the stem-formatives between a derivational and an inflectional function. But the word-class neutrality of Indo-European roots is not decisive in this connection. Rather, what matters is that from these roots both primary nouns and primary verbs could be formed by adding the appropriate stem-formatives and additional inflectional endings (case, number; aspect, number, person). This means that at this stage there is no direct derivational connection between verb and derived noun or noun and derived verb; both are only related via their common root, from which they are derived by independent morphological processes.4 From these primary derivatives further, secondary derivatives could be formed by adding further derivational and stem-forming affixes, so that we get the following complex morphological system: Figure 1. Indo-European root-based morphology: primary and secondary derivatives. Root

Verb Verb

primary stem-formation Noun secondary stem-formation Noun

3.3 Let us now look at the function of primary stem-formation with verbs. The Indo-European verb system was characterised by a mixture of aspectual and temporal categories such as Present, Imperfect, Perfect, Aorist, etc., and mode of action categories such as iterative, intensive, durative, inchoative, etc. In Modern English, 4

This type of relationship is obscured in the Germanic languages, where the synchronic typological structure of the language, which is characterised by directional deverbal/denominal derivation, imposes a directional interpretation on the relationship between verb, noun and adjective also in the lexical families based on strong verbs involving ablaut alternations.

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German, or the Romance languages these categories are neatly separated as either belonging to inflection (Tense, Aspect) or derivation (mode of action/Aktionsart). In Indo-European, however, no such separation seems to have been possible, cf.: … die Grenzlinie zwischen Stammbildung und Flexion ist schwankend und dies mehr, als die herkömmliche Darstellung indogermanischer Morphologie vermuten läßt.[...] weit öfter als gewöhnlich zugegeben kann die Entstehung und sogar der Ursprung einer Derivationskategorie beim Verbum nur aus der historischen Entwicklung des Flexionsschemas erklärt werden (Watkins 1969: 19).

Put differently, and simplifying somewhat, the stem-formatives are added to roots, producing verb-stems that belong to these aspect/Aktionsart categories, to which finally the appropriate person/number endings are added. And it is a moot point to ask whether these present stems, perfect stems, aorist stems, etc. are separate lexical items or word forms of one and the same lexical item, since they ultimately have to be directly derived from one and the same root. Clearly the stem-formatives here serve a dual function if looked at from our modern perspective, where aspects and modes of action are separate grammatical and lexical categories, respectively.5 But for the Indo-European morphological system such a division would seem to be quite arbitrary. There is, however, an important difference between primary verbs, i.e. those directly derived from the root, and secondary derivatives, i.e. those derived from a root-based noun or verb. The former normally accept quite a variety of stem-formatives, which results in the whole gamut of aspectual/temporal categories that we also know from Sanskrit, Greek or the modern Slavic languages. But the latter were much more restricted in this respect and usually occurred in one category only, viz. in the present. And this is where the ancestors of the Germanic weak verbs play an important role with regard to the subsequent development. These go back to present stem-formations with an Indo-European stem-formative -y-e/-o. This could be added to a root, forming primary verbs (cf. OE bycgan < Germanic *bug-j-an-, a derivative from a zero grade root), but also to action nouns related to strong verbs. This latter pattern results in causatives such as settan, drencan, etc., which are the ultimate origin of Class 1 weak verbs in the Germanic languages. As Bammesberger (1986: 36ff.) has convincingly argued, these originally denominal formations were ambivalent between a denominal and a deverbal interpretation, although the traditional handbooks always analyse them as deverbal causatives, which thus is not quite correct. The original meaning of these verbs might 5

Note that this is not the case in the Slavic languages, where we still have this cline between genuine aspects and mode of actions, which has led to numerous misinterpretations of the English and Romance aspectual systems, when they were analysed with the Slavic system as a model. Cf. also the use of the term ‘aspect’ for both categories, e.g. in Comrie (1976), and the reasons given for this (Comrie 1976: 6fn. 4).

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therefore be paraphrased as ‘perform an action’, the action being represented by a root-based action noun. They are therefore similar to Modern English denominal verbs such as to curtsy, to sabotage, which are also derived from primary action nouns. Thus what happened was a reinterpretation of the denominal analysis ‘cause action x’ as ‘cause the action denoted by V’, and then finally as ‘cause V’, i.e. as a deverbal causative directly connected with the underlying verb. The next step was the extension of this deverbal/denominal pattern to nondeverbal -a-stem nouns. Finally, the nominal stem-formative -a- came to be reinterpreted as part of the verbal stem-formative, i.e. we get the morphological reanalysis -y-e/-o > -a-y-e/-o > -ay-e/-o (> Germanic -oj-) due to the loss of a morpheme boundary. This allowed a general extension of this new morphological pattern, which primarily derived inchoative and causative verbs, to other types of noun stems, and in Germanic and later in OE it shows up as Class 2 of the weak verbs. This is the only class which is really productive in OE and the other Germanic languages; it is the antecedent of the Modern English regular verbs. It should be pointed out again that these stem-formatives originally derived aspectual stems, i.e. secondary verbs, in our case so-called present stems, from which only an imperfectum could be formed but no perfect or aorist. This also explains the development of new preterite and past participle forms in the Germanic languages (the ‘dental preterite’) in connection with the shift from an aspectual to a tense-oriented system. The stem-formative thus originally combined the function of a derivative morpheme with the function of creating an inflectional stem, at the same time specifying a particular inflectional class. Derivation and inflection overlapped and could not be neatly separated, since the respective exponents did double duty. Moreover, category specification was always overtly marked by a corresponding morphological exponent.

3.4 The same situation holds for nouns. These were also derived from roots by adding stem-formatives, which accounts for terms such as nominal -o-, -a-, or -nstems. The function of these stem-formatives apparently was similar to the verbal stem-formatives: on the one hand they created various inflectional classes, i.e. they had inflectional function, but on the other hand they must also have had some kind of derivational function establishing certain derivational categories, even though these did not have a one-to-one correspondence with the various inflectional classes they created at the same time and tended to be semantically polyvalent.6 As an ex6

This should not come as a surprise, however, because we find similar semantic ambiguities in Modern English (and other languages), where more often than not a suffix has more than one meaning, cf. baker (Agent), poker (Instrument), breather (Act), diner (Place), drawer (Object).

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ample cf. the following reconstructed paradigm related to the root sprVMg- (cf. OE springan): Table 1. Reconstructed Indo-European nominal o-stem paradigm (= E spring).

Sg.

Pl.

root Nom. *spréMg Acc. *spréMg Gen. *spruMg Dat. *spruMg Nom. *spréMg Acc. *spréMg Gen. *spruMg Dat. *spréMg

theme o o é/ó Ø/ó: o: o ó:/(? é:) o

infl. s ‘spring’ m so í /i s(es)/*spruMg - ó:s (es) ns m mis

This represents an Indo-European -o-stem (Germanic -a-stem) noun, where the stem-formative is basically -o-, but exhibits morphonological alternation due to stress-conditioned ablaut. At this stage, the tripartite morphological structure of the nouns is still clearly recognisable.

3.5 As has already been mentioned, the development from Indo-European to Germanic was characterised by a typological shift from root-based to stem-based morphology. This had to do with the replacement of variable morphologycontrolled word stress by fixed initial stress (perhaps as a consequence of language contact). As a result, nouns, verbs and adjectives could no longer be related directly to an underlying root, but had to be derived from nominal, verbal, or adjectival bases, i.e. derivation became directional. This change of the stress system also made ablaut alternations unpredictable and therefore prone to morphologisation (but only in inflection). Another important development was the replacement of the Indo-European aspect system by a tense system consisting of a morphologically marked past tense and an unmarked non-past. This happened in conjunction with the development of the weak verbs and the rise of the dental preterite. In turn this innovation triggered the reinterpretation of the ablaut alternations in the verbal paradigms, which originally had had no morphological function. They now came to be interpreted as morphological exponents of the preterite and past participle together with the appropriate person/number exponents. No such morphologisation, however, happened to ablaut in deverbal derivation, i.e. in the type OE singan : sang, cwelan ‘die’: cwalu ‘death’ or G. singen : (Ge)-sang, reiten: Ritt, springen : Sprung, etc., where it has no morphological function except providing different verbal bases for derivation.

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The typical structure of Early Germanic morphology for both nouns and verbs was therefore: Figure 2. Early Germanic verb/noun structure.

base

stem-formative

inflectional ending

stem *naz

+

*spriMg +

j (= /i/)

+

d + a ‘to save’

a

+

z

‘spring’

The base was followed by a stem-formative or thematic element, to which the inflectional ending proper was added, making it a word usable in a syntactic context. Stem-formatives continued to have a dual role: they acted as derivational elements producing denominal verbs or deverbal nouns in the absence of other derivational suffixes, and they acted as inflectional markers characterising the stem as a member of a specific inflectional class with class-specific inflectional endings. Note, however, that there now were some categories which did not have any overt stemformative, e.g. the normal strong verbs of the type OE sing-an (as against OE biddan ‘to pray’ < *bed-j-an), and the so-called athematic or root nouns such as pes/foot, etc., where the absence of a stem-formative itself acted as a class marker. At this stage, the domains of derivation and inflection were still not neatly separated as they are today, but formed a continuum, as they did in Indo-European (cf. Kastovsky 1996). Moreover, inflection was stem-based, since no paradigm had an uninflected base form. Also, each paradigm had an overt class marker (the absence of one, i.e. zero, also counts as a marker), so that each inflectional form could unambiguously indicate class membership (Kastovsky 1997b).

3.6 I will now turn to another important phonological development which had profound morphological consequences and which is basically responsible for the final split of inflection and derivation and the emergence of zero in both domains. During the evolution of the individual Germanic languages, the location of the main stress on the initial syllable (presumably in conjunction with the introduction of expiratory stress and stress-timing) triggered a gradual weakening and eventual loss of unstressed syllables. This process affected English more than other Germanic languages (for whatever reason), but all Germanic languages eventually underwent it to some degree. Since in many cases these unstressed syllables had a morphological function (they were either stem-formatives or inflectional endings proper), this phonological development had serious morphological side-effects, because it caused the loss of morphological exponents. Thus, in certain inflectional

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paradigms, e.g. the strong masculines of the type OE cyning (belonging to the same inflectional type as Table 1 above), the nominative singular ending was lost together with the stem-formative preceding it, whereas other paradigms preserved an overt nominative singular ending, cf. the OE weak nouns gum-a ‘man’, byrn-e ‘coat of mail’. And in some inflectional paradigms, e.g. the strong feminines of the type luf-u ‘love’/glof ‘glove’ or the -u-stems sun-u ‘son’, hond ‘hand’ (both nominative singular), a form with an overt case/number exponent alternates with one lacking it, its absence being triggered by syllable weight of the base (light vs. heavy), a process usually referred to as Siever’s Law or High Vowel Deletion. The same kind of alternation also affects other inflectional categories, e.g. the nominative/accusative plural of the strong neuters, cf. scip-u ‘ships’ vs. land ‘lands’. This results in the following paradigms: Table 2. OE noun paradigms.

Sing. Nom. Gen. Dat. Acc. Pl. Nom. Gen. Dat. Acc.

spring spring-es spring-e spring spring-as spring-a spring-um spring-as

gum-a gum-an gum-an gum-an gum-an gum-ena gum-um gum-an

luf-u luf-e luf-e luf-e tal-a tal-a tal-um tal-a

glof glof-e glof-e glof-e glof-a glof-a glof-um glof-a

sun-u sun-a sun-a sun-u sun-a sun-a sun-um sun-a

hond hond-a hond-a hond hond-a hond-a hond-um hond-a

How are these forms to be interpreted? The alternations in luf-u vs. glof or scip-u vs. land are fairly straightforward. Since the presence or absence of an overt exponent is governed by weight, i.e. is phonologically conditioned, it makes sense to assume an underlying case/number exponent -u-, which is deleted by a phonologically conditioned morphonological process (High Vowel Deletion). The forms glof and land can therefore be interpreted as containing a phonologically conditioned zero allomorph of the overt case/number exponent present in luf-u and scip-u, i.e. the underlying representation is replaced by zero. The case of cyning or spring, however, where no member of the paradigm has an overt nominative singular exponent, is more problematic. There seem to be two options. If we generalise across paradigms and assume that nominative singular is in principle marked by an exponent, which, however, may be deleted in some instances by a morphonological rule, we have to postulate a morphologically conditioned zero allomorph of this category for the cyning/spring paradigm. If, on the other hand, we treat each paradigm as a separate entity, we could argue that the forms cyning/spring were reinterpreted as unmarked base forms serving as nominative singular (and also as accusative), which would mark the beginning of word-based inflection – the typological system

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eventually becoming the basic feature of English morphology. In view of this subsequent development, it would seem preferable to adopt the latter interpretation, which also allows us to reduce the number of zeros in OE inflectional morphology. Another important aspect of these changes is the fact that they have brought about the total loss of the stem-formatives with nouns: either they disappeared altogether, or they were reinterpreted as case/number exponents (for details cf. Kastovsky forthcoming). This means that in deverbal derivation, e.g. in instances such as spring, cum-a ‘someone who comes, guest’, hunt-a ‘hunter’, there is no longer any element which can be correlated with the derivational process, since -a now has to be interpreted as a case/number exponent. Thus, in the absence of overt derivational suffixes, all we are left with are case/number endings, which produce word-forms and have no derivational function. This means that a situation where some morphological exponent (the stem-formative) did double duty both as a derivational and an inflectional marker is now replaced by a system where inflection and derivation are strictly separate domains, inflectional exponents creating wordforms of lexical items, and derivational exponents producing new lexical items, to which inflectional endings have to be added. But this also means that in those instances where the stem-formatives originally acting as derivational exponents were lost or reinterpreted (e.g. in spring, cuma, hunta), we have to assume their replacement by a zero morpheme in order to keep up the binary interpretation of wordformation syntagmas. The same development affected the weak verbs. Take, as an example, the reconstructed paradigm for pre-OE Class 2 weak verbs (cf. Kastovsky 1996: 105): Table 3. Pre-OE Class 2 weak verbs.

Base wund wund wund wund wund wund wund wund wund

Stem-formative oj oj Ø/o Ø/o oj od od od od

Preterite

Person/Number/Infinitive an ‘to wound’ Infinitive u (o)s (o)þ Present aþ æ æs æ Preterite un

At this stage, there is an overt stem-formative -oj-/-o-, again doing double duty as a derivational element, converting the noun wund into a verb, and at the same time marking it as a member of a particular verb class. In some forms, this stemformative is deleted by a phonologically conditioned morphonological rule result-

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ing in a zero allomorph. But this alternation is fully predictable as in the case of lufu vs. glof or scip-u vs. land. Compare this with the corresponding OE paradigm: Table 4. OE Class 2 weak verbs. Stem wund wund wund wund wund wund wund wund wund

Preterite

Person/Number/Infinitive ian ie ast aþ iaþ e est e on

o-d o-d o-d o-d

Infinitive Present

Preterite

In this paradigm, it is no longer possible to isolate a stem-formative in the infinitive and the present tense forms, although -o- in the preterite and past participle might still be regarded as a reflex of the old stem-formative, contrasting with -e- of Class 1 weak verbs such as ner-e-d-e. In view of the structure of the present tense and the subsequent development, however, I would argue that the reflexes of the original stem-formatives in the preterite lost their function and were reinterpreted as part of the underlying representation of the preterite and past participle morphemes (cf. Kastovsky 1996: 108), i.e. we get the following development: (3)

trym + e + d + e wund + o + d +e

> >

trym + ed + e wund + od + e

Again, the stem-formative doing double duty as a derivational morpheme and an inflectional class marker is lost, resulting in a clear-cut split between derivation and inflection, and the replacement of the derivational element by zero.

3.7 What we have observed here is a radical restructuring of the morphological system of the languages involved. At the outset we are confronted with a system where inflection (the derivation of word-forms) and derivation (the creation of new lexical items) are not clearly separated – a reflex of the originally root-based type of morphology characterising Indo-European. Phonological developments first brought about a shift from root-based to stem-based morphology. Eventually, progressive phonetic attrition of unstressed syllables carrying morphological information resulted in the loss of morphological exponents relevant for both derivation and inflection. The result was a split of the morphological processes into derivation and inflection on the one hand, and the replacement of overt derivational/inflec-

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Conversion and/or zero

tional markers by zero. Zero-derivation in the modern Germanic (and other IndoEuropean) languages can thus be related to the originally more explicit morphological system of Indo-European and Germanic, with zero acting as a default case in the absence of an overt derivational marker – i.e. it can be interpreted as ‘replacing something by nothing’. This historical split of inflection and derivation also precludes certain analyses especially popular in German word-formation, where inflectional endings like the infinitive are treated at the same time as inflectional and derivational (cf., for example, Fleischer 1976: 314,7 and Dalton-Puffer 1992, 1993 for OE). This means that once one recognises the split of inflection and derivation, richly inflecting languages may have as much zero-derivation as those with greatly reduced inflection. Thus statements that English has much more conversion than German because it has less inflection than the latter are misguided. The same observation is true of a study like Biese (1941), which investigates the development of conversion in English since the OE period and argues that the incidence of conversions rises with the loss of inflection. If one keeps inflection and derivation apart, no such conclusion can be drawn. Affixless derivation (whether we call it conversion or zeroderivation) has always been frequent in English, and for denominal verb-formation it has been the normal process, the suffixal patterns being basically restricted to the non-native vocabulary.

References Aronoff, Mark (1980). Contextuals. Language 56, 744–758. Bally, Charles (1922). Copule zéro et faits connexes. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 23, 1ff. Bally, Charles (1944 [1932]). Linguistique générale et linguistique française, 2nd ed. Berne: Francke. Bammesberger, Alfred (1986). Untersuchungen zur vergleichenden Grammatik der germanischen Sprachen. Band 1. Der Aufbau des germanischen Verbalsystems. Heidelberg: C. Winter. Biese, Y.M. (1941). Origin and development of conversions in English. Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae B XLV(2).

7

In the revised edition (Fleischer and Barz 1992: 44, 305ff.) the distinction between inflection and derivation is recognised, and the infinitive ending -en is no longer regarded as derivationally relevant. The patterns involved are treated as instances of conversion, and not as zeroderivatives, however, since it is argued that the inflectional characteristics mark the results of the derivational processes as different from their bases. The basic reason for this decision is the assumption that word-formation does not necessarily yield binary (i.e. syntagmatic) results, i.e. this analysis is primarily form- and not content-oriented.

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Cetnarowska, Bożena (1993). The Syntax, Semantics and Derivation of Bare Nominalisations in English. Katowice: Uniwersytet Śląski. Chomsky, Noam (1957). Syntactic Structures. Mouton: The Hague. Clark, Eve V. and Clark, Herbert H. (1979). When nouns surface as verbs. Language 55, 767– 811. Comrie, Bernard (1976). Aspect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coseriu, Eugenio (1977). Inhaltliche Wortbildungslehre (am Beispiel des Typs ‘coupepapier’). In Perspektiven der Wortbildungsforschung. Beiträge zum Wuppertaler Wortbildungskolloquium vom 9.–10. Juli 1976, Herbert Brekle and Dieter Kastovsky (eds.), 48–61. Wuppertaler Schriftenreihe Linguistik 1. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann. Dalton-Puffer, Christiane (1992). A view on Middle English derivation: verbs. Views 1, 3–15. Dalton-Puffer, Christiane (1993). How distinct are inflection and derivation? Reply to Lass and Ritt. Views 2, 40–44. Fleischer, Wolfgang (1976 [1969]). Wortbildung der deutschen Gegenwartssprache, 4th ed. Leipzig: VEB Bibliographisches Institut. Fleischer, Wolfgang and Barz, Irmhild (1992). Wortbildung der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer. Frei, Henri (1950). Zéro, vide, et intermittent. Zeitschrift für Phonetik und allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft 4, 161–191. Godel, Robert (1953). La question des signes zéro, Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 11, 31–41. Haas, William (1962). Zero in linguistic description. Studies in linguistic analysis. Special Volume of the Philological Society, 33–53. Oxford: B. Blackwell. Irmer, Roland (1972). Die mit Nullmorphem abgeleiteten Substantive des heutigen Englisch. Ph.D. diss. Universität Tübingen. Tübingen: Photodruck Präzis. Kastovsky, Dieter (1968). Old English Deverbal Substantives Derived by Means of a Zero Morpheme. Esslingen/N.: B. Langer. Kastovsky, Dieter (1969). Wortbildung und Nullmorphem. Linguistische Berichte 2, 1–13. Reprinted in Studien zur generativen Grammatik. Athenaion Skripten zur Linguistik (1974), Werner Bauer, Matthias Hartig, Herwig Krenn, Edith Mayer, Klaus Müllner and Hartmut Pott (eds.), 134–157. Frankfurt am Main: Athenaion. Reprinted in Wortbildung (1981), Leonhard Lipka and Günther Hartmut (eds.), 306–323. Wege der Forschung 564. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Kastovsky, Dieter (1973). Causatives. Foundations of Language 10, 255–315. Kastovsky, Dieter (1974). Word-formation, case grammar and denominal adjectives. Anglia 92, 1–54. Kastovsky, Dieter (1980). Zero in morphology. A means of making up for phonological losses? In Historical Morphology, Jacek Fisiak (ed.), 213–250. Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 17. The Hague: Mouton. Kastovsky, Dieter (1986). Problems in the morphological analysis of complex lexical items. Acta Linguistica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 36, 93–107. Kastovsky, Dieter (1992). Typological reorientation as a result of level interaction: the case of English morphology. In Diachrony within Synchrony: Language History and Cognition, Günter Kellermann and Michael D. Morrissey (eds.), 411–428. Duisburger Arbeiten zur Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft 14. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang.

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Kastovsky, Dieter (1993). Inflection, derivation and zero – or: what makes OE and German derived denominal verbs verbs? Views 2, 71–81. Kastovsky, Dieter (1996). Verbal derivation in English: a historical survey. Or: much ado about nothing. In English Historical Linguistics 1994, Derek Britton (ed.), 93–117. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 135. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins. Kastovsky, Dieter (1997a). Sign-oriented vs. form-oriented linguistics and word-formation. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 31, 79–90. Kastovsky, Dieter (1997b). Morphological classification in English historical linguistics: the interplay of diachrony, synchrony and morphological theory. In To Explain the Present. Studies in the Changing English Language in Honour of Matti Rissanen, Terttu Nevalainen and Leena Kahlas-Tarkka (eds.), 63–75. Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki 52. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique. Kastovsky, Dieter (1999). Hans Marchand’s theory of word-formation: genesis and development. In Form, Function and Variation in English. Studies in Honour of Klaus Hansen, Uwe Carls and Peter Lucko (eds.), 19–39. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang. Kastovsky, Dieter (forthcoming). The restructuring of nominal inflection from Germanic to Modern English: major typological changes. Paper read at the 2nd SHEL Conference, Seattle, April 2002. Kastovsky, Dieter and Brekle, Herbert E. (eds.) (1977). Perspektiven der Wortbildungsforschung. Beiträge zum Wuppertaler Wortbildungskolloquium vom 9.–10. Juli 1976. Wuppertaler Schriftenreihe Linguistik 1. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann. Kuryłowicz, Jerzy (1968). Indogermanische Grammatik. Band 2. Akzent, Ablaut. Heidelberg: C. Winter. Lass, Roger (1994). On ‘root-based’ Indo-European: an embryological or phylogenetic note. Views 3, 31–34. Lee, Donald W. (1948). Functional Change in Early English. Columbia Univ. diss. Menasha, Wisconsin: G. Banta. Lees, Robert B. (1960). The Grammar of English Nominalizations. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University. Leitner, Gerhard (1974). Denominale Verbalisierung im Englischen. Eine Analyse der Derivation im Rahmen der generativen Grammatik. Linguistische Arbeiten 21. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer. Marchand, Hans (1960). The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation. A Synchronic-Diachronic Approach. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz. Marchand, Hans (1963a). On content as a criterion of derivational relationship with backderived words. Indogermanische Forschungen 68, 170–175. Reprinted in Studies in Syntax and Word-Formation. Selected Articles by Hans Marchand. On the Occasion of his 65th Birthday on October 1st, 1972, (1974). Edition by Dieter Kastovsky, 218– 223. Internationale Bibliothek für allgemeine Linguistik 18. München: W. Fink. Marchand, H. (1963b). On a question of contrary analysis with derivationally connected but morphologically uncharacterized words. English Studies 44, 176–187. Marchand, H. (1964). A set of criteria for the establishing of derivational relationship between words unmarked by derivational morphemes. Indogermanische Forschungen 69, 10– 19. Reprinted in Studies in Syntax and Word-Formation. Selected Articles by Hans Marchand. On the Occasion of his 65th Birthday on October 1st, 1972 (1974). Edition

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by Dieter Kastovsky, 242–252. Internationale Bibliothek für allgemeine Linguistik 18. München: W. Fink. Marchand, Hans (1969 [1960]). The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation. A Synchronic-Diachronic Approach, 2nd ed. München: C. Beck. Meier, Georg F. (1961). Das Zero-Problem in der Linguistik. Kritische Untersuchungen zur strukturalistischen Analyse der Relevanz sprachlicher Formen. Schriften zur Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 2. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. Opdahl, Lise (2000). Ly or Zero Suffix. A Study in Variation of Dual-Form Adverbs in Present-Day English. Vol. 1. Overview. Vol. 2. Adverbial Profiles. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang. Pennanen, Esko V. (1966). Contributions to the Study of Back-Formations in English. Acta Academiae Socialis. Series A, Vol. 4. Tampere: Yhteiskunnallinen Korkeakoulu. Pennanen, Esko V. (1971). Conversion and Zero-Derivation in English. Acta Universitatis Tamperensis. Series A. Vol. 40. Tampere: Tampere Yliopisto. Ritt, Nikolaus (1993). What exactly is it that makes OE -ian derivational? Reply to Lass. Views 2, 35–39. Saussure, Ferdinand de (1973 [1915]). Cours de linguistique générale. Edition by Tullio de Mauro. Paris: Payot. Štekauer, Pavol (1996). A Theory of Conversion in English. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang. Štekauer, Pavol (2000). English Word-Formation. A History of Research (1960–1995). Tübingen: G. Narr. Szemerényi, Oswald (1990 [1970]). Einführung in die vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft, 4th ed. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Twardzisz, Piotr (1997). Zero Derivation in English. A Cognitive Grammar Approach. Lublin: Lublin Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej. Valera Hernández, Salvador (1996). Adjetivos y adverbios en inglés. La relación de homomorfia. Granada: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Granada. Vogel, Petra M. (1996). Wortarten und Wortartenwechsel. Zu Konversion und verwandten Erscheinungen im Deutschen und in anderen Sprachen. Studia Linguistica Germanica 39. Berlin and New York: W. de Gruyter. Watkins, Calvert (1969). Indogermanische Grammatik. Band 3.1. Formenlehre. Geschichte der indogermanischen Verbalflexion. Heidelberg: C. Winter.

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Ferenc Kiefer (Hungarian Academy of Sciences)

Types of conversion in Hungarian The paper provides an overview of conversion in Hungarian. Category indeterminacy is distinguished from conversion. Conversion is considered a derivational rule and the direction of conversion is defined by means of input conditions on this rule. Special attention is paid to productive conversion rules. Finally, it is argued that there are three types of productive conversion rules in Hungarian: the conversion may be contextually driven, or it may be syntactically or semantically determined. In Hungarian, typical conversions are conversions from nouns into adjectives and adjectives into nouns.

1.

Introduction

The notion of conversion will be taken to mean any (syntactic) category changing operation by means of zero-derivation including category changes within a major part-of-speech category. According to this view, then, in English, for example, the transitive – intransitive alternation, too, would come under the heading of conversion. Conversion is rule-governed if the input and output conditions to conversion can be specified. Conversion may be rule-governed but unproductive, but productive conversion is always rule-governed.1 Productive conversion is possible in the case of open syntactic classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives) only. Though there are cases (in Hungarian as well as in other languages) where the same lexical element may be an adverb, an adposition and a preverb or prefix, this will neither be considered to be a problem of conversion nor of category indeterminacy. Historically, in Hungarian postpositions and preverbs have typically developed from adverbs but no conversion rule can be formulated which would convert all adverbs of a given class into postpositions or preverbs. Neither is there any systematic connection be-

1

On the role of productivity and its relation to morphological rules cf. Dressler and Ladányi (2000).

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tween postpositions and preverbs.2 Conversion as a morphological rule is part of the synchronic system of the language – consequently historical considerations should not play any role in the formulation of conversion rules. This does not mean, of course, that the historical changes of word-class membership should not be studied but they constitute a different enterprise. The direction of conversion is determined by the following rule: the direction of conversion is X > Y if the domain of Y is smaller than X, and if it is possible to specify the conditions for X > Y, but not for Y > X. At least as far as Hungarian is concerned, the determination of the direction of conversion does not pose any problems. The notion of category indeterminacy, too, can easily be defined: if the domains of X and of Y are identical (any member of X is at the same time member of Y and vice versa) we have to do with category indeterminacy. Derivational conversion is often distinguished from syntactic conversion or re-categorisation.3 In Hungarian, as we shall see presently, both types of conversion can be found, though syntactic conversion is more typical than derivational conversion, which may have to do with the fact that nouns and adjectives cannot always be distinguished from each other morphologically. I am going to argue that in Hungarian conversion can be found under three different conditions. We will call a conversion contextually driven4 if the conversion is made possible by specific contexts only. The result of contextual conversion never gets lexicalised. The conversion is syntactically determined if the conversion depends on the argument structure of the input element. The argument structure includes the thematic roles of the arguments. Finally, we have to do with semantically determined conversion if the conversion depends on the meaning of the input or on that of the output.

2

3

4

In Hungarian, for example, the element tovább ‘further, onward’ can function as an adverb and a preverb but not as a postposition; the element át ‘across’ can be a preverb and a postposition but not an adverb, the element alá ‘under’ may belong to three different syntactic categories: a fa alá ‘under the tree’ – postposition, alá mutat ‘to point under’ – adverb, alámegy ‘to go under’ – preverb. Moreover, the postposition mellett ‘next to’ has no adverbial use and it can never become a preverb, the preverb meg ‘perfectivising preverb’ has no adverbial use and is not a postposition. The unsystematic character of these correspondences and in certain cases the complete lack of any correspondence makes the formulation of rules impossible hence the application of conversion is out of the question. Cf., for example, Manova and Dressler (this volume). The re-categorisation of German adjectives as nouns which preserves the adjectival inflection as in gut ‘good’ > der Gute (genitive des Guten) is considered to be an instance of syntactic conversion whereas the conversion of gut > das Gut (genitive des Gutes) ‘the good, property’ would be an instance of derivational conversion. It could also be called sporadic or occasional conversion.

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In what follows, I am going to discuss four cases of conversion:5 (i) the conversion of nouns into adjectives, (ii) the conversion of adjectives into nouns, (iii) the conversion of present and past participles into adjectives, and (iv) -able-derivatives, which have a passive meaning, though the verbal root is active, similarly to English (compare translate – translatable); it can thus be claimed that the active root is transformed into a passive root by conversion. The first case seems to be the most interesting one since it may have typological consequences: it is not unfrequent in Finno-Ugric,6 at the same time it is rather exceptional in Indo-European. Case (ii) can also be found in English and some other languages (e.g. English blindADJ < > (the) blindN; richADJ < > (the) richN), though this type of conversion is more regular in Hungarian. The cases (iii) and (iv) are well-known from other languages, nevertheless they will be discussed here because, as for (iii), the conditions under which the conversion of participles into adjectives is possible are not always clear, and, as for (iv), in principle, two different analyses are possible, one assuming conversion, the other assuming that the relevant information is contained in the lexical entry for the derivational suffix.

2.

The conversion of nouns into adjectives

In Hungarian, morphologically there is not much difference between nouns and adjectives. Adjectives can take exactly the same inflectional suffixes as nouns but the converse is not quite true: (i) only adjectives can productively take the comparative suffix -(V)bb;7 (ii) only adjectives can take a derivational suffix which derives adverbs from adjectives (-an, -ul or -lag). This is, however, only a sufficient but not a necessary condition since there are adjectives which cannot be compared and adjectives which cannot take the adverbial suffix. Some adjectives can take neither the comparative nor the adverbial suffix. Nouns typically denote entities, adjectives denote properties. It does not make sense to grade entities, which would be entailed by the comparative, it is possible, however, to grade properties of entities. Semantically speaking, then, the conversion of a noun into an adjective means that an entitity is replaced by a property or a set of properties of that entity. In other words, the principle underlying this type of conversion is something like this:

5 6 7

Productive conversion in Hungarian also includes conversion of participles into nouns and adjectives into nouns, which are discussed in detail in Kiefer (forthcoming). Raun (1951) cites examples from Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian. The qualification ‘productively’ is important here because some adverbs, too, may take the comparative.

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Types of conversion in Hungarian If P is a salient property (or a set of properties) associated with the entity E, then N referring to that entity can be converted into ADJ expressing that particular property (or set of properties).

On the basis of the above principle any concrete noun with a certain form and with certain functional properties can occasionally be converted into an adjective. Consider, for example, the noun asztal ‘table’. Under certain circumstances we may want to use something, a rock, for example, as a table and we may find two stones of which one is more suitable as a table than the other one. In that case we may without any difficulty use the comparative form of ‘table’: asztalabb meaning ‘more like a table’. Similarly, székebb (from szék ‘chair’) ‘more like a chair’, ágyabb (from ágy ‘bed’) ‘more like a bed’, házabb (from ház ‘house’) ‘more like a house’. These are all occasional coinages used under certain circumstances and they never get lexicalised. Moreover, though they admit the comparative, they do not permit the adverbial suffix. The process is, however, productive. We will call this type of conversion contextually determined conversion. Contextually determined conversions are instances of derivational conversion since the output is differently inflected from the input. The conversion noun to adjective may, of course, also be the result of a diachronic process. For example, the noun vitéz ‘champion’ was first used as a noun only (in Middle Hungarian; the word was borrowed from South Slavic), in Early Modern Hungarian it was also used as an attributive adjective, vitéz nép ‘courageous people’, and as such it could also be used in the comparative vitézebb ‘more courageous’ and it was possible to derive an adverb vitézül ‘courageously’ from it. Evidently, if the comparative suffix -(V)bb can be added to a noun, the noun must be taken to have an adjectival meaning. One cannot be ‘more champion’ or ‘more knight’ or ‘more warrior’ but champions, knights and warriors are supposed to be courageous and, of course, this property can be graded. To take another example: the noun kutya means ‘dog’, which is an adjective in the expression Kutya életem van ‘I have a dog’s life’, in which case it can easily receive the comparative suffix: Az én életem kutyább ‘lit. my life is doggier, i.e. more miserable’. That is, the comparative can be taken as a diagnostic for adjective-hood. Similar things hold true for the corresponding derived adverbs: nouns can never be suffixed by an adverbial suffix, the input to the affixation rule must be an adjective. Hungarian has three deadjectival adverbial suffixes: -lag, -ul, and -an. The suffix -an is the default case: it can be attached to base adjectives as well as to all derived adjectives except for those which take the suffix -lag or -ul. The suffix -lag can productively be added to adjectives containing the denominal suffix -i only and -ul can productively occur with adjectives denoting nationality or with adjectives containing the negative suffix (Kiefer and Ladányi 2000: 208–210). This means that neither -lag nor -ul should be relevant in the present context, at least as

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far as productive formations are concerned. Notice, however, that in certain lexicalised forms -ul can also be found with simple adjectives (e.g. rossz ‘bad’ – rossz-ul ‘badly’, vad ‘wild’ – vad-ul ‘wildly’). In view of these facts it may come as a surprise that adjectives formed from nouns by means of conversion do admit the suffix -ul, while they do not tolerate the suffix -(a)n, e.g. vitézül ‘heroically’ but *vitézen, kutyául ‘as a dog, very bad, miserably’ but *kutyán. The only explanation I can offer for this behaviour is that there is also a homonymous case suffix -(a)n (the supperessive), which yields the same forms vitézen ‘on the hero’, kutyán ‘on the dog’ and this seems to block the use of -(a)n as an adverbial suffix. Though it is true that there is also a case suffix -ul (the essive), this suffix is very rare, the suffixed forms occur either in certain fixed expressions or after a small set of nouns only. In other words, the adverbs vitézül, kutyául would hardly be interpreted as essive forms of the corresponding nouns. Though all adjectivised nouns admit the comparative, not all of them take the adverbial suffix. We have alongside of vitéz ‘courageous’ – vitézebb ‘more courageous’ – vitézül ‘courageously’, kutya lit. ‘doggy’ – kutyább lit. ‘doggier’ – kutyául lit. ‘doggily’, piszok ‘dirty’ – piszokabb ‘dirtier’ – piszokul ‘dirtily’ also szamár ‘stupid, silly’ from ‘donkey’ – szamarabb ‘more stupid’ – *szamárul ‘in a stupid way’, eretnek ‘heretical’ – eretnekebb ‘more heretical’ – *eretnekül ‘heretically’, rongy ‘mean’ – rongyabb ‘meaner’ – *rongyul ‘meanly’. In view of these facts should we assume, then, that we have three degrees of adjectivalisation? The first degree allows only for the attributive use, the second one also for the comparative (and also for the superlative), and the third one also for the derivation of adverbs. The question must be left open at the present stage of investigation. Typically, apart from the contextually determined conversion, the conversion noun to adjective occurs in the following semantic fields (Hadrovics 1992: 200– 223): 1. Nouns referring to persons: vitéz ‘champion’ > vitéz ‘courageous’, hős ‘hero’ > hős ‘heroic’, szűz ‘virgin’ > szűz ‘virgin(al), pure’, mostoha ‘stepmother’ > mostoha ‘harsh, cruel’. 2. Nouns referring to animals: disznó ‘pig’ > disznó ‘swinish, dirty’, szamár ‘donkey’ > szamár ‘stupid’, kutya ‘dog’ > kutya ‘bad, miserable’. The nouns barom ‘beast, ass, idiot’ from ‘cattle’, ökör ‘fool, silly ass’ from ‘ox’ have only attributive use. 3. Ethnic names: német ‘GermanN’ > német ‘GermanADJ’, angol ‘EnglishN’ > angol ‘EnglishADJ’, magyar ‘HungarianN’ > magyar ‘HungarianADJ’, etc.

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4. Nouns referring to dirt: piszok ‘dirt’ > piszok ‘dirty’, mocsok ‘dirt, filth, mess’ > mocsok (ember) ‘pill, ratfink’, szar ‘shit’ > szar ‘ad’. These adjectives have all a pejorative meaning and are mostly used in slang. From among the cases 1 – 4 only 3 and 4 are productive, 1 and 2 are restricted to a small set of nouns and the corresponding adjectives have often an idiosyncratic meaning. The conversion is in neither case rule-governed. Three is a clear case of category indeterminacy or multifunctionality (Don, Trommelen and Zonneveld 2000: 950).8 As to 4, even if this may be a genuine case of conversion, it is quite restricted in scope and therefore rather marginal.

3.

The conversion of adjectives into nouns

As we shall see immediately, the conversion adjective to noun, the converse of the previous case, is quite frequent in Hungarian: it does not only affect certain semantically definable subsets of base adjectives but also a considerable number of derived adjectives. The most straightforward case is when a person’s salient property gets substantivised: bölcs ember ‘wise man’ > (a) bölcs ‘(the) wise’, bolond ember ‘crazy/mad man’ > (a) bolond ‘(the) fool’. The underlying principle for this type of conversion can be formulated as follows: If P is a salient property of entity E then ADJ expressing P can be used to denote E.

The properties at stake can be physical properties (vak ‘blind’, néma ‘mute’, beteg ‘ill’, etc.), intellectual/psychic properties (okos ‘bright’, bölcs ‘wise’, bolond ‘crazy’, gonosz ‘evil’, etc.) or social properties (gazdag ‘rich’, szegény ‘poor’, nemes ‘noble’, idegen ‘foreign’, etc.).9 It is not quite clear, however, what the restrictions on this type of conversion are, some of them may even be lexicalised as nouns. If we exclude ethnic adjectives as being multifunctional, the conversion adjective to noun seems to work for all privatives, and perhaps also for all adjectives denoting salient social properties. This may also be true for color adjectives, measure adjectives, and evaluative adjectives, though with the restriction that it may be more natural to use them as plural nouns: a szőkék ‘the blond.PL’, a feketék ‘the black.PL’, a kövérek ‘the fat.PL’, a kicsik ‘the little.PL’ (often used to refer to small children), a szorgalmasak ‘the diligent/hard-working.PL’, a lusták ‘the lazy.PL’. On the other hand, it is impossible to derive a noun from irregular adjectives such as előző ‘preceding’, néhai ‘late (= who died recently)’, állítólagos ‘alleged’. Also 8 9

The same holds true, among others, for the English and French ethnic names as well. Some further groups are mentioned in Hadrovics (1992: 251).

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some derived adjectives are excluded – on semantic grounds – from conversion, as we shall see presently. Since most base adjectives which admit the conversion adjective to noun take also the comparative and the adverbial suffix, we have to do in this case with derivational conversion. Conversion is especially frequent in the case of adjectives derived by the denominal suffixes -i and -(V)s. (a) The suffix -i is extremely productive and can be added to nouns with a number of different meanings. It would seem, however, that substantivisation is possible with the meaning ‘stemming from somewhere’ only, e.g. vidék ‘countryN’ – vidéki ‘countryADJ, provincial’ > vidéki ‘country (wo)man’, város ‘city, town’ – városi ‘city, townADJ’ > városi ‘townsman, -woman’, Budapest – budapesti ‘coming from or living in BudapestADJ’ > budapesti ‘person coming from or living in BudapestN’. Once again, it would seem that the derived nouns are mainly used in plural. Whereas a sentence such as ?A budapesti mindig rohan ‘The inhabitant of Budapest is always in a hurry’ is odd, the sentence A budapestiek mindig rohannak ‘Inhabitants of Budapest are always in a hurry’ is quite normal. Similarly, ?A városi gyakran mogorva ‘The townsman is often grumpy’ – A városiak gyakran mogorvák ‘Townspeople are often grumpy’. In the singular, the normal construction would be ADJ N, e.g. a budapesti ember ‘the man in Budapest’, a vidéki ember ‘the countryman’, in which case, of course, budapesti, vidéki are adjectives and not nouns. At first glance, it would seem that the above type of conversion does not only work for persons but also for products, e.g. beverages and food: Tokaj – tokaji ‘produced in TokajADJ’ > tokaji ‘a product from TokajN’. Notice, however, that the substantivised form can only denote the wine produced in the Tokaj region and not other products. Similarly, the nouns csabai (from (Békés)csaba > (békés)csabaiADJ > csabaiN), gyulai (from Gyula > gyulaiADJ > gyulaiN) can only refer to certain types of sausages. This means that tokaji, csabai and gyulai should rather be considered to be elliptical coming from tokaji bor ‘Tokajer wine’, csabai/gyulai kolbász ‘sausage from (Békés)csaba/Gyula’. Moreover, these meanings are lexicalised and cannot be considered to be results of productive processes. In other words, conversion always produces nouns referring to a person coming from or living in the place denoted by the base noun. This is accounted for by means of the following rule: If in a construction ADJ N, ADJ is an adjective derived from a place name N* by means of the suffix -i and N means a person then ADJ can be substantivised with the meaning ‘person coming from or living in N*’.

It should also be pointed out that though the adjectives such as vidéki ‘coming from the country’, városi ‘coming from or living in a town’ have a wide range of appli-

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cations (e.g. vidéki iskola ‘country school’, vidéki kultúra ‘country culture’, vidéki levegő ‘country air’, vidéki szokás ‘rural custom’, vidéki táj ‘country landscape’, etc., the corresponding nouns may only mean ‘person who comes from or lives in the country’. In other words, we have to do here with a genuine case of derivation, ellipsis is out of the question. (b) The suffix -(V)s can be used to derive adjectives from nouns denoting objects, animals, plants, institutions, mass nouns, proper names, temporal intervals (Kiefer and Ladányi 2000: 183–185). These adjectives can in certain cases be substantivised to yield names of profession meaning ’practice N or work with N’, where N denotes the base noun. Depending on the meaning of the base noun, in this way we may get (i) names of persons doing a certain sport (bob ‘bob-sled’ – bobos ‘practising bob-sledADJ’ > bobos ‘bob-sledderN’, gördeszka ‘skateboard’ – gördeszkás ‘practising skateboardADJ’ > gördeszkás ‘skateboarderN’; the base noun can denote any sports equipment; (ii) names of merchants (zöldség ‘vegetables’ – zöldséges ‘of vegetablesADJ’ > zöldséges ‘greengrocer’, öv ‘belt’ – öves ‘belted’ > öves ‘merchant selling belts’); (iii) names of musicians (klarinét ‘clarinet’ – klarinétos ‘playing the clarinetADJ’ > klarinétos ‘clarinetist’, cseleszta ‘celesta’ – cselesztás ‘playing the celestaADJ’ > cselesztás ‘musician playing the celesta’). In addition there are a number of other cases where substantivisation is possible (e.g. szoftver ‘software’ – szoftveres ‘working with softwareADJ’ > szoftveres ‘person with softwareN’; butik ‘boutique’ – butikos ‘having a boutiqueADJ’ > butikos ‘person owning a boutiqueN’, etc.).10 The details need not concern us here. The rule for the substantivisation just discussed is this: If an adjective is derived by means of the suffix -(V)s from a noun meaning a sports equipment, goods or a musical instrument, then it can also be used to denote the person who practises the sport in question, the merchant who sells the goods or the musician who plays the instrument.

There is yet another case where substantivisation is possible: if the base noun denotes an institution, the derived adjective can be substantivised to mean the person who is working at that institution or who is associated with that institution: főiskola ‘college’ – főiskolás ‘collegeADJ’ > főiskolás ‘student of a college’, óvoda ‘nursery school’ – óvodás ‘nursery schoolADJ’ > óvodás ‘nursery school child’.11 This works 10 Note that though szoftveres may also be used as an adjective to refer to an enterprise working with software, it can never be substantivised in this meaning. That is, the conversion works only in the case of persons. 11 It is clear that the type of nouns which can occur with adjectives in -(V)s is not restricted to persons (e.g. főiskolás/óvodás újság ‘student/nursery school newspaper’); if this were the case one could argue that the substantivised forms come about by means of ellipsis.

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also with acronyms: apeh ‘revenue office’ – apeh-es ‘from the revenue officeADJ’ > apeh-es ‘revenue officer’. The following rule takes care of this case: If an adjective is derived by means of the suffix -(V)s from a noun denoting an institution then it can also be used to denote the person who is working at that institution or who is associated with that institution.

As can be seen from the above discussion, the substantivisation of adjectives concerns the core of base and derived adjectives and is thus by no means marginal. Once again, the adjectives occur in a wide range of different contexts whereas the corresponding nouns may normally denote persons only. For example, zöldséges ‘of vegetables’ may occur, among other things, in the following contexts: zöldséges kert ‘kitchen garden’, zöldséges bolt ‘greengrocer’s’, zöldséges piac ‘vegetable market’ as a noun it may, however, only mean ‘greengrocer’. Moreover, the suffix -(V)s may be used to derive adjectives such as vajas ‘buttered’, esős rainy’, skarlátos ‘having scarlet-fever’, lázas ‘feverish’, hegyes ‘hilly’, virágos ‘flowery’, diós ‘made with walnut’, erkélyes ‘having a balcony’, etc. none of these can be converted into nouns. Both adjectives in -i and adjectives in -(V)s are not appropriate bases for the comparative and for the adverbial suffix. This means that in both cases we have to do with syntactic conversion. The conversion adjective to noun is clearly determined by semantic factors: the input conditions are semantically specified. Consequently, in contrast to the conversion noun to adjective, which was contextually determined, the conversion adjective to noun is an instance of semantically determined conversion.

4.

The conversion of participles into adjectives

The conversion of participles into adjectives is a well-known phenomenon. Nevertheless, we are going to discuss it for at least two reasons: (i) first, in the literature it is not always made clear what the difference is between participles and adjectives; (ii) second, and more importantly, the conditions under which such a conversion is possible must be made explicit.

4.1

The conversion present participle into adjective

The differences between the present participle and the corresponding adjective can be summarised as follows (Komlósy 1992: 386–388):12 12 The examples are taken from Komlósy’s work.

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1. Only adjectives can be used predicatively: (1) a.

b.

*Ez a férfi (szalonnát) falatozó. is the man (bacon) eating ‘This man is (bacon) eating’ Ez a hír megdöbbentő. this the news shocking ‘This news is shocking’

2. Adjectives do not inherit the argument structure of the base verb: (2) a.

b.

*Ez a hír Pétert megdöbbentő. this the news Peter.ACC shocking lit. ‘This news is Peter shocking’ A (szalonnát) falatozó férfi rám nézett. he (bacon.ACC) eating man at-me looked ‘The man eating (bacon) looked at me’

3. Adverbs can only be derived from adjectives: (3) a.

b.

*A férfi (szalonnát) falatozón nézett rám. the man (bacon.ACC) eating-ly looked at-me ‘The man looked at me (bacon) eatingly’ A táj megdöbbentően szép volt. the landscape astonishing-ly beautiful was ‘The landscape was astonishingly beautiful’

4. Manner adverbials can only occur with participles: (4) a.

b.

A lassan falatozó férfi rám nézett. the slowly eating man at-me looked ‘The slowly eating man looked at me’ *Tegnap egy alaposan megdöbbentő kérdést kaptam. yesterday a thoroughly astonishing question.ACC got ‘Yesterday I got a thoroughly astonishing question’

5. Only adjectives can take the comparative and superlative suffix: (5) a.

b.

*Az öcsém falatozóbb a bátyámnál. the younger-brother-mine eating-more the elder-brother-mine-than lit. ‘My younger brother is more eating than my elder brother’ Ez a legmegdöbbentőbb hír. this the most-astonishing-more news ‘This is the most astonishing news’

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Some of the tests concern past participles only: 6. Preverbs can be separated from the base in the case of participles only: (6) a.

b.

A még be nem csomagolt könyvek… the yet prev not packed books ‘The not yet packed up books…’ *A meg is döbbentő film… the prev also astonishing film ‘The also astonishing film…’

Ambiguities may arise when the element in question is used attributively without a manner adverbial and without a (potential) subject argument. E.g.: (7)

A meglepetéstől elejtettem a reszelt sajtot. lit. ‘the surprise-from dropped-I the grated cheese’ ‘In my surprise I dropped the piece of cheese which I was grating’ ‘In my surprise I dropped the grated cheese (the cheese which I had grated earlier)’

The conversion present participle into adjective is possible under the following conditions: the base verb must have an Experiencer argument (which is typically the object) and a Source subject argument. The base verbs of the following adjectives fulfil these conditions: dühítő ‘infuriating’, elkeserítő ‘exasperating’, elképesztő ‘astonishing’, felkavaró ‘disturbing’, idegesítő ‘irritating’, izgató ‘exciting’, kiábrándító ‘disappointing’, kielégítő ‘satisfying’, etc. If this condition is not fulfilled (productive) adjectivisation is not possible: e.g. teljesítő ‘accomplishing’, ígérő ‘promising’, kérdező ‘asking’, elfáradó ‘growing tired’, elárasztó ‘inundating’, etc. The verbs teljesít ‘accomplish’, ígér ‘promis’, kérdez ‘ask’ require an Agent subject argument, the verb elfárad ‘get tired’ has no Source argument and the verb eláraszt ‘inundate’ requires either an Agent or a Natural force subject argument. The participles which permit conversion, on the other hand, all have a base verb with a Source subject argument and with an Experiencer argument, e.g. A zaj idegesít engem ‘The noise irritates me’→az idegesítő zaj ‘the irritating noise’. Since the morphology of present participles and the corresponding adjectives differ, the conversion present participle into adjective is an instance of derivational conversion. In addition, the conditions under which this conversion becomes possible are definable in syntactic terms; hence we have to do here with syntactically determined conversion.

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4.2

The conversion past participle into adjective

In contrast to the conversion present participle into adjective, the conversion past participle into adjective does not seem to be productive: the input conditions for this conversion cannot be specified. It is known that past participles can be derived from perfective verbs whose subject argument is Theme and which are either durative or punctual; in the latter case, however, they must bring about a change of state (cf. the contrast between *a megrezdült falevél ‘the trembled leave(s)’ – a felrobbant híd ‘the exploded bridge’). It is also known what the differences between past participles and the corresponding adjectives are: they are quite similar to the differences between present participles and adjectives. What we do not know, however, is under what conditions past participles can be converted into adjectives. Adjectives such as törött ‘broken’, repedt ‘cracked’, kopott ‘worn’ are small in number and cannot be formed freely. Other adjectival forms occur mainly in compounds: sült ‘roasted, baked’ (e.g. sült csirke ‘fried chicken’) , főtt ‘boiled, cooked’ (e.g. fõtt krumpli ‘boiled potato’) and are more or less lexicalised.

5.

The conversion active root into passive root

The problem arises in connection with the participles containing the suffix -ható, as, for example, in megoldható ‘solvable’, kikapcsolható ‘releasable’, elküldhető ‘sendable’, feltölthető ‘refillable’, etc. (Komlósy 1992: 393–397). In contrast to the participles with the suffix -ó (megoldó ‘solving’, kikapcsoló ‘releasing’, elküldő ‘sending’, feltöltő ‘refilling’, etc.), the participles with the suffix -ható have a passive meaning: (8) a. b.

a megoldható feladat ‘the solvable task’ a feltölthető toll ‘the refillable pen’

In these cases the head can only be interpreted as being the object argument of the base verb. In order to get this reading we have to assume a passivising rule:13 Root.ACTIVE

>

Root.PASSIVE

13 In English the suffix -able can also be added to some intransitive verbs as in perishable, which amounts to an ergative pattern, whereas Hungarian does not allow for this, although the suffix -andó/-endő, with related meaning, does show an ergative distribution, as in olvasandó ‘to be read’ and romlandó ‘perishable’.

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One way of solving the problem is to assume that the suffix -ó is attached to the active root and the suffix -ható to the passive root. However, -ható is clearly a ‘complex’ suffix, which can be analysed as consisting of two suffixes, the possibility suffix -hat and the suffix of the present participle -ó, neither of them has a passive meaning. Since the suffix -hat may occur with both active and passive roots, the only thing which may change is the order of -hat-suffixation and passivisation. In fact, there are two possibilities: active root > passivisation > hat > ó active root > hat > passivisation > ó We do not have to chose between these two alternatives. What is important in the present context is that in either case we need a conversion rule which converts an active form into a passive form. To be sure, we could also assume that the complex suffix -ható is a lexical entry which carries passive meaning. This would perhaps be the preferred solution for the English -able-suffixation, for the German -barsuffixation, and for the French -ible-suffixation, etc. However, in Hungarian since both -hat and -ó are fully productive suffixes, the assumption of a complex suffix -ható would be less appealing. Once again, in the case of the conversion active root into passive root, we have to do with a semantically driven conversion. In contrast, however, to the conversion of present participle into adjective, the conversion is not determined by input conditions but rather by the semantics of the output. It should also be made clear that this type of conversion is not a necessary analysis but the cost of the alternative analysis is rather high: as pointed out above, we have to assume a lexical entry -ható with passive meaning. Since the passivising conversion does not affect inflectional morphology, it comes under the heading of syntactic conversion (re-categorisation).

6.

Conclusion

In view of the above discussion it can safely be claimed that there are some clear cases of productive conversion in Hungarian. These include the conversion of adjectives into nouns, especially in the case of derived adjectives and the conversion of present participles into adjectives. Both are very productive and by no means marginal. And though the conversion of active roots into passive roots is only semantically motivated, this type of conversion, too, seems to be uncontroversial. The other types of conversion mentioned in the present paper are less productive and sometimes even marginal.

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We have also claimed that there are three basic types of conversion in Hungarian depending on what motivates the conversion. In the case of contextually driven conversion we get occasional coinages, which are motivated by the context. We have to do with syntactically driven conversion if the input conditions are syntactically determined. Finally, if the conditions of conversion are semantic, we get semantically determined conversion. In this last case, two subcases may be distinguished depending on whether the input or the output conditions are at stake. We have also seen that some conversion is syntactic and some derivational. In certain cases we were unable to formulate the input conditions for the conversion in a sufficiently precise manner. This was the case with the conversion adjective to noun, when the adjective was a simplex adjective. Another case where further research is needed is the conversion of past participle into adjective. Though we could not find any systematic relationship between past participles and adjectives, there might be certain subclasses of past participles (or, more precisely, verbs), which may exhibit such a relationship. These, and some other questions must be relegated to further research.

References Don, Jan; Trommelen, Mieke and Zonneveld, Wim (2000). Conversion and category indeterminacy. In Morphologie/Morphology. Ein internationales Handbuch zur Flexion und Wortbildung/An International Handbook on Inflection and Word-Formation. Vol. 1, Geert Booij, Christian Lehmann, Joachim Mugdan (eds.) in collaboration with Wolfgang Kesselheim and Stavros Skopeteas, 943–952. Berlin and New York: W. de Gruyter. Dressler, Wolfgang U. and Ladányi, Mária (2000). Productivity in word formation (WF): a morphological approach. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 47(1–4), 103–144. Hadrovics, László (1992). Magyar történeti jelentéstan [The Historical Semantics of Hungarian]. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. Kiefer, Ferenc (forthcoming). Conversion in Hungarian. In Approaches to Hungarian 9. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. Kiefer, Ferenc and Ladányi, Mária (2000). Morfoszintaktikailag semleges képzések [Morphosyntactically neutral derivations]. In Structurális magyar nyelvtan. 3. Morfológia [The Structural Grammar of Hungarian. Volume 3. Morphology], Ferenc Kiefer (ed.), 165– 214. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. Komlósy, András (1992). Régensek és vonzatok [Predicates and arguments]. In Strukturális magyar nyelvtan. 1. Mondattan [The Structural Grammar of Hungarian. Vol. 1. Syntax], Ferenc Kiefer (ed.), 299–527. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. Laczkó, Tibor (2000). A melléknévi és határozói igenévképzők [The derivation morphology of participles]. In Strukturális magyar nyelvtan. 3. Morfológia [The Structural Grammar of Hungarian. Vol. 3. Morphology], Ferenc Kiefer (ed.), 409–452. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.

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Manova, Stela and Dressler, Wolfgang U. (this volume). The morphological technique of conversion in the inflecting-fusional type. Raun, Alo (1951). Zur Komparation der Substantive im Finnisch-Ugrischen. FinnischUgrische Forschungen 30, 242–247.

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Stela Manova and Wolfgang U. Dressler (University of Vienna)

The morphological technique of conversion in the inflecting-fusional type This paper defines conversion within the theoretical framework of Natural Morphology with its three subtheories of 1) universal preferences, 2) typological adequacy and 3) language-specific system-adequacy. The introductory part (§ 1) provides information about the theoretical framework being focused on the presentation of morphological rules and their bases. The second section (§ 2) gives a definition of conversion and then delimits it from modification (§ 2.3.1) and subtraction (§ 2.3.2). In section 3, conversion is evaluated for naturalness according to the universal preference parameters of Natural Morphology. Section 4 deals with conversion from a typological perspective. In section 5, instances of language-specific behaviour of conversion are discussed and paralleled to modification and subtraction. In the last section 6, we sum up the characteristic features of conversion and draw conclusions about its realisations in the inflecting-fusional type.

1.

Introduction

Although the term conversion entered linguistics as far back as 1891 (introduced by Henry Sweet), its definition has remained unclear. Unfortunately, the notion of conversion is even more problematic when the inflecting-fusional type is concerned. This is due to the fact that in an inflecting language, derivational changes are usually accompanied by inflectional changes, e.g. Bg. krav-a.SG, ‘cow’ > kravi.ADJ.MASC ‘cow-’ (to the base of the rule, only the inflectional suffix -i is added, cf. krav-ja.ADJ.FEM) and krav-a.SG, ‘cow’ > krav-ešk-i.ADJ.MASC ‘cow-’ (derivational (-ešk-) and inflectional (-i) material is added, cf. krav-ešk-a.ADJ.FEM). While it is undoubted that the adjective kraveški is derived via suffixation from the noun krava, it is not so easy to classify the adjective kravi where the word-class change is somewhat strangely expressed by addition of inflectional material only. Moreover, it seems that before the addition, a deletion/substitution of the inflection -a from the input krav-a (krav-i.PL ‘cows’) has taken place. Is the adjective kravi derived by conversion?

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The morphological technique of conversion

Thus, this paper aims at giving a definition of conversion with the help of which copious examples from languages approaching the inflecting-fusional type will be classified. The discussion is situated within the theoretical framework of Natural Morphology (NM) with its three subtheories of 1) universal preferences, 2) typological adequacy, and 3) language-specific system-adequacy. In its universal part, NM recognises five basic morphological techniques assumed on the analogy of all possible cognitive operations that can be done with existing morphological forms (Manova 2003, cf. also Dressler 1987a, 1987b): 1. Addition or affixation, i.e. X→X + Y, e.g. R. učitel’ ‘teacher‘ > učitel’-nica ‘teacher.FEM’. 2. Substitution, i.e. X + Y→X + Z, e.g. Bg. irland-ec ‘Irishman’ > irland-ka ‘Irishwoman‘; E. to nomin-ate > nomin-ee; R. ženščin-a.NOM.SG ‘woman’ > ženščin-u.ACC.SG. 3. Modification, i.e. X→X’, e.g. R. byt’ ‘to be‘ > byt ‘mode of life‘, the noun with a depalatalised final consonant. 4. Conversion, i.e. X→X, e.g. E. dry > to dry. 5. Subtraction, i.e. X→X – Y, e.g. German Hessian hond ‘dog’ > hon ‘dogs’ – the addition of the semantic meaning ‘plural’ is expressed by deletion of form. These techniques represent prototypical instances of morphological rules and constitute a scale beginning with most natural (iconic, see § 3.1) affixation, via less iconic substitution and modification, then through non-iconic conversion to antiiconic non-natural subtraction where addition of meaning is expressed by deletion of form. Here natural is meant as synonymous to cognitively simple and easily accessible, which implies that more natural techniques are more frequent and more productive and that in case of competition of techniques, more natural forms are expected to be more general and more preferred than less natural ones. This is true, for example, for the above discussed Bulgarian adjectives kravi and kraveški, the latter, being formed via affixation, expresses the notion ‘cow-’ in general, whereas the former, a potential candidate for conversion, can be found only in idiomatic expressions, e.g. krave.ADJ.NEUT sirene.N.NEUT ‘cow cheese’ (it is the typical Bulgarian white cheese made from cow milk). In derivation, a morphological technique either changes the word-class of the input of a rule (e.g. E. to work→work-er) or preserves it (e.g. E. garden→gardener). The same holds for the morphological technique of conversion, for example: E. to guide→a guide involves word-class change, whereas R. matematik-a ‘mathemat-

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ics’→matematik ‘mathematician’ does not. Note that due to lack of space, we will concentrate only on derivational morphology. For conversion in inflection, see Manova (2002, 2003). As for bases of morphological rules, we define a base of a rule as a morphological unit which is presented in the input as well as in the output of the respective rule. According to this definition, X is the base of the rules illustrating the five morphological techniques above and as can be seen from the examples, X can be a root, a stem or a word (for exact definitions of root, stem and word, see below). Note, however, that since the languages of our contribution represent right-hand headedness in derivational morphology, for the classification of bases, only suffixes are taken into consideration. Thus, a root is that part of a word form which remains when all suffixes have been removed, i.e. the basic part of a multimorphemic word which cannot be further decomposed on the right edge. This means that both xód-j-a [xód'?] ‘I go, walk’, xód-i.3SG > xod ‘walk, pace, tread’ and raz-grom-j-á ‘I rout’, raz-grom-í.3SG > raz-gróm ‘rout’ are root-based. Consider the following examples of root-based morphology from Italian: (1)

parl-a-re ‘to speak’

Root-based inflection: (2)

párl-o.PRES.IND.1SG, párl-i.PRES.IND.2SG, etc. ‘I speak’

Root-based derivation: (3)

attenuative parl-ottáre, parl-ucchiáre; cf. guf-o ‘owl’ > guf-ino.DIM

Root-based conversion: (4) (5) (6) (7)

ritárd-o/i ‘I/you delay’ zitt-oADJ ‘silent’ favor-eN ‘favour’ emulsion-eN ‘emulsion’

> > > >

ritárd-o.MASC ‘delay’ zitt-i-reV ‘to reduce to silence’ favor-i-reV ‘to favour’ emulsion-a-reV ‘to emulsify’

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The morphological technique of conversion

Stem is that part of a word form which remains when a suffix is removed. A stem has, by definition, at least one suffix more than a root, i.e. if after the removal of a suffix the form left over is a root (see the previous definition), it is classified as a root. A prototypical stem consists of a root and a thematic marker as in the Italian examples below: Stem-based inflection: (8) (9)

parl-á-re.INF = parl-á-te.IMP, PRES.IND.2PL parl-á-vo.IMPRF.1SG, parl-á-i.PRET.1SG, parl-á-to.PAST.PART, etc.

Stem-based derivation: Agent nouns (10) parl-á-nte, parl-a-tóre ‘speaker’, ‘orator’ Local nouns: (11) parl-a-ménto, parl-á-gio ‘parliament’, ‘parlour’ Stem-based conversion: (12) revoc-a-re ‘to revoke’

>

la revoc-a ‘revocation’1

Slavic languages offer instances of stem-based conversion in which the stemforming class marker occurs in a reduced form as in the following conversions with the thematic marker -i/-j from Bulgarian: Stem-based: (13) bro-j-á, bro-í.3SG ‘I count’ (14) presto-j-á, presto-í.3SG ‘I stay, stop’

> >

broj ‘number, issue, copy’ prestój ‘stay, stop, idle time’

On the differentiation of thematic markers from derivational suffixes, see Thornton (1990), cf. also Pavesi (1994: 77ff.). 1

Diachronically via an abbreviation of the suffixed nominalisation revoc-a-zione ‘revocation’ (cf. Thornton 1990), with subsequent rule-telescoping, which results in conversion.

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Of course, it is also possible to have a base of conversion bigger than a root, but without a thematic marker on the right edge, e.g.: in Bulgarian, the verb učitelstv-am, učitelstv-a.3SG ‘I am/work as a teacher’ is derived from the noun uč-i-tel-stv-o ‘being/working as a teacher’, the base being the stem uč-i-tel-stv-. We use word as a hyperonym of word-form and lexeme, i.e. it is a form which exists autonomously in a given language. In Italian, with which we have illustrated root- and stem-based morphology, word-based suffixation is marginal, e.g. gufo ‘owl’ > triple diminutive gufo-inoino-ino. Italian examples of word-based conversion are: (15) parlare.INF

>

(16) sapere.INF ‘to know’

>

il parlar-e toscano ‘the Tuscan idiom’, where parlare can be pluralised: i parlar-i il saper-e, i saper-i.PL ‘knowledge’

As can be seen from the above examples, such an exact distinction between different types of bases allows for co-occurrence of word-based, stem-based and rootbased morphology in the same language.

2.

Definition of conversion

Following the basic concepts of Natural Morphology (Dressler et al. 1987, Dressler 2000), easily translatable into other frameworks, we will define conversion in relation to the other morphological techniques, and especially to its neighbour techniques modification (§ 2.3.1) and subtraction (§ 2.3.2), as given by the scale of morphological techniques. Conversion is a morphological technique parallel to affixation. When derivation is concerned, there is a strict parallelism in morphosemantics (addition of intensional meaning), but none in morphotactics (no addition or change of derivational form), i.e. conversion changes the morphosemantic head, but in contrast to suffixation has no derivational morphotactic head. We distinguish conversion from lexical multifunctionality as in Chinese because Chinese has no morphologically defined word-classes (cf. Vogel 1996: 228ff.). This makes up the difference between derivational conversion in English and multifunctionality in Chinese. We also differentiate derivational conversion from syntactic conversion or re-categorisation (Vogel 1996; partial conversion in Adams 1973), for example the re-categorisation of German and Russian adjectives as nouns which keep their adjectival inflection, e.g. G. der Gute (des Guten.GEN) ‘the good one’ (masculine, identical inflection with the definite masculine adjec-

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tive) (syntactic conversion) vs. derivational conversion gutADJ > das Gut (des Gutes.GEN) ‘the good, property’ (neuter, nominal inflection for genitive). Thus, morphological conversion has morphological consequences in terms of new inflection whereas syntactic conversion does not. We do not accept zero-derivation as a distinct category,2 since, as already Lieber (1981) showed, converted items enter different word and inflection classes, which is incompatible with the assumption of a unique zero-derivation. Consider, for example, the following conversions from German whose output is integrated into different declension classes: gutADJ ‘good’ > das Gut, die Güt-er.PL ‘the good, property’, but ovalADJ ‘oval’ > das Oval, die Oval-e.PL ‘oval’. Thus, if for English, due to the fact that conversions in English have, by rule, regular paradigms (e.g. joyride > to joyride, joyrided, but ride, rode, ridden, cf. Myers 1984: 58), we would have to assume only several homophonous word-class-changing verbal, nominal, etc. zero suffixes, for German (as well as for any inflecting language), we should postulate as many zeroes as the number of the inflection-classes where conversion is found. For a morphosemantic argument against zero-derivation, see § 3.4 below. Like affixation, conversion has prototypical (with word-class change) and nonprototypical (without word-class change) occurrences. Since Sweet, word-class change has been pointed out as the most important feature of conversion. 2.1 Thus conversion is change of word-class without addition of derivational affixes. Addition and omission of inflectional suffixes are allowed, for example: (17) Fr. gard-er ‘to guard’ (18) visit-er ‘to visit’

> >

garde.MASC ‘guard’ visite.FEM ‘visit’

In prototypical conversion nothing else is changed. Thus conversion is less prototypical if thematic markers (thematic vowels or thematic sequences), which are clearly not derivational suffixes but inflection-class indicators, occur either in the input or in the output of a word-class-changing conversion rule:

2

Many recent studies on derivational morphology refuse to accept zero suffixation: Aronoff (1976), Pennanen (1988), Sanders (1988), Lieber (1981, 1992), Don (1993) and Štekauer (1996). One should also add linguists such as Bauer (1988) and Mel’čuk (2002) who recognise zero suffixes only in inflectional morphology.

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Bulgarian V > N.MASC (19) vík-a-m.V.IMPERFECTIVE/ semelfactive vík-n-a.V.PERFECTIVE vík-a/ vík-n-e.3SG ‘I cry’ (20) bjág-a-m.V.IMPERFECTIVE, bjág-a.3SG ‘I run’ (21) spád-a-m.V.IMPERFECTIVE/ semelfactive spád-n-a.V.PERFECTIVE spád-a/ spád-n-e.3SG ‘I decrease’ (22) stro-j-á.V.IMPERFECTIVE, stro-í.3SG ‘I build, construct’ (23) podém-a.V.PERFECTIVE/ podém-a-m.V.IMPERFECTIVE, podém-e/podém-a.3SG ‘I take up’ (24) zamáx-a-m.V.PERFECTIVE, semelfactive zamáx-n-a.V.PERFECTIVE/ zamáx-v-a-m.V.IMPERFECTIVE, zamáx-a/zamáx-n-e/zamáx-v-a.3SG ‘I raise my hand’ V

> >

> >

vik.MASC ‘a cry’ bjag.MASC ‘running, rush’

spad.MASC ‘drop, decrease, reduction’ stroj.MASC ‘order, regime’

>

podém.MASC ‘upsurge, revival’

>

zamáx.MASC ‘stroke, blow’

>

igr-á.FEM ‘game, sport’

>

săvét-v-a-m.V.IMPERFECTIVE, săvét-v-a.3SG ‘I advise’

>

xvat.MASC (slang) ‘dashing fellow’

> N.FEM

(25) igr-á-ja.V.IMPERFECTIVE, igr-á-e.3SG ‘I play, act’ N>V

(26) săvét.MASC ‘advice, council’ Russian V > N.MASC (27) xvat-á-t’.V.IMPERFECTIVE, xvat-í-t’.V.PERFECTIVE ‘to seize, snatch’

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(28) bég-a-t’.V.IMPERFECTIVE > ’to run’ > (29) torg-ov-á-t’(sja).V.IMPERFECTIVE ‘to deal in, trade’ (30) ingressive zamax-á-t’.V.PERFECTIVE, semelfactive zamax-nú-t’-sja.V.PERFECTIVE/ zamáx-iv-a-t’-sja.V.IMPERFECTIVE > ‘to raise one’s hand’ V

> >

igr-á.FEM ‘play, acting, game, sport’ rabót-a.FEM ‘labour, task, work, job’

> N.NEUT

(33) dél-a-t’.V.IMPERFECTIVE ‘to do, make’ N

zamáx.MASC ‘stroke, blow’

> N.FEM

(31) igr-á-t’.V.IMPERFECTIVE ‘to play, act, perform’ (32) rabót-a-t’.V.IMPERFECTIVE to work’ V

beg.MASC ‘run’ torg.MASC ‘trade, bargain’

>

dél-o.NEUT ‘affair, business, deed’

>

sovét-ov-a-t’.V.IMPERFECTIVE ‘to advise’

>

lov.MASC ‘hunt, chase’ hod.MASC ‘walk, gate, pace’ rad.MASC ‘work, labour’ pòsjed.MASC ‘ownership, possession’

>V

(34) sovét.MASC ‘advice, council’ Serbo-Croatian V > N.MASC (35) lòv-i-ti.V.IMPERFECTIVE ‘to hunt, chase’ (36) hód-a-ti.V.IMPERFECTIVE ‘to walk, pace’ (37) rád-i-ti.V.IMPERFECTIVE ‘to work’ (38) pòsjed-ov-a-ti.V.IMPERFECTIVE ‘to own, possess’ (39) ùsklik-nu-ti.V.PERFECTIVE/ usklik-ív-a-ti.V.IMPERFECTIVE ‘to exclaim, cry out, call out, shout’

> > >

>

ùsklik.MASC ‘exclamation, shout, cry, interjection’

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(40) zamáh-a-ti.V.PERFECTIVE, zamáh-nu-ti.V.PERFECTIVE, zamah-ív-a-ti.V.IMPERFECTIVE ‘to swing, wave’

V

zàmah.MASC ‘swing, movement, stroke’ (Serbo-Croatian does not admit word-final stress)

>

hrán-a.FEM ‘food, nourishment’ brán-a.FEM ‘dam, barrier’ ìgr-a.FEM ‘game, play(ing), dance(ing)’

> >

> N.NEUT

(44) d`èl-ov-a-ti.V.IMPERFECTIVE (or rare also imperfective d`èl-a-ti) ‘to work, perform’ N

>

> N.FEM

(41) hrán-i-ti.V.IMPERFECTIVE ‘to feed, nourish’ (42) brán-i-ti.V.IMPERFECTIVE ‘to defend, protect’ (43) ìgr-a-ti.V.IMPERFECTIVE ‘to dance, play, act, perform’ V

75

>

d`èl-o.NEUT ‘deed, action, act’

>V

(45) sáv(j)et.MASC ‘advice, council’

>

sáv(j)et-ov-a-ti ‘to advise’ (about the direction of the conversion cf. Babić 1991: 307)

The thematic markers -(V)v-a- and -n-(u)- also express imperfective and perfective aspect, respectively. Prototypically thematic markers are meaningless. Since the above-mentioned class indicators also signal verbal aspect, they must be assigned a transitional status between purely inflectional suffixes (thus conversion) and derivational suffixes (which excludes the status of conversion in derivation). This fits to the hotly debated intermediate status of the category of aspect between inflection and derivation.3 3

Dressler (1989) has assigned verbal aspect to non-prototypical inflection whereas Aktionsart clearly belongs to derivation. For Russian, Vinogradov (1972: 395) considered aspect an inflectional category, Maslov (1962: 22) recognised only imperfectivisation as inflection; in contrast, the Academy Grammar (Švedova et al. 1980: 584f.) and Lehmann (1999: 215) interpret aspect pairs as consisting of different lexemes. About the debate on the status of the cate-

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The morphological technique of conversion

Thus the presence of thematic material in the input or output of a conversion rule renders such conversions slightly less prototypical than its absence. Moreover, we have to add that the addition or deletion of thematic material is neither to be classified as derivational affixation nor as derivational subtraction (for subtraction, see § 2.3.2), and therefore in itself does not impede the assumption of conversion, i.e. in derivational conversion, addition, substitution and deletion of non-derivational material is allowed. In this line, Dokulil (1968: 223) was right assuming that the Czech lov-i-t ‘to hunt’ > lov ‘a hunt’ is a case of conversion, whereas Dressler (1984) was incorrect in postulating subtraction for similar examples (cf. Dressler 1987a; 2000: 583).

2.2 A much more important source of non-prototypicality in conversion occurs when only subclasses are changed, e.g.: (46) R., Pol. lógik-a.FEM ‘logic’

>

lógik.MASC ‘logician’

(cf. the same semantic pattern in Serbo-Croatian where the usually word-classchanging suffix -ār, as in čúv-a-ti ‘to guard, watch over’ > čùv-ār ‘watchman, guard’, does not change the word-class in lògik-a ‘logic’ > lògič-ār ‘logician’). (47) Cf. R. matemátik-a ‘mathematics’ (48) fízik-a ‘physics’

> >

matemátik ‘mathematician’ fízik ‘physicist’

In these examples, we have: first, change from inanimate to animate, and second, gender alternation, i.e. feminine to masculine. The more class features are changed, the less non-prototypical is a conversion. In inflecting-fusional languages, morphological conversion can be further classified according to the inflectional properties of its output: 1) the output of a conversion rule can have the full paradigm of the new class it goes into. Conversions to verbs are always of this type (examples in the discussion above); 2) the output of a conversion rule can partially preserve its original inflection, taking the rest forms from the class it enters. Sometimes nominalisations of adjectives behave in this way, e.g. SC. mlâda ‘bride’ (< mlada.ADJ.FEM ‘young’) exhibits a mixed nominaladjectival paradigm in some regions (cf. Halilović 1996 for Bosnian and Anić 1991 gory of aspect in Bulgarian, see Maslov (1959, 1982) and Kucarov (1983, 1999: 482–490). See also Comrie (1976), Bybee (1985) and Bybee et al. (1994).

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for Croatian, however, according to Barić et al. 1997: 180 and Anić et al. 2002, mlâda has a normal nominal paradigm in Croatian). Conversions such as mlâda are rare and represent a transitional stage between morphological and syntactic conversion; and 3) the output of a conversion rule can have a defective (incomplete) paradigm exhibiting only some of the inflection forms of the new word-class, e.g. R. zlo.ADJ.NEUT ‘bad’→zlo ‘the bad’ with a single form in the plural, namely zol.GEN.PL, cf. Manova (2003: 94–95). Remember that with the help of the same criterion, we distinguished between derivational (morphological) and syntactic conversion (cf. the examples of syntactic substantivisation from German, see above).

2.3.

Conversion and its neighbour techniques

2.3.1 Conversion vs. modification As can be expected from the assumption of a scale of morphological techniques, conversion has often been confused with its neighbour techniques modification and subtraction. Therefore in order to define conversion, we will next deal with modification. Here we disagree with those who classify modifications, despite prosodic and segmental changes, as marginal (Bauer 1983: 228), minor or secondary cases of conversion, such as partial conversion (Bauer 1983: 229) or conversion with formal modifications (Quirk et al. 1985: 1566–1567; Mel’čuk 1996: 131f., 2000: 148–150; Štekauer 1996: 94). Since all prosodic and segmental changes involve modifications, we distinguish them from conversion. 2.3.1.1 Prosodic modifications We understand stress or accent-pattern changes as prosodic modifications. According to the scale of morphological techniques postulated above, such changes represent the morphological technique of modification. For example: (49) E. to impórt (50) Bg. stru-j-á, stru-í.3SG ‘I stream, flow’ (51) Bg. osnov-á, osnov-é.3SG ‘I found’ (52) SC. zaštítiti ‘to defend’

> > > >

the ímport strú-ja.FEM ‘jet, spurt, stream’ osnóv-a.FEM ‘base’ zâštita.FEM ‘defence’

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Superficial stress shift does not count as modification, however, if due to deletion of the stressed word-final inflectional suffix: (53) Bg. otčet-á, otčet-é.3SG ‘I give an account’ (54) presto-j-á, presto-í.3SG ‘I stay, stop’

> >

otčét.MASC ‘an account’ prestój.MASC ‘a stay, stop’

Here the prosodic pattern of word-final stress is preserved. In contrast, word-final stress is modified into word-initial stress in: (55) Bg. ustrem-j-á (se), ustrem-í (se).3SG ‘I rush’

>

ústrem ‘a rush’

A still more evident case of modification is represented by derivations such as: (56) Bg. ogléd-a-m, ogléd-a.3SG ‘I examine, look over’

>

ógled ‘view, inspection’

(cf. ogléžda-ne ‘inspection’ and gléd-a-m ‘I look’, gléd-a.3SG, gléd-ka ‘view’, gléda-ne ‘looking’ – all root-stressed). Here we have stress shift from final stress to initial stress, which establishes prosodic modification.4 Note that for Serbo-Croatian, it is not the contour of accent (i.e. whether short/long or rising/falling), but the accent-placement that is taken into consideration for the postulation of conversion, i.e. SC. škôl-a ‘school’ > šk`òl-ov-a-ti ‘to educate’ and zlât-o ‘gold’ > zlát-i-ti ‘to gild’ are conversions, but the above-cited zaštít-i-ti ‘to defend’ > zâštit-a ‘defence’ is not. 2.3.1.2 Morphonological and allomorphic modifications While prosodic alternations have often been confused with conversion, fewer linguists (Dokulil 1968; Lieber 1981, 1992; Bauer 1983; Štekauer 1996; Quirk et al. 1985; Mel’čuk 1996: 131; 2000: 149f.) postulate conversion in case of segmental changes of a morphonological or allomorphic nature, such as: changes of final consonants, e.g. voicing, as in E. belief > to believe; palatalisation or depalatalisation, as in R. drug ‘friend’ > druž-i-t’ ‘to be a friend’, or SC. skoč-i-ti ‘to jump, leap’ > 4

Of course, it is necessary to identify the correct base of a conversion rule. E.g. It. ritard-á-re ‘to delay’ > ritárd-o.MASC ‘delay’ does not involve prosodic modification, because the base of the conversion is the verbal root in ritárd-o/a ‘I/(s)he delay(s)’ and not the thematic stem of the infinitive (cf. Dressler and Thornton 1991).

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skok ‘jump, leap’; ablaut, as in E. blood > to bleed; and umlaut, G. Kamm ‘comb’ > kämm-en ‘to comb’; consonant insertion, as in Fr. béton ‘concrete’ > bétonn-erV ‘to concrete’, engrais ‘manure; fattening pasture or food’ > engraisserV ‘to fatten, manure’ (conversions for Mel’čuk 1996: 131; 2000: 149f.). Conversion is paralleled by modification via morphonological palatalisations in R. lov-i-t’ ‘to hunt, catch’ > lov.MASC (conversion) vs. lovl-ja.FEM (modification) ‘hunting, catching’ (cf. kup-i-t’ ‘to buy’ > kupl-ja.FEM ‘purchase’), cf. Jakobson (1971: 126). Despite final phonemic change (automatic depalatalisation) we have conversion in the following Polish word families: (57) wytapi-a-ć [vItap’ać].V.IMPERFECTIVE, wytapi-a-nie.VERBAL NOUN, wytapi-acz.AGENT NOUN wytop-i-ć.V.PERFECTIVE > ‘to melt’ (58) wywabi-a-ć.V.IMPERFECTIVE, wywob-i-ć.V.PERFECTIVE, wywabi-acz.NOMEN INSTRUMENTI > ‘to remove’, ‘remover’

conversion: wytop.VERBAL NOUN ‘melting’

conversion: wywab ‘corrosive substance’

For in Polish (cf. Gussmann 1978: 45f., Rochoń 1999), all palatalised labial consonants are automatically depalatalised in word-final position. 2.3.2 Conversion vs. subtraction According to the scale of constructional iconicity, the other, still less natural neighbour technique of conversion is subtraction, e.g. Bg. miš-k-a ‘mouse’ > miši.ADJ.MASC ‘mouse-’ with subtraction of the final -k- from the stem miš-k-. At first sight it seems difficult to confuse conversion and subtraction. In fact, such confusions are much more a result of the approach followed than a consequence of false understanding of conversion. As Dressler (1987a: § 4.4.3–4.4.4) points out there might be two different solutions for the case, R. lógik-a ‘logic’ > lógik ‘logician’: 1) within the stem-based morphology of Mel’čuk (1982) it is clearly a conversion, and 2) within the word-based morphology of Aronoff (1976) it can be interpreted as subtraction because the basis of any WFR must be an occurring word-form. As mentioned in § 1, our theoretical framework allows for co-occurrence of word-, stem- and root-based morphology in the same language. Thus, since the base logik- is a root, we classify the above Russian example as a root-based conversion.

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Another source for confusions between conversion and subtraction are the different analysis of the status of thematic markers. The problem has already been discussed in § 2.1, therefore we will not deal with it again here.

3.

Universal preference parameters

The subtheory of universal markedness is a preference theory operating with a restricted number of naturalness parameters on which deductively derived degrees of universal preferences are established. We are going to deal with the preference parameters of iconicity, indexicality, biuniqueness, morphosemantic and morphotactic transparency5 according to their relevance to conversion and to their positive or negative contribution to the relative naturalness of conversion.

3.1

Iconicity

On the semiotically-derived parameter of iconicity the morphological technique of conversion appears non-iconic because there is no formal analogy to addition of intensional meaning. Thus, conversion is less iconic than suffixation, substitution and modification.6

3.2

Indexicality

Affixes as signantia refer indexically to their respective bases as signata. The more salient an indexical signans is, the better on the parameter of indexicality. Therefore, also on this parameter, conversion is less natural than any type of affixation.

3.3

(Bi)uniqueness

According to the preference for biuniqueness over uniqueness and ambiguity, the most natural case is when one and the same form has always the same meaning and vice versa. Clearly, this is not the case with conversion. Prototypical conversion connects two meanings with one surface form, e.g. E. hold is both verb and noun, but the two meanings are not expressed by anything else (since the nouns hold and holding are not synonymous). This is a case of uniqueness which is less natural

5 6

Those parameters that have already been dealt sufficiently in respect to conversion (cf. Dressler 1987b; Crocco-Galèas 1997: 31ff.) will here be only briefly mentioned. On metaphoricity of conversions (a much weaker type of iconicity than diagrammaticity of affixation) see Crocco-Galèas (1997).

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than biuniqueness. There is uniqueness not just for the base forms of hold, but also for the inflected and derived forms holds, holding. Multiple relations, which create ambiguity can be found in English but most of them are due to additional syntactic conversion, as in blindADJ > the blindN vs. the morphological conversion blindADJ > to blindV (blinded.PAST.PART). A sequence of two morphological conversions can be identified in: (59) E. smokeN

>

to smokeV

(60) Bg. lov-j-a.V.IMPERFECTIVE, lov-uv-a-m.V.IMPERFECTIVE, > lov.MASC lov-i.3SG ‘I catch, hunt’ ‘hunt, hunting, pursuit, chase’ > vèčer-a-ti (61) SC. v`èčer.FEM ‘evening’ ‘to have supper’

>

a smokeN, as in a cigar is a good smoke (see Jackendoff 1975: 661f.)

>

lov-uv-a.3SG ‘I go shooting, hunting/shooting’ vèčer-a.FEM ‘supper’ (Skok 1973: 570)

>

As expected, such instances of multiple relations are rare.

3.4

Transparency

Another semiotic preference parameter is that of transparency from which the two subparameters of morphosemantic and morphotactic transparency follow. Morphosemantic transparency Since full morphosemantic transparency, which means fully compositional meaning (without lexicalisation), is only possible in inflection, we can, in regard to derivational morphology, only compare more or less transparency. One important aspect of morphosemantic transparency is descriptivity, i.e. the amount of descriptive motivation of the meaning of a complex word (cf. Dressler 1987b: 99). As the presence of an affix is clearly more descriptive than its absence, we can predict that in general conversion should be more opaque than suffixation. Among deverbal nominalisations, conversions and suffixations do not only differ in syntax (cf. for English, Grimshaw 1992: 47), but also semantically: conver-

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sions are usually event, result or concrete nouns whereas the most productive suffixations are predominantly action nouns.7 In Bulgarian, verbal nouns can be formed from simple imperfective verbs both with the suffix -ne and conversion. Whereas the suffixations are transparent action nouns, the conversions are always either result or event nouns or have other more specific concrete meanings which would fit better to a perfective verb as base. > (62) bród-j-a, bród-i.3SG ‘I rove, tramp, wander’ > (63) zíd-a-m, zíd-a.3SG ‘I build, construct (of brick/stone), lay bricks’ > (64) stro-j-á, stro-í.3SG ‘I build, construct, erect’ > (65) bro-j-á, bro-í.3SG ‘I count’ > (66) vík-a-m, vík-a.3SG ‘I cry (out), shout (out), call’

bród-e-ne vs. ‘action of…’ zíd-a-ne vs. ‘action of…’

brod ‘ford’ zid ‘wall’

stro-é-ne vs. ‘action of...’ bro-é-ne vs. ‘action of...’ vík-a-ne vs. ‘action of...’

stroj ‘system, regime’ broj ‘number, issue’ vik ‘cry, shout, yell’

Very few conversions may in addition have an action noun meaning, but only with specialised semantics: (67) xód-j-a, xód-i.3SG ‘I go, walk’

>

xód-e-ne8 vs. ‘going, walking’

(68) bjág-a-m, bjág-a.3SG ‘I run’

>

bjág-a-ne vs. ‘running, race’ ‘running, rush’

7

8

9

xod ‘gate, pace, tread, walk’9 bjag as in udrjam na bjag ‘take to flight’

For lack of space, we cannot go into finer semantic differentiations (as in Marchand 1969: 368–377, Cetnarowska 1993: 86–121, Štekauer 1996), we are only interested in comparing parallel conversion and suffixation. Semantic comparisons between conversion and result nouns in the suffix doublet -nie are difficult for our purposes in view of their general stylistic contrasts: -nie suffixations are typical for literary and ecclesiastic style and under Russian influence, e.g. prinúd-j-a ‘I compel, force’, prinúd-i.3SG > prinúd-a ‘compulsion, constraint’ = prinužd-é-nie (much less used). This only in specific expressions such as baven/bărz xod ‘slow/quick march of humans, animals, cars’, zaden xod ‘backward motion’, konski xod ‘horse pace’, umel xod ‘clever move (in chess and metaphorically)’.

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But this difference in degree of morphosemantic transparency may simply be a consequence of the fact that verbal nouns in -ne are very productive (usually they are even not entered into dictionaries), whereas such conversions are unproductive. However this argumentation does not hold for perfective prefixed verbs: First of all, -ne suffixations can only be derived from imperfective verbs, e.g.: (69) Bg. obmén-ja-m, obmén-ja.3SG > ‘I exchange, interchange’

obmén-ja-ne ‘exchanging, interchanging’

Second, from perfective prefixed verbs, conversions to masculine nouns may be derived productively, in contrast to unproductive modificatory reclassifications into feminine nouns (cf. Maslov 1982: 99f., Bojadžiev 1999: 266). And here, despite the difference in productivity, we do not find a difference in degree of morphosemantic transparency. This becomes especially evident when conversions and modifications coexist. In these cases we have lexical synonymy, as in: (70) Bg. ob-men-j-á, ob-men-í.3SG ‘I exchange, interchange’

>

ob-mén.MASC = ob-mján-a.FEM ‘exchange, interchange’

Consider: tărgovski obmen ‘trade’; obmen na valuta ‘exchange of money’, obmjana na stoki ‘barter’, obmjana na opit ‘exchange of experience’, obmjana na parite ‘monetary reform’, obmjana na veštestvata ‘metabolism’. Also in case of suffixation plus modification, conversion is less transparent than the more iconic alternative, e.g.: (71) pek-a > ‘I bake, roast, scorch’ (72) vlek-a > ‘I entail, cause, attract, carry along, drag along’

1) pek, ‘scorching heat’ 1) vlek ‘rope line’

2) peč-e-ne ‘baking, roasting, sunbathing’ 2) vleč-e-ne, vleč-e-nie ‘carrying along, dragging along, inclination, attraction’

Polish Whereas suffixed verbal nouns are completely transparent action nouns (often not even cited in dictionaries, but well-known by informants) conversions are less transparent result nouns, cf.: (73) wydrukow-a-ć.V.PERFECTIVE ‘to print’

>

wydrukow-a-nie ‘action of...’

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vs.

wydruk ‘print’

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(74) przekład-a-ć.V.IMPERFECTIVE

‘to shift, to translate’

>

przekład-a-nie

‘action of…’

vs.

result noun = conversion przekład ‘translation’

These result nouns may show restrictions of meaning in regard to the meaning of the basic verbs and the action nouns, e.g. przekaz-a-ć.V.PERFECTIVE ‘to carry over, transfer’, przekaz-yw-a-ć.V.IMPERFECTIVE > przekaz-a-nie ‘transfer, carry over’, przekaz-yw-a-nie ‘action of…’(not even in dictionaries) vs. przekaz ‘transfer’. German Also in German, verbal nouns in the suffix -ung are more transparent than conversions: (75) berufen > ‘to call (together), appoint’ (76) verbauen > ‘to build up, obstruct’

Beruf-ung.FEM ‘action of…’ Verbau-ung.FEM ‘action of…’

vs. vs.

(77) unterhalten > Unterhalt-ung.FEM vs. ‘to main/sus/entertain, converse’ ‘action of...’ (78) verhauen > ‘to hack (in wrong places), thrash soundly’ (79) verleihen > ‘to lend, bestow, grant’ (80) geleiten > ‘to accompany’

Verhau-ung.FEM’ ‘action of…’

vs.

Verleih-ung.FEM ‘action of…’

vs.

Versuch-ung.FEM ‘temptation’

vs.

Beruf.MASC ‘profession’ Verbau.MASC ‘obstructing, building’ Unterhalt.MASC ‘maintenance, livelihood’ Verhau.MASC ‘entanglement’

Verleih.MASC ‘loan office, hire service’ Geleit.NEUT vs. zurückgeleiten > Zurückgeleitung.FEM ‘action of…’ ‘to escort back’ ‘action of…’

Counter-example: (81) versuchen > ‘to attempt, test, tempt, taste’

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Versuch.MASC ‘attempt, test’ (but neither ‘*temptation’ nor ‘*taste’)

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Interestingly word-based conversions are morphosemantically more transparent than root-based conversions: (82) treff-en ‘to meet’ (83) trink-en ‘to drink’

> >

das Treffen ‘meeting’ das Trinken ‘drinking’

vs. vs.

der Treff ‘rendezvous’ der Trink ‘drink’

Morphotactic transparency In a conversion the base is maximally transparent (Clark 1981), but the formal exponent of derivation is maximally opaque. This reciprocal relation is maintained when thematic material intervenes. Morphotactically the most natural base of a morphological rule is a word (as a primary sign in semiotic terms), hence stem-based conversions are less natural, and root-based conversions are the least natural ones. Thus word-based conversions such as G. laufen ‘to run’ > das Laufen ‘the running’ are more natural than lauf-en > der Lauf ‘the run’ (root-based). Therefore, there exists an iconic relationship between degree of morphosemantic and morphotactic transparency in the fact that the word-based das Laufen is both morphotactically and morphosemantically more transparent than the root-based der Lauf. Intermediate conclusion Conversion is less natural/more marked than affixation, substitution and modification on nearly all naturalness parameters: iconicity, indexicality, biuniqueness, morphosemantic and morphotactic transparency. Only in regard to morphotactic transparency of the base, conversion is as natural/unmarked as the most transparent type of affixation, i.e. in case of transparent (purely agglutinative) concatenation without resyllabificaton or phonemic neutralisation. For these two (affixation and conversion), phonological process types opacify slightly, morphonological and especially allomorphic rules (as in the case of modification) opacify much more. From this constellation we can predict: 1) the relative overall rareness of conversion in the languages of the world (cf. Dressler 1982), this in relation to more natural techniques; 2) that the occurrence of conversion in the word-formation of a language implies the occurrence of affixation, substitution and modification;10 and 3) that generally conversion rules should be less productive than affixation, substitu-

10 One might object that the co-occurrence of affixation with conversion is definitional (cf. § 1), but the implication of the presence of modification by the presence of conversion is empirically testable. So far we have found no counter-example.

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The morphological technique of conversion

tion and modification rules. This last prediction is not true for English, but here a typological factor intervenes. This leads us to the next section.

4.

Typological adequacy11

The most natural options on all parameters do not co-occur within one language therefore a language must sacrifice naturalness on some parameters in favour of others. The selection of which parameters to choose for assigning them the most natural options is not chaotic but coordinated by typological adequacy (cf. Dressler 1999: 141). Due to the restricted number of languages we have looked at, we concentrate on the typological continuum between the polar ideal types of isolating and strongly inflecting languages (cf. Skalička 1979; Dressler 1987b).

4.1 For the ideal type of an isolating language, no conversion must be assumed but only multifunctionality (see § 2). Languages which are close to the ideal isolating language type, such as (the non-Latinate part of) English and French12 distinguish word-classes morphologically in inflection and by word-class-specific derivation, therefore conversion instead of multifunctionality. Diachronically they have derived from stronger inflecting-fusional languages and, similar to what Kastovsky (1985) claimed for English, the diachronic loss of suffixes has been reanalysed as conversion. This explains why for certain categories of conversion, conversion rules are more productive than competing suffixation rules. Moreover such languages have only word-based conversions. Examples: (84) (85) (86) (87)

E. telephoneN to whistleV dryADJ Fr. beurreN ‘butter’ (88) vivreV ‘to live’

> > > > >

to telephoneV a whistleN to dryV beurr-erV ‘to butter’ le vivreN (plural-dominant) ‘food stuff’

11 For another way of classifying the typological adequacy of conversions see Crocco-Galèas (1997: 61ff.). 12 Other well-known isolating properties of English inflection and non-Latinate-derived French inflection (cf. Skalička 1984, Geckeler 1984) are poverty of bound morphology, nearly no morphological gender distinction, little agreement, much greater trend towards monosyllabicity than in cognate languages.

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4.2 In contrast, strongly inflecting languages have predominantly stem- and root-based conversions: Latin Word-based N>V (89) spic-a.FEM ‘ear’

>

spic-a-re ‘to supply with ears’

>

fin-i-re ‘to end’

>

pugn-a.FEM ‘combat’

>

moll-i-re ‘to soften’

>

dux, duc-is.GEN ‘leader’ morsic-us.MASC (o-stem) ‘bite’ coqu-us.MASC ‘cook’

Stem-based N>V (90) fin-i-s.MASC (cf. fin-alis) ‘end’ V

>N

(91) pugn-a-re ‘to combat’ ADJ

>V

(92) moll-i-s ‘soft’ Root-based: V>N (93) duc-ě-re ‘to lead’ (94) morsic-a-re ‘to bite’ (95) coqu-ĕ-re ‘to cook’ N

> >

>V

(96) frons.FEM, frond-is.GEN ‘leaf’ (97) don-um.NEUT ‘gift’

> >

frond-e-re ‘to have leaves’ don-a-re ‘to donate’

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88 ADJ

The morphological technique of conversion

>V

(98) san-us ‘sane’ (99) saev-us ‘wild’ (100) alb-us ‘white’ N

> > >

san-a-re ‘to heal’ saev-i-re ‘to rage’ alb-e-re ‘be white’

> ADJ

(101) honos.MASC, honor- obl. cases ‘honour’

>

honor-us/a/um ‘honourable’

>

sigá-o-men ‘we keep silence’

>

stephan-ó-o-men ‘we crown’ mēn-í-o-men ‘we rage’ plēth-ý-o-men ‘we are full’

Ancient Greek Word-based N>V (102) Doric sig-á.FEM ‘silence’ Stem-based N>V (103) stéphan-o-s.MASC ‘crown’ (104) mẽn-i-s.FEM ‘rage’ (105) plēth-ý-s.FEM ‘crowd’ V

> >

>N

(106) klī́́n-ō (root /klĭn/ with short /i/) ‘I cause to lean’

>

klī́́n-ē.FEM ‘couch’

Root-based: ADJ > V (107) aũ-o-s ‘dry’

>

aú-ō-mōn ‘I dry’

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Stela Manova and Wolfgang U. Dressler N

>V

(108) kósm-o-s.MASC ‘order’ (109) thánat-o-s.MASC ‘death’ (110) géphyr-a.FEM ‘bridge’ V

89

> > >

kosm-é-ō ‘I order’ thanat-á-ō ‘I desire to die’ gephyr-ó-ō ‘I bridge’

>N

(111) mákh-o-mai ‘I combat’

>

Doric mákh-ā.FEM ‘battle’

(Deverbal noun formation nearly always uses suffixes or ablaut, thus, either addition or modification in our framework). Word-based: beyond the type of (102) there exists syntactic conversion, and this even in case of nominalised infinitives: (112) lég-ein ‘to say’

>

tò légein ‘the fact of saying’, where the article, not the noun, can be inflected, e.g. toũ légein.GEN

>

igr-á.FEM13 ‘play, acting, game, sport’

>

xvat.MASC (slang) ‘dashing fellow’

Russian Stem-based V>N (113) igr-á-t’ ‘to play, act, perform’ Root-based V>N (114) xvat-á-t’ ‘to seize, snatch’

13 In such cases the thematic marker of the verb remains, but is reanalysed as a singular marker in the noun (cf. also the definition of stem in § 1).

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90 N

The morphological technique of conversion

>V

(115) žen-á ‘wife’ (116) vtór-a = vtoraja skripka ‘second,14 second violin’

> >

žen-í-t’(sja) ‘marry off, (marry)’ vtór-it’ ‘to echo, repeat; take the second part’ (Švedova 1980: 226)

Word-based conversions of the type noun to verb occur only if the inflectional paradigm collapses word, stem and root into a single base form: (117) sovet‘ ‘advice, council’

>

sovet-ova-t’ ‘to advise’

>

slab-é-t’ (modification), sláb-i-t’ (conversion) ‘to purge’, ‘to weaken’

ADJ > V

(118) slab15 ‘feeble, delicate, weak’

Exceptions are the adjectival nouns of the type zol.ADJ.MASC, zlo.NEUT ‘evil’ > zlo.NOUN.NEUT ‘the evil’, zla.GEN.SG, zol.GEN.PL (no other plural forms). Serbo-Croatian Stem-based V>N (119) ìgr-a-ti ‘to dance, play, act, perform’

>

ìgr-a ‘game, play(ing), dance(ing)’

>

žèn-i-ti (se) ‘marry off, (marry)’ vèsl-a-ti ‘to row, paddle, scull’

Root-based N>V (120) žèn-a ‘woman, wife’ (121) vèsl-o ‘oar, paddle, scull’

>

14 Formed via root-based prosodic modification from vtor-ój ‘second’. 15 If the long form of an adjective (e.g. slab-yj ‘feeble, delicate, weak’) serves as input, the rule will be an example of root-based morphology.

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Stela Manova and Wolfgang U. Dressler V

91

>N

(122) prègled-a-ti.V.PERFECTIVE, pregléd-a-ti.V.IMPERFECTIVE ‘to examine, check, overlook’

>

prégled ‘inspection, examination, check-up’

Word-based conversions are similar to those in Russian: ADJ > V sl`àb ‘weak, feable, delicate, poor, bad’ > sl`àb-i-ti.V.IMPERFECTIVE ‘to weaken, ease, become weak, lose weight’; zl`ò ‘the evil’ and dòbro ‘the good’ are also completely converted into nouns, this in contrast to the usual adjective-to-noun syntactic conversions (cf. Barić et al. 1997: 301). Consider also r`ìba.N.FEM ‘fish’ > r`ìb-a-tiV ‘to fish (archaic)’ and the presentday form of ‘to fish’ ribár-i-tiV, derived via modification from r`ìbār.N.MASC ‘fisher’. Strongly inflecting Polish has, in addition to root-based deverbal conversions (already discussed in section § 2.3.1.2), also stem-based conversions as in: vs. pływ (123) pły-ną-ć.V.IMPERFECTIVE vs. pły-w-a-ć.V.IMPERFECTIVE > płyn ‘to flow, swim’ vs. ‘to swim’ ‘liquid vs. ‘tide’ substance’ The converted nouns maintain the stem-forming elements (thematic markers) -nand -w-.

4.3 In weakly inflecting languages, one can find all three types of conversion or the two polar ones, word-, and root-based conversions: German16 Root-based: V>N (124) lauf-en ‘to run’ (125) schein-en ‘to shine’ (126) ruf-en ‘to cry’

> > >

der Lauf ‘race, run’ der Schein ‘light’ der Ruf ‘cry’

16 The most systematic account of German word-based vs. root-based morphology is in Harnisch (2001), who speaks of stem-based instead of root-based derivations.

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92 N

The morphological technique of conversion

>V

(127) die Robb-e ‘seal’

>

robb-en, robb-t.3SG ‘to creep, crawl’

Presumably proper names can also serve as bases, e.g. Röntgen > röntg-en ‘to Xray’ (ge-röntg-t. PAST.PART!) (cf. Neef 1999). Word-based: N>V (128) das Kalb ‘calf’ ADJ

>

lang-en ‘to suffice’

>

das Gut ‘property’

>

Ernst ‘seriousness’

>N

(130) gut ‘good’ ADJ

kalb-en ‘to give birth to a calf’

>V

(129) lang ‘long’ ADJ

>

>N

(131) ernst ‘serious’

Finally we have word-based conversion of an infinitive, as in laufen ‘to run’ > das Laufen ‘running’, which is inflected in the singular but has no plural. Such word-based conversions are essentially of the same type as in English, only there exist more inflectional suffixes and more suffix-marker slots in German than in English paradigms. For Italian see § 1 above. Another difference between a predominantly isolating and a predominantly inflecting type is the existence of conversions of non-basic forms, e.g.: Russian ADJ.NEUT > N.NEUT (132) zlo ‘evil’

>

zlo ‘the evil’

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(133) vysokó ‘the high’ (134) tíxo ‘the silent’ and modifications such as (135) dóbroADJ ‘good’

>

dobróN (cf. Švedova et al 1980: 226) ‘the good’

In English, conversions of non-basic forms are very rare, e.g. better→to better and even a better. Typological conclusion In the isolating language type, multifunctionality, as counterpart of conversion, is trivially word-based, and there are no competing suffixations or modifications. In weakly inflecting languages whose morphology is close to the isolating type, conversion is word-based, due to the non-existence of roots and stems. The more a language approaches the strongly inflecting type, the more root- and stem-based conversion appears, whereas word-based conversion decreases and sometimes even vanishes, the more iconic techniques of suffixation and modification are more productive than conversion. The great productivity of the least natural (in regard to its base) root-based conversion can be explained in terms of technical easiness: roots appear to be the most adequate type of bases to which inflectional suffixes (and thematic markers) are added (cf. Manova 2003). The typological distinction of word-, stem- and root-based conversion is strictly parallel to the distribution of word-, stem- and root-based suffixation and thus proves the status of morphological technique we assigned to conversion. As for the word-class of the output of conversion and productivity, Manova (2003) established that verbalisation is the most productive type of conversion in Slavic. She explained the fact as a strategy for compensating the poverty of derivational suffixes in verbal morphology. Conversion (nominalisation) of infinitives seems to be a typologically-specific change. It can be seen as a continuum from languages tending to the isolating type (e.g. English), i.e. from morphological conversion, via weakly inflecting ones where morphological conversion also occurs (see the examples from Italian and German above) to the strongly inflecting article language Ancient Greek, i.e. to syntactic conversion with a declinable article. We gave no examples of conversion of infinitives from the strongly inflecting Latin, Russian and Serbo-Croatian, since

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The morphological technique of conversion

in these non-article languages, infinitive nominalisation is a purely syntactic change.

5.

Language-specific system adequacy

This third subtheory of Natural Morphology has to study how conversion fits into the language-specific morphological system of a given language. Since a full treatment of system-adequacy of a specific conversion process in a given language would have to be matter of a separate research article, we will limit our discussion, on the most telling aspect of system-adequacy, the shape of the right edge of conversion. Our examples are Russian and Bulgarian agent nouns, elaborating on Dressler (1987a: 71–73), and Bulgarian diminutive formations, as discussed in Manova (2003: 115f.). Modern Russian and Modern Bulgarian agent nouns show language specific conspiracies in their segmental and prosodic make-up. For example, the suffix -ik and its allomorphs are usually unstressed in Russian (cf. Zaliznjak 1977) and the same holds for conversions terminating in -ik (e.g. lógika ‘logic’ > lógik ‘logician’). Consider: (136) (s)pút-nik ‘(fellow-)traveller’ (137) kolxóz-nik ‘collective-farmer’ (138) razvéd-čik ‘scout, secret service man’ (139) nabór-ščik ‘compositor’ The same target-pattern occurs in abbreviatory formations of the type kósmik ‘specialist of cosmic rays’ < kosmíčeskij ‘cosmic’ (cf. Švedova et al. 1980: 225–226), where formal influence of West European languages is possible. In Bulgarian, where the suffix -ík is usually stressed in native words (cf. Stojanov 1993: 175), the terms denoting scientists share this language-specific stresspattern, as can be seen from the following examples: (140) uč-en-ík ‘pupil’ (141) grozn-ík ‘ugly man’

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(142) măčen-ík ‘martyr’ (143) čist-ník ‘fastidious person’ vs. (144) lógika ‘logic’ (145) matemátika ‘mathematics’

> >

logík ‘logician’ matematík ‘mathematician’

The latter two are clearly prosodic modifications. Whereas one may object that the type R. logik is simply due to its diachronic origin in Mediaeval Latin logicus (transmitted via Polish logik, cf. Dressler 1987a), the change /č/ to /k/ in R. kosmik and the convergent stress shift in Bulgarian modifications appear to display an output-oriented shape convergence (cf. the concept of output (or product)-oriented morphology in Enger 2000). A similar output convergence holds for language-specific conversion in Bulgarian diminutive formation, the latter representing a non-prototypical derivation process (cf. Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi 1994). Such conversion is even less prototypical because there is no word-class change, but the gender alternation and the additional meaning of diminutiveness allow us to argue for derivational conversion. For example: (146) ovén.MASC ‘ram’ (147) petél.MASC ‘cock’ (148) orél.MASC ‘eagle’ (149) kotél.MASC ‘caldron’

>

ovn-é.NEUT.DIM

>

petl-é.NEUT.DIM

>

orl-é.NEUT.DIM

>

kotl-é.NEUT.DIM

in parallel to the diminutive suffixation with -lé as in: (150) măž.MASC ‘man’ (151) nos.MASC ‘nose’

>

măž-lé.NEUT.DIM

>

nos-lé.NEUT.DIM

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The morphological technique of conversion

(152) vrat.MASC ‘neck’

>

vrat-lé.NEUT.DIM

Also the other gender-changing diminutive suffixes terminate in -e: (153) stol.MASC ‘chair’ (154) žen-á.FEM ‘woman’ (155) palt-ó.NEUT ‘coat’

>

stól-če.NEUT.DIM, stól-čence.NEUT.DIM

>

žen-čé.NEUT.DIM

>

palt-énce.NEUT.DIM

Modifications, parallel to the above-cited conversions, are: (156) učeník.MASC ‘student’ (157) krak.MASC ‘leg’ (158) bik.MASC ‘bull’

>

učeníč-e.NEUT.DIM (old Vocative)

>

krač-é.NEUT.DIM

>

bič-é.NEUT.DIM

Finally there are parallel subtractions, as in: (159) méčk-a.FEM/mečók.MASC ‘bear’ (160) pátk-a.FEM/patók.MASC ‘duck’

6.

>

meč-é.NEUT.DIM

>

pát-e.NEUT.DIM

General conclusions

In this paper, we have defined conversion as a technique of derivational morphology parallel to affixation, substitution, modification and subtraction. Like any morphological technique in derivation, conversion either changes the word-class of its base or preserves it, and can involve addition, substitution or deletion of inflection, i.e. can be root-, stem- and word-based. We have further distinguished between morphological and syntactic conversion, since while the output of a morphological conversion takes the inflection of the new word-class it enters, syntactic conversion preserves its original inflection, i.e. it is only the syntactic role of an item that is changed and nothing morphological happens. Following the scale of morphological techniques, conversion has been delimited from its neighbour techniques modifica-

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tion and subtraction, which in the inflecting-fusional type could sometimes look very conversion-like. We have evaluated conversion according to the universal preference parameters of Natural Morphology and demonstrated that it is less natural (more marked) than affixation, substitution and modification on nearly all naturalness parameters. It has been established that conversion is more specific and more opaque semantically than affixation, the latter being the most frequent derivational technique in the inflecting-fusional type. On the typological continuum which leads from isolating languages over weakly inflecting to strongly inflecting ones, conversion, similar to the other morphological techniques, exhibits some preferences in regard to bases: in languages tending to the isolating type conversion is trivially word-based, in weakly and strongly inflecting languages conversion can be word-, stem- or root-based. For languages approaching the ideal inflectingfusional type a tendency for stem- and root-based conversion has been observed, of both, root-based conversion seems to be the more productive one. In relation to the third subtheory of NM, that of language-specific system-dependent naturalness, and as expected from the assumption of a scale of morphological techniques, in one and the same language, competing modifications and conversions may exist. When a given language prefers conversion to modification, always language-specific factors intervene. This is, of course, due to the fact that the output of a morphological rule has to fit the system within which it has been derived.

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collaboration with Wolfgang Kesselheim and Stavros Skopeteas, 581–587. Berlin and New York: W. de Gruyter. Dressler, Wolfgang U.; Mayerthaler, Willi; Panagl, Oswald and Wurzel, Wolfgang U. (1987). Leitmotifs in Natural Morphology. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. Dressler, Wolfgang U. and Thornton, Anna M. (1991). Doppie basi e binarismo nella morfologia italiana. Rivista di Linguistica 3, 3–22. Dressler, Wolfgang U. and Merlini Barbaresi, Lavinia (1994). Morphopragmatics: Diminutives and Intensifiers in Italian, German, and Other Languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Enger, Hans Olav (2000). Inflection classes, Norwegian verbs and cognitive grammar. Odense Working Papers in Language and Communication 19, 12–138. Geckeler, Horst (1984). Le français est-il une langue isolante? In Navicula Tubingensis, Studia in honorem Antonii Tovar. F.J. Oroz Arizcuren (ed.), 145–159. Tübingen: G. Narr. Grimshaw, Jane (1992). Argument Structure. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. Gussmann, Edmund (1978). Contrastive Polish-English Consonantal Phonology. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. Halilović, Senahid (1996). Pravopis bosanskoga jezika [The Spelling of Bosnian]. Sarajevo: Kulturno društvo Bošnjaka Preporod. Harnisch, Rüdiger (2001). Grundform- und Stamm-Prinzip in der Substantivmorphologie des Deutschen. Heidelberg: C. Winter. Jackendoff, Ray (1975). Morphological and semantic regularities in the lexicon. Language 51, 639–671. Jakobson, Roman (1971 [1948]). Russian conjugation. Reprinted in Selected Writings II. 1971, 119–129. The Hague: Mouton. Kastovsky, Dieter (1985). Deverbal nouns in Old and Modern English: from stem-formation to word-formation. In Historical Semantics, Jacek Fisiak (ed.), 221–261. Berlin: Mouton. Kucarov, Ivan (1983). Po văprosa za kategorialnata xarakteristika na glagolnija vid v săvremennija bălgarski ezik [On the question of the categorical characteristics of verbal aspect in the Modern Bulgarian Language]. Naučni trudove na Plovdivskija universitet ‘Paisij Xilendarski’, t. 21, kn. 5 – Filologija, 45–54. Kucarov, Ivan (1999). Morfologija [Morphology]. In Săvremenen bălgarski ezik. Fonetika. Leksikologija. Slovoobrazuvane. Morfologija. Sintaksis [The Modern Bulgarian Language. Phonetics. Lexicology. Word-Formation. Morphology. Syntax], Todor Bojadžiev, Ivan Kucarov and Jordan Penčev (eds.), 277–497. Sofija: P. Beron. Lehmann, Volkmar (1999). Aspekt. In Handbuch der sprachwisssenschaftlichen Russistik und ihrer Grenzdisziplinen, Helmut Jachnow (ed.), 214–242. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz. Lieber, Rochelle (1981). On the Organization of the Lexicon. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Linguistics Club. Lieber, Rochelle (1992). Deconstructing Morphology: Word Formation in Syntactic Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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The morphological technique of conversion

Manova, Stela (2002). Between inflection and derivation: on morphotactic expression of aspect and gender in Bulgarian, Russian and Serbo-Croatian. Wiener Slavistisches Jahrbuch 48, 203–217. Manova, Stela (2003). Conversion and Subtraction in Bulgarian, Russian and SerboCroatian. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Vienna. Marchand, Hans (1963). On a question of contrary analysis with derivationally connected but morphologically uncharacterized words. English Studies 44, 176–187. Reprinted in Studies in Syntax and Word-Formation. Selected Articles by Hans Marchand. On the Occasion of his 65th Birthday on October 1st, 1972. Edition by Dieter Kastovsky, 224– 241. Internationale Bibliothek für allgemeine Linguistik 18. München: W. Fink. Marchand, Hans (1969 [1960]). The Categories and Types of Present-Day English WordFormation. A Synchronic-Diachronic Approach, 2nd ed. München: C. Beck. Maslov, Jurij S. (1959). Glagol’nyj vid v sovremennom bolgarskom literaturnom jazyke (značenie i upotreblenie) [Verbal Aspect in Modern Literary Bulgarian (Meaning and Use)]. In Voprosy grammatiki bolgarskogo literaturnogo jazyka [Questions of Grammar of the Bulgarian Literary Language]. Samuil B. Bernštejn (ed.), 157–312. Moskva: Nauka. Maslov, Jurij S. (ed.) (1962). Voprosy glagol’nogo vida [Questions of Verbal Aspect]. Moskva: Izdatel’stvo inostrannoj literatury. Maslov, Jurij S. (1962). Voprosy glagol’nogo vida v sovremennom zarubežnom jazykoznanii [Questions of verbal aspect in modern foreign linguistics]. Foreword in Voprosy glagol’nogo vida [Questions of Verbal Aspect]. Jurij S. Maslov (ed.), 7–32. Moskva: Izdatel’stvo inostrannoj literatury. Maslov, Jurij S. (1982). Gramatika na bălgarskija ezik, prevod Bl. I. Blažev [A Grammar of the Bulgarian Language]. (Grammatika bolgarskogo jazyka. 1981. Moskva: Vysšaja škola). Sofija: Nauka i izkustvo. Mel’čuk, Igor A. (1982). Towards a Language of Linguistics. München: W. Fink. Mel’čuk, Igor, A. (1996). Cours de morphologie générale. Vol. 3. Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal. Mel’čuk, Igor A. (2000). Kurs obščej morfologii, tom III [Course in General Morphology. Vol. 3]. Moskva, Wien: Wiener Slavistischer Almanach, Sonderband 38 (3). Mel’čuk, Igor A. (2002). Towards a formal concept ‘zero linguistic sign’. Applications in typology. In Morphology 2000, Sabrina Bendjaballah, Wolfgang U. Dressler, Oskar E. Pfeiffer and Maria D. Voeikova (eds.), 241–258. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 218. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. Myers, Scott (1984). Zero-derivation and inflection. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 7, 53–69. Mühlhäusler, Peter (1983). The development of word-formation in Tok Pisin. Folia Linguistica 17, 463–487. Neef, Martin (1999). A declarative approach to conversion into verbs in German. In Yearbook of Morphology 1998, Geert Booij and Jaap van Marle (eds.), 199–224. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Pavesi, Maria (1994). Formazione di parole: La conversione in inglese L2. Milano: Angeli. Pennanen, Esko V. (1988). Word-formation revisited. Topical aspects of English wordformation. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 21, 123–144.

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Quirk, Randolph; Greenbaum, Sidney; Leech, Geoffrey and Svartvik, Jan (1985). A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman. Rochoń, Marzena (1999). Application of universal constraints in Polish: palatalized labials. Linguistica Silesiana 20, 31–59. Sanders, Gerald (1988). Zero derivation and the Overt Analogue Criterion. In Theoretical Morphology, Michael Hammond and Michael Noonan (eds.), 155–175. San Diego: Academic Press. Skalička, Vladimír (1979). Typologische Studien. Braunschweig, Wiesbaden: Vieweg. Skalička, Vladimír (1984). La typologie du français. In Navicula Tubingensis, Studia in honorem Antonii Tovar. F.J. Oroz Arizcuren (ed.), 45–159. Tübingen: G. Narr. Skok, Peter (1973). Etimologijski rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika [Etymological Dictionary of the Croatian or Serbian Language]. Zagreb: Jugoslavenska Akademija znanosti i umjetnosti. Stojanov, Stojan (1993 [1964]). Gramatika na bălgarskija knižoven ezik, V izdanie [A Grammar of the Bulgarian Literary Language, 5th ed.]. Sofija: Universitetsko izdatelstvo ‘Sv. Kl. Oxridski’. Štekauer, Pavol (1996). A Theory of Conversion in English. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang. Švedova, Natalija Ju. (ed.) (1980). Russkaja grammatika, tom I. Fonetika, fonologija, udarenie, intonacija, slovoobrazovane, morfologija [Russian Grammar. Vol. 1. Phonetics, Phonology, Stress, Intonation, Word-Formation, Morphology]. Moskva: Nauka. Sweet, Henry (1900 [1891–98]): A New English Grammar. Logical and Historical, 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Thornton, Anna M. (1990). Vocali tematiche, suffissi zero e ‘cani senza coda’ nella morfologia dell’italiano contemporaneo. In Parallela 4: Morfologia/Morphologie, Monica Berretta, Piera Molinelli and Ada Valentini (eds.), 43–52. Tübingen: G. Narr. Vinogradov, Viktor V. (1972 [1947]). Russkij jazyk (grammatičeskoe učenie o slove) [The Russian Language (Grammatical Doctrine about the Word)], 2nd ed. Moskva: Izdatel’stvo ‘Vysšaja škola’. Vogel, Petra M. (1996). Wortarten und Wortartenwechsel. Zu Konversion und verwandten Erscheinungen im Deutschen und in anderen Sprachen. Studia Linguistica Germanica 39. Berlin and New York: W. de Gruyter. Zaliznjak, Andrej A. (1977). Grammatičeskij slovar’ russkogo jazyka [Russian Grammatical Dictionary]. Moskva: Russkij jazyk. Zemskaja, Elena A. (1973). Sovremennyj russkij jazyk: slovoobrazovanie [The Modern Russian Language: Word-Formation]. Moskva: Prosveščenie.

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Martin Neef (University of Cologne and University of Brunswick)

On some alleged constraints on conversion∗ This coming and going Is driving me nuts This toing and froing Is hurting my guts (Rolling Stones, Mixed Emotions) Embedded in a declarative conception of grammar, the notion of conversion is first delimited from related notions like polysemy and transposition. Conversion turns out as a lexeme formation process that nevertheless does not constitute a morphological category. As a consequence, there must be no specific constraints on conversion. The basic assumption is, thus, that every word can be converted into any different wordclass as long as the requirements of this target category are fulfilled. This hypothesis is tested with the example of conversion into verbs in German. For this purpose, input-related properties like semantic features and the foreignness or the complexity of the bases are discussed. Furthermore, restrictions on the output of conversion are considered like blocking or the avoidance of homonymy. While all these aspects have at least an indirect influence on conversion, there are also constraints that directly prohibit the conversion of specific bases. This is due to the fact that conversion into verbs in German is equivalent to conversion into infinitives. Therefore, constraints on the shape of infinitives may be relevant for conversion. In fact, such constraints lead to an exclusion of words like Abend ‘evening’ and Kanu ‘canoe’ respectively from the set of convertible bases.

1.

Conversion as lexeme formation

Conversion is a morphological phenomenon that describes a relation between two morphological items. Two morphological items may be related by conversion only

∗

I’d like to thank Laurie Bauer and Salvador Valera for organising the ‘Workshop on Conversion’ and the participants of this workshop for stimulating discussion. Further thanks go to Stefanie Eschenlohr, Geoffrey Haig, Katharina Klein, Pavol Štekauer, and two anonymous reviewers.

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if they have the same form. However, there are many cases of formal identity that do not count as conversion. A first instance can be seen in inflectional paradigms: Table 1. Inflectional paradigm in Latin: the nominal lexeme CORNU ‘horn’ (Aronoff 1994: 81).

nominative singular accusative singular genitive singular dative singular ablative singular

cornu cornu cornūs cornū cornū

nominative plural accusative plural genitive plural dative plural ablative plural

cornua cornua cornuum cornibus cornibus

Typically, Latin nouns have an inflectional paradigm of ten cells. Nouns differ in how many different forms they have to fill these cells. The example given has six different forms only. If the nominative forms in both columns are taken to be the bases of the other forms of the two sub-paradigms, then the accusative forms would be derived from this base without formal modification. Nevertheless, linguists are reluctant to refer to this relation as one of conversion. One motivation for this assessment may be that conversion is generally not considered to be inflection. Therefore, the relations exemplified in Table 1 illustrate a different phenomenon which usually trades under the name of syncretism. If two morphological items that have the same form do not belong to one and the same inflectional paradigm, they belong to different lexemes. Hence, conversion is presumably an instance of lexeme formation, with lexemes being abstract representations combining form, grammatical properties, and meaning. However, it is not always easy to decide whether two grammatical words (in the sense of Aronoff 1994; i.e. word forms) instantiate the same lexeme or two different ones. Polysemy and homonymy mark two opposing poles with this problem: (1)

Polysemy and homonymy in English (Spencer 1991: 87) a. mouth ‘body part’ mouth ‘endpoint of a river’ b. bank ‘side of a river’ bank ‘financial institution’

In the case of polysemy like mouth, the different meanings are sufficiently closely related to count as one lexeme with two different readings. Therefore, this relation is located inside the semantic form of one lexeme and is, hence, a question of semantic analysis. In the case of homonymy, on the other hand, the two meanings are remote to the extent that these words may count as two different lexemes, with their formal identity being accidental. Thus, there is no morphological relation between

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the words in question. This is even clearer for pairs of homonyms that belong to different parts of speech like rushV vs. rushN (botany). The question for conversion is: is there a phenomenon in between polysemy and homonymy? Since polysemy presupposes the same part of speech in both words, it is conceivable that a lexeme formation process may exist that changes neither the form nor the grammatical features of the base but only its meaning. Restricting this phenomenon to polysemy would be hard to argue for, but in any case this would typically not be regarded as a case of conversion because a precondition for conversion seems to be a change in the part of speech. In this regard, conversion differs from derivation proper which may preserve the part of speech as in blueADJ – blue-ishADJ. A change in the part of speech need not necessarily be regarded as the formation of a new lexeme. Relevant cases are the following: (2)

Transposition in German (Neef 1999: 219) a. infinitive > noun sagen ‘to say’ b. past participle > adjective verzweigt ‘branched’ c. inflected adjective > noun schöne ‘beautiful.SG.NOM’

Sagen ‘saying’ verzweigt ‘branched’ Schöne ‘beauty.NOM.SG’

Since these phenomena are absolutely productive1 and furthermore have a fully predictable semantic interpretation (cf. Eschenlohr 1999: 47), the forms in the right column can be said to belong to the same lexeme as their base forms. Thus, the noun Sagen is an element of the inflectional paradigm of the verb lexeme SAGEN. Consequently, I will argue for a distinction between part of speech on the level of the lexeme and on the level of the grammatical word: every grammatical word shows exactly one part of speech, but a lexeme may have exponents of different parts of speech on the level of the grammatical word. This assumption is a reanalysis of the concept of part of speech-changing inflection currently supported by only a minority of linguists (e.g. Bybee 1985: 85; Gallmann 1990: 51; Haspelmath 1996; cf. also the discussion in Kalinina 2002). A good argument in favour of this assumption is the present participle in German. Every verb lexeme has a present participle among its inflectional forms. This present participle, however, cannot be used as a verb in Modern Standard German, but only as an adjective:

1

The past participle, however, cannot be used as an adjective for a number of intransitive verbs (e.g. schlafen ‘to sleep’) and reflexive verbs (e.g. sich freuen ‘to be glad’; cf. Duden 1998: 193f.).

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(3)

On some alleged constraints on conversion

Present participle in German a. das laufende Kind ‘the running child’ b. *das Kind ist laufend ‘the child is running’

If the present participle is accepted as an element of the inflectional paradigm of verbal lexemes, then the examples in (2) may be accorded the status of inflectional forms of lexemes that have as a default grammatical words of a different part of speech as their exponents. Gallmann (1990: 58) provides the example of the inflectional paradigm of the verb lexeme LESEN ‘to read’ comprising verbal, nominal, and adjectival forms. If, as argued above, conversion is different from inflection, it is natural not to subsume transposition under conversion. A related phenomenon is nominalisation without affixes. Bauer (1983: 230) lists the following data among the ‘clear cases of conversion’: (4)

Nominalisation in English (Bauer 1983: 230) a. conjunction no buts b. adverb the hereafter c. affix a maxi d. phrase a forget-me-not

In general, almost every linguistic element may be used as a noun (at least in English and German). Since this is especially true for both non-inflecting parts of speech and phrases, it is obvious that this kind of nominalisation is different from transposition: the bases in question do not have an inflectional paradigm; therefore the related nouns cannot be elements of such an inflectional paradigm. However, nominalisation is restricted for inflected forms. In German, for example, only the infinite inflectional forms of verbal lexemes may be used as nouns but not the finite ones (cf. er reist ‘he travels’ vs. *das Reist ‘the travel’). If the regularities for the nominal use of verbs and adjectives are regarded as transposition and therefore explained by means of inflectional paradigms, the term nominalisation can be restricted to non-inflecting linguistic elements as given in (4). Since these nominalisations are both absolutely productive and semantically transparent, I regard them as being different from lexeme formation and thus something other than conversion. As a consequence of this line of argument, very little remains which can be subsumed under conversion. Conversion is a specific type of lexeme formation in the sense that a new lexeme as a combination of form, grammatical properties, and meaning is formed on the basis of an existing lexeme. The specific property of

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conversion is that there is no concomitant formal change in the lexeme formation process. If conversion is seen akin to derivation, there are other properties that have to be taken into consideration in order to compare these lexeme formation processes. The typical property of derivation is that it is realised through specific lexeme formation patterns (traditionally conceived of as affixes) that constitute morphological categories. An example of a lexeme formation pattern in English is the so-called affix -ee (cf. Bauer 1983: 243–250). Regular instances of this pattern have a specific base, namely a transitive verb, they are nouns, and they have a specific phonological form, namely stem-final [i]. Furthermore, they form a semantically coherent group denoting humans with the meaning ‘one who is Ved’. Thus, a specific type of semantics is grammaticalised in English in that it constitutes a morphological category which, in turn, is an element of the morphology of English. For conversion to be regarded as a morphological category, it should exhibit a constant meaning aspect across the lexemes belonging to the category. Whether this is the case can only be demonstrated with the examples of individual languages. Kiefer (this volume), for example, gives data that indicate the existence of several morphological categories of conversion in Hungarian. In the remainder of this paper I will argue that conversion into verbs in German does not constitute a morphological category. This is in line with Stiebels (1996: 193) who shows that converted verbs in German represent many different meaning classes (though not all meaning classes that are available for verbs have converted verbs among their representatives). Consequently, there can be no constraints on conversion.

2.

Conversion into verbs

In the declarative morphological theory Word Design (Neef 1996, 1999), I distinguish the module Lexicon from the module Grammar, following Bloomfield (1933). While grammar comprises the regular aspects of linguistic knowledge, the lexicon is the hoard of irregularities.2 Morphology is one of the linguistically relevant modules of grammar. Lexemes may or may not belong to the lexicon, depending on whether they are regular or irregular. Following Aronoff (1994: 22), I take lexemes to form an endless list in their own right.

2

Neef and Vater (2004) give a survey of different concepts of the lexicon in modern linguistics.

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Table 2. Parts of linguistic knowledge.

Set of Lexemes Lexemes

– basic sound form (stem) – stem variants – grammatical features – meaning

Morphology Morphological categories (both inflectional categories and lexeme formation patterns): – base – conditions on sound shape – grammatical features – meaning/function

The morphological component of linguistic knowledge comprises morphological categories. This is a cover term for both inflectional categories and lexeme formation patterns. The specific property of the latter is that they combine a specific meaning with both grammatical properties and conditions on the sound shape. Hence, instances of morphological categories are signs. In this conception, specific restrictions both on the bases and on the output forms can only be modelled as aspects of morphological categories. If conversion were a morphological category, we would expect to find constraints that are specific for conversion. If conversion, on the other hand, does not have the status of a morphological category, there could be no constraints on conversion. In the following, I will therefore investigate putative constraints on conversion and show that these constraints either do not hold or that they follow from information that is independent from conversion.

2.1

Restrictions on the bases of conversion

Constraints on conversion can be of two different types: constraints can apply to the input, referring to some property of the base, and constraints can apply to the output, restricting the possible shape of words. While the former constraints are the focus of derivational theories, the latter ones are the focus of output-oriented approaches. I will investigate both these types of constraints one after another. 2.1.1 Semantic constraints and conversion of proper names A possible constraint on conversion could refer to semantic properties of permitted bases. According to Eschenlohr (1999: 89), constraints of this type cannot be detected. While this statement is hard to prove, I will approach the question of semantic properties in an indirect way and ask: are there any minimal conditions a nonverb has to meet in order to become a legal base of conversion into verbs? A minimal condition could be that the basic stem has meaning. If this were true, linguistic elements that are devoid of meaning should be excluded from conversion. This assumption can be tested with proper names that are generally assessed as elements

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that have no meaning but only reference (cf. Clark and Clark 1979: 783).3 In English, proper names can extensively be used as verbs as can be seen in the excerpt of the following pop song by Paul Simon (introduced into linguistic discourse by Clark and Clark 1979: 785): (5)

A simple desultory philippic (or how I was Robert McNamara’d into submission) (Paul Simon) I been Norman Mailered, Maxwell Taylored. I been John O’Hara’d, McNamara’d. I been Rolling Stoned and Beatled till I’m blind. I been Ayn Randed, nearly branded Communist, ‘cause I’m left-handed. That’s the hand I use, well, never mind! […] I been Mick Jaggered, silver daggered. Andy Warhol, won’t you please come home? I been mothered, fathered, aunt and uncled, Been Roy Haleed and Art Garfunkeled. I just discovered somebody’s tapped my phone.

Obviously, this text is incomprehensible or at least open to an in principle infinite number of interpretations. The omitted middle section does not provide any clues to the meaning either. The final line indicates that the text may be written in some kind of secret language that can be deciphered by the initiated only, but ideally not by those who tap the telephone of the speaker. One main reason for the text’s incomprehensibility lies in the fact that some of the people mentioned are unknown for a contemporary audience. This may have been different in 1966 when the song was first published.4 But even for persons like the pop musicians Mick Jagger and Art Garfunkel or the pop groups The Beatles 3

4

Interestingly, Štekauer (1997) uses the same data of conversion of proper names to prove that proper names in fact have meaning. His main argument is that since verbs converted from proper names do have meaning, this ‘meaning really cannot enter into converted names […] out of thin air’ (1997: 31). A prerequisite of his analysis, however, is to include any aspect of a person’s life that may be connected with this person in the meaning of the name of the person. Thus, Štekauer makes no principle difference between context-dependent and contextindependent information (or, so to say, between pragmatics and semantics). Even Clark and Clark (1979: 785) misunderstand some aspects of the song when they remark in a footnote that, among others, a person named ‘Roy Hale’ serves as a base for a converted verb. Both the written form of this verb and the pronunciation in the sung version indicate that the person meant is ‘Roy Halee’. This person was the co-producer of the music of Simon and Garfunkel.

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and The Rolling Stones, who may be regarded as still being familiar today, it is unclear what the respective converted verbs mean. This problem is not rooted in morphological or syntactic ungrammaticality but in the way meaning in converted verbs is achieved. In this context, Clark and Clark (1979) argue that proper nouns can be converted into verbs when there is a specific highlighted property connected with this ‘famous’ person. In general, they claim that mutual knowledge is essential to the interpretation of innovative denominal verbs. To select the unique sense intended on a particular occasion, the listener must decide which of the possible senses is most salient. Generally he can look to the predominant features of the generic theory associated with the parent noun, which will always be fairly salient. But salience is a relative notion, and depends on context. (Clark and Clark 1979: 795)5

Consequently, they group innovative verbs (together with other patterns like nominal compounds) under their category of contextuals which ‘are neither purely denotational nor indexical, for they have a shifting sense and denotation’ (1979: 782). The meaning of a verb converted from a proper name is therefore: action, state, or event that is connected with a salient property of the individual which is referred to by the basic name. In general, people do not have only one property connected with them independent of the context. Therefore, a verb converted from a proper name is only understandable in a specific context. In this sense, conversion resembles nominal compounding (cf. also Eschenlohr 1999: 87). The meaning of a compound XY (in a right-headed language) is ‘Y that has something to do with X’. The precise relation between X and Y is not supplied by grammar but by the context. Lexicalisation may lead to a fixing of this open meaning relation both in conversion and in compounding. Moreover, nominal compounds can contain proper names as their first parts. A comparison of the data shows that in principle proper names behave alike in conversions and in compounds. Usually, there is exactly one natural interpretation of such a compound, but specific contexts may lead to a different interpretation, as the following example shows: (6)

5

Meaning relations in German nominal compounds containing a proper name Das war eine typische Brandt-Rede a. literal translation: This was a typical Brandt-speech b. possible meanings: This was a speech by Willy Brandt (former German chancellor) that was typical for him.

Interestingly, Clark and Clark (1979) implicitly pursue a declarative strategy in determining the semantics of denominal verbs in that they try to formulate ‘constraints on the kind of situation that an innovative denominal verb may denote’ (1979: 792).

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This was a speech by someone other than Willy Brandt, but in a style reminiscent of Willy Brandt. This was a speech that was typical for speeches given in the village Brandt (part of the city of Aachen). This was a speech that was typical for speeches given in the company Brandt (producer of food). In German, conversion of proper names is not well-established. Bruderer (1976) lists only a dozen proper names converted into verbs with only the following ones being used outside technical terminology: (7)

Lexicalised verbs converted from proper names dieseln ‘to make noise typical of a Diesel engine’ kneippen ‘to undergo a Kneipp therapy’ lynchen ‘to lynch’ morsen ‘to send a message in Morse code’ röntgen ‘to X-ray’

This rareness may be due to Bruderer’s way of collecting data since he only looked at dictionaries. Productive lexeme formation, however, is characterised by its ability to produce new lexemes that are not listed in representative data collections. Since the fame of famous persons is an elusive matter, it is no wonder that converted proper nouns rarely find their way into permanent dictionaries. In actual speech, more examples can be found like the following: (8)

Occasional verbs converted from proper names a. Es beckert heute in München. < Boris Becker ‘It beckers today in Munich.’ (radio announcement) (Stiebels 1996: 190) b. barzeln < Rainer Barzel ‘behave like Barzel’ (Barzel is a German politician) (Höhle 1985: 373) (Barzel tried in vain to become Federal Chancellor through a constructive vote of no confidence) c. genschern < Hans-Dietrich Genscher (Genscher is the former leader of a German political party that changed his senior partner in the government coalition during lifetime of the parliament)

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d.

e.

gaucken < Joachim Gauck (Gauck is the former leader of the institution that administers the secret files of the state security service of the former GDR) riestern < Walter Riester (Riester is the former German minister of social affairs who has introduced a new type of pension)6

If morphological theory aims at analysing the productive means of creating new words, the verbal use of proper names is among its central subjects. The fact that only few lexemes of this type end up in dictionaries is of minor interest under this view. However, as will be discussed in section 2.2.3, a considerable number of proper names (e.g. Stiebels or Valera) does not comply with constraints on the sound shape of infinitives in German. The number of formally excluded bases is much larger in the set of proper names than in the set of appellatives. This fact may inhibit the conversion of proper names. In general, however, I assume that in German as in English proper names have the grammatical capacity of being converted into verbs. The main point of the discussion of proper names, however, is that there are no minimal conditions on the semantics of convertible non-verbs. There only has to be a prototypical or contextually highlighted property connected with the basic stem.7 Typically, not a whole non-verbal concept but only one aspect is turned into a verbal one. This aspect is salient either in discourse or stereotypically. Its connection to the basic non-verbal stem may become loose or opaque diachronically. Nevertheless, it could turn out that the presence of some specific semantic feature in a base may be able to prevent the convertibility of this base, though I have yet to encounter any evidence of such a feature. 2.1.2 Foreign bases Proper names belong to the peripheral vocabulary of a language. More typical examples of this part of the vocabulary are foreign words, at least non-assimilated ones. In the following, I will disregard uncertainties as to the definition of the term foreign word as well as to the problematic status of being assimilated. Instead, I presuppose some kind of intuitive preconception of what constitutes a foreign 6

7

The biographical sketch of the four latter persons mentioned is only meant to give an impression of how the related verb could be understood. I am not sure that this is the highlighted property the creators of these verbs really aimed at. Three more examples (pirckheimern, hegeln, and mosern) are attested in Fleischer and Barz (1992: 307). Eschenlohr (1999: 89, 209) furthermore lists waigeln, fringsen, stoibern, and barscheln. In this regard, Plank (1981: 107–112) offers interesting considerations concerning the semantics of verbs converted from names of animals.

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word. An important question is whether foreign non-verbs can be converted into verbs. The following list gives some examples of foreign nouns that are not familiar as converted verbs. (9)

Non-existing verbs converted from foreign bases ? af'fären a. Af'färe ‘affair’ ? ma'tratzen Ma'tratze ‘mattress’ ? re'klamen but: Re'klame ‘advertising’ ? si'renen Si'rene ‘siren’ ? fri'suren but: b. Fri'sur ‘hairstyle’ ? 'humbugen 'Humbug ‘humbug’ ? kon'trasten but: Kon'trast ‘contrast’ ? 'scharlatanen 'Scharlatan ‘charlatan’ ? sig'nalen but: Sig'nal ‘signal’ ? 'slalomen 'Slalom ‘slalom’ ? 'substantiven but: 'Substantiv ‘substantive’

reklamieren ‘to complain’

frisieren ‘to do sb’s hair’

kontrastieren ‘to contrast’

signalisieren ‘to signal’

substantivieren ‘to nominalise’

These nouns represent different prosodic patterns. The assumed converted infinitives are phonologically well-formed, which is evident from the fact that most of these forms represent the actual dative plural of the respective nouns. It is hard to decide whether the made-up words are strictly ungrammatical as infinitives or the non-existence is due to some other factor. Eschenlohr (1999: 172f.), who discusses similar data, assesses the grammaticality of comparable infinitives as questionable. One possible factor determining ungrammaticality is, according to Eschenlohr, the existence of synonymous verbs8 using the pattern ending in -ieren. The right column in (9), however, shows that only some of these complex verbs exist. This indicates (as stated by Eschenlohr) that the correlation is presumably reverse: the nouns 8

The concept of blocking by synonymous words will be taken up again in section 2.2.1.

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in the left column can (for some reason) not be used as converted verbs. In order to be nonetheless verbalised, they participate in the pattern ending in -ieren. This pattern forms prosodically prototypical infinitives with main stress on the penultimate syllable. This description suggests that another conversion-preventing factor could be the prosodic structure of the nouns in (9). What all these nouns have in common is that they contain at least two full vowels. For some researchers this is reason enough to value these words as being foreign. Simple verbs containing more than one full vowel are not very numerous in German but they do exist. Moreover, at least some of them belong to the unmarked core vocabulary. Muthmann (1988) lists about 100 verbs with more than one full vowel, with some of them being converted, others not (cf. also Eschenlohr 1999: 175): (10) Infinitives with more than one full vowel a. 'antworten < 'Antwort ‘to answer’ ‘answer’ 'arbeiten < 'Arbeit ‘to work’ ‘work’ 'heiraten < 'Heirat ‘to marry’ ‘marriage’ 'kiebitzen < 'Kiebitz ‘to kibitz’ ‘lapwing’ b. bene'deien ‘to bless’ 'faulenzen ‘to loaf about’ kra'keelen ‘to kick up a row’ schma'rotzen ‘to sponge’ If neither the existence of synonymous words nor the prosodic structure of the bases can be made responsible for the non-existence of verbs converted from foreign bases, then the mere feature of foreignness (however vague it may be) may be the crucial factor. Counter-evidence to this assumption is the existence of a number of verbs converted from foreign non-verbs. The corpus in Muthmann (1988) contains about 15 nouns with initial main stress (11a) and 25 with main stress on the last full vowel (11b) that have a converted verb:

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(11) Existing verbs converted from foreign bases a. 'Batik > 'batiken ‘batik’ ‘to do batik’ 'Firlefanz > 'firlefanzen ‘frippery’ ‘to fool around’ 'Firnis > 'firnissen ‘varnish’ ‘to varnish’ 'Handikap > 'handikappen ‘handicap’ ‘to handicap’ 'Picknick > 'picknicken ‘picnic’ ‘to picnic’ b. Inter'view > inter'viewen ‘interview’ ‘to interview’ Mani'küre > mani'küren ‘manicure’ ‘to manicure’ Po'saune > po'saunen ‘trombone’ ‘to bellow’ Ru'mor > ru'moren ‘disturbance’ ‘to rumble’ Trom'pete > trom'peten ‘trumpet’ ‘to trumpet’ In general, there only seem to be vague tendencies with respect to the convertibility of foreign bases: English-based stems seem to be allowed more readily in simple infinitives while stems with Greek, Latin, or French origin rather have an affinity to the pattern ending in -ieren. Dressler (1987) attributes this distribution to the fact that the latter languages have theme vowels. The lowest resistance against conversion is found with nouns that end in a liquid final reduced syllable as is shown by Eschenlohr (1999: 177) with the following examples: (12) Foreign bases ending in a liquid-final reduced syllable a. Mene'tekel > menetekeln ‘warning sign’ ‘to warn’ O'rakel > orakeln ‘oracle’ ‘to prognosticate’ 'Triangel > triangeln ‘triangle’ ‘to play triangle’ b. Phari'säer > pharisäern ‘pharisee’ ‘to be a hypocrite’

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Phi'lister ‘philistine’ Re'volver ‘revolver’

> >

philistern ‘to behave like a philistine’ revolvern ‘to shoot with a revolver’

These data can best be accounted for by looking at the output: the infinitives in the right column end in a nasal-final reduced syllable containing a liquid in the rhyme. This is a typical constellation for infinitives in general (sometimes termed pseudoaffixes, cf. Köpcke 1993). Therefore, these words can be recognised as infinitives straightforwardly. The recognisability of verbs is even greater if the verb stem represents a typical morphological category for verbs, namely the pattern characterised by the segmental ending -ier. Therefore, this pattern is preferred for a majority of foreign stems, but this is only a tendency concerning the behaviour of foreign stems as bases for conversion into verbs. In sum, I doubt that the problematic feature of foreignness has some strict and regular influence on the convertibility into verbs. 2.1.3

Complex bases

a. Derived bases Next, I want to examine the behaviour of morphologically complex bases. Eschenlohr (1999: 206) pursues the hypothesis that derived nouns and adjectives are generally excluded from conversion into verbs.9 However, there is a notable number of counter-examples to this assumption. The adjective data in (13) are taken from Eschenlohr (1999) and Muthmann (1988) respectively, the noun data in (14) derive from Kaliušcenko (1988). (13) Derived adjectives as bases of conversion a. ehelichen < ehelich ‘to wed’ ‘marital’ offenbaren < offenbar ‘to reveal’ ‘obvious’ b. einigen < einig ‘to unite’ ‘united’ heiligen < heilig ‘to hallow’ ‘holy’

9

< < <


?

toden

>

?

beilen

>

?

besen

>

?

degen

>

?

lappen

>

?

schwammen

>

?

schwerten

>

?

spaten

123

schneien ‘to snow’ sterben ‘to die’ hacken ‘to chop’ fegen/kehren ‘to sweep’ fechten ‘to fence’ wischen ‘to wipe’ wischen ‘to wipe’ fechten ‘to fence’ graben ‘to dig’

The scope of the concept of blocking has been subject to some discussion (cf., for example, Plank 1981: 177–183; Werner 1995; Plag 1999). It seems that only lexicalised lexemes have the power to block the creation of synonyms. Furthermore, the concept of synonymy is problematic because languages are rich in near synonyms which only differ in some stylistic aspect. Finally, blocking is not connected with specific lexeme formation patterns. Rather it is a kind of a meta-constraint. If a potential lexeme is blocked for most speakers (e.g. the creation of the verb dieben through the existence of stehlen) the blocked form may nevertheless be created by an individual speaker, either because this speaker has not yet acquired the verb stehlen or he has temporarily forgotten this lexeme (cf. also Aronoff 1976: 56). Thus, blocking is a conversational strategy with the effect that a speaker creates a new word only if the already existing words are not sufficient to express his thoughts. Presumably, this constraint can be derived from Grice’s (1975) conversational maxims. Hence, blocking may be a constraint on language, but it is certainly not a specific constraint on conversion. The relevance of blocking for conversion is questionable for another reason: regular lexeme formation patterns may be effected by conversion because the new lexemes that are created according to such patterns typically have a predictable and, hence, a fixed meaning. Conversion, on the other hand, is not a pattern in the sense that the results of conversion necessarily display

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a specific meaning. For example, if the verb converted from the noun Dieb should not be a simple transitive verb because a corresponding verb (namely stehlen) already exists, the putative verb dieben could readily be a causative verb with the meaning ‘turn sb into a thief’. 2.2.2 Avoidance of homonymy Avoidance of homonymy is sometimes regarded as a leading principle of lexeme formation (cf. Plank 1981: 165–173 and Eschenlohr 1999: 188 for some suggestions in this direction). In the context of conversion, however, this is a peculiar principle because conversion by definition results in the creation of stems homonymous to already existing stems. Moreover, languages typically have homonymous lexemes as verified for English in (1) above. Plank (1981: 171) argues that avoidance of homonymy is only relevant where lexemes of the same part of speech are concerned. With lexemes of different parts of speech, the syntactic context is said to be sufficient for disambiguation while homonymous lexemes of the same part of speech may lead to confusion (again violating a Grician conversational maxim). If conversion is, as argued in section 1, part of speech-changing by definition, then it cannot be directly affected by avoidance of homonymy. However, there are some scenarios in which this principle may become relevant. If a noun has different meanings, then only one of these meanings may serve as a basis for conversion into verbs in order to avoid homonymy (despite the basic noun being homonymous itself). A clear case of this scenario are autohyponyms, thus words that are their own generic terms, as Kleenex, which is also used to denote handkerchiefs in general, or words that can also be used to denote a specific subset of their usual set of reference, as rectangle in the more specific reading ‘scalene rectangles’ etc. (cf. Klein 2001). This phenomenon is not restricted to taxonomic hierarchies but can also be found in partonymic hierarchies. The noun Tag ‘day’ either means ‘period from midnight to midnight’ or ‘period from sunrise to sunset’. Therefore, a sentence like ‘a day consists of day and night’ makes perfect sense (both in English and in German). However, both meanings serve as bases for a converted verb in German, namely tagen1 ‘to sit’ and tagen2 (impersonal) ‘day is dawning’. Another scenario for avoidance of homonymy may arise when there already exists a verb stem homonymous to a non-verb stem, but not related to it. The following list gives some examples of this type. The examples given differ in that in a. both the verb related to the given noun stem and the unrelated verb exist while in b. the related verb is a hypothetical one. The meanings indicated for these verbs, however, are in my view unproblematic, which is supported by the fact that some of these supposed meanings correspond with simple verbs in English (e.g. ?leuten as ‘to people’).

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(20) Conversion and homonymy noun

a.

b.

Filz ‘felt’ Locke ‘curl’ Pauke ‘timpani’ Stier ‘bull’ Ball ‘ball’ Büffel ‘buffalo’ Grille ‘cricket’ Kaper ‘caper’ Krieg ‘war’ Laute ‘lute’ Leute ‘people’ Ochse ‘ox’ Schuft ‘cad’ Spitz ‘spitz’ Stock ‘stick’ Wein ‘wine’

> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

related verb

homonymous verb

filzen ‘to felt’ locken ‘to curl’ pauken ‘to beat the timpani’ stieren ‘to be in heat’ ? ballen ‘to play ball’ ? büffeln ’to move like a buffalo’ ? grillen ‘to chirp’ ? kapern ‘to spice with capers’ ? kriegen ‘to make war’ ? lauten ‘to play a lute’ ? leuten ‘to people‘ ? ochsen ‘to castrate a bull’ ? schuften ‘to behave as a cad’ ? spitzen ‘to move like a spitz’ ? stocken ‘to stick (plants)’ ? weinen ‘to pick grapes’

filzen ‘to frisk’ locken ‘to lure’ pauken ‘to swot’ stieren ‘to stare’ ballen ‘to clench’ büffeln ‘to swot’ grillen ‘to grill’ kapern ‘to seize’ kriegen ‘to get’ lauten ‘to have wording’ läuten ‘to ring’ ochsen ‘to swot’ schuften ‘to graft’ spitzen ‘to sharpen’ stocken ‘to falter’ weinen ‘to cry’

If the meanings of the converted verbs and the already existing homonymous verbs are very different, then the risk of ambiguity may be rather small. This is in line with Plank (1981: 171) (who nevertheless attempts to explain the case of lauten with this principle; cf. 1981: 169f.). Thus, avoidance of homonymy is at best a tendency, again not specific for conversion but with more general scope. A violation

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of this supposed principle can be expected in puns. Moreover, other lexeme formation types are especially effective if they make use of the creation of homonyms. This can be seen in the following acronyms that create an effect from being homonymous with an already existing stem: (21) Acronyms in English (Bauer 1983: 237f.) BASIC Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code FIST Federation of Inter-State Truckers GRAS Generally Recognised As Safe SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks WASP White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Finally, a prerequisite for the effectiveness of avoidance of homonymy (as it is for blocking) is that the actual speaker knows the homonymous lexeme. Since the lexematic knowledge of speakers is different, it may well be that someone creates the verb ochsen with the meaning ‘to castrate a bull’ without knowing that the homonymous verb ochsen with the meaning ‘to swot’ already exists. In this case, the creator of the new lexeme would not have violated avoidance of homonymy, even if his use of the new verb should leave its mark in dictionaries. Thus, the stock of dictionary entries cannot be used as an argument against the effectiveness of avoidance of homonymy. On the other hand, the presumably conscious creations in (20b) and (21) may be seen as an indication that morphological systems do not contain a principle that restricts the creation of homonyms. 2.2.3 Formal Restrictions Even if conversion does not constitute a morphological category, there may be constraints that are relevant for conversion. In this case, these constraints can only be indirectly tied to conversion. Constraints of this type are the focus of my analysis of conversion into verbs in Neef (1999). There I discussed constraints on the morphological category of the verbal infinitive that have the consequence of blocking some non-verbal bases from being used as verbs. The main idea of this analysis is that a verb lexeme is only well-formed if it can be used as an infinitive (cf. Neef 1999: 217). The infinitive in German is subject to some specific conditions that restrict the possible sound shapes of verbal stems. A crucial condition – besides the obligatory segmental ending [N] – is that every infinitive has to end in exactly one reduced syllable. If the phonology does not allow the realisation of a given nonverbal stem meeting both these conditions, then the stem cannot be used as a verb and, hence, conversion is blocked. Some examples are the following:

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(22) Conversion blocked by a unique reduced syllable condition (Neef 1999: 209f.) noun

a. b. c.

pronunciation

Kirmes [jí5.l?r] ‘funfair’ Abend [@:.a?ms] ‘evening’ Hundert [gTm.c5s] ‘a hundred’

converted infinitive

pronunciation

#

[jí5.l?.r?m]

#

[@:.a?m.c?m]

#

[gTm.c5.s?m]

kirmesen abenden hunderten

These hypothetical converted infinitives are not strictly ungrammatical in German. In fact, the word Abenden is the actual dative plural form of the noun Abend. The ungrammaticality of the form abenden is restricted to a specific morphological category, that of the verbal infinitive. Therefore, it makes sense to distinguish between phonological ungrammaticality on the one hand (marked by *) and morphological ungrammaticality on the other hand (marked by #). A crucial prerequisite for this analysis is that deletion of segments is not allowed. Otherwise, the noun Abend could turn into the perfectly well-formed infinitive #aben. Deletion, however, can only be allowed for specific morphological categories since it constitutes an aspect of linguistic knowledge that goes beyond the phonologically conditioned realisation of a base. This assumption is implemented in the theory of Word Design by means of the Main Principle of Morphology (cf. Neef 1999: 205). Phonological constraints can also interfere with conversion into verbs. In German, the syllable peak of a reduced syllable must not follow immediately the syllable peak of an unstressed (full or reduced) syllable. This so-called Syllable Peak Adjacency Constraint (cf. Neef 1999: 216) blocks to an even larger extent conversion into verbs, as exemplified by the following data: (23) Conversion blocked by the Syllable Peak Adjacency Constraint (Neef 1999: 216) noun pronunciation converted infinitive pronunciation # kanuen ['j@:.mt.?m] a. Kanu ['j@:.mt] ‘canoe’ [jNl.'l`m.cn.?m] b. Kommando [jNl.'l`m.cn] #kommandoen ‘command’ There are conceivable strategies to make these nouns suitable as bases of infinitives: either the final vowel of the noun is deleted (leading to an infinitive like # kanen) or the stress is shifted to the final full vowel (resulting in the infinitive

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#

ka'nuen). Both options are ruled out in German which follows straightforwardly from the assumption that conversion does not constitute a morphological category.

3.

Conclusions

The main ideas of this paper are the following: conversion is a means of creating new lexemes. However, conversion does not constitute a morphological category. There is no productive core of conversion that allows one to predict the semantics of the converted verb from the semantics of the base. Therefore, the meaning of a newly coined converted verb is somewhat vague and highly dependent on the context. If conversion does not constitute a morphological category, there can be no constraints that are specific for conversion. Nevertheless, constraints may influence conversion in an indirect way. Conversion, thus, is more like a compromise solution if the language does not provide a morphological category to express the intended meaning with the intended base. Therefore, languages should differ in the kinds of concepts they preferably denote with converted verbs depending on the kinds of grammaticalised morphological categories. This assumption is supported by Vogel (1996) who investigates the kinds of concepts that are expressed in certain languages in a morphologically marked vs. in a morphologically unmarked (viz. converted) form. Imperfective verbs in German, for example, are usually unmarked (schießen ‘to shoot’) whereas perfective verbs are usually marked (erschießen ‘shoot dead’). In English, the situation is reverse: imperfective verbs are marked (going) while perfective verbs are unmarked (go) (cf. Vogel 1996: 272). Vogel interprets this as a reason for the high frequency of noun-to-verb conversion in English, because in this language there is no productive means to perfectivise verbs in a marked way (1996: 193). Eschenlohr (1999: 88) finds that some semantic patterns of verbs in German are always expressed with converted verbs (e.g. agent and instrument verbs) while other patterns show both converted verbs and explicitly derived verbs. For the latter case, she finds a lower productivity for converted verb. She captures this restricted productivity with a Prefix/Particle Preference Principle (1999: 87). According to this principle, a specific meaning is preferably expressed by a prefix or particle verb if there is a corresponding pattern available. Conversion, thus, fills gaps in the set of morphological categories.

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References Aronoff, Mark (1976). Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 1. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: MIT Press. Aronoff, Mark (1994). Morphology by Itself. Stems and Inflectional Classes. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 22. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: MIT Press. Bauer, Laurie (1983). English Word-Formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bloomfield, Leonard (1933). Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Bruderer, Herbert (1976). Von Personennamen abgeleitete Verben. Folia Linguistica 9, 349– 360. Bybee, Joan L. (1985). Morphology. A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. Clark, Eve V. and Clark, Herbert H. (1979). When nouns surface as verbs. Language 55, 767– 811. Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1987). Typological aspects of Natural Morphology. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 35, 51–70. Duden (1998). Die Grammatik. Mannheim, Leipzig, Wien and Zürich: Duden Verlag. Eschenlohr, Stefanie (1997). Zur kategorialen Determiniertheit von Wortformen im Deutschen. In Lexikalische Kategorien und Merkmale, Elisabeth Löbel and Gisa Rauh (eds.), 27–43. Linguistische Arbeiten 366. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer. Eschenlohr, Stefanie (1999). Vom Nomen zum Verb. Konversion, Präfigierung und Rückbildung im Deutschen. Hildesheim (u.a.): Olms. Fleischer, Wolfgang and Barz, Irmhild (1992). Wortbildung der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer. Gallmann, Peter (1990). Kategoriell komplexe Wortformen. Reihe Germanistische Linguistik 108. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer. Grice, Paul (1975). Logic and conversation. In Syntax and Semantics, vol. 3. Speech Acts, Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan (eds.), 41–56. New York: Academic Press. Haspelmath, Martin (1996). Word-class-changing inflection and morphological theory. In Yearbook of Morphology 1995, Geert Booij and Jaap van Marle (eds.), 43–66. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Höhle, Tilman N. (1985). On composition and derivation: the constituent structure of secondary words in German. In Studies in German Grammar, Jindřich Toman (ed.), 319– 376. Studies in Generative Grammar 21. Dordrecht: Foris. Kalinina, Elena (2002). The problem of morphological description of verbal forms ambivalent between finite and nonfinite uses. In Morphology 2000, Sabrina Bendjaballah, Wolfgang U. Dressler, Oskar E. Pfeiffer and Maria D. Voeikova (eds.), 185–198. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 218. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. Kaliušcenko, Vladimir D. (1988). Deutsche denominale Verben. Studien zur deutschen Grammatik 30. Tübingen: G. Narr. Kiefer, Ferenc (this volume). Conversion in Hungarian. Klein, Katharina (2001). Autohyponymie. Master’s thesis, University of Cologne. Köpcke, Klaus-Michael (1993). Schemata bei der Pluralbildung im Deutschen. Versuch einer kognitiven Morphologie. Studien zur deutschen Grammatik 47. Tübingen: G. Narr.

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Muthmann, Gustav (1988). Rückläufiges deutsches Wörterbuch. Reihe Germanistische Linguistik 78. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer. Neef, Martin (1996). Wortdesign. Eine deklarative Analyse der deutschen Verbflexion. Studien zur deutschen Grammatik 52. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Neef, Martin (1999). A declarative approach to conversion into verbs in German. In Yearbook of Morphology 1998, Geert Booij and Jaap van Marle (eds.), 199–224. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Neef, Martin and Vater, Heinz (2004). Concepts of the lexicon in theoretical linguistics. Ms. University of Cologne. Plag, Ingo (1999). Morphological Productivity. Structural Constraints in English Derivation. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Plank, Frans (1981). Morphologische (Ir-)Regularitäten. Aspekte der Wortstrukturtheorie. Studien zur deutschen Grammatik 13. Tübingen: G. Narr. Spencer, Andrew (1991). Morphological Theory. Oxford: B. Blackwell. Štekauer, Pavol (1997). On the semiotics of proper names and their conversion. Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 1/97, 27–36. Stiebels, Barbara (1996). Lexikalische Argumente und Adjunkte. Studia Grammatica 39. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Toman, Jindřich (1983). Wortsyntax. Linguistische Arbeiten 137. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer. Vogel, Petra M. (1996). Wortarten und Wortartenwechsel. Zu Konversion und verwandten Erscheinungen im Deutschen und in anderen Sprachen. Studia Linguistica Germanica 39. Berlin and New York: W. de Gruyter. Werner, Anja (1995). Blockierungsphänomene in der Wortbildung. Papiere zur Linguistik 52, 43–65. Wunderlich, Dieter (1987). Schriftstellern ist mutmaßen, ist hochstapeln, ist Regeln mißachten. Über komplexe Verben im Deutschen. In Neuere Forschungen zur Wortbildung und Historiographie der Linguistik. Festschrift Herbert Brekle, Brigitte AsbachSchnittker and Johannes Roggenhofer (eds.), 91–107. Tübingen: G. Narr.

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Doris Schönefeld (Ruhr University of Bochum)

Zero-derivation – functional change – metonymy ∗ The article is about the character of what is commonly known by zero-derivation. After an introduction to the phenomenon, more traditional approaches to its description are discussed and evaluated. In the remaining part, I show what Cognitive Linguistics can contribute to the understanding and explanation of the nature of this linguistic phenomenon.

1.

The phenomenon at issue

The phenomenon at issue is exemplified more easily than it is named.1 What I have in mind is the use of a word of a particular word category as a word of another category, without this being indicated by any formal marker or change. Examples are: (1)

noun

>

(2) (3) (4)

adjective adj./noun + noun verb

> > >

(5)

adjective

>

∗

1

verb coke, witness, hammer, bomb, stone, shop, bottle, lecture, golf, breakfast verb dirty, empty, narrow, warm, blind, clean verb wet-nurse, handcuff, blacklist noun kick, clean, laugh, look, puzzle, reprint, cheat, guide, show-off, turncoat noun black, intellectual, progressive, white, chemical, final(s) (Examples from Hansen et al. 1982: 128ff.)

I am grateful to the two editors and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and insightful advice on earlier versions of this article. The remaining shortcomings and mistakes are entirely mine. For a more recent discussion of the terminology, see Don, Trommelen and Zonneveld (2000).

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Zero-derivation – functional change – metonymy

There is no generally accepted term for this phenomenon. Among others, the following terms have been used in descriptions of its character: merkmalloser Wortartwechsel (roughly: unmarked change of word-class) in Vogel (1996); Konversion/conversion or functional change by Sweet (1891), Kruisinga (1931– 32), Koziol (1972), Bauer (1983), Quirk et al. (1985) and Fleischer and Barz (1992); Wortartwechsel (change of word-class) by Grimm (1826) and Paul (1920); Paradigmenwechsel (change of paradigm) by Smirnickij (1956) and Dokulil (1968); Nullableitung (zero-derivation) by Bloomfield (1979), Adams (1973), Marchand (1969), Kastovsky (1982), Hansen et al. (1982) and Lipka (1992). Some linguists use these terms synonymously, others, however, use only one of the terms and consider their choice to be motivated by particular assumptions about the essential characteristics of the phenomenon. A third group of linguists uses several of the terms, though not synonymously but to indicate that the words at issue exhibit the features attributed to them in various degrees. At this point, I will have to decide on a term to be used in my further discussion, since I need a label to refer to what I am talking about. In the first part of my argument, I will – without any theoretical predilection and implications – use the term zero-derivation for both the process and its products.

2.

Zero-derivation in English

As a number of linguistic analyses of the English lexicon have shown, English considerably exploits its potential for using one word as a representative of a number of distinct word categories or classes. Lipka (1992: 85), for example, finds that zero-derivation is extremely productive in Modern English (ModE). Also Bauer (1983: 226) (using the term conversion) lists it as an extremely productive type of forming new words in English. In this respect, we can say that English is remarkable, allowing for a noticeable amount of formal identity with functional or semantic diversity. One reason for the ease with which in English a word can represent distinct types of categories (such as things and events) is the fact that – as a result of the loss of inflections in its historical development – Modern English has relatively few word-class specific (inflectional) endings. Thus, words of distinct word categories are not typically marked by category-specific morphemes. The sparseness of wordclass specific inflectional endings cannot, however, be the only reason, for, languages of a more distinct inflectional type also show the phenomenon of zero-

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derivation: we find it in Modern German2 or in Old English (OE), though – admittedly – the products are few in number as compared to Modern English.3 Koziol (1972) comments on another trend in later Middle English (ME) times, namely the loss of word-class specific affixes, i.e., affixes that were characteristic of particular word-classes (cf. Koziol 1972: 281). He emphasises its favourable influence on the emergence of formally identical representatives of distinct wordclasses in larger numbers, as shown in (6) to (8): (6) (7) (8)

ME fill (noun and verb) < ME heap (noun and verb) < OE wæterian (a denominal verb) >

OE fyllu (fullnessN), fyllan (fillV) OE heap (heapN), heapian (heap upV) ME wateren > ModE to water (as against waterN)

In addition to that, the existence of such (now formally identical) pairs was gradually understood as a pattern for new formations. Marchand (1969), also arguing against the assumption that the loss of endings is the only reason for the occurrence of derivation by a zero morpheme (or for the existence of two identical, but category-distinctive forms), specifies that zeroderivation began to develop on a larger scale at the beginning of the 13th century, when the word endings were still distinctive. He concludes that the loss of inflections ‘cannot have much to do with the problem of zero-derivation’ (Marchand 1969: 361). In his view, the explanation seems to be related to the fact that English (from classical OE times onwards) had hardly any other type of word-formation that could be seen as a competing model, so that the one pattern available was used whenever a derivation was needed (cf. Marchand 1969: 361). 2

3

Fleischer and Barz (1992: 49f.) define the phenomenon under discussion as follows: ‘Bei der (reinen) Konversion (...) handelt es sich um eine syntaktische Transposition von Wörtern oder Wortgruppen bzw Sätzen (...) mit potentieller semantischer Eigenentwicklung und Lexikalisierung ohne Stammvokalveränderung oder Affigierung (...).’ They further elaborate with regard to German: ‘Nach der o.g. Definition werden auch die desubstantivischen (filmen) und deadjektivischen (faulen) Verben ohne weitere Affigierung als Konversionen klassifiziert. Das infinitivische -en wird also nicht (mehr) als Wortbildungsmorphem aufgefaßt, da es nicht – wie die Wortbildungsmorpheme – Bestandteil des Wortstammes ist, sondern – wie die Flexionsmorpheme – innerhalb des verbalen Flexionsparadigmas verändert wird (…). ... Neben den substantivischen und verbalen Konversionsprodukten tritt die Bildung anderer Wortarten durch Konversion stark zurück.’ The following formally identical pairs of adjective and adverb or adjective and noun respectively, which – among others – can be found in Koziol (1972), may serve as an illustration of OE zero-derivations: (a) adjective = adverb: bliðe (friendly, cheerful vs. ~ly), clæne (clean, pure vs. utterly, entirely); (b) adjective = noun: god (good vs. goodness/goods), hæðen (heathen), hat (hot vs. heat), sealt (salty vs. salt), isern (iron) (Koziol 1972: 281).

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According to Vogel (1996: 43), these two processes – the loss of categoryspecific affixes (which had been part of the word before) and the formation of new words without adding any formal marker – result in a problem with regard to the synchronic status of such pairs. It is true that all the formally identical words look as if they represented an unmarked change of the word category, but one cannot see whether this is actually true from a diachronic point of view, i.e. whether they were once two distinct forms and became identical only as a consequence of the loss of their category-specific marker(s). Thus, an exact and comprehensive analysis of English zero-derivations will have to take into consideration this situation, since the diachronic aspect is certainly important for the specification of the relationship between the two identical forms, or more specifically, for the determination of which of the two can be considered the base and which the derivation or the derived word. For the discussion here, however, it does not seem to be necessary to tell the ‘original’ zero-derivations apart from those which only – accidentally – end up in such a form, because this is a fact that is also not available to the ordinary language user. He will treat those forms alike. I will take this perspective, i.e. I will concentrate on the phenomenon of zero-derivation from an exclusively synchronic perspective. That means I will consider such ModE words which – without any formal indication – occur as representatives of at least two word categories, no matter whether this was different at older stages of English or not.

3.

More traditional approaches to zero-derivation

In the following, I will disclose – from an analysis of the terms used for its denomination – a number of assumptions commonly held about the nature of the phenomenon of zero-derivation. I will ask what is supposed to actually happen in cases when we form or use and understand such forms and why we can form, use and understand them. The relatively large number of terms available for the designation of the phenomenon can be understood as a reflection of its complexity. Though some of the terms are seemingly used as synonyms, they nevertheless have different theoretical implications. The most widely-spread terms are conversion and zero-derivation. Taking into account the terms listed above as well, the smallest common denominator of the phenomenon under discussion can be found in something that might be called an unmarked change of word category (cf. Vogel 1996: 2). This means that we can list this rather neutral term on top of a hierarchy. With all the other terms, some more specific aspect is highlighted and considered to determine the nature of the phenomenon in general.

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If the term conversion is used, the focus is on the idea of using a word of one category as a word of another, which then results in a change of the paradigmatic forms and the syntactic functions. Koziol (1972) draws on this idea when he specifies for English: Nach dem Muster der zahlreichen Fälle der Formgleichheit von Wörtern verschiedener Wortarten [which – according to Koziol – is a result of the loss of inflexions in late ME D.S.], also grammatischer Homonymie, wurde nun auch in vielen anderen Fällen eine Wortform ohne Veränderung auch als ein einer anderen als der ursprünglichen Wortart angehörendes Wort verwendet. Durch diese ‘Konversion’ entstanden jeweils zwei, manchmal auch mehrere, gleichlautende Wörter. (Koziol 1972: 281)

This focus is one reason why conversion is not always and exclusively considered to be a model or type of word-formation, but can just as well be understood as a phenomenon of morpho-syntax (cf. Bauer 1983: 227). If one starts out from this understanding of conversion, i.e. if one considers the nature of conversion to be a change in the use of a word, also the use of a word of one and the same word category in different morpho-syntactic forms can be subsumed under the term: e.g. the use of English nouns as countable or uncountable nouns (where this is meaningful), as can be found for tea, would then be a form or type of conversion. This would also be true for words that are (metonymically) derived from proper nouns, which Koziol actually lists as special cases of conversion: duffel – woollen material/cloth (1677) named after Duffel, a town close to Antwerp, denim – cotton cloth (1695) from French ‘serge de Nîmes’, and jersey – a knitted woollen fabric (1587) named after the Channel Island Jersey, to name but a few (cf. Koziol 1972: 287f.). A further problem arising from focussing on the use of one word as another is associated with the use of a noun as an attribute of another noun: stone wall, gold ring can be read as both compounds and free syntactic phrases. Regarding the latter reading, the question is whether the nouns have been converted to adjectives or whether they are nouns. From our point of view, they cannot be considered cases of conversion, for the resulting words do not exhibit all the paradigmatic forms and syntactic functions an adjective can usually have: they cannot form comparative or superlative forms, they are not gradable, they can usually not be used predicatively. To cover cases like these, some linguists, admittedly, have found it suitable to speak of partial conversion (Sweet 1891 uses this term when the converted word does not adopt the new paradigm completely (cf. Vogel 1996)). Still some others claim that in such cases we cannot speak of a genuine change of the word-class, but merely of a shift in the syntactic function of a word (cf. Kruisinga 1911, quoted in

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Vogel 1996), which is an idea compatible with considering the phenomenon as a matter of (syntactic) usage. The term conversion is also discussed by Marchand (1969). He accepts the term conversion without any modifying element when it is used to refer to the syntactic transposition of a word (e.g. stone wall, bow window), i.e. in the sense of functional change. From his point of view, the syntactic transposition of a word is a purely grammatical matter, which has nothing to do with word-formation and derivation, with the latter representing a change of word-class/lexical class which becomes evident in form and syntactic behaviour (cf. Marchand 1969: 360). Hansen et al. (1982) also take the view that the term conversion mostly reflects a stronger syntactic orientation in the understanding of the phenomenon. That is why they delimit its scope so that it only refers to such words die noch nicht als Wortbildungen im strengen Sinne des Wortes, sondern eher als Beispiele für die gelegentliche Verwendung eines Wortes in einer besonderen, seiner Wortart an sich nicht entsprechenden syntaktischen Funktion anzusehen sind. (z.B. the wealthy) (Hansen et al. 1982: 125)

Quirk et al., on the other hand, use the term without these restrictions and define: Conversion is the derivational process whereby an item is adapted or converted to a new word class without the addition of an affix. In this way, conversion is closely analogous to suffixation (as distinct from prefixation). (Quirk et al. 1985: 2558)

This definition suggests that, though using the term conversion, the authors understand the phenomenon referred to as a matter of derivation (or word-formation). However, seeing the phenomenon at issue as a matter of word-formation is more commonly reflected in the selection of the term zero-derivation to name it. This choice is not random, but a motivated one, since the component derivation already points towards the idea of word-formation. The use of the term also implies the assumption of a derivational morpheme, which has no material form, i.e. which is a zero morpheme (∅). Marchand (1969: 359) says: By derivation by a zero-morpheme I understand the use of a word as a determinant in a syntagma whose determinatum is not expressed in phonic form but understood to be present in content, thanks to an association with other syntagmas where the element of content has its counterpart on the plane of phonic expression.

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It is important to note that Marchand speaks of derivation and zero morpheme, because there are parallel types of word-formation that are characterised by an explicit derivational morpheme: (9)

adjective

(10) noun (11) verb

>

verb

> >

verb noun

dirtyV tidyV blueV cashV lookN stopN glanceN cheatN

vs.

vs. vs.

legalise nationalise redden atomise arrival landing guidance writer

This parallelism or rather the association with formally expressed derivational morphemes is also decisive for Hansen’s, Lipka’s and Kastovsky’s understanding of the phenomenon and for their using the term zero-derivation. This parallelism must, however, be qualified in that there is an important argument against the assumption of a zero morpheme, namely its semantic diversity. Štekauer (1996) elaborates on this idea: if the concept of zero-morpheme is consistently developed, a zero functions as a word-formation derivational suffix that is synonymous with a number of other suffixes in various word-formation types [cf. the examples mentioned above D.S.]. However this yields scores of homonymous zero morphemes because one and the same zero cannot cover all, semantically very different, functions, e.g. Agent (cheat V > N), Quality as a result of Action (clean A > V), Time of Action (time N > V) Object of Action (insert V > N) ... and dozens of others. (Štekauer 1996: 40)

This problem is the main reason why Štekauer does not understand the phenomenon at issue as a derivational process (or a result thereof). However, since the forms involved are linked by a motivated relation, they can – from his point of view – be attributed to the field of word-formation, so that it is only natural for him to suggest: The process of conversion should be regarded as a unique, specific, word-formation process, based upon principles different from those that characterise the process of derivation. (Štekauer 1996: 43)

I will come back to this below. In contrast to that, the understanding of the phenomenon at issue as a form of derivation can be justified when other semantic aspects are considered: the derived

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word can be paraphrased with reference to its base (which is another parallelism with affixation). That means that there is a more primary word and a semantically more complex one, which is more secondary: (12) cheat (comparable suffixation: writer) = (13) stop (comparable suffixation: landing) = (14) cash (comparable suffixation: atomise) = (15) clean (comparable suffixation: sterilise)=

someone who V-s (habitually, professionally) place where one V-s convert into N make Adj. (cf. Kastovsky 1982: 79).

Thus, we can say that there is a semantic relationship between the two words, the base and the derivation: Die Bedeutung der Ableitung kann nur unter Rückgriff auf die Bedeutung der Basis in natürlicher Weise beschrieben werden, so daß die Basis nicht nur morphologisch in der Ableitung erhalten ist, sondern von ihr logisch-semantisch vorausgesetzt wird. (Kastovsky 1982: 173)

The semantic dependence of the one form on the other can also help to determine the direction of the derivation (e.g. noun to verb or verb to noun), which, admittedly, is of almost no concern for the ordinary language user. The fact that one of the two words involved (the ‘derived word’) has a semantically more complex structure than the other (the ‘base’), is one reason for Hansen’s argument that the interpretation of zero-derivation as a mere transposition to another word category, i.e. as a syntactic phenomenon, is inadequate: the change in meaning accompanying zero-derivation usually affects the semantic and syntactic co-occurrence potential of the resultant word, and this is considered as indirect evidence for the emergence of a new, derived word, which is beyond the scope of syntax. The change in the grammatical paradigm is understood as a further marker of the independent status of the newly formed word (cf. Hansen et al. 1982: 125). The preceding discussion shows that the nature of the unmarked change of word category is discussed controversially, with the crucial and decisive question being whether it can be seen as a process/product of word-formation or not. If the answer is ‘no’, the phenomenon is understood as a change in the syntactic functions of a word (which is necessarily accompanied by semantic changes to variable degrees). The terms available for its denomination are conversion, transposition, or partial conversion. If the answer is ‘yes’, the phenomenon is understood as a process/product of word-formation (again implying semantic changes, which, from the perspective or

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producing new words, are less restricted in scope). A further differentiation can be made here: either a zero morpheme is postulated or the change of the paradigm of the respective word is considered to be the marker of the word-formation process (as is done by Smirnickij). The terms used by the proponents of such views are zero-derivation or change of paradigm. Thus, the following questions remain debatable issues: 1. Is there a uniform/homogeneous phenomenon of unmarked change of word category? 2. Is this phenomenon a syntactic one or does it relate to word-formation, and is thus more of a lexical nature? 3. As for such examples as tea (cf. above), the question is whether uses of one word in different sub-categories of one word-class must also be considered to represent the phenomenon under analysis. Ad 1., we can conclude that – from our point of view – the phenomenon of unmarked change of word category is a gradient. At the one end of the continuum, we find words which are used in a non-typical function (Marchand’s transpositions or functional shifts, Vogel’s syntactic re-categorisation – stone wall), at the other – such words which can be used in any of the potential forms and functions of two (or even more) word-classes. Ad 2., taking the stance just expressed, cases of the former type can be more or less easily attributed to syntax, whereas cases of the latter type can more easily be considered word-formations. Ad 3., the words addressed here seem to be more closely related to wordformation: though fairly closely related, the two concepts denominated by a superficially identical form are conceptually different, with this difference being signalled by a difference in the morphological and/or combinatory behaviour of the respective form.

4.

A cognitive-linguistic interpretation

Seeing these issues in a cognitive-linguistic perspective offers the potential for a more unified answer. The cognitive-linguistic understanding of unmarked changes of word categories is discussed in Langacker (1987 and 1991a) under such head words as conversion and nominalisation. It is also touched in two publications about metonymy (Kövecses and Radden 1998; Radden and Kövecses 1999), which – among other things – is dicussed in relation to a number of types of word-

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formation. As quite a few of the expressions given to exemplify metonymy turned out to be classical cases of zero-derived words or conversions, the two studies were the final trigger for me to deal with the phenomenon of unmarked change of wordclass more intensively. When elaborating on the role of metonymy, the authors explicitly refer to conversion, more specifically, to denominal verbs: We take Clark and Clark’s (1979) work on denominal verbs as an example to demonstrate the point that metonymy may be involved in various aspects of grammar, and that it is not only and simply a property of words. ... We suggest that at least a part of the explanation for why such denominal verbs are readily made and understood involves many of the productive metonymic relationships we have described ... (Kövecses and Radden 1998: 60)

In the further course of the argument, the authors show that all the noun-verb conversions listed by Clark and Clark can be understood as being based on metonymic relations. The question arising from these investigations is whether the unmarked change of word category can generally be explained as being motivated by metonymy. This would allow for considering it as a primarily conceptual/semantic phenomenon with morpho-syntactic consequences: new senses of a lexical item are produced by semantic transfer, by metonymy, with the new sense being associated with a different type of word-class. Hence, when one tries to define its nature, it would much more directly relate to the creation of new words, i.e. word-formation or the extension of a language’s vocabulary, than to syntax.4 In order to substantiate this assumption, I will now further elaborate on the relationship between metonymy and word-formation in general, as well as between metonymy and unmarked change of word-class in particular.

4

It is not uncommon to treat metonymy and metaphor as processes closely related to wordformation. Lipka (2002: 109 and 136) speaks of ‘semantic processes extending the lexicon’ and argues that semantic transfer and word-formation have something in common in that they provide patterns for producing new lexical items. Hansen et al. (1982: 205) note that metaphoric and metonymic expressions are comparable with complex words in that they are all motivated, though this motivation is not explicitly marked in metaphors and metonymies. Tournier (1985: 51) goes as far as to list ‘semantic neologisms’ (i.e. conversion, metaphor and metonymy) as one category of mechanisms producing new lexemes side by side with ‘morpho-semantic neologism’ and morphological neologism.

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Metonymy and word-formation

In order to familiarise the reader with the cognitive understanding of metonymy and its role in word-formation, I will briefly sum up the essential points made in the two articles mentioned above. In the first source (Kövecses and Radden 1998: 49), the authors discuss conceptual relationships that allow for and may give rise to metonymy. They can show that the metonymies established can generally be understood to arise from two conceptual configurations: one configuration is between whole idealised cognitive models (ICM)5 and their parts, the other – between the parts of an ICM. The first configuration allows for metonymies in which a part of an ICM is used to refer to the whole ICM, the classical synecdoches,6 when Eng5

6

Lakoff’s term ICM refers to a schema we associate with an expression’s concept. There are several other terms used in the respective literature, which name the same concept: cognitive model, domain or frame. A cognitive model is generally understood as the typical contexts associated with a cognitive category, as the stored cognitive representations belonging to a particular field (cf. Ungerer and Schmid 1996: 47). Langacker uses the term domain for conceptions that are presuppositions for the characterisation of others. Fillmore uses frame in a roughly equivalent sense for ‘cognitive structures, … knowledge of which is presupposed for the concepts encoded by the words’ (Fillmore and Atkins 1992: 75), but also in a more specific sense (as against scripts) for structured patterns of knowledge that are related to recurring situations (cf. Ungerer and Schmid 1996: 211). Ungerer and Schmid, in a discussion of the various terms available for the denomination of a cognitive model, say that ‘frames can be conceived as a way of describing the cognitive context which provides the background for and is associated with cognitive categories.’ (Ungerer and Schmid 1996: 210). This is perhaps the widest reading possible, equivalent with what is mostly termed by cognitive model. As already said, Lakoff has the term idealised cognitive model ICM (Lakoff 1987), which – from our point of view – emphasises the fact that we abstract away from many specific details we may have experienced in encountering the respective event/thing, the model of which we are talking about. All these terms have been established to refer to the fact that we understand the meaning of linguistic expressions only against the background of their cognitive contexts, a structured background of experience, beliefs, or practices (cf. Fillmore and Atkins 1992: 76), or, in other words, relative to (more complex) cognitive domains. One of Langacker’s examples may serve as an illustration here: the meaning of the word hypotenuse can only be understood when reference to a right-angled triangle is made (cf. Langacker, 1991a: 278ff.). Further examples are the names of the days of the week, which make sense against the background of the complete system of calendric terms only (cf. Fillmore 1985b: 223f.). We often find synecdoche simply listed as a special type (German Abart) of metonymy, where a ‘more’ stands for a ‘less’ and vice versa (i.e. part-whole and whole-part mappings) (cf. also Bußmann 2002: 434, Kuznec and Skrebnev 1968: 26). To tell the two phenomena apart, the following can be said: the concepts involved in the mappings (the source and the target) are in a different relation to one another. In metonymy, the two concepts are of two distinct elements (things/phenomena) within the same cognitive domain, as e.g. the mappings CAUSE FOR EFFECT; CONTAINER FOR CONTENT. Here, we map one element (as part) of a domain onto another element in the same domain (in order to make the latter more easily accessible). In the

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land is used to refer to Great Britain as a whole, for example. The second allows for metonymies in which parts of an ICM serve to access other parts of the same model, e.g. when an instrument involved in an action is used to refer to the action itself, as in shampoo (one’s hair) (cf. Kövecses and Radden 1998: 49ff.). The first type of metonymy is frequent in the naming of things, whereas the second one is typical of names for conceptual entities involved in an event-ICM, such as the event relation itself or a participant associated with it (e.g. DESTINATION FOR MOTION in corner (someone)). The latter type is typically employed when speakers want to refer to events or participants/entities involved therein, using the entity-word for the event (as for example in types (1), (2) and (4) below) and vice versa (as in (3) and (7)) – Actions have been found to represent the dominating ICM, the authors illustrate as many as 12 different metonymic relationships: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

7

INSTRUMENT FOR ACTION AGENT FOR ACTION ACTION FOR AGENT OBJECT INVOLVED IN AN ACTION FOR THE ACTION ACTION FOR OBJECT INVOLVED IN THE ACTION RESULT FOR ACTION ACTION FOR RESULT MEANS FOR ACTION MANNER OF ACTION FOR THE ACTION TIME PERIOD OF ACTION FOR THE ACTION DESTINATION FOR MOTION TIME OF MOTION FOR AN ENTITY INVOLVED IN THE MOTION

to ski, to shampoo (one’s hair) to butcher (the cow), to author (a book) snitch (slang: to inform and informer) to blanket (the bed) (give me one) bite powder (the aspirin) (a deep) cut (He) sneezed (the tissue off the table) (She) tiptoed (to her bed) to summer (in Paris) to porch (the newspaper) (The) 8.40 (has just arrived) (Kövecses and Radden 1998: 54)7

case of synecdoche, the mapping is between concepts that are in a part-whole relationship, i.e. where one concept includes the other one, as in the mappings PART FOR WHOLE; WHOLE FOR PART; GENUS FOR SPECIES; SPECIES FOR GENUS; MATERIAL FOR PRODUCT) (cf. Bußmann 2002: 434, 672; Krahl and Kurz 1973: 123f.). Seto (1999: 91f.), topicalising the distinction between the two terms, defines them as follows: ‘Metonymy is a referential transfer phenomenon based on the spatio-temporal contiguity as conceived by the speaker between an entity and another in the (real) world … Synecdoche is a conceptual transfer phenomenon based on the semantic inclusion between a more comprehensive and a less comprehensive category.’ For a further list cf. Dirven (1999: 285).

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As is immediately obvious, all the examples given have something in common: they represent cases of zero-derivation. To put it differently, morphologically derived forms with an explicit formal marker exhibiting the same semantic relationships between the base and the derivative, such as write – writer, do not occur. This avoidance is a deliberate decision by the authors, which they motivate by saying that the question of whether or to what extent morphologically derived forms can be treated as metonymies is still open (cf. Kövecses and Radden 1998: 55). In the second source mentioned, the authors first argue that noun-verb conversion and nominalisation ‘can be seen as two complementary morphological processes leading to the two types of reversible metonymies [i.e. participants for whole events and vice versa D.S.]’ (Radden and Kövecses 1999: 37). They furthermore claim that such morphological derivations are special types of metonymy in that the vehicle and the target are conflated (cf. Kövecses and Radden 1998: 55). Exactly this is what relates to my argument as to the status of unmarked change of wordclass. My first question is related to the seemingly equivalent treatment of N-V conversion and nominalisation: in order to be exact, it should be kept in mind that – though they may represent two types of reversible metonymies – they are, however, conceptually different. Langacker (1991a: 25) elaborates on this difference clarifying that in nominalisations (V→N) the conceptual content of both V and N is not principally different, the semantic effect of the nominalisation being a change in the construal of the entity to be denominated. In contrast to this, an N→V derivation ‘is generally accompanied by the addition of conceptual content’ (Langacker 1991a: 25). As Langacker’s examples make explicit, this difference can be assumed to hold for N↔V derivation in general, i.e. not only for (N↔V) zero-derivatives, but for (N↔V) derivatives with a formal marker as well (cf. Langacker 1991a: 25). I think that the claim can be extended to derivation in general, i.e. derivation involving other word categories, with derived nouns representing changes in construal and derived members of other word categories – addition of conceptual content. This can basically be attributed to the categories’ status of being either conceptually autonomous (N) or dependent and relational respectively (others). My second question, being more central to my argument, is about metonymy in morphologically derived forms. In their 1999 publication, the authors take up their stance and claim that for all the morphological derivations (specified there for the Action ICM) metonymy can be assumed. The list of examples given there shows that they no longer consider metonymy as restricted to so-called zero-derivatives: Four out of the nine relationships listed, are exemplified by expressions that clearly represent overtly marked morphologically derived forms:

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1. 2. 3. 4.

Zero-derivation – functional change – metonymy ACTION FOR AGENT: ACTION FOR INSTRUMENT: ACTION FOR OBJECT: ACTION FOR RESULT:

writer, driver pencil sharpener, screwdriver the flight is waiting to depart the production

As for the motivation, the authors say that ‘[w]hat makes these morphological derivations special types of metonymy, …, is their conflation of vehicle and target.’ (Radden and Kövecses 1999: 37) The logic of the claim itself is something I fully agree with: conflated vehicle and target evidently speak for metonymy. However, it is doubtful whether this conflation – and thus, also metonymy – can be assumed for overtly marked derivatives. That this is not a trivial point shows in the consequences arising from such a stance: if the answer were ‘yes’, all other types of word-formation, at least those of derivation and compounding, but most probably also the minor types, such as blending and clipping, could be considered metonymies. For, as long as there is a determinative relation, we can theoretically assume the more salient part of the complex expression (e.g. the determinant in cases of derivation, or the determinatum in cases of compounding) to be used to access the concept denoted by the whole expression. This, however, does not fit with my understanding of metonymy and seemingly also clashes with what most linguists and authorities from other fields dealing with this phenomenon have found and had to say. TRADITIONALLY, metonymy – alongside with metaphor – is mainly seen as a rhetorical figure of speech in which AN EXPRESSION STANDING FOR ONE OBJECT/IDEA IS USED TO STAND FOR ANOTHER THING/IDEA so that it can be understood as a form of indirect reference. The (metonymic) transfer is based on some obvious (and thus recognisable) connection between the two things/ideas concerned, which by many researchers is specified as a connection by contiguity or association (cf. Croft 1993: 347, Fass 1997: 70ff., for example). For our problem this implies that metonymy can – if at all – at best be assumed for so-called zero-derivatives. The COGNITIVE understanding of metonymy assigns it an important role in cognition, considers the occurrence of concrete metonymies at the level of language as a reflection thereof and specifies the types of associative or contiguous relations that can be assumed to motivate metonymic ways of thinking and speaking (cf. Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 3, 39–40, Lakoff 1987: 77–90, Croft 1993, Gibbs 1994: 319–358, Ungerer and Schmid 1996: 114–155, Blank 1999, Koch 1999, Radden and Kövecses 1999, Barcelona 2003, to name but a few of the related publications). In other words, one has found that metonymy – alongside with metaphor – is an effective cognitive tool for the conceptualisation, i.e. the grasping and understanding, of abstract categories and categories which are more difficult to mentally access for other reasons. A fairly new definition reads as follows: ‘Metonymy is a

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cognitive process in which one conceptual entity, the vehicle, provides mental access to another conceptual entity, the target, within the same idealised cognitive model.’ (Radden and Kövecses 1999: 21). In other words, one entity within a model is used to stand for another entity within the same model. Hence, the main function of a metonymic term is to activate a cognitive category by using another, more easily accessible one from the same model in order to refer to the former (cf. Ungerer and Schmid 1996: 128). This becomes evident and clear in the following example: (16) The Times hasn’t arrived at the press conference yet [This is the linguistic reflection of the metonymy INSTITUTION FOR ITS REPRESENTATIVE, where the institution (The Times) activates the concept of one of its reporters] From this perspective, metonymy can be considered a reference-point phenomenon and is also described as such by Langacker: … the entity that is normally designated by a metonymic expression serves as a reference point affording mental access to the desired target (i.e. the entity actually being referred to)… By virtue of our reference-point ability, a well-chosen metonymic expression lets us mention one entity that is salient and easily coded, and thereby evoke – essentially automatically – a target that is either of lesser interest or harder to name. (Langacker 1993: 30)

That means that the vehicle is used to refer to the target because it is more salient and thus more easily accessible, and because it is also expected to be an effective means to make the addressee understand what is being talked about (cf. Langacker 1993: 30). This implies for the target that it cannot simply be any entity, but must be related or linked to the vehicle in some (generally or situationally) natural way. For a thorough understanding of the procedures involved, it needs to be specified what in particular natural means. In the respective literature, one can find that natural relations can be assumed to be motivated by frames (in Fillmore’s 1985 sense), domain matrices (in Croft’s 1993: 348 sense), schemas, scripts, scenes, scenarios, domains, ICMs (cf. Koch 1999: 146; Blank 1999: 173, for example), in that contiguity can be understood to exist between their constitutive elements. Regarding the question posed above, all these elaborations on the phenomenon of metonymy have one thing in common – they start out from the fact that the conflation of vehicle and target is to be pinned down at the conceptual level, so that metonymy is first and foremost a conceptual phenomenon, a cognitive strategy to access entities that are difficult to access otherwise. As for metonymy in language, its manifestation at the linguistic level, a more exact term is metonymic expression, which then stands for expressions referring to (at least) two concepts which are

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contiguously related. As a consequence, the claim made (that morphological derivations are special types of metonymy (cf. Radden and Kövecses 1999: 37) is formulated ambiguously: does it mean that derivatives emerge as a result of conceptual metonymy, i.e. of metonymically accessing a new concept, or does it mean that derivatives are metonymic expressions? From the text at issue I take the claim to mean the latter, which is implied by such formulations as: ‘Noun-verb conversion and nominalisation can … be seen as … morphological processes leading to two types of reversible metonymies’ (Radden and Kövecses 1999: 37 my emphasis). If it were to refer to conceptual metonymy, the formulation should be the other way round: two reversible metonymies (i.e. metonymic relationships, such as result for action; action for result) (may) lead to or manifest themselves in conversion and nominalisation processes. Also the text quoted first (cf. Kövecses and Radden 1998: 55) suggests the reading of metonymy as metonymic expressions. Be it as it may, I can agree on the idea that metonymy as a cognitive strategy can be found to motivate many – or even most – word-formation types. However, it shows up differently at the linguistic level: in overtly marked morphological derivations, there is no disturbance of isomorphism – a new concept is hinted at by a new form, so that linguistically the stand-for relationship assumed for metonymic expressions does not hold. Zero-derivatives and metonymies in the traditional sense, on the other hand, violate isomorphism: a new concept is named by a form already existing for naming another concept. That means that, regarding metonymic expressions, we can actually speak of semantic extension – an expression is used to cover an additional sense, thus becoming polysemous, whereas in all cases of formally marked derivatives, compounds etc., new expressions emerge, and polysemy is out of the question. Thus, I cannot agree on the fact that these derivatives represent metonymic expressions. At closer inspection, it also is debatable whether the actual conceptualisations underlying the formulation or instigating the understanding of formally marked word-formations and metonymic expressions are identical, so that differences must be assumed to be effective also at the conceptual level. Thus, metonymic expressions emerge when for the denomination of metonymically related concepts one and the same form is used. Ergo, the conceptual processes underlying the access of a metonymically related concept are not given an explicit hint. They might even get lost in conventional metonymic expressions in the sense that the language user is no longer aware of this original motivation. Marked word-formations, on the other hand, guide the language user explicitly (and thus continually) in the conceptualisation to be made on the basis of the word encountered: the formal markers contribute to the meaning of the whole expression, because they are meaningful predications. As Langacker elaborates for a number of nominalisations (1987: 246ff., 312,

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353ff.), the verbal bases designate processes and the suffixes are also meaningful: the suffix -er, for example, is a nominalising predicate, profiling a thing. If a verb (e.g. climb) and this suffix are combined in a composite structure V-er, we are instructed to identify the thing as the trajector (the figure within a relational profile) in the process characterised by the verb: climber (cf. Langacker 1987: 312). The suffix -ance (as in entrance), to give a further example, results in episodic nominalisation, i.e., we are induced to ‘construe the component states of the corresponding process [to enter D.S.] as a set of interconnected entities and impose on them the collective profile of a thing… [entrance D.S.]’ (Langacker 1987: 247). In other words, the same scene (that of entering a container) can be construed as a process, as a result of sequential scanning of the event, indicated by the expression enter, or collectively as a thing, as a result of summary scanning of the event, being expressed by the noun entrance (cf. Langacker 1987: 248). That is why it seems only natural to me to consider the concepts expressed by identical (i.e. unchanged) forms to be conceptually different from those expressed by overtly marked derivatives. The former need to have a much richer context in order to be triggered off, whereas the latter are meaningful in themselves. Ergo, we argue against the assumption of conceptual metonymy in (non-zero) derivatives: they (formally) reflect a conceptual process of combination, with the partaking elements given, whereas metonymic expressions seem to reflect (by their formal identity with another concept’s denomination) a process of accessing a less salient entity via a more salient one. So, what now remains to be clarified is the status of so-called zero-derivatives.

4.2

Metonymy and unmarked change of word category

I will now come back to the point raised above that unmarked change of word category can generally be explained as being motivated by conceptual metonymy, and that – as a consequence – zero-derivatives can be assumed to be metonymic expressions.8 For illustration, consider the following: when a word of a particular word category is used as a word of another, e.g. when a noun is used as a verb (witness N→V), we make use of the original category (inclusive of its meaning) as a means to refer to another category associated with it. (In this example, the link is: EXPERIENCER OF AN EVENT FOR THE EVENT). This transfer or rather mapping is located in one and the same domain, the domain which organises the knowledge we have about the event of watching (i.e. passively experiencing) an event, action or deed. All of us probably have such a standard idea of what it is like to watch an 8

For an analysis of how exactly metonymy operates at the morphological level, more particularly in processes of conversion giving rise to verbs, you are referred to Dirven (1999).

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event, action or deed: it implies that the watcher him/herself, though being attentive and aware of the situation, is not involved in the event, action or deed. The mapping, which does not show in the expression itself (witness), is cued by its (syntactic) use and potential contextual information, as shown in (17) and (18): (17) At least fifteen persons witnessed the attack on Morris (18) He scored the most fantastic goal I have ever witnessed (Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary (CCELD) 1988: 1679) Quite naturally, the question arising here is whether we actively map or whether we are actually aware of the mapping. Regarding this example, neither of the two questions can be answered affirmatively, which means that the language user is almost certainly unaware of this metonymic shift. For, the metonymic use is conventionalised, it has been established and lexicalised, its metonymic motivation is no longer active (cf. also Ungerer and Schmid 1996: 117).9 Nevertheless, this motivation (EXPERIENCER FOR EXPERIENCED EVENT) is not uncommonly found to exist between nouns and denominal verbs, and it can be assumed to be productively involved in the formation of new denominal verbs and/or to account for their intended interpretation (boycott the store, badger the officials quoted from Clark and Clark 1979 in Kövecses and Radden 1998: 60). As for the general ease with which denominal verbs are used and understood by the (English) language user, the authors suggest that this is due to the employment of productive metonymic relationships. For the action ICM, they claim that it can be considered as actually motivating thousands of denominal verbs, because the metonymic relations being based on this ICM represent standard or default routes of conceptualisation for the English native speaker: DESTINATION FOR MOTION, AGENT FOR ACTION, RESULT FOR ACTION and INSTRUMENT FOR ACTION. Using these natural cognitive links, s/he can use one entity as a reference point from which to access another without any effort and – in most cases – even without being aware of this cognitive activity (cf. Kövecses and Radden 1998: 61). This, together with the formal prerequisites that English has been found to have in abundance, makes metonymy across word categories such a wide-spread and common phenomenon of English. As already discussed in section 4.1, the zero-derived examples Kövecses and Radden give to illustrate metonymy-producing relations (see the list above) name concepts that emerge from a re-categorisation of their original concept, for the de-

9

From a diachronic perspective, Queller (2003) makes a critical assessment of the role metonymy plays in sense shift. He argues that such shifts as from Middle English bedes (prayers) to Modern English beads may arise from context-based abductive reanalysis of usage-events rather than a metonymic construal.

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nomination of which it is an established conventional expression. The recategorisation at the conceptual level is not indicated by any formal change in the form of the original expression. Does that match with the (more traditional) understanding of metonymy that a name for one thing is used to refer to another thing? Is it a typical feature of metonymically related expressions to refer to concepts belonging to different categories, and if so to what types of category? Consulting the relevant literature, one will predominantly find examples of the following kind: read Shakespeare (for what he wrote), drink a glass (for what one drinks), The White House tries to (for the institution housed in the White House). They all involve a change in category, such as human for artefact (producer for product), container for contained/content, building for institution. However, the thing is that, on a more general level, these categories are of the same kind, they all represent categories of things. Thus, expressions conventionally considered metonymic do in fact represent different (sub)categories of a (more general) superordinated category. In Dirven’s (1999: 278) view, this is ‘the referencing type of metonymy’, where a salient participant is selected to become ‘the identity marker for an unknown or unnamed referent’ (Dirven 1999: 279) a function that he finds to be closely related to the agent function. In contrast to that, the re-categorisation occurring in so-called zero-derivations affects different TYPES of categories: an action is identified in terms of the agent instigating the action, i.e., an agent word (a noun) is re-categorised as an action word (a verb), or an action word (verb) as word naming a result (noun). In other words, things are re-categorised as events, or things/objects as relations, and vice versa. This is the eventual reason why the re-categorised expression is a representative of a different word category. Despite this difference from reference metonymy, it seems reasonable to suppose that also these cases are metonymic expressions, though special cases. They are special in that: ‘they single out a salient participant to become ... the main designation for the event itself (event-schema metonymy).’ (Dirven 1999: 279, my emphasis) and vice versa. As a consequence, I will from now on use Dirven’s term event-schema metonymy to name the phenomenon of unmarked change of word-class. However, from the perspective of word-formation, it still needs to be tested whether there are cases of unmarked change of word-class which are not metonymically motivated. In order to find this out, I checked Hansen et al.’s lists of types of zero-derivation, which, though no claim to completeness is made, will have to suffice at this place for reasons of feasibility of the task. The result is that for all the types described there (cf. Hansen et al. 1982: 124ff.), metonymic links can be shown to exist between the original and the new meanings of the respective forms (details can be seen in the table provided in the appendix). Thus, also from this perspective, it appears to be justified to assume that zero-derivatives in English

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are generally motivated by metonymic relationships. As a consequence, the phenomenon should neither be understood as a derivational nor as a syntactic phenomenon, but first and foremost – as a phenomenon of semantic extension of a language’s lexicon. This is in line with Tournier (1985: 51), for example, who lists this type of word-formation – side by side with metaphor and metonymy – as one form of semantic neologism, contrasting it with other types that involve formal changes of any kind (cf. also note 3). The term event-schema metonymy for its denomination would make two things explicit: the fact that it is a result of semantic transfer and the fact that this transfer is special in that it occurs between the highly general conceptual categories involved in an event-schema.10 These are the types of events (action, process or state) and their respective participants. The exploitation of one such category to access another appears as the ultimate motivation for changes in the expression’s word-class and hence in its combinatory potential. The creation of new words by means of semantic, syntactic and word-formation processes is commonly acknowledged. As has become obvious in my argument, there is, however, no agreement on the particular place of the phenomenon of event-schema metonymy. Tournier (1985: 51) suggests the same grouping as I do: he considers semantic neologisms (i.e. conversion, metaphor and metonymy) as one category of mechanisms producing new lexemes side by side with morphosemantic neologism and morphological neologism. Further views expressed in the literature reviewed above which are compatible with such an idea are Smirnickij’s and Štekauer’s. The former considers conversion to be a specific type of wordformation, which – despite sharing certain structural and semantic properties – is distinct from derivation, the formal marker being of a grammatical nature (Smirnickij 1953: 26). The latter describes the nature of zero-derivation as a process of word-formation since the forms involved are linked by a motivated relation, which is, however, unique in that it operates on principles distinct from those involved in derivation (cf. Štekauer 1996: 43). As I have shown, such a distinct or special principle is the metonymic relation between the source or rather vehicle and the target concept and word respectively. Fleischer and Barz (1992) list as distinct procedures for the formation of new words/names word-formation proper, syntax and semantics, thus making a difference between semantic, syntactic and morpho-structural11 procedures of word-

10 Dirven and Verspoor (1998: 82) define the term as a conceptual schema of an event which ‘combines a type of action or state with its most salient participants, which may have different ‘roles’ in the action or state’, and elaborate on it, describing seven types thereof (Dirven and Verspoor 1998: 81–90). 11 Morpho-structural procedures result in the formation of new words by changing the formal structure of a word (extension, reduction and other changes), which coincides with semantic

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formation in a wider sense. Event-schema metonymies seem to also fit into the semantic procedures, though the definition does not explicitly include such forms: Beim semantischen Verfahren ist dominierend die Bedeutungsveränderung eines Ausgangselements; formativstrukturelle Prozesse müssen nicht erfolgen (...). Allerdings hat die semantische Veränderung (Metaphorisierung, Metonymisierung usw.) nicht selten auch formativstrukturelle Konsequenzen (z.B. in bezug auf Orthographie und Flexion). (Fleischer and Barz 1992: 6)

However, in their further argument, the respective forms are identified as results of a syntactic procedure, because the new words also imply a change of the conceptual class (cf. Fleischer and Barz 1992: 7). Lipka (1992) similarly distinguishes between word-formation (formation of a lexeme, i.e. of a new (complex) word) and semantic transfer (metaphor and metonymy resulting in a new sense of a polysemous word). But he proceeds differently in assuming that zero-derivation is a procedure comparable to suffixation, thus attributing it to word-formation. As a consequence, syntactic procedures are not an issue for him, i.e. they are not discussed within the scope of word-formation. This is also one reason why Lipka rejects the term conversion as a name for the complete change of a word from one category into another (cf. Lipka 1992: 85 and 139f.). The idea to more closely associate event-schema metonymy with semantic transfer rather than with syntactic or derivational procedures, finds implicit support from lexicographical work, in particular from the way how lexicographers decide on the determination of head words. It is not unusual that dictionaries have only one head word even when the word senses to be subsumed must be assigned to more than one word category (e.g. Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary, PONS Collins Deutsch-Englisch/Englisch-Deutsch). Thus, (reference) metonymies and products of an unmarked change of word-class, event-schema metonymies, are treated in the same way: they each cause the emergence of a separate entry (indicated by a new number) describing the meaning and giving morpho-syntactic information of the respective senses, all listed under one head word. An example from the Collins Cobuild Dictionary will briefly illustrate the point: fox /…/ foxes, foxing, foxed. 1. A fox is a wild N COUNT animal which looks like a dog and has reddish-brown fur, a pointed face and ears, and a thick tail. e.g. … the footprints of wildcats, badgers, and foxes. and syntactic processes. This roughly corresponds to what other authors understand as wordformation proper/in a narrow sense.

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Zero-derivation – functional change – metonymy 2. If something is made of fox, it is made from the fur and skin of a fox. e.g. … a shaggy red fox coat. 3. If you call someone a fox, you are saying that they do things in clever ways, such as by deceiving people or by being dishonest and secretive; used showing disapproval. e.g. … It was probably the Colonel’s doing, and the wily old fox was making damn sure he didn’t leave any tracks 4. If something foxes you, it causes you a lot of difficulty, so that you cannot understand or complete it; informal use. e.g. … When you get a piece of handwriting which really foxes you, you have a very careful look at it… The computers were foxed by the calculations (Sinclair 1987: 575)

N UNCOUNT N COUNT = devil

V+O = baffle, stump

Another project in which no difference is made between words representing distinct word-classes and those representing the different senses of a polysemous word in the arrangement of its entries is the FrameNet project,12 which is described by Fillmore and Atkins (1992), for example. In this project, word senses are described by referring to the cognitive models (frames) they are linked to. The exact description of these frames allows for the registration of all the elements involved and the names associated with them. These may well belong to distinct conceptual categories and – as a potential consequence – to distinct word categories, especially when 12 The project is characterised as follows: ‘The FrameNet project has as its goal the production of a partial lexicon of English that describes word meanings within the ‘frame semantics’ model while providing precise and reliable information about each word’s syntactic and semantic combinatorial properties. The work begins with descriptions of the conceptual structure (‘frame’) underlying a word’s meaning (...) and labeling the elements of such a scenario (...).’ (webpage http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/∼framenet/fn9802/fnintroduction.html (09/30/1998)). These frames represent necessary background information against which the concept a word encodes can be understood (cf. also Fillmore and Atkins 1992: 75). By explicitly relating a word’s concept to its background frame, the latter becomes the organising principle for all the related senses of a (polysemous) word and the senses of semantically related (different) words. If one considers the complexity of the information to be incorporated into such a dictionary, it becomes obvious that its form will necessarily have to be of a special kind: it will be computer-based, i.e. it will not exist in the form of a book, but will finally result in an online lexicon, where the user can get access to all the information provided via the computer (for more details, see the webpage of the project: http://www.icsi.berkely.edu/~framenet (09/30/1998)).

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the word senses to be described are related to frames of events. Taking witness as an example again, we could speculate about the frame to incorporate everything associated with the event of witnessing, i.e. an experiencer and an event to be experienced, which, in this case, are both named by the same form.

5.

Conclusion

To sum up, the major aim of this text is to contribute to a clearer understanding of the nature of what is mainly known as zero-derivation or conversion. Pursuing this objective, I presented a number of arguments that considerably support my idea to grasp and classify this phenomenon as a special case of metonymy, namely eventschema metonymy, in which the re-categorisation is between (two) different types of categories (thing vs. event or relation etc.). Such a stance allows for subsuming all the kinds of unmarked change of word-class traditionally told apart in different ways (such as complete and partial conversion and zero-derivation), thus also providing the answer to question number one raised in section 3: the phenomenon of unmarked change of word-class can be characterised as a particular metonymic mapping, with the resultant expressions showing a syntactic behaviour which differs from that of the original expression to variable degrees. Forms which result from a re-categorisation NOT affecting the category type and which – consequently – do not undergo a change of word-class (fox, birdbrain etc.), pose no problem at all, for they represent the classical case of metonymy. The decisive point for a word to be categorised as an event-schema metonymy is thus a specific semantic re-categorisation of its original sense, resulting in a concept that is associated with a (morpho-)syntactic category different from the category of the original sense. In other words, central cases of metonymy at best exhibit differences in the subclass of vehicle and target (e.g. proper→common N, or noncount→count N), event-schema metonymies quite naturally cross word-categorial boundaries. As to the second question raised above, the understanding of unmarked changes of word-classes as event-schema metonymy relates the phenomenon to the lexicon more closely than to syntax: the need for naming new concepts or newly construed phenomena and situations calls for the creation of new expressions, which in this particular case means using established forms in new ways. This is basically a conceptually/semantically triggered process of word (or sense) formation in the widest sense. The attendant changes in the form’s paradigmatic and syntagmatic behaviour are a logical consequence of the re-categorisation process at the conceptual level. As regards the third open issue, the fact that, in event-schema metonymies, the re-categorised word stands for a different TYPE of conceptual category and hence is a representative of a different word category is important: it is an argument for the

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exclusion of the above-mentioned uses of nouns as count or non-count nouns (tea, oil, sugar) and the uses of proper nouns as common nouns (duffel, denim etc.) from event-schema metonymy. For, although the respective words are also metonymically related, they do not cross category boundaries, but rather represent subclasses of one and the same category, thus representing cases of reference metonymy. Conversely, the association of event-schema metonymy with a conceptual recategorisation of category types sets this phenomenon clearly apart from classical cases of metonymy (of the reference type) and from other types of formally unmarked vocabulary extension, such as metaphor. On the other hand, it allows for the inclusion of such expressions that represent what is often subsumed under functional change or partial conversion: transpositions (stone wall) represent syntactic re-categorisation (Marchand 1969) and semantic re-categorisation: OBJECT FOR ITS PROPERTY; ellipses (the wealthy) represent syntactic re-categorisation (Hansen et al. 1982) and semantic re-categorisation: PROPERTY FOR CARRIER; nominalisations (the evil) represent syntactic and semantic re-categorisation: PROPERTY FOR REIFIED PROPERTY. With regard to the latter type, I also asked whether all nominalisations can generally be considered metonymies and I concluded that – after closer inspection – the question ought to be answered in the negative, both for what is going on at the conceptual level and for what shows at the level of linguistic expression, so that metonymy is seen as restricted to formally unmarked changes in a word’s sense or concept. Finally, my argument can also contribute to explaining the fact that English is conspicuously rich in such unmarked changes of word-class or event-schema metonymies: As briefly mentioned above, the employment of default routes of metonymic conceptualisation in such cases together with the formal features of English, in particular its sparseness of word-class specific morphological marking, make this language especially hospitable to this procedure of making new words.

References Adams, Valerie (1973). An Introduction to Modern English Word-Formation. London: Longman. Barcelona, Antonio (2003). Metonymy in cognitive linguistics. In Motivation in Language: Studies in Honour of Günter Radden, Hubert Cuyckens, Thomas Berg, René Dirven and Klaus-Uwe Panther (eds.), 223–255. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 243. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins. Bauer, Laurie (1983). English Word-Formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blank, Andreas (1999). Co-presence and succession. A cognitive typology of metonymy. In Metonymy in Language and Thought, Klaus-Uwe Panther and Günter Radden (eds.), 169–191. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins.

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Kruisinga, Etsko (1931–32 [1911]). A Handbook of Present-Day English, 5th ed. Groningen: P. Noordhoff. Kuznec, Marianna D. and Skrebnev, Jurij M. (1968). Stilistik der englische Sprache. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie. Lakoff, George (1987). Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George (1993). The contemporary theory of metaphor. In Metaphor and Thought, Andrew Ortony (ed.), 202–251. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark (1980). Metaphors we Live by. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Langacker, Ronald (1987). Foundations of Cognitive Grammar 1. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Langacker, Ronald (1991a). Foundations of Cognitive Grammar 2. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Langacker, Ronald (1991b). Cognitive grammar. In Linguistic Theory and Grammatical Description, Flip G. Droste and John E. Joseph (eds.), 275–306. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins. Langacker, Ronald (1993). Reference-point constructions. Cognitive Linguistics 4–1, 1–38. Lipka, Leonhard (1990). An Outline of English Lexicology. Lexical Structure, Word Semantics, and Word-Formation. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer. Marchand, Hans (1969 [1960]). The Categories and Types of Present-Day English WordFormation. A Synchronic-Diachronic Approach, 2nd ed. München: C. Beck. Paul, Hermann (1920). Deutsche Grammatik, Band 4. Halle an der Saale: M. Niemeyer. Queller, Kurt (2003). Metonymic sense shift: its origins in hearers abductive construal of usage in context. In Cognitive Approaches to Lexical Semantics, Hubert Cuyckens, René Dirven and John R. Taylor (eds.), 211–241. Berlin and New Tork: Mouton de Gruyter. Quirk, Randolph; Greenbaum, Sidney; Leech, Geoffrey and Svartvik, Jan (1985). A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman. Radden, Günter and Kövecses, Zoltán (1999). Towards a theory of metonymy. In Metonymy in Language and Thought, Klaus-Uwe Panther and Günter Radden (eds.), 17-59. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins. Seto, Ken-ichi (1999). Distinguishing metonymy from synecdoche. In Metonymy in Language and Thought, Klaus-Uwe Panther and Günter Radden (eds.), 91–120. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins. Sinclair, John (ed.) (1987). The Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary. London and Glasgow: Collins. Smirnickij, Aleksandr I. (1956). Leksikologija anglijskogo jazyka. Moskau: MGU. Štekauer, Pavol (1996). A Theory of Conversion in English. Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang. Sweet, Henry (1891–98). A New English Grammar. Logical and Historical. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Tournier, Jean (1985). Introduction descriptive à la lexicogénétique de l’anglais contemporain. Paris et Genève: Champion-Slatkine. Ungerer, Friedrich and Schmid, Hans-Jörg (1996). An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics. London and New York: Longman.

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Vogel, Petra M. (1996). Wortarten und Wortartenwechsel. Zu Konversion und verwandten Erscheinungen im Deutschen und in anderen Sprachen. Studia Linguistica Germanica 39. Berlin and New York: W. de Gruyter.

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Appendix Types of zero-derivation and metonymy (cf. Hansen et al. 1982, 124ff.) Denominal zero-derivations: Basis 1. N = person

Type of word-formation a) be/act as N

Example referee

2. N = animal

b) make N of..., make... into N a) act/behave like N VI

orphan fox

b) treat... like N/as N does VT

parrot

a) act like N

telescope

b) convert into N c) produce N

coke steam

d) ornative: provide... with N

saddle

e) privative: remove N from... f) use N (instrument)

dust comb

g) go in(to) N (location)

shop

3. N = object

put... in/on N (container)

4. N = abstract

5. Adj.

bottle

h) be/live in N (location/container) keep/store... in N

tent bottle

a) make N play N have/take N

compromise cricket lunch

b) fill/supply... with N

panic

a) become Adj.

narrow

b) make Adj.

clean

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Metonymy agent for action (cf. 2) patient for action agent for action+metaphor agent for action+metaphor property of object for action result for action product for action patient for action (cf. 4) patient for action instrument for action (cf. 1) location for action (cf. 11) container for action location for state container for state result for action event for action time for action (cf. 10) emotion for process property for process property for action

Doris Schönefeld 6. Adv.

159

location [put/knock... down]

down

[get/jump up, increase]

up

(final) state for action (final) state for action

Deverbal zero-derivations: 1. V

a) discrete act of V-in

kick

b) state/process of V-ing/being V-ed worry c) sth that is/has been V-ed cut d) instrument/substance with which one V-s polish rattle

2. V + Particle

e) place where one/sth V-s

hide

f) person who V-s g) person who is/as been V-ed a) b) c) d) ditto e) f)

guide suspect come-back mix-up hand-out make-up check-out drop-out pickpocket turn-screw

3. Verbal word group

nominal compound (no change of word category)

birdbrain

hunchback bluejacket

4. Adj.

a) person/object that is Adj.

black

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action for result (cf. 7) process for state action for result action for substance action for instrument action for location action for agent action for patient

ditto

action for agent action for instrument feature for carrier + metaphor feature for carrier feature for carrier feature for carrier

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Author index A Adams, V...................................11, 71, 132 Allen, M.R.................................................9 Anić, V. ............................................. 76-77 Aronoff, M. .......72, 79, 104, 107, 122, 123 Atkins, B.T. ...................................141, 152 B Babić, S. ..................................................75 Bally, Ch............................................33, 35 Bammesberger, A....................................39 Barcelona, A..........................................144 Barić, E..............................................77, 91 Barz, I..................... 46, 112, 117, 120-122, 132-133, 150-151 Bauer, L.......10, 12-13, 19, 72, 77-78, 106107, 126, 132, 135 Biese, Y.M.....................................7, 11, 46 Blank, A. ....................................... 144-145 Bloomfield, L. .........................14, 107, 132 Booij, G. ....................................................9 Bruderer, H............................................111 Bußmann, H. ................................. 141-142 Bybee, J.L........................................76, 105 C Cetnarowska, B. ..................................7, 82 Chomsky, N...................................9, 14, 32 Clark, E.V............ 7, 85, 109-110, 140, 148 Clark, H.H. ................ 7, 109-110, 140, 148 Coates, R. .......................................... 19-20 Comrie, B. .........................................39, 76 Coseriu, E. ...............................................35 Crocco-Galèas, G. .............................80, 86 Croft, W......................................... 144-145 Curme, G.O. ............................................26 D Dalton-Puffer, C. .....................................46 Dirven, R. ...................... 142, 147, 149-150

Dokulil, M. ........................... 7, 76, 78, 132 Don, J.................................... 7, 56, 72, 131 Donaldson, B.C....................................... 26 Dressler, W.U. .......... 12, 14, 51-52, 68, 71, 75-76, 78-81, 85-86, 94-95, 115 Duden.................................................... 105 Durrell, M. .............................................. 26 E Enger, H.O. ............................................. 95 Eschenlohr, S. ..................... 105, 108, 110, 112-116, 119, 121, 124, 128 F Farrell, P. ............................................ 9, 14 Fass, D. ................................................. 144 Fillmore, Ch.J. ................ 35, 141, 145, 152 Fleischer, W....46, 112, 117, 120-122, 132133, 150-151 Foulet, L.................................................. 23 Frei, H. .................................................... 32 G Gallmann, P. ..................................105-106 Geckeler, H. ............................................ 86 Geerts, G. ................................................ 26 Gibbs, R.W. .......................................... 144 Giegerich, H........................................ 9, 20 Givón, T.................................................. 21 Godel, R.................................................. 32 Grice, P. ................................................ 123 Grimm, J. .............................................. 132 Grimshaw, J. .......................................... 81 Gussmann, E. .......................................... 79 H Haas, W. de............................................. 26 Hadrovics, L. .....................................55-56 Halilović, S. ............................................ 76 Hansen, K. .............131-132, 136-138, 140, 149, 154, 158 Harnisch, R. ............................................ 91 Haspelmath, M.................................. 9, 105 Höhle, T.N. ........................................... 111 Hopper, P.J. ...................................... 21, 25

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162

Author Index

J Jackendoff, R...........................................81 Jakobson, R. ............................................79 Jespersen, O.............................................21 Johnson, M. ...........................................144 Josefsson, G.........................................9, 20 K Kalinina, E.............................................105 Kaliušcenko, V.D. .........................116, 118 Kastovsky, D. ............. 7, 12, 14, 31-35, 42, 44-45, 86, 132, 137-138 Katamba, F. .............................................19 Kennedy, B.H..........................................23 Kiefer, F. ............. 9, 11, 14, 53-54, 58, 107 Kiparsky, P. .............................................11 Klein, K. ................................................124 Koch, P. ......................................... 144-145 Komlósy, A. ......................................59, 62 Köpcke, K.-M........................................116 Kövecses, Z. .......................... 139-146, 148 Koziol, H. .............................. 132-133, 135 Krahl, S..................................................142 Kruisinga, E...................................132, 135 Kucarov, I................................................76 Kuryłowicz, J. ................................... 37-38 Kurz, J. ..................................................142 Kuznec, M.D. ........................................141 L Ladányi, M. .................................51, 54, 58 Lakoff, G. ......................................141, 144 Langacker, R. ........ 139, 141, 143, 145-147 Lass, R.....................................................38 Lees, R.B. ................................................32 Lehmann, V.............................................75 Lieber, R..................................7, 12, 72, 78 Lipka, L. ........................132, 137, 140, 151 M Manova, S....... 12, 14, 52, 68-69, 77, 93-94 Marchand, H...... 7, 11, 31-34, 82, 132-133, 136-137, 139, 154 Maslov, J.S. ................................. 75-76, 83 Mel’čuk, I.A. ............................... 72, 77-79 Merlini Barbaresi, L. ...............................95

Mitchell, B. ............................................. 26 Moignet, G...................................23-24, 26 Muthmann, G................................ 114, 116 Myers, S.................................. 9, 20, 24, 72 N Neef, M. .........9, 13, 92, 105, 107, 126-127 P Paul, H. ............................... 21, 24, 26, 132 Pavesi, M. ............................................... 70 Pennanen, E.V. ................................... 7, 72 Plag, I.............................................. 13, 123 Plank, F. .................................112, 122-125 Prokosch, E. ............................................ 27 Q Queller, K. ............................................ 148 Quirk, R. ......................26, 77-78, 132, 136 R Radden, G. .............................139-146, 148 Raun, A. .................................................. 53 Renzi, L. ................................................. 24 Rochoń, M. ............................................. 79 S Sanders, G............................................... 72 Saussure, F. de ........................................ 33 Schmid, H.-J. .................141, 144-145, 148 Schönefeld, D. .......................................... 8 Schutter, G. de ........................................ 26 Seto, K.-I............................................... 142 Sinclair, J. ............................................. 152 Skalička, V.............................................. 86 Skok, P.................................................... 81 Skrebnev, J.M. ...................................... 141 Smirnickij, A.I. ..................... 132, 139, 150 Spencer, A. ........................................... 104 Štekauer, P............ 7, 13, 31, 35, 72, 77-78, 82, 109, 137, 150 Stiebels, B. .................................... 107, 111 Stojanov, S.............................................. 94 Švedova, N.J. .........................75, 90, 93-94 Sweet, H........................ 7, 67, 72, 132, 135 Szemerényi, O......................................... 37

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Author Index

163

T Thompson, S.A..................................21, 25 Thornton, A.M...................................70, 78 Toman, J. ...............................................121 Tournier, J. ....................................140, 150 Trommelen, M...........................26, 56, 131 Twardzisz, P. .............................................7

W Ward, D. ................................................. 25 Watkins, C. ............................................. 39 Welmers, W.E......................................... 21 Werner, A. .....................................122-123 Wrenn, Ch.L. .......................................... 26 Wunderlich, D....................................... 122

U Ungerer, F...................... 141, 144-145, 148

Z Zaliznjak, A.A. ....................................... 94 Zonneveld, W. ................................ 56, 131

V Vater, H. ................................................107 Verspoor, M. .........................................150 Vinogradov, V.V. ....................................75 Vogel, P.M. ........................7, 71, 128, 132, 134-136, 139

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Subject Index A ablaut ............................... 37-38, 41, 79, 89 acronymy .........................................59, 126 addition................ 36, 67-68, 71-72, 76, 80, 89, 96, 136, 143 adjectivalisation.......................................55 adjective ...............10-11, 20-23, 25, 27-29, 35, 38, 41, 51-64, 67-68, 71, 76, 9091, 105-106, 116-117, 119-120, 131, 133, 135, 137 attributive......................................25, 54 predicative ..........................................25 regularity.....................................56, 120 see also under base; conversion; form; inflection; meaning; noun; paradigm; suffixation; use adverb ........ 21, 24, 27, 51-55, 60, 106, 133 see also under suffixation; use affixation .............. 8, 12, 19, 37, 68, 71-72, 80-81, 85, 96-97, 106-107, 118-119, 133, 136, 138 category-specific...............................134 derivational .................10, 21, 38, 72, 76 iconic ..................................................68 pseudo-affix ......................................116 regular.................................................33 rule ................................................54, 85 stem-forming ......................................38 type of ...........................................80, 85 see also derivation; form allomorph .............................. 33-35, 78, 94 rule ......................................................85 see also zero allomorph; see also under modification; relationship alternation..........................................43, 45 prosodic ..............................................78 transitive-intransitive ..........................51 see also under morphonology analogy ....................................................80 aorist .................................................. 38-40 argument..................... 24, 27-28, 52, 61-62

structure ....................................... 52, 60 article ...................................................... 89 declinable ........................................... 93 definite ......................................... 20, 27 indefinite ............................................ 25 see also under language aspect ......................................38-39, 75-76 see also under category; stem; system attrition phonetic.............................................. 45 B base .............. 11, 13, 19, 31, 42-44, 46, 67, 69, 71, 78-80, 82, 85, 92-93, 96-97, 103-109, 112-122, 124, 127-128, 134, 138, 143 adjectival..................... 41, 54, 56-57, 59 complex............................................ 116 foreign....................................... 112-115 nominal ........................... 41, 57-58, 118 type of .......................................... 71, 93 verbal .............. 41, 60-62, 120, 126, 147 see also under conversion; derivation; form; inflection; modification; morphology; noun; suffixation; system; verb behaviour ........................................ 55, 116 combinatory ..................................... 139 language-specific ............................... 67 morphological .................................. 139 syntactic ................................... 136, 153 syntagmatic ...................................... 153 (bi)uniqueness.............................. 80-81, 85 blending ................................................ 144 blocking ....55, 103, 113, 122-123, 126-127 Bosnian ................................................... 76 boundary category..................................... 153-154 morpheme .......................................... 40 Bulgarian ............. 67-68, 70-71, 73, 76-79, 81-83, 94-95 C case .................................. 38, 43-44, 55, 88 see also under category; suffixation categoreme.............................................. 34 categorisation.......................................... 34

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Subject Index lexical .................................................34 category ......................... 10-11, 23, 28, 31, 39-40, 42-43, 51, 72, 75, 86, 103, 107, 110, 119, 121, 131-135, 140-144, 147, 149-151, 153-154 aspectual ....................................... 38-39 case .....................................................35 change...... 8, 19, 21, 28-29, 36, 51, 134, 138-140, 147, 149, 159 cognitive ...................................141, 145 conceptual......................... 150, 152-153 denominal ...........................................35 derivational ...........................36, 40, 121 deverbal ..............................................35 grammatical ..................................29, 39 inflectional ............................43, 75, 108 lexical ......................... 19-25, 28, 31, 39 morphological............ 36, 103, 107-108, 116, 119-121, 126-128 morpho-syntactic ..............................153 semantic ........................................ 35-36 semantic-syntactic ........................ 34-35 sub(-)category...........................139, 149 syntactic ..............................................52 temporal ........................................ 38-39 type of ....................... 132, 149, 153-154 word .................. 119, 131-132, 134-135, 138-140, 143, 147-149, 151, 152-153, 159 word-formation...................................35 see also re-categorisation; affixation; boundary; indeterminacy; morpheme; part of speech; shift change derivational .........................................67 formal ..............10, 19, 33, 71, 107, 131, 147, 149-150 functional .......... 31, 33, 35-36, 131-132, 136, 138, 154 historical .............................................52 inflectional ..........................................67 morphonological.................................78 phonemic ............................................79 prosodic ..............................................77 segmental ...................................... 77-78 semantic ......................................33, 138 syntactic ..............................................94

165

typological ......................................... 93 unmarked ......... 132, 134, 138-140, 143, 147, 149, 151, 153-154 see also under category; class; paradigm; part of speech; suffixation; word-class Chinese ................................................... 71 class ...................... 10, 39-40, 44-45, 75-76 change ............................ 9, 19, 136, 151 conceptual ........................................ 151 declension .......................................... 72 form............................................... 19-20 inflectional ............................. 40, 42, 72 lexical............................................... 136 meaning............................................ 107 subclass ............. 10, 15, 64, 76, 153-154 syntactic ............................................. 51 see also word-class; see also under marker; membership clipping ................................................. 144 cognitivity.......... 33, 68, 141, 144-146, 148 see also under category; context; linguistics; model comparative ..............53-55, 57, 59-60, 135 compound ................... 34-35, 62, 110, 118, 120-122, 135, 144, 146 nominal ............................ 110, 121, 159 verbal ............................................... 122 conceptualisation .... 34, 144, 146, 148, 154 see also under category; class; metonymy; re-categorisation; relationship; transfer conditioning input .................................. 51, 59, 62-64 morphological .................................... 43 morphological-phonological.............. 37 output ........................................... 51, 64 phonological...............35-36, 43-44, 127 sound shape...................................... 108 stress................................................... 41 conjunction ........................................... 106 constraint ........ 12, 103, 107-108, 110, 112, 119, 121-123, 126-128 phonological..................................... 127 pragmatic ......................................... 122 semantic ........................................... 108

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166

Subject Index

context ................ 52, 59, 64, 109-110, 128, 141, 147-148 cognitive ...........................................141 syntactic ......................................42, 124 see also under conversion; inflection contiguity....................................... 144-146 spatio-temporal .................................142 conversion ........ 7-15, 19-20, 22-23, 28-29, 31, 33, 35-36, 46, 51-53, 55-59, 61, 63-64, 67-72, 75-86, 90-97, 110, 114-115, 117-119, 121-128, 132, 134-136, 138-140, 146, 150-151, 153, 158 active to passive...................... 53, 62-63 adjective to noun.. 28, 35, 51, 53, 56-59, 63-64, 72, 76, 79, 91-93, 105, 131 adjective to verb......... 31, 33, 69, 86-88, 90, 92, 116, 131, 137 complete .............................................29 contextually determined/driven............. 51-52, 54-55, 59, 64 derivational ................52, 54, 57, 61, 64, 71-72, 76-77, 95 deverbal ........................................91, 93 full.......................................................22 (non-/anti-)iconic ..........................68, 80 minor...................................................77 morphological....... 72, 76-77, 81, 93, 96 name ....................... 55, 58, 92, 108-112 noun to adjective.............. 51-56, 59, 67, 76, 88, 135 noun to verb ............... 11-12, 22, 28, 33, 44, 68-69, 73-75, 78-79, 81, 86-89, 91, 109-112, 115-118, 123-125, 128, 131, 137-138, 140, 143, 146, 158 occasional ...........................................52 partial ............... 22-23, 71, 77, 135, 138, 153-154 participle to adjective ..................53, 59, 61-64, 105 participle to noun ................................53 process .................8-9, 12-13, 19-20, 28, 31, 94, 103, 136-137, 146-147 relationship . 8-9, 12-13, 19-20, 103-104 root-based ....... 69, 79, 85, 87-91, 93, 97 rule ..............51-52, 63, 72, 76-78, 85-86

rule-governed ............................... 51, 56 secondary ........................................... 77 semantically determined/driven ............. 52, 59, 63-64 sporadic.............................................. 52 stem-based ........... 14, 70, 85, 87-88, 91, 93, 97 syntactic ..........52, 59, 61, 63-64, 71-72, 77, 81, 89, 91, 93, 96 syntactically determined/driven ............. 51-52, 61, 64 type of ............. 14, 51-54, 56-57, 63-64, , 90-93, 135 verb to noun ..........11-13, 22, 25-26, 28, 31, 33, 71-75, 77-79, 82-83, 86-91, 105, 119, 131, 137-138, 143 verbal ..........76, 103, 107-110, 112-117, 119, 121-122, 124-128, 147 word-based...................71, 85-93, 96-97 see also convertibility convertibility.. 103, 112, 115-116, 119, 121 Croatian .................................................. 77 Czech ................................................ 33, 76 D degemination .......................................... 33 deletion .........43-44, 67-68, 76, 78, 96, 127 derivation ......... 9, 11-13, 19, 22-23, 26-27, 31-42, 44-46, 53-60, 62-63, 67-68, 71, 75, 78, 80-81, 83, 85-86, 91, 95-97, 104-105, 107-108, 116-119, 121, 123, 128, 133-138, 143-144, 146, 150-151 affixless................................... 33-34, 46 denominal..................................... 36, 38 deverbal............................. 36,38, 41, 44 root-based..................................... 69, 91 stem-based ......................................... 70 suffixal ............................................... 36 see also derivative; see also under affixation; category; change; conversion; ending; exponent; form; function; head; marker; morpheme; morphology; noun; process; stem; subtraction; suffixation; verb; word; zero derivative ............... 34-35, 39, 53, 143, 146 marked .............................. 144, 146-147

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Subject Index primary ...............................................38 secondary ...................................... 38-39 descriptivity.............................................81 determinative..................................... 37-38 determinatum............... 33, 35-36, 136, 144 determiner.................................... 23, 27-28 diachrony..........11, 15, 54, 70, 86, 95, 112, 134, 148 see also under loss diminutiveness............................. 71, 94-96 directionality................8, 11-12, 37-38, 41, 51-52, 75, 138 see also under interpretation diversity functional ..........................................132 semantic ....................................132, 137 domain...36, 42, 44, 52, 119, 141, 145, 147 subdomain...........................................36 Doric.................................................. 88-89 Dutch ...............................................26, 116 E ellipsis.................................. 35, 57-58, 154 ending ............................ 39, 43-44, 46, 133 derivational .........................................46 inflectional ..... 34, 37-38, 42-44, 46, 132 phonological .....................................119 segmental .................. 116, 120-121, 126 see also under word English........9, 11, 13, 19-22, 26-28, 35-36, 39, 42, 44, 46, 51, 53, 56, 62-63, 71-72, 81, 86, 92-93, 104, 106-107, 109, 112, 115-116, 124, 126, 128, 132-135, 148, 150-152, 154 history of.............................................35 Middle...............................133, 135, 148 Modern ................ 14, 24, 27, 36, 39-41, 132, 148 Old ................. 14, 26-27, 37, 39-46, 133 erosion phonetic ..............................................36 Estonian...................................................53 etymology..........................................11, 13 exponent ............................ 40, 43, 105-106 case ............................................... 43-44 derivational .........................................44 formal-morphological....... 32, 35-36, 85

167

inflectional ......................................... 44 morphological ........ 35-36, 40-42, 44-46 person................................................. 41 number .................................... 41, 43-44 extension......................... 40, 140, 150, 154 figurative........................................... 8-9 semantic ................................... 146, 150 F Finnish .................................................... 53 Finno-Ugric ...................................... 38, 53 form ...........8-12, 14, 19-25, 32, 34, 37, 40, 43-46, 54-55, 68, 70-71, 76-77, 80-81 90-93, 104-106, 108-109, 112-114, 120, 123, 127, 132-139, 143-144, 146-153 active.................................................. 63 adjectival.............................. 22, 62, 106 affixless.............................................. 32 base ............... 32, 37, 42-43, 81, 90, 105 deletion............................................... 68 derivational ........................................ 71 essive.................................................. 55 inflectional .................. 9, 21, 42, 77, 81, 105-106 morphological .................................... 68 morpho-syntactic ............................. 135 natural ................................................ 68 paradigmatic..................................... 135 passive................................................ 63 phonological.......................... 21-22, 107 unmarked ......... 14, 32, 37, 43, 128, 154 see also under analogy; change; class; exponent; identity; marker; marking; modification; restriction; shift; use formation .......33-36, 39, 46, 55, 89, 94-95, 118, 122, 133-134, 148, 150-151, 153 lexeme........103-108, 111, 122-124, 126 see also stem-formation; wordformation; see also under pattern frame.............................. 141, 145, 152-153 French .. 25-26, 56, 63, 72, 79, 86, 115, 135 Old ............................................... 23, 26 function................21-25, 32, 35, 37-40, 45, 54, 108, 137, 139, 145, 149 derivational ............................ 34, 40, 44 inflectional ................................... 38, 40 morphological ......................... 36, 41-42

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168

Subject Index

nominal ...............................................22 predicative ..........................................25 syntactic ..............................28, 135, 138 see also multifunctionality; see also under change; diversity; shift G gender .................. 20, 23, 25, 76, 86, 95-96 German ..... 9, 13, 20, 25-26, 35, 39, 46, 52, 63, 71-72, 77, 84, 91-93, 103, 105-107, 110-112, 114, 122, 124, 126-128, 133, 141 Hessian ...............................................68 Modern .............................................133 Germanic ................... 27, 34, 36, 38-42, 46 Early ...................................................42 history of.............................................36 gerund..................................................9, 20 grammar ..................... 7, 21-22, 26, 32, 75, 103, 107, 110, 140 case .....................................................35 see also ungrammaticality; see also under category; modification; paradigm; word grammaticalisation ........................107, 128 Greek ...............................................39, 115 ancient...........................................88, 93 H head ...................................................33, 62 derivational .........................................71 morphosemantic .................................71 morphotactic .......................................71 phrase...................................... 22, 24-25 right-hand ...........................................69 see also under language homonymy...... 13, 20, 32, 34, 55, 103-105, 120, 124-126, 137 inflectional ..........................................20 homophony..................................12, 20, 72 Hungarian ....... 9, 11, 51-54, 56, 62-64, 107 Middle.................................................54 Early Modern......................................54 hyponymy........................................71, 124 I iconicity..................... 68, 79-80, 83, 85, 93

type of ................................................ 80 see also under affixation; conversion; relationship; substitution; subtraction; suffixation identity .................................... 12, 139, 149 formal.................... 9, 104, 132-134, 147 see also under marker imperfectivisation ............39-40, 73-75, 79, 81-84, 91, 128 unmarked ......................................... 128 see also perfectivisation indeterminacy category................................... 51-52, 56 indexicality ............................... 80, 85, 110 Indo-European ...........31, 34, 36-39, 41-42, 45-46, 53 infinitive ........ 23-28, 44-46, 78, 89, 92-94, 103, 105, 112-116, 126-127 see also under marker; noun inflection.... 9, 14, 20-21, 28-29, 31, 35-46, 54, 67-69, 71-72, 75-78, 81, 86-87, 89, 91-93, 96-97, 104-106, 108, 119-120, 132-133 adjectival.......................... 22, 35, 52, 71 contextual............................................. 9 inherent ................................................ 9 nominal ........................21-23, 27-28, 71 root-based........................................... 69 stem-based ................................... 42, 70 verbal ...................................... 23, 27-28 word-based......................................... 43 see also under category; change; class; ending; exponent; form; function; homonymy; language; marker; morphology; paradigm; pattern; process; stem; suffixation; system; type; word interpretation......................................... 148 binary ................................................. 44 denominal........................................... 39 deverbal.............................................. 39 directional .......................................... 38 nominal .............................................. 38 semantic ........................................... 105 verbal ................................................. 38 isomorphism ......................................... 146 Italian ..........................24, 69-71, 78, 92-93

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Subject Index L language ...8, 11, 14, 21, 26, 29, 33, 38, 41, 45, 51-53, 67-69, 71, 79, 85-86, 93-95, 97, 107, 112, 115-116, 123-124, 128 European....................................... 25-26 inflecting/fusional....... 20-21, 46, 67-68, 72, 76, 86-87, 91, 93, 97, 132 isolating ..................................86, 93, 97 non-article...........................................94 right-headed ......................................110 West European....................................94 see also under behaviour; system; typology Latin ............................ 86-87, 93, 104, 115 Classical..............................................21 Mediaeval ...........................................95 lexeme . 8-13, 19-21, 71, 75, 103-108, 111112, 122-124, 126, 128, 140, 150-151 nominal .............................................104 verbal ................................ 105-106, 126 see also word; see also under formation; stem lexicalisation....... 27, 35, 52, 54-57, 62, 81, 110-111, 121, 123, 148 linguistics ........................... 8-9, 31-32, 107 cognitive ...............................8, 131, 139 historical .............................................31 listeme .....................................................21 loss.............. 33, 36, 40, 42-44, 46, 133-135 diachronic ...........................................86 historical ...........................................132 M mapping .................. 141-142, 147-148, 153 markedness; see marker; marking; see also under change; form; imperfectivisation; vocabulary marker.......... 25, 42, 89, 118, 134, 138-139 case .....................................................27 class ........................................42, 45, 70 derivational .........................................46 formal ...............131, 134, 143, 146, 150 identity ..............................................149 infinitival ...................................... 27-28 inflectional ........................ 14, 42, 44-46 segmental .................................. 118-119 suffix...................................................92

169

thematic........... 70-72, 75, 80, 89, 91, 93 verbal ................................................. 27 marking........ 14, 19, 27, 29, 32, 40, 43, 80, 85, 97, 119, 128, 132, 146-147 dative.................................................. 27 formal................................................. 12 morphological ..... 41, 128, 144-145, 154 to ........................................................ 27 see also under change; derivative; form; imperfectivisation; perfectivisation; vocabulary meaning ..... 8, 10, 12-13, 21-23, 32, 34-35, 37, 39-40, 52-53, 56-58, 62, 68, 80-82, 84, 95, 104-110, 118-119, 121-125, 128, 138, 141, 146-147, 149, 151-152 adjectival............................................ 54 intensional.................................... 71, 80 passive.......................................... 53, 63 verbal ................................................. 22 see also under class; restriction; shift membership class.............................................. 10, 42 word-class .................................... 33, 52 metaphor ........... 80, 82, 140, 144, 150-151, 154, 158 metonymy ..................... 131, 135, 139-151, 153-154, 158 conceptual ........................................ 147 event-schema .............149-151, 153-154 type of ............... 141-144, 146, 149, 158 see also under motivation; relationship; shift; transfer; use mode of actions.................................. 38-39 model cognitive............ 141-143, 145, 148, 152 modification.............. 24, 27, 33, 67-68, 71, 77-80, 83, 85, 89-91, 93, 95-97, 136 allomorphic ........................................ 78 formal................................. 77, 104, 121 grammatical .................................. 27-28 lexical................................................. 28 postmodification ................................ 22 premodification.................................. 29 prosodic............................. 77-78, 90, 95 root-based........................................... 90 rule ..................................................... 86

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170

Subject Index

submodification ..................................21 see also under morphonology morpheme.................. 21, 32-33, 35, 40, 69 category-specific...............................132 derivational ................... 40, 45, 136-137 see also zero morpheme; see also under boundary; relationship morphologisation.....................................41 morphology ..... 7, 12, 21, 25, 33-88, 40-42, 44-45, 52-53, 61, 69, 71-72, 86, 93, 95-96, 103-104, 107-108, 112, 116, 119, 122, 127, 147 bound ..................................................86 derivational ...........33, 36, 69, 72, 81, 96 inflectional ............ 33, 35-36, 44, 63, 72 root-based ............ 37-38, 41, 45, 69, 71, 79, 90-91 rule ......................... 51-52, 67-69, 85, 97 split .....................................................45 stem-based ............14, 37, 41, 45, 71, 79 verb .....................................................93 word-based .................14, 37, 71, 79, 91 see also morphologisation; morphonology; morphophonemics; morphosemantics; morpho-syntax; morphotactics; see also under behaviour; category; conditioning; conversion; exponent; form; function; marking; pattern; process; shift; system; technique; type; typology; ungrammaticality; word morphonology alternation .....................................33, 41 modification.................................. 78-79 process ................................................43 rule .......................................... 43-44, 85 see also under change morphophonemics rule ......................................................33 morphosemantics......................... 36, 71-72 see also under head; transparency morpho-syntax.......................135, 140, 151 see also under category; form; morphotactics ..........................................71 see also under head; transparency motivation......................... 33, 64, 136-137, 144-146, 148, 150

descriptive.......................................... 81 metonymic ........................ 140, 146-150 semantic ............................................. 63 multifunctionality ...... 10-11, 56, 71, 86, 93 N Natural Morphology ........ 67-68, 71, 94, 97 naturalness ....................... 67, 80, 85-86, 97 see also Natural Morphology neologism ..................................... 140, 150 nominalisation .......... 13, 36, 76, 89, 93-94, 106, 139, 143, 146-147, 154 deverbal........................................ 36, 81 suffixed .............................................. 70 noun ................. 9-12, 20-23, 25-29, 32, 35, 38-44, 51-59, 67-68, 70-71, 79-80, 82-84, 89-91, 94 104-107, 110-111, 113-18, 120-122, 124-125, 131, 133, 135, 137, 147-149, 154 action..........................39-40, 82-84, 118 adjectival...................................... 55, 90 athematic............................................ 42 complex............................................ 119 derived ............ 22, 38, 57, 116-119, 143 deverbal.......................... 40, 42, 89, 119 infinitive............................................. 27 primary............................................... 38 root-based...................................... 39-40 simple............................................... 119 suffixed .............................................. 83 verbal ...................................... 79, 82-84 weak ................................................... 43 see also nominalisation; see also under base; category; compound; conversion; derivation; form; function; inflection; interpretation; lexeme; paradigm; pattern; phrase; stem; stem-formation; suffixation; use; verb; zero-derivation number ............23, 25, 29, 38-39, 41, 43-45 see also under exponent O onomasiology ......................................... 35 opacity ................. 81, 85, 97, 112, 120-121 Optimality Theory .................................... 8

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Subject Index P paradigm....... 21, 27, 33, 41-45, 72, 76, 92, 135, 153 adjectival.......................................37, 76 change....................... 132, 135, 138-139 grammatical ......................................138 inflectional ........ 23, 37, 43, 90, 104-106 nominal ....................... 37, 41, 43, 76-77 verbal ............................................37, 41 see also under form part of speech20-21, 24, 105-106, 121, 124 category ..............................................51 change.......................................105, 124 participle............................................ 59-62 past..... 33, 40-41, 45, 53, 61-62, 64, 105 present...... 9, 20, 53, 59, 61-63, 105-106 preterite............................. 33, 40-41, 45 see also under conversion; suffixation passivisation ................................ 53, 62-63 rule ......................................................62 see also under conversion; form; meaning pattern........ 33-34, 107, 110, 113-117, 119, 122, 128, 133, 140-141 accent ..................................................77 denominal ...........................................40 deverbal ..............................................40 ergative ...............................................62 formation .................. 107-108, 118, 123 inflectional ..........................................21 morphological...............................35, 40 prosodic ......................................78, 113 semantic ......................................76, 128 stress .............................................77, 94 suffixal ................................................46 target ...................................................94 word-formation.............................33, 35 perfectivisation .......... 39-40, 52, 62, 73-75, 79, 81-84, 91, 128 see also imperfectivisation; stem person ... 23, 32, 38-39, 41, 44-45, 119, 158 see also under exponent phrase ................................ 24-25, 106, 135 noun ....................................................22 prepositional .......................................27 see also under head Polish...............................76, 79, 83, 91, 95

171

polysemy.................103-105, 146, 151-152 position ............................................. 23, 31 attributive ........................................... 21 initial .................................................. 32 postposition................................... 51-52 predicative............................... 21, 24-25 word-final........................................... 79 pragmatics....................................... 11, 109 see also under constraint predicate ........................................ 146-147 predictability........... 8, 13, 41, 45, 105, 123 prefixation................. 34, 51, 121, 128, 136 see also under verb; word preverb ......................................... 51-52, 61 process .............9, 12-13, 36, 42-43, 46, 54, 57, 134, 140, 147, 150, 159 derivational ............ 8, 10, 12-13, 31, 37, 44, 46, 95, 136-137 inflectional ......................................... 20 lexical-derivational ...................... 31, 33 (pseudo-)morphological............... 12-13, 37-38, 45, 143, 146 phonological................................. 36, 85 semantic ............................ 140, 150-151 syntactic .............................. 31, 150-151 syntagmatic .................................. 31, 36 see also under lexeme-formation; wordformation; zero-derivation productivity......... 12, 22, 25, 33, 35-36, 40, 51, 53-57, 61-63, 68, 82-83, 85-86, 93, 97, 105-106, 111-112, 117-118, 121-122, 128, 132, 140, 148 prototypicality........... 19, 21, 23, 25, 28-29, 70, 72, 75-76, 80, 95, 112, 114 R re-categorisation .. 52, 63, 71, 148-149, 153 conceptual ........................................ 154 semantic .................................... 153-154 syntactic ............................. 71, 139, 154 see also categorisation; category reduction ............................................... 150 regularity..........11-12, 33, 40, 72, 106-107, 118, 120-121, 123 see also under adjective; affixation; verb; word

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172

Subject Index

relationship .........8-9, 11-13, 19-21, 34, 38, 64,134, 140, 143 allomorph............................................35 conceptual.........................................141 iconic ..................................................85 metonymic ........140, 142, 146, 148, 150 morpheme ...........................................35 semantic ....................................138, 143 restriction................56, 103, 106, 108, 122, 126-127 formal .........................................13, 126 idiosyncratic .......................................35 meaning ..............................................84 semantic ..................................13, 25, 35 Romance..................................................39 root .................37-42, 62-63, 69-71, 79, 88, 90, 93, 117 verbal ......................................38, 53, 78 see also under conversion; derivation; inflection; modification; morphology; noun; suffixation; verb rule............................. 52, 57, 59, 67-70, 90 see also under affixation; allomorph; conversion; modification; morphology; morphonology; morphophonemics; passivisation; substantivisation; substitution; suffixation Russian ......... 25, 68, 71, 73, 75-79, 82, 89, 91-95 Modern .........................................21, 94 S Sanskrit....................................................39 Saxon Old ......................................................27 script ..............................................141, 145 segment.................................. 119-120, 127 phonological .....................................119 see also under change; ending; marker semantics ...... 12, 35, 63, 82, 107, 109-110, 112, 118, 128, 150, 152 see also under category; change; constraint; conversion; diversity; extension; interpretation; motivation pattern; process; re-categorisation; relationship; restriction; transfer; transparency

Semitic .................................................... 38 Serbo-Croatian................. 74-76, 78, 90, 93 shape .................................. 94-95, 103, 108 input ................................................... 19 sound................................ 108, 112, 126 see also under conditioning shift ........................................... 36, 40, 148 category........................................ 31, 35 denotation......................................... 110 form.................................................... 21 functional ..................... 21, 35, 135, 139 gender........................................... 20, 23 meaning.............................................. 21 metonymic ....................................... 148 morphology.................................. 36, 45 sense......................................... 110, 148 stress..................................... 78, 95, 127 typological ................................... 14, 41 word-class ..................................... 35-36 signans .................................................... 80 signatum ................................................. 80 slang.................................... 56, 73, 89, 142 Slavic .......................................... 39, 70, 93 South .................................................. 54 source...................................... 61, 141, 150 Spanish ................................................. 116 stem ............... 14, 20-21, 27, 37-38, 42-43, 69-71, 78-79, 87, 89-90, 93, 107-108, 112, 115-116, 119-122, 124, 126 aorist................................................... 39 aspectual............................................. 40 derived ............................................. 118 inflectional ......................................... 40 lexemic............................................... 14 noun .............................. 40-41, 117, 124 perfect ................................................ 39 present........................................... 39-40 suffixed ............................................ 121 verb ...... 39, 45, 112, 116, 119, 124, 126 type of ................................................ 40 see also stem-formation; see also under affixation; conversion; derivation; inflection; morphology; system stem-formation ...................... 36-45, 70, 91 nominal .............................................. 40 verbal ................................................. 40 see also stem

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Subject Index stress ...............41-42, 45, 75, 77-78, 94-95, 114, 127 see also under conditioning; pattern; shift; system structuralism ............................................33 subject.................................... 23, 35, 61-62 substantivisation ................................ 56-59 rule ......................................................58 syntactic ..............................................77 substitution ........... 67-68, 76, 80, 85, 96-97 iconic ..................................................68 subtraction . 67-68, 71, 76-77, 79-80, 96-97 derivational .........................................76 iconic ..................................................68 suffixation............ 13, 31, 34-36, 40, 54-55, 57-59, 62-63, 67, 69-71, 80-84, 86, 89, 93-94, 117-121, 136-138, 147, 151 adjective............................................117 adverbial ........................... 53-55, 57, 59 case .....................................................55 deadjectival.........................................54 denominal .....................................54, 57 derivational ......9, 42, 44, 53, 70, 72, 75, 93, 137 iconic ..................................................93 inflectional .. 9, 53, 67, 72, 75, 78, 92-93 negative...............................................54 pseudo-suffix ....................................119 present participle ................................63 root-based ...........................................93 rule ......................................................86 verbal ................................................117 word-based .........................................71 word-class-changing...........................76 word-formation.................................137 see also zero suffixation; see also under derivation; marker; nominalisation; noun; pattern; verb; word superlative .................................55, 60, 135 Swedish .............................................20, 23 synchrony ...............11, 15, 36, 38, 52, 117, 120, 134 see also under system syncretism........................................20, 104 synecdoche .................................... 141-142 synonymy ................... 20, 68, 80, 113-114, 122-123, 137

173

lexical................................................. 83 syntagma........................ 32-34, 36, 46, 136 word-formation .................................. 44 see also under behaviour; process syntax............34-35, 81, 138-140, 150, 153 see also under behaviour; category; class; context; conversion; function; process; re-categorisation; substantivisation; transposition; ungrammaticality; usage; use system aspectual........................................ 39-41 inflectional ............................. 14, 20, 37 language ............................................. 11 linguistic............................................. 36 morphological ......38-39, 44-46, 94, 126 stem-based ......................................... 14 stress................................................... 41 sub-system ......................................... 36 synchronic.......................................... 52 tense .............................................. 40-41 typological ......................................... 43 verb .................................................... 38 word-based......................................... 14 word-class ...................................... 8, 12 T tagmeme ............................................ 34-35 target .............. 103, 141, 143-145, 150, 153 see also under pattern technique.......................... 35, 85, 93, 96-97 morphological .......67-69, 71, 77, 79-80, 93, 96-97 tense ................................................... 39-41 past ..................................................... 41 present.......................................... 32, 45 preterite .............................................. 45 see also under stem; system theme .............................. 35, 52, 62, 76, 85 vowel....................41-42, 70-72, 78, 115 see also under marker; noun transfer .......................................... 142, 147 conceptual ........................................ 142 metonymic ....................................... 144 semantic ............................ 140, 150-151 transparency........ 81-85, 118-119, 121-122 morphosemantic.......... 33, 80-81, 83, 85

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174

Subject Index

morphotactic ........................... 80-81, 85 semantic ............................................106 transposition ... 103, 105-106, 138-139, 154 syntactic ......................................35, 136 type inflecting/fusional............ 43, 67-68, 93, 97, 132 morphological......................... 14-15, 45 see also under affixation; base; category; iconicity; conversion; metonymy; stem; word-class; wordformation; zero-derivation typology...........8, 14, 36, 38, 53, 86, 93, 97 adequacy ................................. 67-68, 86 language..............................................31 morphological.....................................14 see also under shift; system U ungrammaticality...................113, 122, 127 morphological...........................110, 127 phonological .....................................127 syntactic ............................................110 see also grammar uniqueness; see (bi-)uniqueness usage................................................23, 148 syntactic ............................................136 use..........................................................147 adjectival................... 54, 56, 58-59, 105 adverbial .............................................52 attributive......................................55, 61 form ..................................................146 informal ............................................152 metonymic ........................................148 nominal ..... 54, 56-57, 89, 106, 135, 154 predicative ..................................60, 135 syntactic ......................................21, 148 transitive .............................................29 verbal .........25, 105, 109, 112, 114, 119, 126, 147-148 word .......... 121, 131, 135-136, 139, 147 V verb ............ 9-10, 20-28, 32-33, 38-42, 46, 51, 60-62, 64, 71, 80, 84, 89-90, 105-128, 131, 133, 137, 147, 149, 159 auxiliary ..............................................27

causative................................ 39-40, 124 complex.................................... 113, 122 denominal................ 34, 40, 42, 46, 110, 133, 140, 148 derived ................................. 22, 38, 128 inchoative........................................... 40 intransitive ................................. 62, 105 modality ............................................. 27 prefixed ...................................... 83, 119 primary.......................................... 38-39 reflexive ........................................... 105 regularity...................................... 33, 40 root-based........................................... 39 secondary ........................................... 40 simple....................................... 114, 124 strong ...................................... 38-39, 42 suffixed ............................................ 122 transitive........................... 107, 120, 124 weak ...................................39-41, 44-45 see also imperfectivisation; perfectivisation; passivisation; verbalisation; see also under base; category; compound; conversion; inflection; interpretation; lexeme; marker; meaning; morphology; nominalisation; noun; paradigm; pattern; stem; stem-formation; suffixation; system; use; zero-derivation verbalisation ..................... 36, 93, 114, 118 vocabulary ........................ 38, 46, 112, 140 unmarked ................................. 114, 154 W word ...............10-11, 14, 20-21, 24, 28, 37, 42, 54-55, 69, 71, 75, 79, 85, 90, 94, 103-104, 112-114, 116, 119-121, 123-124, 127, 131-132, 134-136, 138-142, 146-147, 149-154 complex.............................. 81, 140, 151 derived ................ 23, 121, 134, 137-138 ending............................................... 133 grammatical ...................... 104-106, 121 inflected ........................................... 119 irregular............................................ 121 morphological .................................. 119 prefixed ............................................ 119 primary............................................. 138

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Subject Index suffixed .............................................119 see also lexeme; word-form; wordformation; see also under category; conversion; inflection; morphology; position; suffixation; system; use word-class...............8-15, 20, 37-38, 71-72, 76-77, 86, 93, 96, 103, 132-133, 139, 150, 152, 154 change...... 10, 14, 34-36, 52, 67, 72, 76, 95-96, 132, 135-136, 140, 143, 149, 151, 153-154 open ....................................................10 type of ...............................................140 see also class; membership; see also under shift; suffixation; system word(-)form..........19-21, 37, 44-45, 70-71, 79, 104 word-formation.........7-9, 12-13, 31-36, 46, 85, 136-141, 146, 149-151 process ..... 13, 33-35, 137-139, 150, 153 type of ........................12, 133, 135, 137, 139, 144, 146, 150, 158 see also formation; see also under category; pattern; process; suffixation; syntagma

175

Z zero ........... 12-13, 31-34, 36-37, 39, 42-46, 72, 137 derivational .................................. 12, 15 zero allomorph....................... 33-34, 43, 45 see also allomorph; zero zero-derivation......... 7-8, 12-13, 19, 31-36, 46, 51, 72, 131-134, 136-140, 143-144, 146-151, 153 denominal......................................... 158 deverbal............................................ 159 process ............................................. 132 type of ...................................... 149, 158 see also derivation; zero; noun zero morpheme ...... 13, 32, 34, 36, 44, 133, 136-137, 139 see also morpheme; zero zero suffixation ...................................... 72; see also suffixation; zero

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