Gender/sex expressing suffixes

4.  Gender/sex expressing suffixes.

In the Ukrainian language they can express masculine gender:

- -ар/яр (лікар, школяр);

- -ист/іст (бандурист);

- -ій (водій);

- -ант/ент (студент).

Feminine gender can be expressed by means of the following suffixes:

-  -к (артистка);

-  -их (кравчиха).

Neuter gender is expressed by means of:

-  -атк (курчатко);

-  -к (вушко);

-  -ц (винце).

English gender suffixes are only sex expressing: actor – actress.

5.  International suffixes:

-  -er/or ор(conductor, кондуктор);

-  -ist/іст (socialist, соціаліст);

-  -tion/ц (revolution, революція);

-  -able/абельн(readable, читабельний).

In both languages there are semi-affixes. In English these are the elements:

loadsa-, friendly, -something.

In Ukrainian the semi-suffixes are: повно-, ново-, само-, авто-, -вод, -воз (повноправно, автопілот, водовоз, тепловоз).

Conversion (zero derivation, root formation, functional change) is the process of coining a new word in a different part of speech and with different distribution characteristics but without adding any derivative element, so that the basic form of the original and the basic form of derived words are homonymous. This phenomenon can be illustrated by the following cases: work – to work, love – to love, water – to water.

If we regard these words from the angle of their morphemic structure, we see that they are root words. On the derivational level, however, one of them should be referred to a derived word, as having the same root morpheme they belong to different parts of speech. Consequently the question arises here: “What serves as the word-building means in such cases?” It would appear that the noun is formed from the verb (or vice versa) without any morphological change, but if we probe deeper into the matter, we inevitably come to the conclusion that the two words differ only in the paradigm. Thus, it is the paradigm that is used as a word-building means. Hence, we can define conversion as the formation of a new word through changes in its paradigm.

The change of the paradigm is the only word-building means of conversion. As the paradigm is a morphological category, conversion can be described as a morphological way of forming words.

As a type of word-formation conversion exists in many languages. What is specific for the English vocabulary is not its mere presence, but its intense development.

The main reason for the widespread development of conversion in present-day English is no doubt the absence of morphological elements serving as classifying signals, or, in other words, of formal signs marking the part of speech to which the word belongs. The fact that the sound pattern does not show to what part of speech the word belongs may be illustrated by the word back. It may be a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb.

Many affixes are homonymous and therefore the general sound pattern does not contain any information as to the possible part of speech.

e.g.: maiden (N), darken (V), woollen (A), often (Adv).

O. Jesperson points out that the causes that made conversion so widely spread are to be approached diachronically. The noun and verb have become identical in form firstly as a result of the loss of endings. More rarely it is the prefix that is lost (mind < gemynd). When endings had disappeared phonetical development resulted in the merging of sound forms for both elements of these pairs.

e.g.: OE carian (verb) and caru (noun) merged into care (verb, noun); OE drinkan (verb) and drinca, drinc (noun) merged into drink (verb, noun).

A similar homonymy resulted in the borrowing from French of pairs of words of the same root but belonging in French to different parts of speech. These words lost their affixes and became phonetically identical in the process of assimilation.

Prof. A. Smirnitsky is of the opinion that on a synchronic level there is no difference in correlation between such cases as listed above, i.e. words originally differentiated by affixes and later becoming homonymous after the loss of endings (sleep – noun :: sleep – verb) and those formed by conversion (pencil – noun :: pencil – verb).

Prof. I. Arnold is of the opinion that prof. Smirnitsky is mistaken. His mistake is in the wish to call both cases conversion, which is illogical if he, or any of his followers, accepts the definition of conversion as a word-building process which implies the diachronistic approach. Prof. I. Arnold states that synchronically both types sleep (noun) – sleep (verb) and pencil (noun) – pencil (verb) must be treated together as cases of patterned homonymy. But it is essential to differentiate the cases of conversion and treat them separately when the study is diachronistic.

Conversion has been the subject of a great many discussions since 1891 when

H. Sweet first used the term in his New English Grammar. Various opinions have been expressed on the nature and character of conversion in the English language and different conceptions have been put forward.

The treatment of conversion as a morphological way of forming words was suggested by A.I. Smirnitsky and accepted by R.Z. Ginzburg, S.S. Khidekel,

G.Y. Knyazeva, A.A. Sankin.

Other linguists sharing, on the whole, the conception of conversion as a morphological way of forming words disagree, however, as to what serves here as a word-building means. Some of them define conversion as a non-affixal way of forming words pointing out that its characteristic feature is that a certain stem is used for the formation of a categorically different word without a derivational affix being added

(I.R. Galperin, Y.B. Cherkasskaya).

Others hold the view that conversion is the formation of new words with the help of a zero-morpheme (H. Marchand).

There is also a point of view on conversion as a morphological-syntactic word-building means (Y.A. Zhluktenko), for it involves, as the linguists sharing this conception maintain, both a change of the paradigm and of the syntactic function of the word.

e.g.: I need some paper for my room : He is papering his room.

Besides, there is also a purely syntactic approach commonly known as a functional approach to conversion. In Great Britain and the United States of America linguists are inclined to regard conversion as a kind of functional change. They define conversion as a shift from one part of speech to another contending that in modern English a word may function as two different parts of speech at the same time.

The two categories of parts of speech especially affected by conversion are the noun and the verb. Verbs made from nouns are the most numerous among the words produced by conversion.

e.g.: to hand, to face, to nose, to dog, to blackmail.

Nouns are frequently made from verbs: catch, cut, walk, move, go.

Verbs can also be made from adjectives: to pale, to yellow, to cool.

A word made by conversion has a different meaning from that of the word from which it was made though the two meanings can be associated. There are certain regularities in these associations which can be roughly classified. In the group of verbs made from nouns some regular semantic associations are the following:

- A noun is a name of a tool – a verb denotes an action performed by the tool: to knife, to brush.

- A noun is a name of an animal – a verb denotes an action or aspect of behaviour typical of the animal: monkey – to monkey, snake – to snake. Yet, to fish does not mean to behave like a fish but to try to catch fish.

- A noun denotes a part of a human body – a verb denotes an action performed by it : hand – to hand, shoulder – to shoulder. However, to face does not imply doing something by or even with one’s face but turning it in a certain direction.

- A noun is a name of some profession or occupation – a verb denotes an activity typical of it : a butcher – to butcher, a father – to father.

- A noun is a name of a place – a verb denotes the process of occupying this place or putting something into it: a bed – to bed, a corner – to corner.

- A noun is the name of a container – a verb denotes an act of putting something within the container: a can – to can, a bottle – to bottle.

- A noun is the name of a meal – a verb denotes the process of taking it: supper – to supper, lunch – to lunch.

The suggested groups do not include all the great variety of verbs made from nouns by conversion. They just represent the most obvious cases and illustrate the great variety of semantic interrelations within the so-called converted pairs and the complex nature of the logical associations which underlie them.

In actual fact, these associations are more complex and sometimes even perplexing.

Types of Conversion

Partial conversion is a kind of a double process when first a noun is formed by conversion from a verbal stem and next this noun is combined with such verbs as to give, to make, to take to form a separate phrase: to have a look, to take a swim, to give a whistle.

There is a great number of idiomatic prepositional phrases as well: to be in the know, in the long run, to get into a scrape. Sometimes the elements of these expressions have a fixed grammatical form, as, for example, where the noun is always plural: It gives me the creeps (jumps). In other cases the grammatical forms are free to change.

Reconversion is the phenomenon when one of the meanings of the converted word is a source for a new meaning of the same stem: cable (металевий провідник) – to cable (телеграфувати) – cable(телеграма); help(допомога) – to help (допомагати пригощати) – help (порція їжі), deal (кількість) – to deal (роздавати) – deal (роздача карт).

Substantivation can also be considered as a type of conversion. Complete substantivation is a kind of substantivation when the whole paradigm of a noun is acquired: a private - the private – privates – the privates. Alongside with complete substantivation there exists partial substantivation when a feature or several features of a paradigm of a noun are acquired: the rich. Besides the substantivized adjectives denoting human beings there is a considerable group of abstract nouns: the Singular, the Present. It is thus evident that substantivation has been the object of much controversy. Those who do not accept substantivation of adjectives as a type of conversion consider conversion as a process limited to the formation of verbs from nouns and nouns from verbs. But this point of view is far from being universally accepted.

Conversion is not characteristic of the Ukrainian language. The only type of conversion that can be found there is substantivation: молодий, хворий.