И. В. Арнольд лексикология современного английского языка Издание

§ 8.7 CONVERSION AND OTHER TYPES OF WORD-FORMATION

The flexibility of the English vocabulary system makes a word formed by conversion capable of further derivation, so that it enters into combinations not only with functional but also with derivational affixes characteristic of a verbal stem, and becomes distributionally equivalent to it. For example, view ‘to watch television’ gives viewable, viewer, viewing.

Conversion may be combined with other word-building processes, such as composition. Attributive phrases like black ball, black list, pin point, stone wall form the basis of such firmly established verbs as blackball, blacklist, pinpoint, stonewall. The same pattern is much used in nonce-words such as to my-dear, to my-love, to blue-pencil.

This type should be distinguished from cases when composition and conversion are not simultaneous, that is when, for instance, a compound noun gives rise to a verb: corkscrew n : : corkscrew v; streamline n : : streamline v.

A special pattern deserving attention because of its ever increasing productivity results as a combined effect of composition and conversion forming nouns out of verb-adverb combinations. This type is different from conversion proper as the basic forms are not homonymous due to the difference in the stress pattern, although they consist of identical morphemes. Thanks to solid or hyphenated spelling and single stress the noun stem obtains phonetical and graphical integrity and indivisibility absent in the verb-group, сf. to ‘draw ‘back : : a ‘drawback. Further examples are: blackout n : : black out v; breakdown n : : break down v; come-back, drawback, fall-out, hand-out, hangover, knockout, link-up, lookout, lockout, makeup, pull-over, runaway, run-off, set-back, take-off, takeover, teach-in.

The type is specifically English, its intense and growing development is due to the profusion of verbal collocations (see p. 120 ff) and con- or unchangeable, whether the meaning of the one element remains free, and,