Martsa S. Conversion in English: A Cognitive Semantic Approach

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, 2013, 323 pages, ISBN: 9781443864183, 9781443849326The present work consists of twelve chapters distributed into four major parts. The first three chapters, constituting Part I, peruse previous
interpretations of conversion, namely derivational, syntactic, lexicalsemantic and non-processual interpretations. Out of derivational interpretations the one claiming that during conversion the converting base takes on a zero-suffix is the most widely accepted and, perhaps not accidentally, the most widely criticised.The main concern of Part II, also including three chapters, is to identify the types and scope of English conversion. In this study conversion is treated as a process of semantic derivation motivated by conceptual shifts. Arguments in favour of this interpretation are presented in Part III.Part IV sets out to explore three interrelated issues concerning the status of conversion as a morphological category: these are the polysemy
vs. homonymy issue, the directionality issue and the productivity vs. analogy issue. Out of these issues only directionality has been given due
attention in the corresponding literature, the other two having been either completely ignored or, especially productivity, considered self-evident and therefore not been studied seriously. In the chapters constituting this part evidence is provided to prove that these three issues are in effect mutually conditioned and none of them can be properly dealt with without taking the other two into account. Concretely, in claiming that conversion is a productive process, its direction must also be statable in synchronic terms. That conversion is a directional process directly follows from the semantic link between conversion pairs.