Chapter 4: Morphology

de-verbal nouns 
„state‟, „state of mind‟ 
desire, dismay, doubt, love, smell, taste, want 
„event/activity‟ 
attempt, fall, hit, laugh, release, search, swim 
„object of V‟ 
answer („that which answers‟), bet, catch, find 
„subject of V‟ 
bore („s.o./s.th. who/that bores‟), cheat, coach 
„instrument of V‟ 
cover („s.th. with which to cover things‟), paper 
„manner of V-ing‟ 
walk („manner of walking‟), throw 
„place of V‟ 
divide, retreat, rise, turn 
de-nominal verbs 
„to put in/on N‟ 
bottle, corner, catalogue, floor, garage 
‟to give/provide with N‟ 
butter (bread), coat, commission, grease, oil 
„to deprive of N‟ 
core, peel, skin 
„to … with N‟ 
brake, elbow, fiddle, hand, finger, glue 
„to be/act as N with respect to‟ 
chaperone, father, nurse, parrot, pilot 
„to make/change … into N‟ 
cash, cripple, group 
„to send/go by N‟ 
mail, ship, telegraph; bicycle, boat, canoe 
de-adjectival verbs 
„to make (more) Adj‟ (trans. V) 
calm, dirty, dry, humble, lower 
„to become Adj‟(intrans. V) 
dry, empty, narrow, weary (of ), yellow 
There has been some controversy in linguistics as to how the phenomenon of conversion 
should be explained theoretically. The approach presented so far regards it as some kind of 
invisible transfer process very similar to overt suffixations. Another possibility is to argue that 
many lexemes in the English lexicon have either multiple word-class membership or are not 
determined with regard to word-classes anyway, but only acquire word-class properties when 

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used in syntactic contexts (Farell 2001). Extreme cases supporting the latter view include the 
form round, which can be used as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb and preposition or particle. 
Yet another approach, which emphasizes the similarity to overt suffixation, works with the 
notion of zero-morpheme and claims that the word-class change is brought about by a suffix 
that does not have a formal substance (Marchand 1969: 360ff). The verb to empty, for 
example, would be explained as a result of the addition of the zero-morpheme to the adjective 
empty (empty – empty + {Ø}) in analogy to cases like legal – legalize or public – publicize. 
An argument in favour of this approach is that the semantic change effected by the zero-
morpheme („cause to be empty‟) is also identical to the one taking place in overt formations.