ACKNOWLEDGEMENT In order to complete this graduation paper, I have received a lot of advice, encouragement and help of many teachers and friends. First, I wish to express my gratitude to Mrs. Le Thi Hong-teacher of Haiphong University, Mrs. Nguyen Thi Phi Nga-teacher of Haiphong Private Unversity, who has given me continual encouragement, constructive comments and suggestions from start to finish.
Her support helped me a lot during the time of writing this graduation paper. Second, I would like to show my thanks to Mrs. Tran Thi Ngoc Lien-the dean of the foreign language department of Haiphong Private University for her help and encouragement. My thanks also are sent to all teachers in foreign language department for their help during the time I study at the university.
I also want to sent my thanks to my family and friends for their support. Finally, I hope that this work will be useful for anyone who concern with this theme Hai Phong, June 2009. Trần Thị Dung 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Part I: Introduction 1. Rationale of study.
Scope of study. Methods of study. Design of study. 2 Part II: Development Chapter I: Theoretical background.
Definitions of conversion. Phenomena of conversion. Modal verb – ordinary verb. Closed system word – noun.
Approximate conversion: voicing and stress shift. Common nouns used to make verbs by conversion. Name of tools or implements. Name of animals.
Name of parts of body. Name of professions. Name of places. Name of colors.
Classification of conversion. Traditional and occasional conversion. Approximate conversion: voicing and stress shift. 19 Chapter II: The effectiveness of conversion.
Avoiding the lack of words repetition and misleading. 28 Chapter III: Some difficulties in applying conversion in daily conversations and suggested solutions. Restriction of conversion. No native language environment.
Difficulties in realizing meaning of verbs formed by conversion 3 in English. Difficulties in realizing meaning of verbs formed by conversion in Vietnamese. Watching original English films and stories; establishing English clubs. Improving knowledge in term of cultures.
Improving awareness of students. 41 Part III: Conclusion 1. Suggestions for further study. Rationale of study Nowadays, English plays an important role and becomes the international language.
It is used widely in the world in all aspects: trade, economy, science and technology… Moreover, English is the requirement of seeking jobs and is often the language which much of business of good job is conducted. In recent years with the ―open-door‖ policy English learning in our country develops strongly as a trend. It is taught not only in universities, high schools but also in primary school and became compelled subject at school. At Haiphong Private University as well as other university, English is indispensable subject.
And English department at Haiphong Private University always has high compliment. Every year, there are more than 100 graduated students to meet the need of society. And all students here always try to learn English, especially English-major students. They take advantages to practice English.
They applied what they have learnt in daily conversations, among them conversion is always used. It brings big effect. It helps students avoid the shortage of word and repetition, but using well conversion in daily conversations is not easy at all. Students still have trouble with it.
I want to know clearer about the effectiveness as well as difficulties when using conversion then find out the solutions to help students at Haiphong Private University. That the reason why I choose the research entitled ―An analysis on the effectiveness of conversion in daily conversations: Focus on English-major students at Haiphong Private University‖ 2. Scope of study Conversion is an important phenomenon in English lexicology. There are conversions from noun to verb, from adjective to verb… 5 But due to the frame of time, knowledge and experience we only focus on conversion which English-major students at Haiphong Private University always use in daily conversations.
With this research I want to: - Provide the overview of conversion in English with definitions, classification… - find the effectiveness of conversion as well as difficulties when using it - find the solutions to help students use conversion more effectively 3. Methods of study In order to carry out this study the theoretical foundation is formed on the knowledge which has been gained through 4 years. Second, documents are collected by accessing internet, reference books, searching libraries. Third, there also has discussion with supervisor and my friends.
With such methods, we hope that the study will get good result 4. Application places The study is to find out the effectiveness of using conversion in daily conversations. It can be reference document for English major students as well as teachers not only at Haiphong Private University but also at other universities. Design of study To describe the study clearly and understand it deeply about conversion and effectiveness of conversion in daily conversations, my paper is performed by 3 parts.
6 PART I: Introduction consists of the rationale, scope, methods, applications places and design of paper. PART II: Development presents three chapters: Chapter 1: is theoretical background, which introduces the overview of conversion, phenomena of conversion. Chapter 2: is the main chapter, which mentions the effectiveness of conversion: syntactic effectiveness, pragmatics effectiveness, avoiding the lack of words, repetition and misleading with examples and analyzing. Chapter 3: is some difficulties in applying conversion in daily conversations and suggested solutions to help English-major students at Haiphong Private University use conversion effectively.
PART III: conclusion summarizes the content of paper. As usual, the last past of study is references. 7 PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1. Definitions of conversion Conversion is the derivational process whereby an item changes its word-class without the addition of an affix (Quirk, Randolph & Green Baum) Conversion is the formation of a new word in a different part of speech without adding any element (Hoang Tat Truong – Basic English lexicology) Another highly productive word formation process is conversion, which is the term used to describe a word class change without any morphological marking.
Party (noun) -> party (verb) We will be at the party They like to party Must (verb) -> must (noun) You must eat your soup It is a must that you call him Conversion is the formation of new words by another class. This is a method of turning words of one part of speech to those of a different part of speech. These words are new only in a grammatical sense. Since the words do not change in morphological structure but in function, this process is also known as functional shift.
8 In linguistics, conversion, also called zero derivation, is a kind of word formation; specifically, it is the creation of a word from an existing word without any change in form. Conversion is more productive in some languages than in others; in English it is a fairly productive process. Often a word of one lexical category (part of speech) is converted to a word of another lexical category; for example, the noun green in golf (referring to a putting-green) is derived ultimately from the adjective green. Conversions from adjectives to nouns and vice versa are both very common and unnotable in English; much more remarked upon is verbing, the creation of a verb by converting a noun or other word (e.
the adjective clean becomes the verb to clean). The boundary between conversion and functional shift (the extension of an existing word to take on a new syntactic function) is not well-defined Conversion is probably the most popular and most defend view nowadays. However, numerous followers may be found from the nineteenth century up to the present day. Among others, Sweet (1898) and Kennedy (1935) may be mentioned as its most important supporters.
Sweet (1898: 38) seems to have been the first to use the term conversion. He defines it as the phenomenon that makes a word into ―another part of speech without any modification or addition, except the necessary change of infection, etc.‖ Thus, the verb walk in he walks, for example, may be said to have been converted into a noun by simply giving it the same formal characteristics as other nouns, as in He tool a walk, or three different walks o life. In Sweet‘s opinion, ―the‖ essential characteristic of conversion is the change of lexical category, or ―part of speech‖. Therefore, Sweet speaks of conversion only in those cases in which the word adopts all the formal characteristics (inflection, for example) of the new part of speech into which it have been converted.
Simon (1955: 307) also makes a similar point: ―That new words are really created here and that they are not just cases of one part of speech being used in the function 9 of another…is testified by the fact that these new denominal verbs fully acquire all the grammatical categories‖ be longing to the new part of speech the word has been made into. In spite of this, Sweet admits that formal criterion is not always conclusive. Accordingly, in examples like the good are happy he speaks of partial conversion, since good, like nouns, can have a definite article before it but like adjective, it does not take plural inflection. The term conversion, after its coinage, has been used to refer to a wide range of phenomena, all sharing one property: the use of one form in a different (syntactic) context (different from its prototypical one), involving a category change besides other associated characteristics such as meaning alteration.
Moreover, the different authors focus on one feature or the other, depending on how they interpret the phenomenon. Thus, Jespersen (1924: 154), for example, stresses the derivation relation that holds between members such as tea (n) and tea (v), as follows: Many people say that in the sentence We tead at the vicarage we have a case of a substantive used as a verb. The truth is that we have a real verb, just as real as dine or eat, though derived from the substantive tea, and derived without any distinctive ending in the infinitive (my emphasis). But, beyond these interpretations, Kruisinga (1932a, 1932b) extends the use of the term not only to those cases in which categorical change takes place and to instances of partial conversion but also to changes within a given word class.
Thus, the word war in War is going to cease because people adequately civilized will not endure hardness is, in Kruisinga‘s opinion, ―converted‖ from a class noun to an abstract noun, or the noun Westminster in the phrase a young Westminster, referring to a boy at Westminster school, is a conversion of proper noun to a common noun. Similarly, Kennedy (1935: 317 and 576) regards conversion as ― functional change not only between the part of speech but also within each part of speech‖ (emphasis added), an idea captured later by Quirk et al (1985:1563-66) who speak of ―change of secondary word class‖. 10 Unlike Sweet (1898), who mentions the change of word class as well as the required formal changes as the conditions for the recognition of conversion, Kennedy claims that there is no change in the form of a word but not only in its general functions. However, he adds that conversion may only be considered complete ―when a word has changed its function to such an extend that it is capable of taking on new inflectional endings‖ (Kennedy, 1935:318).
Furthermore, she underlines that conversion should be viewed as a derivational phenomenon since, in her opinion, forms like cooks, substantive plural, and cooked, simple past of the verb, are forms of two different words. In spite of this, Duszak apparently places more emphasis on the conception of conversion as ―largely a potential semantic phenomenon‖ (Duszak, 1980:70). This idea had also been pointed out by Leech (1974:214).
