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zero derivation

Zero derivation, or conversion, is a linguistic process where a word changes its grammatical category without morphological change. It is highly productive in Modern English, allowing for multiple meanings and uses of a single word form, which can complicate semantic analysis. The phenomenon raises issues such as polysemy and the loss of category-specific affixes, impacting the understanding of word relationships in the language.

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5 views

zero derivation

Zero derivation, or conversion, is a linguistic process where a word changes its grammatical category without morphological change. It is highly productive in Modern English, allowing for multiple meanings and uses of a single word form, which can complicate semantic analysis. The phenomenon raises issues such as polysemy and the loss of category-specific affixes, impacting the understanding of word relationships in the language.

Uploaded by

KAREN LEI CORPUZ
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Zero Derivation

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Zero Derivation
- also known as conversion,
refers to the process in linguistics
by which a word changes its
grammatical category without
any overt morphological change,
i.e., without adding affixes

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https://library.fiveable.me/fundamentals-of-the-grammar-of-standard-english/unit-3/
morphological-rules-patterns/study-guide/VXqWk8SfNZxFL0QK

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4
VE
RB

SENTENCE 1 Please will you list


your belongings on
this sheet? NO
UN

SENTENCE 2 He gave me a long


list of his troubles.

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A change in the function of a word, as for example
when a noun comes to be used as a verb (without
any reduction).
For example:

 stand up (V) stand up comedian (Adj.)


 to print out a printout (N)

 bottle to bottle (V)

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Some sets of zero derivation show a difference in
stress.

V N

con’duct ‘conduct
re’bel ‘rebel
per’mit ‘permit
im’port ‘import

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As a number of linguistic analyses of the English lexicon have shown,
English con-
siderably exploits its potential for using one word as a representative of
a number
of distinct word categories or classes.
Lipka (1992: 85), for example, finds that zero-derivation is extremely
productive in Modern English (ModE). Also Bauer (1983: 226) (using the
term conversion) lists it as an extremely productive type of forming
new words in English.
In this respect, we can say that English is remark-able, allowing for a
noticeable amount of formal identity with functional or seman-tic
diversity

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Issues/concerns on
ZERO DERIVATION

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1.Polysemy
• Words that undergo zero derivation can accumulate
multiple meanings.

For example, the word "run" as a verb has many meanings,


and its use as a noun also involves different senses ("a run in
your stockings," "a run in a race").

This polysemy can complicate semantic analysis and disambiguation.


One lexeme with two different interpretion

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Word lexeme helps us to analyse polysemy – the existence of several
meanings in separate words.

For example:
fair (n). (as a collection of outdoor entertainments, stalls)
fair (adj.1) (as good, acceptable)
fair (adj.2) (as light in colour of the skin or hair).

This lexeme has three related meanings for one and the same word form.
This also refers to the meanings of the following lexeme:
Lap (1 n./v.) (as in a race)
lap (2 v. )(as in ‘the cat laps the milk’)
Lap (3 n.) (as in ‘sit on my lap’).

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According to Stefanovski (2006, p. 93), polysemy
is a serious problem in lexicology and
lexicography because, taking into consideration
what English lexicographers think, it is very
possible for one word to appear in different word
groups. This reasoning already approaches the
third notion that is also our subject of study here,
and is one of the most distinguished processes in
the contemporary English language – zero
derivation.

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Call me on Sundays.

That was a quick call.

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2. The loss of category-specific
affixes (which had been part of the word
before) and the formation of new
words without adding any
formal marker

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According to Vogel (1996: 43), result in a problem with
regard to the synchronic status of such pairs. It is true
that all the formally identical words look as if they
represented an unmarked change of the word
category, but one cannot see whether this is actually
true from a diachronic point of view, i.e. whether they
were once two distinct forms and became identical
only as a consequence of the loss of their category-
specific marker(s).

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certainly important for the specification of the relationship between the two
identical forms, or more specifically, for the determination of which of the two
can be considered the base and which the derivation or the derived word.

For the discussion here, however, it does not seem to be necessary to tell the
origi-
nal zero-derivations apart from those which only – accidentally – end up in
such a
form, because this is a fact that is also not available to the ordinary language
user.
He will treat those forms alike. I will take this perspective, i.e. I will concentrate
on
the phenomenon of zero-derivation from an exclusively synchronic perspective.

That means I will consider such ModE words which – without any formal indica-
tion – occur as representatives of at least two word categories, no matter
whether
this was different at older stages of English or not.

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Thank
you !!!
Hope you’ve learned something
today!

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