Ho Chi Minh University of Education
English Department
Word Formation in English and Vietnamese
A contrastive analysis
Instructor: Nguyen Ngoc Vu
Student: Nguyen Thi Quynh
Class: 4A
Ho Chi Minh City, December 2010
ABSTRACT
One of the things that make humans different from animals is language. Actually,
language serves as a vital tool for us to communicate, establish different relationships
among others, work and perform other tough tasks. Different people live in different
places in the world speak different languages, which constitutes a variety of languages.
Language makes people a distinction. However, different languages have different rules.
Each word, each sound or each sentence we speak, we write is rule – governed and
English and Vietnamese also have their own ways of forming their lexicon. As a learner
of English, I want to point out some similarities and differences between English and
Vietnamese word formation, some errors that students often meet and serve as
suggestions for English teachers to help them overcome those problems.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Mentioning language family, English belongs to Indo – European language family while
Vietnamese belongs to the Austro-Asiatic language. In spite of this difference, the two
languages still share some similarities. To know and use a language to communicate
means to know words of that language. It is estimated that average speakers of a language
know from 45,000 to 60,000 words and new words enter our mind and our language on a
daily basis. So, what does a word mean?
Defining what a word means in a language is not quite easy because it depends on
different factors that people base on. For example, It has been argued that the word could
be defined in four other ways: in terms of sound structure (i.e. phonologically), in terms
of its internal integrity, in terms of meaning (i.e. semantically), or in terms of sentence
structure (i.e. syntactically). According to Cambridge dictionary, word is a single unit of
language which has meaning and can be written or spoken. This is just quite simple,
typical and understandable. It seems that English and Vietnamese share many things in
common through this way of definition. In addition, Leonard Bloomfield introduced the
concept of "Minimal Free Forms" in 1926. He suggested that words are thought of as the
smallest meaningful unit of speech that can stand by themselves. This correlates
phonemes (units of sound) to lexemes (units of meaning). However, some written words
are not minimal free forms, as they make no sense by themselves (for example, the and
of). In the semantic field, some semanticists have proposed a theory of so-called
‘semantic primitives or semantic primes’, indefinable words representing fundamental
concepts that are intuitively meaningful. According to this theory, semantic primes serve
as the basis for describing the meaning, without circularity, of other words and their
associated conceptual denotations. Another fully complicated concept is ‘A word is the
smallest free form (an item that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic
content) in a language, in contrast to a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning.
A word may consist of only one morpheme (e.g. so, very), but a single morpheme may
not be able to exist as a free form (e.g. the English plural morpheme -s)’ (Wikipedia). It
proved that a word in English and Vietnamese language is characterized by morpheme.
So, what is a morpheme? A morpheme is the smallest component of word, or other
linguistic unit, that has semantic meaning (Wikipedia). Other name in the linguistic
branch of morpheme is morpheme – based morphology. In spoken language, a morpheme
is the smallest unit of sound, called phoneme(s) while it is called grapheme(s) in written
language. One or several morphemes compose a word. In other words, we can
differentiate word from morpheme by a feature that a morpheme may or may not stand
alone while a word can. Many linguists categorized morpheme into two types: free
morpheme and bound morpheme. Free morphemes are the same as words, they can stand
alone, for example, book, cat, and cut in English and cá, cơm, đi, học in Vietnamese.
Bound morphemes cannot stand alone, they have to be attached to another morpheme
such as the plural form –s in books, oranges; the ending –ed in wanted, decided. Through
this theory, it seems that most Vietnamese words are syllables and they can stand alone
with no need of other morphemes or affixation. Therefore, the notion of bound morpheme
is not feasible in Vietnamese. According to their function, bound morphemes can be also
divided into inflectional and derivational morphemes. Inflectional morphemes don’t
change the meaning or part of speech of a morpheme. They particularly indicate a
grammatical function such as case, number, person, gender, voice, mood, tense or aspect.
This kind of morpheme can only be a suffix. English has the following inflectional
morphemes: -(e)s (plural) and -s (possessive) are noun inflections as in books, dishes,
Mary’s letter; -(e)s ( 3rd-person singular), -ed ( past tense), -en (past participle) and -ing (
present participle) are verb inflections as in watches, buys, cooked, written, running; -er
(comparative) and -est (superlative) are adjective inflections as in happiest, faster and
adverb inflections as in beautifully. These features are completely different from
Vietnamese. It doesn’t add prefixes or suffixes to words or something like that.
Vietnamese also doesn’t use -(e)s ( 3rd-person singular), -ed ( past tense) and so on to
mark when the action takes place. Instead it just uses some words such as sẽ, đã, đang…
Derivational morphemes, on the other hand, change the meaning of the .word or part of
speech or both. This type often creates new words. For example, the prefix un- added to
the adjective happy changes the meaning of the word into the opposite (unhappy).
Derivational morphemes carry semantic information.
In The Vietnamese Language Learning Framework by professor Ngo Nhu Binh said that
Vietnamese belongs to the group of isolating languages where there are no inflectional
endings and all the words are invariable. Grammatical relationships are expressed not by
changing the internal structure of the words (the use of inflectional endings), but by the
use of auxiliary words and word order. In this sense, the traditionally recognized
inflectional morphology is not applicable to Vietnamese. “In Vietnamese each
morpheme, which in phonetic respects in most cases is a syllable, tends to form a separate
word. Vietnamese is at the low end of both morphological scales, one of which measures
the degree of fusion (isolation - agglutinating - fusional), while the other one indicates the
degree of synthesis (analytic - inflected - polysynthetic).” Through these statements, a
Vietnamese word may consist of a single morpheme or more than one morpheme such as
cơm, áo, ăn, ở… Polymorphemic words are either compound words or words consisting
of stems plus other element or reduplicants, for instance, xe đạp (compound), vội vàng,
hớt hơ hớt hải (reduplicative). In addition, Vietnamese has borrowed vocabulary from
other languages, including Chinese, French and English such as Va-li, pedan, xà phòng (
French); nhất, quốc gia, quân tử ( Chinese script)…
In short, through the above discussion, we can see that a word will include a root or a
stem and it also concludes one or more affixes. Words can be combined to create other
units of language, such as phrases, clauses, and/or sentences and a word consisting of two
or more stems joined together form a compound. Although Vietnamese and English have
something similarly, they also have their own ways of word formation. In the next
session, I will give more details about their differences.
WORD FORMATION IN ENGLISH
English is one of the most spoken languages in the world so it is obvious that it has a
mass of vocabulary. New words have been incorporated into English through the
application of morphological and derivational rules to existing words or morphemes as
well as through borrowing due to periods of cultural contact between English speakers
and those speaking other languages. Especially, in the early modern English period
(1500-1650), people see a huge influx of Latin and Greek words. Moreover, English is a
very productive and versatile language; due to this nature, it undergoes various processes
of word formation. They are compounding, affixation, conversion, reduplication and
other devices such as blending, clipping, and acronym.
COMPOUNDING
Compounding is a process of combining two words to create a new one. In other words, a
compound is a word composed of more that one free morpheme. There are three forms of
compound words : the closed or solid form, in which word are melded together such as
secondhand,, schoolbag, notebook…; the hyphenated form such as mother-in-law, sixyear-old, one-in-six… and the open or spaced form consisting of newer combinations of
usually longer words such as football player, taxi driver, middle-aged, post office…In
general, most of compound words will have the overall meaning of the two or more
words that combine them, as in baseball, tennis player, or birthday…However, It is not
always the case, as in Understand which doesn’t have the sum meaning of the two words
Under and stand. Following formal classification, English has three types of compound
words: Compound noun, compound verb and compound adjective.
Compound noun
A compound noun is a noun that made up of two or more words. Most compound nouns
in English are formed by nouns modified by other nouns or adjectives. In these types, the
first word modifies or describes the second word, telling us what kind of subject or
person or its purpose. The second part identifies the object or person. In addition,
compound nouns often have a new meaning from the two separate words
(www.edufind.com). Here are some common patterns:
Patterns
Examples
Noun + Noun
Bathroom, boyfriend
Noun + Verb
Haircut, rainfall
Verb + Noun
Living room, dining hall
Verb + Adverb
Drawback, take-off
Adverb + verb
Input, output
Adverb + noun
Outsider, bystander,
onlooker
Adjective + verb
Dry - cleaning
Adjective + Noun
Greenhouse, redhead
In a compound noun, stress is very important, as it distinguishes between a compound
noun (for example, Whitehouse) and a noun with an adjective (white house). The stress
usually falls on the first syllable.
Compound verb
A compound verb is a verb made up of two or more words. A compound verb is usually
composed of a preposition and a verb. Most compound verbs have the collective meaning
of components but some of them later gain additional meanings. As a result, the resultant
meanings are rarely related to the original contributors. There are some ways from which
compound verbs are formed:
Patterns
Examples
Preposition + verb
Underline, overestimate
adverb + Verb
Upgrade, downsize
Adjective +verb
Whitewash, blacklist
Noun + verb
Man-handle, sidestep,
window-shop
verb + verb
Make do
Verb + adverb
Make sure
Some compound verbs are difficult to identify and easily misuse with other terms such as
verb phrase or verbal phrase, phrasal verb. Actually, a phrasal verb can be one-word verb,
of which compound verb is a type, but many phrasal verbs are multi-word. In addition,
one of the distinguishable features of phrasal verbs is that they are used in an idiomatic or
metaphorical context. For example, “hold up” with a meaning rob is a phrasal verb, as in
this sentence: She held up a bank.
Compound adjective
Compound adjective is an adjective modifying a noun with two or more worded
adjective phrase. The adjective phrase is normally written with a hyphen and its meaning
is often clear from the components (Wikipedia). These are some popular forms:
Patterns
Examples
Adjective + present participle
Easy-going, good-looking
Adjective + past participle
Left –handed, kind-hearted
Adverb +adjective
Very beautiful, extremely painful,
rather easy
Noun + adjective
Error- free, world-famous
Number + noun-ed /noun
Six-legged, one- eyed, two-door
Noun + present participle
Mouth-watering, record-breaking
Adverb+ present participle
Far-reaching, never-ending
Adverb + past participle
Well- decorated, deeply-rooted
When the adjectives are made clear by being capitalized or italicized, there is no need to
use a hyphen such as old German friend, beautiful Sunday morning…
AFFIXATION
Firstly, what is an affix? Affix is a bound morpheme that is attached to a word stem to
form a new word. As a result, affixation is a linguistic process used to form neologisms
by adding bound morphemes mainly at the beginning (prefixation) or at the end of words
(suffixation) and sometimes in the middle (infixation) (Wikipedia). There are three kinds
of affix: prefix, infix and suffix. Among these three, prefix and suffix are more popular
( see common prefixes and suffixes in Appendix). A prefix is an element placed at the
beginning of a word to adjust its meaning, for example, de-, re-, un-. A suffix is an
element placed at the end of a word to form a derivative such as –ation, -ment,-ly, usually
converts the stem into another part of speech. A combining form can be a prefix, as in
rewrite, degrade or a suffix, as in warming, quickly or both, as in unreadable,
predominance. When looking closely to the word unreadable, we can see that the prefix
un- adds the extra meaning, i.e. the opposite, to the word read while the suffix –able only
modifies the existing meaning of the word read. This is a different function between a
prefix and a suffix. An infix is placed within a word, for instance cupsful by inserting the
plural form –s- . Infixes are rare in English.
CONVERSION
According to some linguists "Conversion is the derivational process whereby an item
changes its word-class without the addition of an affix". There are some doubts about
whether it must be considered a branch of derivation or a separate process. Despite the
status of conversion is a bit dubious, conversion is productive in creating more English
lexicon as it provides an easy way to build up new words from existing ones. Conversion
is also called ‘zero-derivation’ because the process is without adding an affix. Language
speakers use conversion with different purposes, but mainly to make their conversation
much easier and more convenient. The most common cases are conversion from verb to
noun and from noun to verb (see Appendix):
Types of conversion
Noun to verb
Examples
Access – to access, name – to
name, can- to can
Verb to noun
To increase – increase, to hopehope
Adjective to verb
Green - to green
Preposition to noun
Up, down – the ups and downs
REDUPLICATION
The repeating of parts of words to make new words is called reduplication. This kind of
word formation has created the enjoyment of wordplay. In many cases, people use them
for emphasizing. There are different categories of this such as rhyming, exact and ablaut
(vowel substitution). Rhyming is the reminiscent of Cockney rhyming slang, as in okeydokey, lovely-dovely. Several of exact reduplication are baby-talk such as bye-bye, choochoo, no-no. Most of ablaut use the vowel 'i' in the first part of the reduplication and
either 'a' or 'o' in the second part: tip-top, ping-pong, or chit- chat.
OTHER DEVICES: BLENDING, CLIPPING, AND ACRONYM
Besides main ways of forming new words such as compounding, affixation, conversion
and reduplication, English also use other methods like blending, clipping and acronym.
Blending is the action of abridging and then combining various lexemes to form a new
word. A blend is a word formed from parts of two or more other words (Wikipedia).
There are various methods of blending:
- The beginning of one word is added to the end of the other.
breakfast + lunch-> brunch
smoke + fog → smog
- The beginnings of two words are combined.
cyborg = cybernetic + organism
- Two words are blended around a common sequence of sounds.
motel = motor + hotel
Clipping involves the shortening of a longer word, often reducing it to one syllable. Many
examples are very informal or slang. Clipping is also known as "truncation" or
"shortening". Exam(ination), math(ematics), and lab(oratory) originated in school slang;
spec(ulation) and tick(et) in stock-exchange slang; and vet(eran) and cap(tain) in army
slang are examples of this kind.
An acronym is a word whose letters are the first letters of other words. People often
create a short word that means the same thing as a much longer phrase (set of words), to
make it faster and shorter to say the long phrase. For example: WHO stands for World
Health Organization, CEO stands for Chief Executive Officer.
According to Quirk et al. (1985), acronym, clipping and blending are three highly
productive ways in which abbreviation (i.e., the shortening of words) is involved in
English word-formation.
WORD FORMATION IN VIETNAMESE
As mentioned above, Vietnamese belongs to the isolating language where all the words
are invariable and each syllable is considered as a separate word. It means that we don’t
use inflectional endings or affixation as in English to change the internal structure of a
word or create a new word. In fact, a new word in Vietnamese is created by three
predominant processes: reduplication, compounding, and conversion.
REDUPLICATION
Reduplication is predominantly used and a specific type of word-formation in
Vietnamese. Reduplication is a process of creating a new word by repeating the whole
word or part of a word. This seems like English reduplication, but its frequency of use in
English is not so popular as in Vietnamese. Using this kind of word formation in
Vietnamese can bring users many effects such as either increase or decrease the intensity
of the adjective. For example:
Mạnh -> mạnh mẽ, đau ->đau điếng ( increase the intensity of the adjective)
Thẳm -> thăm thẳm, đỏ -> đo đỏ (decrease the intensity of the adjective)
Reduplication is also used as a literary device in poetry, compositions and in every
conversation. According to Sophana Srichampa’s research from Institute of Language
and Culture for Rural Development, Mahidol University, there are two types of
reduplication in Vietnamese: Full reduplication ( đùng đùng, lâng lâng)) and partial
reduplication (mập mạp, phanh phách). Full reduplication can occur with both
monosyllabic and disyllabic words for which there is exact reduplication of the syllable.
The disyllabic full reduplication follows the AABB pattern (vội vội vàng vàng, hùng hùng
hổ hổ). Partial reduplication can occur with both monosyllabic and disyllabic words.
Monosyllabic partial reduplication has the three sub-types: Rhyming (same vowel, same
final and sometimes same tone) such as khăng khăng (same vowel, same final, same
tone), chiming (same initial but different vowel, final or tone) as in rừng rực , rhyming
and chiming (with different tone) as in mơn mởn . Disyllabic partial reduplication has
three sub-types: ABAB reduplication (change of rhyme and tone) ( e.g: vớ va vớ vẩn),
ABCD reduplication (change of rhyme) ( e.g: lồm nhồm loàm nhoàm), ABB
reduplication (trơ trờ trờ, nhũn nhùn nhùn).
COMPOUNDING
Compounding in Vietnamese has the same meaning as compounding process in English.
According to Professor Ngo Nhu Binh, there are three kinds of compounds in
Vietnamese: coordinate compound (từ ghép đẳng lập), subordinate compound (từ ghép
chính phụ) and isolated compound. Coordinate compounds are formed by two
morphemes or syllables, neither of which modifies the other one, such as quần áo
(cloths), đi đứng (go and stand), phải trái (right and wrong). Subordinate compounds are
formed by two morphemes or syllables, one of which modifies the other one, such as xe
đạp (bicycle), xe hơi (car), xe lửa (train), khó chịu (unbearable), khó nghe (be difficult to
hear), hội trưởng (president of an association), đội trưởng (head of a group), nhóm trưởng
(head of a group), tổ trưởng (head of a small group). Many morphemes in this type may
be regarded as affixes like in English. But actually they aren’t because they are not bound
morphemes. They can stand alone, unlike English. Unlike the coordinate and subordinate
compounds, isolated compounds do not form systems. The meaning of one element is
clear while the meaning of the other isn’t such as tre pheo, đường sá , áo xống, mè
nheo… Like English compounds, Vietnamese compounds have three types: compound
noun, compound verb and compound adjective. These three types of compounds can
occur in coordinate compound, or subordinate compound. Ăn ở, đi đứng, ăn nói
(compound verbs – coordinate compound); áo len, áo khoác, áo thun ( compound nouns -
subordinate compound); vàng ươm, vàng óng, vàng nhạt (compound adjectivessubordinate compound), for example.
CONVERSION
Vietnamese conversion is also as popular as English conversion. Conversion is a type of
word formation creating new words based on the existing word without changing its form
and meanings of new words have the closed relationships or associations with the old
one. Vietnamese language rarely has the conversion of word class like English, for
example verb to noun or vice versa. Instead, a word is used in different contexts with the
same part of speech ( conversion in this sense means Hiện tượng chuyển nghĩa của từ in
Vietnamese). Let’s take “mắt” for instance in “ Đôi mắt cô ấy thật long lanh”, “những
quả na đã bắt đầu mở mắt” or “ăn” in ăn cơm, tàu an than, nước ăn chân. Some others:
đi, đứng, chân, tay …also have the same phenomenon. In general, the aim of Vietnamese
conversion shares common with English. It can be used as a metaphor in many works
and in everyday speech.
Borrowing
Besides these three methods of word formation, Vietnamese vocabulary also has many
Chinese borrowings due to thousand years of occupation. It is estimated that nearly 70
percent of vocabulary has Chinese roots, especially lexicon related to science and politics
–Sino- Vietnamese ( chữ Hán) such as: quốc gia, tiên quyết, nhân loại, nhật nguyệt…In
addition, France invaded Vietnam in the 19th century. As a result, it adopted many French
terms such as va-li, xà phòng, ga ( train station). Nowadays many new words are added to
the lexicon, usually from English: tivi (TV), hot, micro… All these factors contribute to
Vietnamese vocabulary.
DISCUSSION AND EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATION IN
LANGUAGE TEACHING
So far we have seen that English and Vietnamese have some similarities and differences
in word formation. Vietnamese learners tend to have a lot of problems in learning
English, especially when they translate their source language into the target language or
write something in foreign language. Some common errors that we can notice are lexical
and grammatical ones. There are some Vietnamese words that don’t have the English
equivalents, which block the learner’s translation such as bánh cuốn, xôi, nước mắm…
Students don’t know how to handle them effectively. The differences in grammar of two
languages also lead to their errors. First thing is the word order of phrases or compound
words. For example: Cô gái đẹp. Students may say: girl beautiful or beautiful girl. The
first error is the word order. The second one is the lack of the article “a”. In Vietnamese,
it is possible to say Cô gái đẹp but in English, it has to say a beautiful girl with the article
and a different word order. Moreover, cô gái đẹp is regarded as a sentence in Vietnamese
with “đẹp” (beautiful) is a verb whereas it is an adjective in English. This is another gap
between English and Vietnamese. Many adjectives such as đẹp, xấu, thật thà,… are used
as functions of a verb, a noun. Thật thà là điều tốt nhất is an example of this category.
We must say Honesty is the best policy instead of Honest is the best policy.
Other examples in Vietnamese language are these sentences: Anh ấy được lắm! Anh ấy
giỏi lắm! ( giỏi, được – good, fair are used as verbs) and so on. One more thing I want to
mention here is that Vietnamese does not use morphological marking of case, gender,
number or tense and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction. As mentioned above,
it is not used inflectional morphemes such as the “s” plural form, the 3rd person singular
or the –ed ending. Therefore, students may say or handle the translation like this: five
book, two dog or ten pen. Vietnamese doesn’t have tenses referred to the present, the past
or future like English, instead it uses some words in their sentences to mark the time: đã,
đang, sẽ, mới, vừa, sắp, rồi, xong…:
Tôi đã ăn cơm tối rồi.( I ate the dinner./ I have already eaten dinner.)
Mai cô ấy sẽ đi du lịch. ( She will go traveling tomorrow.)
They will say: She eat a lot of bananas today (instead of saying: she eats a lot of bananas
today.).
In Vietnamese, it is quite loosely to combine different words together but in English, it is
not the case. There are also a lot of collocation and rules of compounding. In short,
Vietnamese students often face many difficulties and make a lot of mistakes because of
the differences in vocabulary, content words, function words or grammar between
English and Vietnamese. It is important for teachers to master those things and predict
anticipated problems to help students distinguish the gap and enhance their language
acquisition.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, English and Vietnamese word formation share common things in some
aspects and also have their own ways of forming new words. The most popular methods
in Vietnamese are Compounding, conversion and reduplication while in English; the most
used process is affixation. The fact is that knowing how a word is formed and used in
different contexts plays an important role in learning a language successfully.
Works cited
Binh, N. Ngo. The Vietnamese Language Framework Part one: Linguistics. 29 December 2010
<http://www.edufind.com/english/grammar/NOUNS4.CFM.html>.
“Wales, Williams”. Affixation. Wikipedia. 27 December 2010 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affix.html>.
Srichampa, Sophana. Vietnamese Verbal Reduplication. 28 December 2010
Be<http://www.lc.mahidol.ac.th/Documents/.../200215-Sophana.html>.
Zapata cerra, A. A. (2000). Types of Words and Word-Formation Processes in English. Trabajo de
Ascenso sin publicar. Mérida, Venezuela: Escuela de Idiomas Modernos, Universidad de
Los Andes <http://www.seasite.niu.edu/jsealt/.../VN%20LLF%20Part%20.html>.
“Wales, Williams”. Word. Wikipedia. 27 December 2010 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word.html>
PraxMaxtric. Nouns: compound nouns. 27 Dec. 2010.
<http://webdelprofesor.ula.ve/humanion_procesdades/azapata/materias/english_4/unit_1_ty
pes_of_words_and_ word_formatises.pdf>.
APPENDIX
AFFIXATION
Common Prefixes
Prefix
a-, ananteantiautocircumcocom-, concontradedisenexextraheterohomohyper-
Meaning
without
before
against
self
around
with
with
against
off, away from
not
put into
out of, former
beyond, more than
different
same
over, more
il-, im-, in-, ir- not, without
ininterintramacromicromonononomnipostpre-, prosub-
into
between
between
large
small
one
not, without
all, every
after
before, forward
under
Example
amoral
antecedent
anticlimax
autopilot
circumvent
copilot
companion, contact
contradict
devalue
disappear
enclose
extract, ex-president
extracurricular
heterosexual
homonym
hyperactive
illegal, immoral, inconsiderate,
irresponsible
insert
intersect
intravenous
macroeconomics
microscope
monocle
nonentity
omniscient
postmortem
precede, project
submarine
syntranstriununi-
same time
across
three
not
one
synchronize
transmit
tricycle
unfinished
unicorn
Common Suffixes
Noun Suffixes
Suffix
-acy
-al
-ance, -ence
-dom
-er, -or
-ism
-ist
-ity, -ty
-ment
-ness
-ship
-sion, -tion
Meaning
state or quality
act or process of
state or quality of
place or state of being
one who
doctrine, belief
one who
quality of
condition of
state of being
position held
state of being
Example
privacy
refusal
maintenance, eminence
freedom, kingdom
trainer, protector
communism
chemist
veracity
argument
heaviness
fellowship
concession, transition
Verb Suffixes
-ate
-en
-ify, -fy
-ize, -ise
become
become
make or become
become
eradicate
enlighten
terrify
civilize
-able, -ible
-al
-esque
Adjective Suffixes
capable of being
edible, presentable
pertaining to
regional
reminiscent of
picturesque
-ful
-ic, -ical
-ious, -ous
-ish
-ive
-less
-y
notable for
pertaining to
characterized by
having the quality of
having the nature of
without
characterized by
fanciful
musical, mythic
nutritious, portentous
fiendish
creative
endless
sleazy
CONVERSION
1. Conversion to noun
a. From verbs:
answer
dismay
attempt
divide
bet
doubt
blow-out
drive-in
bore
fall
catch
find
cheat
hand-out
coach
hit
cover
laugh
desire
lay-by
b. From adjectives :
bitter
comic
daily (newspaper)
final (race),
married (married people)
natural (a naturally
skilled player)
roast
red
regular
(customer)
Wet
(the) ignorant
lift
love
raise
release
retreat
rise
search
show-off
shut-down
smell
stand-in,
swim
taste
throw
turn
walk
want
wrap
walk-out
wrench
(the) poor
(the) poorest
(the) rich
(the) Wealthy
(the) wealthier
(the) wicked
d. From closed-class words: buts, downs, how, ifs, a must, ups, why, etc.
2. Conversion to verb
a. From nouns:
Baby
cash
Bicycle
coat
Boat
core
Bottle
corner
Brake
cripple
Butter
elbow
Canoe
father
Carpet
fiddle
catalogue,
finger
b. From adjectives:
Calm
calm down
dirty
dry
empty
humble
lower
floor
garage
glue
grease
group
gut
hand
knife
mail
narrow,
sober up
smooth out
soundproof
weary
yellow
mask
mother
motor
nurse
oil
parrot
peel