Rhyming Compounds

Please visit the links below:

http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/rhyming_compounds01.html

http://www.funtrivia.com/en/subtopics/Rhyming-Compounds-And-Phrases-65046.html

Affixation - Word Formation

Affixation
Word Formation

The basic part of any word is the root; to it, you can add a prefix at the beginning and/or a suffix at the end to change the meaning. For example, in the word "unflattering," the root is simply "flatter," while the prefix "un-" makes the word negative, and the suffix "-ing" changes it from a verb into an adjective (specifically, a participle).

English itself does not use prefixes as heavily as it once did, but many English words come from Latin, which uses prefixes and suffixes (you can use the word affix to refer either to a prefix or a suffix) quite extensively. For example, the words "prefix," "suffix," and "affix" themselves are all formed from "fix" by the use of prefixes:

• "ad" (to) + "fix" (attached) = "affix"
• "pre" (before) + "fix" = "prefix"
• "sub" (under) + "fix" = "suffix"

Note that both the "-d" of "ad" and the "-b" of "sub" change the last letter.
Here are some of the most common Latin prefixes (for the meanings of the Latin roots, look up the words in a good dictionary):

ab
(away) abrupt, absent, absolve
ad
(to) adverb, advertisment, afflict
in
(not) incapable, indecisive, intolerable
inter
(between, among) intercept, interdependent, interprovincial
intra
(within) intramural, intrapersonal, intraprovincial
pre
(before) prefabricate, preface prefer
post
(after) postpone, postscript, postwar
sub
(under) submarine, subscription, suspect
trans
(across) transfer, transit, translate

Written by David Megginson

Conversion I

Word Formation: Conversion

Article by Heather Marie Kosur (18,370 pts )
Edited & published by Rebecca Scudder (15,909 pts ) on Dec 16, 2009

Part two of "Word Formation: Creating New Words in English" covers the process of conversion, which is the word formation process whereby a word of one part of speech converts into a word of another part of speech, e.g., the noun Google changing into the verb to google.

Conversion

Conversion is the word formation process in which a word of one grammatical form becomes a word of another grammatical form without any changes to spelling or pronunciation. For example, the noun email appeared in English before the verb: a decade ago I would have sent you an email (noun) whereas now I can either send you an email (noun) or simply email (verb) you. The original noun email experienced conversion, thus resulting in the new verb email. Conversion is also referred to as zero derivation or null derivation with the assumption that the formal change between words results in the addition of an invisible morpheme. However, many linguistics argue for a clear distinction between the word formation processes of derivation and conversion.

Noun to Verb Conversion

The most productive form of conversion in English is noun to verb conversion. The following list provides examples of verbs converted from nouns:
• Noun – Verb
• access – to access
• bottle – to bottle
• can – to can
• closet – to closet
• email – to email
• eye – to eye
• fiddle – to fiddle
• fool – to fool
• Google – to google
• host – to host
• knife – to knife
• microwave – to microwave
• name – to name
• pocket – to pocket
• salt – to salt
• shape – to shape
• ship – to ship
• spear – to spear
• torch – to torch
• verb – to verb
For example:
• My grandmother bottled (verb) the juice and canned (verb) the pickles.
• My grandmother put the juice in a bottle (noun) and the pickles in a can (noun).
• She microwaved (verb) her lunch.
• She heated her lunch in the microwave (noun).
• The doctor eyed (verb) my swollen eye (noun).

Noun to verb conversion is also referred to as verbification or verbing, as humorously discussed by Calvin and Hobbes.

Verb to Noun Conversion

Another productive form of conversion in English is verb to noun conversion. The following list provides examples of nouns converted from verbs:
• Verb – Noun
• to alert – alert
• to attack – attack
• to call – call
• to clone – clone
• to command – command
• to cover – cover
• to cry – cry
• to experience – experience
• to fear – fear
• to feel – feel
• to hope – hope
• to increase – increase
• to judge – judge
• to laugh – laugh
• to rise – rise
• to run – run
• to sleep – sleep
• to start – start
• to turn – turn
• to visit – visit
For example:
• The guard alerted (verb) the general to the attack (noun).
• The enemy attacked (verb) before an alert (noun) could be sounded.
• Sometimes one just needs a good cry (noun).
• The baby cried (verb) all night.
• We need to increase (verb) our productivity to see an increase (noun) in profits.
Verb to noun conversion is also referred to as nominalization.
Other Conversions

Conversion also occurs, although less frequently, to and from other grammatical forms. For example:
• adjective to verb: green → to green (to make environmentally friendly)
• preposition to noun: up, down → the ups and downs of life
• conjunction to noun: if, and, but → no ifs, ands, or buts
• interjection to noun: ho ho ho → I love the ho ho hos of Christmastime.

Conversion III

Grammatical Conversion in English:
Some new trends in lexical evolution
by Ana I. Hernández Bartolomé and Gustavo Mendiluce Cabrera
Universidad de Valladolid

1. Introduction

English is a very productive language. Due to its versatile nature, it can undergo many different word formation processes to create new lexicon. Some of them are much lexicalised—such as derivation or compounding. However, new trends are pointing up in the productive field. This is the case of the minor methods of word-formation—i.e. clipping, blending—and conversion. As they are recent phenomena, they have not been much studied yet. Even scholars differ in their opinions about the way they should be treated. There is only one point they all agree with: these new methods are becoming more frequently used. For example, conversion will be more active in the future, and so, it will create a great part of the new words appearing in the English language (Cannon, 1985: 415).

Conversion is particularly common in English because the basic form of nouns and verbs is identical in many cases.
This paper will attempt to analyse in depth the behaviour of one of these new word-formation methods: conversion. It is probably the most outstanding new method in the word-formation panorama. It is a curious and attractive subject because it has a wide field of action: all grammatical categories can undergo conversion to more than one word-form, it is compatible with other word-formation processes, and it has no demonstrated limitations. All these reasons make the scope of conversion nearly unlimited.

2. Definition, terminology and characteristics

"Conversion is the derivational process whereby an item changes its word-class without the addition of an affix" (Quirk, Randolph and Greenbaum, 1987: 441). Thus, when the noun 'sign' (1) shifts to the verb 'sign(ed)' (2) without any change in the word form we can say this is a case of conversion1. However, it does not mean that this process takes place in all the cases of homophones (Marchand, 1972: 225). Sometimes, the connection has to do with coincidences or old etymological ties that have been lost.. For example, 'mind' (3 and 4) and 'matter' (5 and 6) are cases of this grammatical sameness without connection by conversion—the verbs have nothing to do today with their respective noun forms in terms of semantics (ibid.: 243).

Conversion is particularly common in English because the basic form of nouns and verbs is identical in many cases (Aitchison, 1989: 160). It is usually impossible in languages with grammatical genders, declensions or conjugations (Cannon, 1985: 430).
The status of conversion is a bit unclear. It must be undoubtedly placed within the phenomena of word-formation; nevertheless, there are some doubts about whether it must be considered a branch of derivation or a separate process by itself (with the same status as derivation or compounding) (Bauer, 1983: 32).

Despite this undetermined position in grammar, some scholars assert that conversion will become even more active in the future because it is a very easy way to create new words in English (Cannon, 1985: 415). There is no way to know the number of conversions appearing every day in the spoken language, although we know this number must be high (ibid.: 429). As it is a quite recent phenomenon, the written evidence is not a fully reliable source. We will have to wait a little longer to understand its whole impact, which will surely increase in importance in the next decades.
The terminology used for this process has not been completely established yet. The most usual terms are 'conversion', because a word is converted (shifted) to a different part of speech; and 'zero-derivation', because the process is like deriving (transferring) a word into another morphological category with a zero-affix creating a semantic dependence of one word upon another (Quirk, 1997: 1558). This would imply that this affix exists—because it is grammatically meaningful—although it cannot be seen (Arbor, 1970: 46). Other less frequently used terms are 'functional shift', 'functional change' or 'zero-marked derivative' (Cannon, 1985: 412), denominations that express by themselves the way the process is considered to happen.
Conversion is extremely productive to increase the English lexicon because it provides an easy way to create new words from existing ones. Thus, the meaning is perfectly comprehensible and the speaker can rapidly fill a meaningful gap in his language or use fewer words (Aitchison, 1989: 161). "Conversion is a totally free process and any lexeme can undergo conversion into any of the open form classes as the need arises" (Bauer, 1983: 226). This means that any word form can be shifted to any word class, especially to open classes—nouns, verbs, etc.—and that there are not morphological restrictions. Up to date, there has only been found one restriction: derived nouns rarely undergo conversion (particularly not to verbs) (Bauer, 1983: 226). This exception is easily understood: if there already exists one word in the language, the creation of a new term for this same concept will be blocked for the economy of language. For example, the noun 'denial' (7) will never shift into a verb because this word already derives from the verb 'deny' (8). In that case, the conversion is blocked because 'to deny' (8) and '*to denial' would mean exactly the same. However, there are some special cases in which this process seems to happen without blocking. This can be exemplified in the noun 'sign' (1), converted into the verb 'to sign' (2), changed by derivation (suffixation) into the noun 'signal' (9) and converted into a new verb, 'to signal' (10). In this case there is no blocking because these words have slight semantic differences (Bauer, 1983: 226-227).
It must be pointed out that the process of conversion has some semantic limitations: a converted word only assumes one of the range of meanings of the original word. For example, the noun 'paper' has various meanings, such as "newspaper" (11), "material to wrap things" (12)... The denominal verb, though, only contains the sense of putting that material on places like walls. This shows the converted item has only converted part of the semantic field of the source item.

The aim of conversion varies with the user. Adults convey it to use fewer words, whereas children perform it in order to be understood, although they frequently produce ungrammatical utterances (Aitchison, 1989: 161). Anyway, it always helps to make communication easier. Thus, trying to gather this double functional raison d'être we have compiled our corpus of examples from international newspapers and magazines, such as The New York Times or Newsweek, and popular literature, such as the teenagers' magazines Smash Hits and Teens. The complete list of extracts can be found in the appendix.

3. Typology

There are many cases in which the process of conversion is evident. Nevertheless, conversion is not as simple as it may seem: the process is easily recognisable because both words are graphically identical; the direction of this process, though, is sometimes nearly impossible to determine. This is not very important for the speaker: he just needs a simple way to cover a gap in the language. As this paper tries to give a comprehensive vision on conversion, it will attempt to establish the direction of the process. Therefore, both the original category and the derived one will be mentioned.
The criterion to establish the original and derived item has been taken from Marchand (1972: 242-252). It focuses on several aspects:
a. the semantic dependence (the word that reports to the meaning of the other is the derivative)

b. the range of usage (the item with the smaller range of use is the converted word),

c. the semantic range (the one with less semantic fields is the shifted item)

d. and the phonetic shape (some suffixes express the word-class the item belongs to and, if it does not fit, this is the derivative).

After this analysis, intuition is still important. Verbs tend to be abstract because they represent actions and nouns are frequently concrete because they name material entities. Conversion is quickly related to shift of word-class. With this respect, it mainly produces nouns, verbs and adjectives. The major cases of conversion are from noun to verb and from verb to noun. Conversion from adjective to verb is also common, but it has a lower ratio. Other grammatical categories, including closed-class ones, can only shift to open-class categories, but not to closed-class ones (prepositions, conjunctions). In addition, it is not rare that a simple word shifts into more than one category.

3.1 Conversion from verb to noun

We shall first study the shift from verb to noun. It can be regarded from seven different points of view (Quirk, 1997: 1560). These subclassifications are not well defined in many cases. The same pair of converted words can be placed into two different categories depending on the subjectivity of their meaning. Nouns coming from verbs can express state of mind or state of sensation, like in the nouns 'experience' (13), 'fear' (14), 'feel' (15) or 'hope' (16). Nouns can also name events or activities, such is the case of 'attack' (17), 'alert(s)' (18) and 'laugh(s)' (19). The object of the verb from which the noun is derived can be observed in 'visit' (20) (with the sense of that which visits), 'increase' (21) (that which increases), 'call' (22) and 'command' (23). In the fourth division the noun refers to the subject of the original verb. Examples of this kind are 'clone' (24) (the living being that is cloned), 'contacts' (25) or 'judge' (26). Other nouns show the instrument of the primitive verb, like in 'cover' (27) (something to cover with) and 'start' (28). Finally, a place of the verb can also be nominalised, like in 'turn' (29) (where to turn) or 'rise' (9).

3.2 Conversion from noun to verb

Verbs converted from nouns have also many subclassifications (Quirk, 1997: 1561). They can express the action of putting in or on the noun, such as in pocket(ed) (30) (to put into the pocket), 'film(ing)' (31) (to put into a film) and 'practice' (32). These verbs can also have the meaning of "to provide with (the noun)" or "to give (the noun)", like 'name' (33) (to give a name to somebody), 'shape' (34) (to give shape to something) or 'fuel(s)' (35). The verbs belonging to the third division will express the action done with the noun as instrument. It can be exemplified with 'hammer' (36) (to hit a nail by means of a hammer), 'yo-yo' (37) (to play with a yo-yo) 'dot' (38) or 'brake' (braking) (39). Another group of verbs has the meaning of to act as the noun with respect to something, as exemplified in 'host(ed)' (40) (to act as the host of a house). Other subclassification has the sense of making something into the original noun, like in 'schedule(d)' (41) (to arrange into a schedule) and 'rule' (42). The last group means to send by means of the noun, that is the case of 'ship(ped)' (43) or 'telephone(d)' (44) (in an abstract sense).

3.3 Conversion from adjective to verb

Adjectives can also go through the process of conversion, especially to verbs. De-adjectival verbs get the meaning of "to make (adjective)". It can be easily seen by means of examples like 'black(ed)' (45) (to make black), 'open' (46), 'slow(ing)' (47)... In some cases, when these transitive verbs are used intransitively, a secondary conversion may happen (Quirk, 1997: 1561-1562), as it will be explained later on.

3.4 Conversion from a closed category to any other category

Closed-class categories can also undergo conversion. Although their frequency is much less common, the process is not ungrammatical. All morphologic categories have examples of this kind (Cannon, 1985:425-426). Prepositions are probably the most productive ones. They can easily become adverbs, nouns and verbs. This is the case of 'up' (48 and 49) and 'out' (37 and 50). Conversion to noun may as well occur in adverbs like in 'outside' (51) and 'inside' (51); conjunctions, as regarded in 'ifs' (52) and 'buts' (52); interjections and non-lexical items, like 'ho ho ho's' (53) and 'ha ha ha' (54); affixes such as 'mini-' (55) can appear as noun (56) and proper noun (55).... Conversion to verb is frequent in onomatopoeic expressions like 'buzz' (57), 'beep' (57) or 'woo(ing)' (58). Finally, phrase compounds can appear as adjectives, such as in 'borrow-the-mower' (59), 'down-to-earth' (60) or 'now-it-can-be-told' (61).

4. Partial conversion

Conversion from noun to adjective and adjective to noun is rather a controversial one. It is called 'partial conversion" by Quirk (1997: 1559) and Cannon (1985: 413) and 'syntactic process' by Bauer (1983: 230). This peculiar process occurs when "a word of one class appears in a function which is characteristic of another word class" (Quirk, 1997: 1559). Most of these cases should not be treated as conversion but as nouns functioning as adjectives and vice versa.

4.1 Conversion from noun to adjective

There are some clues, though, to make sure conversion has taken place. In the case of adjectives coming from nouns, the hints are quite easy: they can be considered as cases of conversion only when they can appear in predicative as well as in attributive form. If the denominal adjective can be used attributively, we can affirm conversion has happened. If it can only appear predicatively, it is merely a case of partial conversion. 'Mahogany music box' (62) can be used in an attributive way, "the music box is mahogany". This implies 'mahogany' is a denominal adjective. However, in the predicative phrase 'antiques dealers' (63) we cannot treat 'antiques' as an adjective because the attributive form of this expression is ungrammatical (*dealers are antique). Another way to make sure we are in front of a case of conversion is to change a word for another similar one. For example, in 'Dutch Auction' (64) we are sure the word 'Dutch' is an adjective because it has the specific form of adjective. Therefore, in 'South Jersey Auction' (65) or 'Texas Auction' (66) we can affirm these are cases of denominal adjectives.

4.2 Conversion from adjective to noun

Adjectives can also shift into nouns, though it is not very frequent. It mainly happens in well-established patterns of adjective plus noun phrase. Nominalisation occurs when the noun is elided and the adjective is widely used as a synonym of an existing set pattern. This could be the case of 'a Chinese favorite' (67).
The adjective nature in cases of partial conversion is evident, though. They are nouns from the point of view that they appear in the same syntactic position. Their grammatical nature, though, is a different one. These adjectives can still be changed to the comparative and superlative form (adjective nature). This can be exemplified in 'worst' (68) and 'merrier' (69). However, these adjectives cannot behave as nouns: if their number or case is changed, they will produce ungrammatical sentences. This can be seen in the case of 'more' (69) in cases like "*the mores we get". If the '-s' for the plural is added to any of these items, we would get ungrammatical sentences. The case of 'cutie' (70), though, could be argued. It seems to be much used and established within certain groups. This could have converted it into a lexicalised example of adjective to noun.

5. Conversion within secondary word classes

Up to this point conversion has only been considered as a shift from one grammatical category to another. However, these are not the only cases where it may happen. "The notion of conversion may be extended to changes of secondary word class, within the same major word category" (Quirk, 1997: 1563). This process has no clear terminology; for example it is called 'change of secondary word class' by Quirk (1997: 1563) and 'conversion as a syntactic process' by Bauer (1983: 227). Within the field of conversion, it has not been much studied because it is less evident than the classical conversion. Some scholars argue that these cases are products of syntactic processes, and so, they may not be considered as part of word-formation (they shift within the same grammatical category but not to a different one) (Bauer, 1983: 227).

5.1 Conversion within noun categories

The noun category can undergo four different kinds of secondary conversion (Quirk, 1997: 1563-1566). First, an uncountable noun can shift to a countable noun, like in the case of 'supplies' (71). It can also happen the other way round, a countable noun can become an uncountable one by becoming abstract, such as in 'cabaret' (72), 'chief' (73) and 'touch' (74). A third case occurs when a proper noun is converted into a common noun, as can be seen in 'diesel(s)' (75) (person's name), 'Bordeaux' (76) (usually related to high-quality French wines but not necessarily made in that particular city), 'yo-yo' (77) (trademark) or 'Stradivarius' (76) (famous maker of violins). Thus, this category can be rephrased as "a product of the (proper noun)". The fourth and final type happens when nouns shift from their static nature to a dynamic meaning when they follow the progressive of the verb 'to be'. Examples of this kind are 'student' (78), 'president' (79) and 'trouper' (80). These cases assume the meaning of "temporary role or activity". This fourth type is a product of the dynamic nature of the tense of the verb; it is not a characteristic of the noun by itself. This means that these nouns would return to their static nature by eliding the progressive form.

5.2 Conversion within verb categories

Verbs may undergo four different types of conversion. The first one happens when an intransitive verb is used transitively. This type has the meaning of "to cause to (verb)". Examples of this kind are 'worked a computer' (81), 'stop the manual recount' (82) and 'run the day-to-day operations' (83). Transitive verbs can also be used intransitively, that is the case of 'closed' (84). This category has been previously converted from adjective to verb, and, afterwards, it has experienced a secondary conversion from transitive to intransitive verb. In this sense, the verb would change the meaning from "to make close" (85) (transitive use) to "to become closed" (intransitive use) (84). A third type involves intransitive nouns converted into copulas. Examples like 'sat frozen' (86), 'grew silent' (87), 'were nailed shut' (88) or 'go global' (89) are quite current in daily conversations for the economy of language. In the case of 'sat frozen' (86) the strongest meaning remains with the verb, while, in the other two examples, the resulting meaning of the adjective prevails over the verbal one. Finally, verbs also shift form a monotransitive nature to a complex transitive one. Verbs commonly used with a unique object—direct or indirect—shift their behaviour and take more than one complement, as it can be seen in examples (90), (91) and (92). In 'won him the award' (90), the verb 'win' takes an indirect object and a direct one, although it usually takes only one direct one. The verb 'make' in 'make it a cabaret' (91) takes two different direct objects as well as the verb 'find' in 'find it very satisfying' (92).

5.3 Conversion within adjective categories

The adjective category can only be converted in two different ways. Like in the case of nouns, the static nature of adjectives can shift to a dynamic one because of the influence of the progressive form of the verb 'to be', such as in 'accused' (93). The other case happens when non-gradable adjectives turn into gradable ones. This category, though, is rather difficult to find. This gradation happens in 'incredulous' (94).

5.4 Conversion within adverb categories

Adverbs may also undergo secondary conversions within themselves. For example, the adverb 'still' can have a temporal sense (37) or be a manner adverb (95).

6. Marginal cases of conversion

There are some few cases of conversion in which there are slight non-affixal changes. These can be considered marginal cases of conversion (Bauer, 1983: 228-229). Although the shift takes place, they are called "marginal" because of the alterations produced in the word. Words belonging to this category are a close and long-established set. This marginal group can be divided regarding two different aspects: the pronunciation and the word-stress (Quirk, 1997: 1566).


6.1 Slight changes in pronunciation

With respect to pronunciation, there are some nouns ending in voiceless fricative consonants /-s/, /-f/ and /-θ/ which are converted into verbs with the voicing of the final consonant into /-z/, /-v/ and /-δ/, respectively2. For example, the noun 'use' /-s/ (96) shifts to the verb 'to use' /-z/ (97) without any change but the voicing of the final consonant. There are also some examples in this category that have a change in spelling for historical reasons. This is the case of the noun 'advice' /-s/ (98), which began to be written with 'c' in the 16th century (Oxford English Dictionary, 1979, vol. I: 139), whereas its corresponding verb 'advise' /-z/ (99) did not change its original spelling. Similarly, the noun 'belief' /-f/ (100) changed from 'beleeve' to 'beleefe' in the 16th century, "apparently by form-analogy with pairs like grieve grief, prove proof" (Oxford English Dictionary, 1979, vol. I: 782), while the verb 'believe' /-v/ (101) kept the original 'v'. In all those cases the change in graphic form corresponds to the shift in sound nature from a voiceless to a voiced consonant. Therefore, the voicing is also represented graphically. This category is no longer productive.

6.2 Slight changes in stress

The other marginal type has to do with the stress pattern. There are some bisyllabic verbs which shift to nouns or adjectives with a change in word stress from the verb distribution /-´-/ to the noun and adjective pattern /´—/ (this stress shift also affects the phonetic pattern, especially the length of the vowels involved). These are the cases of the verb 'conduct' (102) /kən'dVkt/ to the noun 'conduct' (103) /'kQndVkt/, from the verb 'protest' (104) /pr@'test/ to the noun 'protest' (105) /'pr@Utest/, or from the verb 'increase' (106) /iŋ'kri:s/ to the noun 'increase' (107) ('iŋkri:s/. This distinction is not kept in all the varieties of English and it tends to be lost. However, the shift of stress is still productive, as the following quotation from the entry corresponding to 'increase' in the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary shows (2003: 387):
The stress distinction between verb -´- and noun ´— is not always made consistently. Nevertheless, 85% of the BrE 1988 poll panel preferred to make this distinction (as against 7% preferring ´— for both verb and noun, 5% -´- for both, and 3% ´— for the verb, -´- for the noun.
There is a great amount of phrasal verbs which are being nominalised with a change in the stress patterns, such as in 'layoffs' (108), 'outbreak' (109) or 'outlets' (110).

7. Conclusions

Most new words are not as new as we tend to think. They are just readjustments within the same language, like additions to existing items or recombination of elements. This is where the field of action of conversion may be placed, and that is why this type of morphological studies reveals interesting aspects in the diachronic evolution of the English language.
There are evident cases of conversion from one part of speech to another, unclear cases in which the grammatical category is not definitely shifted, secondary changes within the same word and marginal cases where the change has produced slight modifications.
The real examples provided indicate the high frequency of this process. It is quite a common phenomenon is everyday English. In addition, it is not a great source of problems for nonnative speakers and translators because the meaning of converted items is easily recognisable. However, nonnatives and translators are strongly advised to be taught conversion so that their passive knowledge of it can be turned into an active skill, with the subsequent lexical enlargement for their everyday communication.

Conversion II

Conversion (linguistics)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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.g. 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.

Verb conversion in English

Verbification, or verbing, is the creation of a verb from a noun, adjective or other word. Verbification is a type of functional shift. It is also a form of derivation, and may involve any of the various derivational processes. In English, verbification typically involves simple conversion of a non-verb to a verb. The verbs to verbify and to verb are themselves products of verbification, and — as might be guessed — the term to verb is often used more specifically, to refer only to verbification that does not involve a change in form. (Verbing in this specific sense is therefore a kind of anthimeria.)

Verbification may have a bad reputation with some English users because it is such a potent source of neologisms. Although most products of verbification are regarded as neologisms, and may meet considerable opposition from prescriptivist authorities, they are extremely common in colloquial speech, particularly specialized jargon, where words are needed to describe common actions or experiences.
Verbification is by no means confined to argot, and has furnished English with countless new expressions, e.g. "access", as in "access the file", which was previously a noun, as in "gain access to the file". Similar mainstream examples include "host", as in "host a party", and "chair", as in "chair the meeting". Other formations, such as "gift", are less widespread but nevertheless mainstream.

Examples of verbification in the English language number in the thousands, including some of the most common words, such as mail and e-mail, strike, beer, talk, salt, pepper, switch, bed, sleep, ship, train, stop, drink, cup, lure, mutter, dress, dizzy, divorce, fool, merge, and many more, to be found on virtually every page in the dictionary. In many cases, the verbs were distinct from their noun counterparts in Old English and regular sound change has made them the same form: these can be reanalysed as conversion. "Don't talk the talk if you can't walk the walk" is an exemplary sentence.

Verbification is sometimes used to create nonce words or joking words. Sometimes these jocular constructions gain favor and become used in serious discourse, due to a subtle shade of meaning which is present in the neologism but absent from similar standard verbs, e.g. speechify. In other cases, simple conversion is involved, as with formations like beer, as in beer me ("give me a beer") and eye, as in eye it ("look at it"). Sometimes, a verbified form requires an adverb, e.g. sex as in sex it up ("make it sexier").
In other languages, such as Japanese and the Semitic languages, verbification is a more regular process. In Esperanto, any word can be transformed into a verb, either by altering its ending to -i, or by applying suffixes such as -igi and -iĝi.