The Study Of Noun To Verb Conversion In English

Conversion is a popular and continuously-developing language usage.Although a lot of people think that conversion pollutes the purity of Englishlanguage, for the fear that the appearance of transformation words will degrade thequality of language. However, conversion has become one of the most importantword-formation in English out of its brevity and economy. Conversion enriches thelanguage vocabulary and the Noun to Verb Conversion increases the number ofverb in English. The blossom of the conversion makes itself the top target of manylinguists. Many subtypes are included in the conversion; Noun to Verb Conversionis the object of this thesis.Based on the previous studies, the motivation of Noun to Verb was furtherexplored, including language motivation, semantic motivation, and pragmaticmotivation. And the psychological motivation was added in this thesis.Then, the conditions to realize the Noun to Verb Conversion and steps tounderstand the Noun to Verb structure were investigated from the perspective of thecognitive linguistics. Based on the Prototype Theory and the Noun, Adjective andVerb Continuum, the focus was on the factors that contribute to the realization of theNoun to Verb Conversion, including Hypothesis of Mutual Inclusion of SemanticContent of Noun and Verb, context and encyclopedia and so on. Three steps wereadvised to understand the implicit information hidden in denominal structure. Thereare the recognition of the denominal verb, analysis of the stereotypical relationbetween denominal verb and other components of the sentence and the generation ofthe syntactic structure and semantic meaning of a word. In the process of deducingand understanding the denominal verb, metonymy and metaphor contribute a lot toour understanding of the denominal verb, therefore, large examples were listed in thethesis to exemplify these two thinking mechanisms.Last, the difficulties and constraints in the process of learning denominal verbswere discussed. Based on the constraints discussed, conditions for learning were offered at the same time, such as having a good knowledge of the encyclopedia,cultivating the ability to analyze the context and generating the syntactic structureentailed by the denominal verbs. In the end of this chapter, the teaching strategieswere suggested for the teachers, such as the presentation of the classification ofdenominal verbs and the employment of the COCA to help both teachers andstudents.The significance of the thesis is hoping that the research will make acontribution to learning and teaching of Noun to Verb Conversion, besides, peoplewho are engaged in the research of conversion or translation or interpretation canbenefit from this research.