Talk:Conversion (word formation)

Citation
Other than the lead, this article is very messy and not very accurate linguistically. We need some historical comparison and references. Anyone? --Mark (talk) 06:42, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Refudiate
"The suggestion that the presence of a superhuman has inclined the world more towards peace is refudiated by the sharp increase in both Russian and American nuclear stockpiles since the advent of Dr. Manhattan." -- Watchmen, Chapter IV, last page (numbered "III"), DC Comics, 1987, Seventeeth Printing, ISBN 13: 978-0-930289-23-2. I don't know where else in any wiki to put this juicy little tidbit of information. It belongs on my own website, certainly, but I thought I'd give it to the great Wikipedia, too. Maybe it's a word after all, and maybe it's not so humorous now? 70.112.186.143 (talk) 00:16, 27 October 2010 (UTC) Eric

Is refudiate a conversion?
Isn't refudiate a portmanteau, not a conversion? "Refute" and "Repudiate" are both verbs.


 * Youre right. Most of the examples – including the ones you mention – are incorrect. (Most the article should be scrapped, actually.)

Verbification reinstated
I've just reinstated the Verbification section (pasted back into the current version, so that none of the edits since then have been lost). A considerable amount of work by a number of users went into writing that material, and I would ask that it not simply be removed without prior discussion. That is not only unhelpful, but contrary to Wikipedia policy. It is also quite inappropriate to base such action purely on the lack of "Google Books" hits for "verbification" and "verbing". "Verbify" is actually the relevant search term, and Google Books is by no means exhaustive. There is a mountain of material it does not contain, and may never contain.

In support of retaining this section - aside from its obvious and unmissable presence in film, TV and internet media, *all* of my recent dictionaries contain the term 'verbify'. That alone is sufficient reason to refute claims of OR. I believe it is by far the most recognisable form of linguistic conversion in English, and one that almost everyone in English-speaking countries will have come across or be aware of.

To keep this constructive, the material *does* need sourcing and improvement. However, that is an ongoing process. Verbification is an emergent cultural phenomenon, and literature is always slow to reflect linguistic trends. Wikipedia will never be finished, but it will be even further from completion if large swathes of informative text are arbitrarily deleted without consensus.

Dan Pope (talk) 14:19, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: page moved Chihin.chong (tea and biscuits) 09:36, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Conversion (linguistics) → Conversion (word formation) – Perhaps this should be moved because the title “Conversion (linguistics)” also perfectly describes Conversion of scripts. —Michael Z. 2013-05-01 16:53 z  16:53, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Support It is a good idea to avoid confusion, and I see nothing wrong with the proposed new name. --Spannerjam (talk) 20:55, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Support. I agree that Conversion (linguistics) is an ambiguous title and that the proposed move is a good way of resolving that ambiguity. After the move Conversion (linguistics) can be redirected to Conversion (and someone should remember to update the DAB page link too). — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 09:51, 10 May 2013 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Chicken and egg problem
I don't think the ancient examples such as sleep, talk &c. are examples of verbification, but nominalization. Generally, derivational patterns in languages tend to go from concrete to abstract or from directly perceivable to non-perceivable because that's how our brain conceives of events and things. Verbal meaning in these cases is thus the primary one and nominal an abstract derivation. Anyhow, the distinction between nominal and verbal roots is universally fuzzy in languages so conversion as a distinct type of derivation exists only in languages with a rich array of productive derivational affixes. 88.192.73.218 (talk) 09:37, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Zero derivations in languages with inflectional morphology
According to this article, a zero derivation involves no change in form, but how is this considered with regard to languages that have inflectional morphology? Consider for example the Dutch verb drogen (to dry), which is derived from the adjective droog (dry). The infinitive has the ending -en here, but this ending can be replaced with other endings as needed, and some of the verb forms have no endings, such as the first-person singular form ik droog (I dry). Clearly, the stem of the word hasn't changed, it is only the dictionary form (infinitive) that gives the impression that there is a suffix. So I wonder if this would also be considered zero derivation.

The Esperanto example given in the entry has the same problem as well. The -i is the infinitive ending, analogous to the Dutch -en, and can be swapped out for other verb endings like -as, -os or -u. The stem of the word has not changed, but the article claims that the form of the word has changed due to the change in the ending. How strict should this be taken? CodeCat (talk) 12:52, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

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The word have same form but defferent prononciation
The word have same form but defferent prononciation 154.121.51.40 (talk) 11:42, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
 * What word? Nardog (talk) 11:45, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Example of 'cringe' is under wrong heading
This is stated, correctly, as being an example of a noun made from a verb, but it's in the Verbification section. Unless the author was suggesting it went the other way? SuscipiamSingularitatem (talk) 13:34, 27 June 2024 (UTC)