{"id":213,"date":"2018-02-14T10:25:58","date_gmt":"2018-02-14T10:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/?p=213"},"modified":"2018-02-14T10:25:58","modified_gmt":"2018-02-14T10:25:58","slug":"let-me-linguistics-that-for-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/2018\/02\/14\/let-me-linguistics-that-for-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Let me Linguistics that for you…"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a 2016 twitter poll asking do you feel comfortable using gift as a verb? (ie: \u201cI gifted that sweater to you\u201d)<\/a>, 66% of respondents reported that they found this use \u2018icky\u2019. This phenomenon is known by linguists as \u2018conversion\u2019 or \u2018zero-derivation\u2019, because it involves taking a particular class of word, such as a verb, noun, or an adjective, and deriving another type of word from it without doing anything. This stands in contrast to common-and-garden \u2018derivation\u2019, where you convert the class of a word by changing its form somehow. For example, the verb sense <\/em>becomes a noun sensation<\/em>, which becomes an adjective sensational<\/em>, which comes full circle to another verb sensationalise<\/em>, all by the accumulation of suffixes. (The OED even lists a further derivation sensationalisation<\/em> \u2013 but this sort of style has its own equally vociferous critics, showing you can\u2019t win when it comes to linguistic taste).<\/p>\n

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In English verbs, nouns and adjectives all tend to look much the same, which makes it possible to zero-derive by stealth. It wasn\u2019t always this way. Take for example the verb stone<\/em>, a 12th<\/sup>-century example of the noun-as-verb phenomenon, derived from the noun stone <\/em>(in its Middle English form st\u014dn<\/em>). Back then, the infinitive wasn\u2019t simply st\u014dn<\/em>, but st\u014dnen<\/em> \u2013 the suffix –en<\/em> was obligatory for all infinitives, and makes it clear that the word is no longer being used as a noun. Or compare the noun fight<\/em> with the identical verb. In Old English the basic form of the noun was feoht<\/em>, but there was no corresponding verb form feoht<\/em>: instead, it was feohte\u00f0 <\/em>\u2018he fights\u2019, fihtest<\/em> \u2018you fight\u2019, fuhton<\/em> \u2018we\/you (pl)\/they fought\u2019, feaht<\/em> \u2018I\/he\/she fought\u2019, or one of many other forms, depending on various grammatical properties such as subject (who is doing the fighting?), number (how many people are fighting?) and mood (is the fighting real, hypothetical, or an instruction?). As Old English evolved into its modern form, most of these inflectional suffixes were lost, encouraging a rise in the number of zero-derivations entering the language.<\/p>\n

The laissez-faire attitude of English can be clearly recognised when comparing how languages deal with new words such as the recently-coined verb \u2018to google\u2019<\/a>. Some languages, like Middle English st\u014dnen<\/em>, merely adapt the company\u2019s name to express the grammatical categories which are important in the language (e.g. German du googlest, <\/em>\u2018you google\u2019, ich habe gegoogelt<\/em> \u2018I googled\u2019), while other languages add extra pieces of word to explicitly flag up the conversion, e.g. Greek \u03b3\u03ba\u03bf\u03c5\u03b3\u03ba\u03bb\u03af\u03b6\u03c9 or \u03b3\u03ba\u03bf\u03c5\u03b3\u03ba\u03bb\u03ac\u03c1\u03c9 (pronounced \u2018googlizo\u2019\/\u2018googlaro\u2019), where the final syllable -o<\/em> indicates that the subject of the verb is \u2018I\u2019, but the -iz- <\/em>preceding it can\u2019t be attributed any meaning beyond \u2018I\u2019m a verb!\u2019.<\/p>\n

In English, meanwhile, pretty much anything goes: in addition to verbs which have become nouns, we have numerous nouns becoming verbs (e.g. father, storm<\/em>), adjectives becoming verbs (round, smooth<\/em>), adjectives becoming nouns (intellectual<\/em>), and liberal rules governing compounds, which let us treat nouns as if they were adjectives (stone wall<\/em>). English has such a devil-may-care <\/em>attitude to conversion that even whole phrases can become nouns or adjectives: basically, it\u2019s a free-for-all<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This has been going on in English for a very long time, so why do examples like gifting <\/em>make people feel \u2018icky\u2019? Partly it\u2019s because we associate coinages like impact<\/em>, action<\/em> and workshop<\/em> with corporate jargon \u2013\u00a0although some of these are actually of considerable age (impact <\/em>was a verb before it became a noun, and it started out life even earlier as an adjective), their use boomed in the decades following the second world war, as management increasingly came to be seen as a scientific discipline. Another objection is that we already have words for verbs like to gift<\/em>, namely give<\/em>, which makes gift <\/em>feel like an overelaborate solution to a non-problem, the linguistic equivalent of bic\u2019s infamous \u2018for her\u2019 range of pens<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Nevertheless, zero-derivation can come in handy when a word has acquired a different or narrower meaning than the word it originally derived from. Gift<\/em> originally referred to an action or instance of giving, in addition to the thing being given, but it now almost exclusively refers to something given for free in a spirit of goodwill. You can give<\/em> someone a black eye, hepatitis, or the creeps, but it would be the height of irony to call these things gifts<\/em>. Correspondingly, to gift <\/em>has a more specific meaning than to give<\/em>, and is much more concise than to give as a gift<\/em>, just like texting <\/em>someone is more concise than sending a text message <\/em>to them, and friending<\/em> someone is more concise than adding <\/em>them as a friend on Facebook<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a 2016 twitter poll asking do you feel comfortable using gift as a verb? (ie: \u201cI gifted that sweater to you\u201d), 66% of respondents reported that they found this use \u2018icky\u2019. This phenomenon is known by linguists as \u2018conversion\u2019 or \u2018zero-derivation\u2019, because it involves taking a particular class of word, such as a verb, noun, or an adjective, and deriving another type of word from it without doing anything. This stands in contrast to common-and-garden \u2018derivation\u2019, where you convert…<\/p>\n

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