Stress Shift in Noun-Verb Conversion PairsThe Case of ImportN-ImportV Pairs

  1. María Méndez Ruiz 1
  1. 1 Universidad de Granada
    info

    Universidad de Granada

    Granada, España

    ROR https://ror.org/04njjy449

Journal:
Miscelánea: A journal of english and american studies

ISSN: 1137-6368,  2386-4834

Year of publication: 2024

Issue: 69

Pages: 61-85

Type: Article

DOI: 10.26754/OJS_MISC/MJ.20249843 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openDialnet editor

More publications in: Miscelánea: A journal of english and american studies

Abstract

Conversion is a word-formation process characterised, among other aspects, by the formal identity between the original word and the resulting one (bottle to bottle). However, there are a few cases of conversion-related words which challenge this formal identity characteristic of conversion. One of these cases is that of noun-verb conversion pairs such as importN-importV, in which a type of phonological base allomorphy occurs: stress shift. In such cases, stress shift consists in nouns tending to be stressed on the first syllable (importN /ˈɪmpɔːt/) while verbs are usually stressed on the last one (importV /ɪmˈpɔːt/). This study aims to determine which are the most frequently occurring noun-verb conversion pairs displaying stress shift and why this type of allomorphy occurs. To answer these questions, a corpus of 157 noun-verb conversion pairs was compiled from frequency lists of nouns and verbs. Out of these pairs, 25 presented stress shift. Additionally, information about the etymology and the year of introduction into English of the 25 pairs with stress shift was gathered. It was found that all the noun-verb conversion pairs with stress shift are of Romance origin. Furthermore, the results suggest that the stress shift in noun-verb conversion pairs might be due to their adaptation to the Germanic stress system after being introduced into English from either Latin or French.

Bibliographic References

  • ANTONIOVÁ, Vesna. 2016. “Derivational Paradigm – Is There Any? A Contrastive Research”. SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics 13 (2): 91-105. . Accessed October 21, 2023.
  • BAUER, Laurie. 1983. English Word-Formation. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P. .
  • BAUER, Laurie. 1997. “Derivational Paradigms”. In Booij, Geert E. and Jaap van Marle (eds.) Yearbook of Morphology 1996. Dordrecht: Springer: 243-256. .
  • BAUER, Laurie. 2019. “Notions of Paradigm and their Value in Word-Formation”. Word Structure 12 (2): 153-175. .
  • BAUGH, Albert C. and Thomas CABLE. 2013. A History of the English Language. Oxford: Routledge.
  • BEECHER, Henry. 2004. Derivational Paradigm in Word Formation. . Accessed October 21, 2023.
  • BOOIJ, Geert. (2005) 2007. The Grammar of Words: An Introduction to Linguistic Morphology. Oxford: Oxford U.P.
  • BONAMI, Olivier and Jana STRNADOVÁ. 2019. “Paradigm Structure and Predictability in Derivational Morphology”. Morphology 29 (2): 167-197. .
  • BOYÉ, Gilles and Gauvain SCHALCHLI. 2016. “The Status of Paradigm”. In Hippisley, Andrew and Gregory Stump (eds.) The Cambridge Handbook of Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.: 206-234. .
  • CARSTAIRS-MCCARTHY, Andrew. 2006. “Internal Modification”. In Brown, Keith (ed.) Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Elsevier: 752-755. .
  • DIRVEN, René. 1999. “Conversion as a Conceptual Metonymy of Event Schemata”. In Panther, Klaus-Uwe and Günter Radden (eds.) Metonymy in Language and Thought. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company: 275-287. .
  • DON, Jan. 2005. “On Conversion, Relisting and Zero-Derivation”. SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics 2 (2): 2-16. . Accessed October 21, 2023.
  • EMBICK, David. 2012. “Contextual Conditions on Stem Alternations: Illustrations from the Spanish Conjugation”. In Franco, Irene, Sara Lusini and Andrés Saab (eds.) Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2010: Selected Papers from “Going Romance” Leiden 2010. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company: 21-40. .
  • FARRELL, Patrick. 2001. “Functional Shift as Category Underspecification”. English Language and Linguistics 5 (1): 109-130. .
  • GAETA, Livio and Marco ANGSTER. 2019. “Stripping Paradigmatic Relations out of the Syntax”. Morphology 29 (2): 249-270. .
  • GIMSON, Alfred Charles. 1962. An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English. London: Edward Arnold LTD.
  • JESPERSEN, Otto. 1949. A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles: Part 1, Sounds and Spellings. London: George Allen and Unwin.
  • KASTOVSKY, Dieter. 2006. “Typological Changes in Derivational Morphology”. In van Kemenade, Ans and Bettelou Los (eds.) The Handbook of the History of English. Oxford: Blackwell: 151-176. .
  • LEECH, Geoffrey, Paul RAYSON and Andrew WILSON. 2001. “Companion Website for Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English: Based on the British National Corpus”. . Accessed October 21, 2023.
  • LEE, Yongsung. 2009. “Conversion as Zero Affixation: Evidence from Affix Interaction”. Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics 9 (1): 135-160. .
  • LIEBER, Rochelle. 2005. “English Word-Formation Processes”. In Štekauer, Pavol and Rochelle Lieber (eds.) Handbook of Word-Formation. Dordrecht: Springer: 375-427. .
  • LIEBER, Rochelle and Pavol ŠTEKAUER. (eds.) 2014. The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology. Oxford: Oxford U.P. .
  • LIEBER, Rochelle. (2009) 2015. Introducing Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P. .
  • MARTSA, Sándor. 2013. Conversion in English: A Cognitive Semantic Approach. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
  • Oxford English Dictionary. 2023. Oxford U.P. . Accessed October 21, 2023.
  • PLAG, Ingo. (2003) 2018. Word-Formation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.
  • SCHÖNEFELD, Doris. 2005. “Zero-Derivation – Functional Change – Metonymy”. In Bauer, Laurie and Salvador Valera (eds.) Approaches to Conversion/Zero-Derivation. Münster: Waxmann Verlag: 131-159. . Accessed October 21, 2023.
  • SHERMAN, Donald. 1975. “Noun-Verb Stress Alternation: An Example of the Lexical Diffusion of Sound Change in English”. Linguistics 13 (159): 43-71. .
  • ŠTEKAUER, Pavol. 2014. “Derivational Paradigms”. In Lieber, Rochelle and Pavol Štekauer (eds.): 354-369. .
  • STUMP, Gregory. 2019. “Some Sources of Apparent Gaps in Derivational Paradigms”. Morphology 29 (2): 271-292. .
  • SWEET, Henry. (1892) 2014. A New English Grammar: Logical and Historical. Volume 1: Introduction, Phonology and Accidence. Cambridge: Cambridge U. P. .
  • VALERA, Salvador. 2014. “Conversion”. In Lieber, Rochelle and Pavol Štekauer (eds.): 154-168. .
  • VALERA, Salvador and Alba E. RUZ. 2020. “Conversion in English: Homonymy, Polysemy and Paronymy”. English Language & Linguistics 25 (1): 181-204. .
Data source: Dialnet