Peter Kosta

• The book by Božena Bednaříková, Slovo a jeho konverze (‘BSJK’), was originally published in 2009. However, in our view, there has not yet been given a due consideration and certainly not recognition as a genuine new territory of word formation. This is the reason to write a short review in order to give this book the consideration it has by large and far deserved. For in this book, two theoretically interesting working hypotheses are represented and covered by numerous examples of the Czech contemporary language: (i) conversion is the central process (not derivation), and (ii) conversion belongs to morphology and not (just) to word formation. The book is divided into 9 sections. The section 1 (p. 13–14) gives the road map of the book, in section 2 (p. 15–42), the central concern about the position of word as a central unit of morphology (form formation) is established. In this chapter, the traditional views of Czech descriptive and Academic grammars but also manuals and handbooks or teacher’s books for high schools are reviewed. InThe book by Božena Bednaříková, Slovo a jeho konverze (‘BSJK’), was originally published in 2009. However, in our view, there has not yet been given a due consideration and certainly not recognition as a genuine new territory of word formation. This is the reason to write a short review in order to give this book the consideration it has by large and far deserved. For in this book, two theoretically interesting working hypotheses are represented and covered by numerous examples of the Czech contemporary language: (i) conversion is the central process (not derivation), and (ii) conversion belongs to morphology and not (just) to word formation. The book is divided into 9 sections. The section 1 (p. 13–14) gives the road map of the book, in section 2 (p. 15–42), the central concern about the position of word as a central unit of morphology (form formation) is established. In this chapter, the traditional views of Czech descriptive and Academic grammars but also manuals and handbooks or teacher’s books for high schools are reviewed. In most of them, word formation is considered being a part of lexicology, and not an integral part of morphology or better form formation. The review serves not only the improvement towards a unifying grammatical terminology in academic circles (university and academy of science) but it should also improve the quality of teaching at elementary and high schools (cf. 2.6., p. 31–42: Školský exkurz). Bednaříková is famous for her leading role as missing link between the Academia and the consumers of grammars. In chapter 3, entitled Návrat slova ‘The return of the word’ (into the Morphology, p. 43–54), arguments in favor of a morphological approach are raised. In this important methodological chapter, the main reasons are given why the word must be a central part of the form formation (morphology/grammar) and not of the lexicology. In addition, key terms such as stem, root and affix are subject to revision. The chapter is very brief, but very precise in its reasoning and arguments, in which the formal teaching is assigned a central supporting role in the context of conversion and transposition. In chapter 4 Slovo jako slovní druh (‘The word as a pars orationis’, p. 55–70), the syntactic function of transposition of one pars orationis to another with the means of conversion is considered. In Chapter 5, the central role of morphology for word formation is analyzed taking as starting point Mel’čuks theory which is understood as the analysis of morphological processes (cf. Mel’čuk, I. 2000. Morphological processes. In G. Booji, Ch. Lehmann, J. Mugdan, & S. Skopeteas (eds.), Morphologie/Morphology. Vol. 1, 523–535. Berlin & New York). The innovative part of the book are without any doubt the chapters 6–9, in which the internal structure of the word is introduced (chapter 6, 79–122), furthermore the part of speech transfer (or PS Transfer) including the conversion (Chapter 7, 123–149), once more the transposition understood as the shift from one part of speech to the other and concentrating on nouns, verbs and adjectives (Chapter 8, 150–201), and, finally, transflexion, “transflexe” (chapter 9, 203–219), which belongs rather to the domain of derivation than to a new type of word formation, and which does not include the transposition from one part of speech to another but rather the transition from one declension class to another. However, it is to be criticized that in some chapters, certain systematics are missing (this is expressed for example in the repetition of the same phenomenon in several places), and the illustrations in the form of derivation trees or the abbreviations are not always transparent and explicitly defined. It took a very long time until I received information about the abbreviation “S”. I would now like to give a short statement concerning the innovative potential and the contribution of the book itself as compared to the western standard on the same topic. At the beginning of the monograph, the author raises the central concerns of her two hypotheses. In her study, she is concerned with the bases of morphemic analysis of word formation and with the function of the syntagma. In view of methodology, two central acts of actualization are, following Mathesius’ terminology, under review: first, the category called “pojmenovávací”, and second, the category called “usouvztažňovací” (cf. also Mathesius, V. 1982. Jazyk, kultura a slovesnost; Daneš, F. 1991.Mathesiova koncepce funkční gramatiky v kontextu dnešní jazykovědy. In SaS 52. 161–174 and Panevová, J. 2010. Kategorie pojmenovávací a usouvztažňovací [Jak František Daneš rozvíjí Viléma Mathesia]. In S. Čmejrková & J. Hoffmannová ad. [eds.], Užívání a prožívání jazyka, 21–26.). Her major concern is thus to establish a missing link between an analysis of word formation and form formation (morphology). Her morphemic analysis of word formation processes wants to “combat traditional school views of word formation as a (mechanical) connection of the root, prefix, and suffix”. Doing so, she analyzes in the book the relationship between transfer, transposition (as change of partes orationis) and conversion (as the operation process serving transposition). In the last chapter 8, BSJK re-introduces and refines the term transflection (BSJK 2009,13). This book is important for its consistent satisfactory treatment of the term conversion as a morphological process in the Czech tradition; still we cannot confirm that in European context, this topic would be “seriously under-researched” (cited from the introduction, Chapter 1, p. 13). The contrary is true, in context of English word formation besides the most influential work by Marchand (Marchand, H. 1996. The categories and types of present-day English word-formation: A synchronic diachronic approach. 2nd ed. München), conversion as the most productive process of word formation has become perhaps the most researched object recently: to mention just a few influential monographs: Martsa, S. 2013. Conversion in English: A Cognitive Semantic Approach. Cambridge; Vogel, P. M. 1996. Wortarten und Wortartenwechsel. Berlin & New York. The word formation called conversion originally comes from analytic languages such as English and French. Especially English is a language in which the derivation of a noun from a verb and vice versa causes a considerable large amount of homonymous forms in the dictionary and of course, this is not just a problem of morphology but especially a problem of any theoretical approach to language acquisition, cognitive semantics or even generative morphosyntax. Thus, in his seminal book, Language Instinct (1995), Steven Pinker argues persuasively that prescriptive grammar rules disallowing, among other things, the sentence-final use of prepositions, the splitting of infinitives and the conversion of nouns to verbs are both useless and nonsensical (371–379). As regards the conversion of nouns to verbs, he says: “[i]n fact the easy conversion of nouns to verbs has been part of English grammar for centuries; it is one of the processes that make English English” (ibidem: 379). To illustrate the easiness characterizing this type of conversion, he lists verbs converted from nouns designating human body parts, some of which are reproduced in (1): (1) head a committee, scalp a missionary, eye a babe, nose around the office, mouth the lyrics, tongue each note on the flute, neck in the back seat, back the candidate, arm the militia, shoulder the burden, elbow your way in, finger the culprit, knuckle under, thumb a ride, belly up to the bar, stomach someone’s complaints, knee the goalie, leg it across the town, foot the bill, toe the line (cf. Pinker, S. 1995. The Language Instinct. New York, 379–380 and Pinker, S. 1996. Language learnability and language development. Cambridge MA) Pinker estimates that approximately a fifth of English verbs originate from nouns, which, as documented extensively in Clark & Clark (Clark, E. V. & H. H. Clark. 1979. When nouns surface as verbs. In Language 55. 767–811), may also have to do with the fact that new or innovative verbs in English arise predominantly from conversion of nouns to verbs. Without questioning the dominance of noun to verb conversion, I shall claim in this review that it is not only the easy conversion of verbs from nouns, but, more broadly, conversion as a word-formation process that makes English English. Consider, for instance, (2) below demonstrating that the easiness of forming conversion verbs equally characterizes, though in a lesser degree, the conversion of nouns from verbs. The expressions given in (2) are modelled on Pinker’s above examples by the seminal work of Sándor Martsa (2013. Conversion in English: A Cognitive Semantic Approach. Cambridge), and they contain nouns converted from verbs designating actions functionally related to different parts of the human body. (2) have your say, give a shout, let out a shriek / a cry, give a talk, take a look at the notes, keep a close watch, down the whisky with a swallow, have a chew on it, have a smell of this cheese, with a smile, the touch of her fingers, Hey! Nice catch! go for a run, it’s worth a go, go for a walk Thus, the major difference between the term konverze as introduced and defended in BSJK (2009, 149) on one hand, and the English type of conversion mostly called “Zero-Derivation” by a zero morpheme (as Marchand 1969 op. cit., has called it) is to be found inside of the two quite different systems of word formation. Czech very rarely allows for pure zero derivation such as demonstrated in the English examples (1)-(2). Despite this major difference, even Czech language being still a highly inflectional language with rich case, number and declension system and agreement, nevertheless more and more allows for similar word formations typical for English with a true zero affixation, e. g. tunnel > to tunnel : Cz tunel > tunelovat and this process is an integral part of the grammar because it includes even the category of verbal aspect deriving also the perfective forms and negated verbs such as nevytunelovalo peníze, ve snaze “politicky korektně” uctít Havlovu památku jednotliví ministři české vlády přislíbili, že přestanou tento stát vykrádat a tunelovat, tedy alespoň do začátku příštího roku; Nové vedení Obce spisovatelů a jeho sekretariát nevytunelovalo peníze Obce spisovatelů, vždyť nebylo ani co tunelovat, naopak zachránilo tuto organizaci před téměř nezvratným koncem (ČNK. Last accessed July 10, 2018). Thus conversion is becoming more and more an important process of word and form formation in the system of Czech word formation and morphology. One critical observation remains to be mentioned: The book is solid but in a certain sense restricted to just functional approaches not considering or even including the important contribution of alternative approaches in formal linguistics. Thus, mainstream generative syntax, based on the theory of government and binding or minimalism (introduced by Noam Chomsky in 1981 and 1995), are not reviewed in this book even though there are many allusions including the important role of syntax for word formation (this is an important demand on any theory of word formation, cf. also Dokulil, M. 1962. K vzájemnému poměru slovotvorby a skladby. In Acta Universitatis Carolinae: SLAVICA PRAGENSIA IV, 369–375. UK, Praha). Most of the recent work devoted to a theoretical approach of minimalism considers conversion as a “syntactic decomposition” based on root semantics (cf. e. g. Borer, H. 2005. In name only: Structuring sense Vol. I. & The normal course of events: Structuring sense Vol. II. Oxford; Harley, H. & R. Noyer. 1999. State-of-the article: Distributed Morphology. In GLOT 4. 3–9; Halle, M. & A. Marantz. 1993. Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection. In Keyser, S. J. & K. Hale (eds.), The view from Building 20, 111–176. Cambridge.). A recent development in minimalism is the concept of roots and categorial features (cf. Panagiotidis, Ph. 2014. Categorial Features. A Generative Theory of Word Class Categories. Cambridge.). This theory differentiates between so-called true “denominal verbs tape-type verbs” as opposed to those verbs which are “directly derived from a root hammer-type”. The structural differences between them are argued by Panagiotidis (2014: 63) “to account for the idiosyncratic meaning of the latter, as opposed to the predictable and systematic meaning of the former”. The two types are demonstrated under (3) vs. (4) (3) nP vP / \ / \ N HAMMER v xP / \ HAMMER x (Panagiotidis op. cit., 2014: 63) In (3) to the left, the nominalizer head n takes a root complement, nominalizing it syntactically. In the tree to the right, the root h a m m e r is a manner adjunct to an xP (schematically rendered) inside the vP. On the other hand, verbs like tape behave differently. They seem to be truly denominal, formed by converting a noun into a verb, by recategorizing the noun and not by categorizing a root. By hypothesis, the verbalizing head takes as its complement a structure that already contains a noun – that is, an nP in which the root tape has already been nominalized: (4) nP vP / \ / \ N TAPE v xP / \ np. X / \ n TAPE (Panagiotidis 2014:63) As opposed to this approach, the present monograph uses the term “transpozice” (‘transposition’) as the change of parts of speech of different classes by the means of konverze (‘conversion’) (chapter 8, 151–201). We will just mention one typical class or type of such conversions as given under (5) and (6): (5) kapř / \ Kapř í (BSJK,156) (6) výlov [vylovit] / \ vý [vy] lov [lovit] (BSJK, 180) In summary, I would see the great merit of the publication especially in a new view on ancient phenomena. Additionally, the work also excels in a thorough multi-level analysis of conversion, transposition and transflexion, including consideration of morphonological alternations and differences of semantic interpretation by adding or removing a specific onomasiological feature (according to the onomasiological word formation theory of Dokulil, M. 1962. Tvoření slov v češtině. Teorie odvozování slov. Praha.). Above all, I value the book because of its consistent insistence on the role of shaping for conversion as a part of morphology (form formation). I also think that conversion will play an increasingly important role in the further development of the Czech language, both for system external reasons, as a language contact phenomenon for English, but also for system inherent reasons, triggered and flanked by the tendency towards analytism and simplification, and finally the gradual reduction of the complex inflectional system of nouns and verbs. For the theoretical linguist, this book may not be a substitute for word-formation theories such as Marchand, op. cit. (1969) or Dokulil, op. cit. (1962, 1968); but it is a very stimulating and original study in which a more thorough reading could lead to a differentiated view than that given here, showing the differences between a true zero-derivative language such as English based on a more elaborated morpho-syntactic generative theory of root semantics by Panagiotidis (2014) in which the term conversion is very different from that presented in Bednaříkovás book (see Examples 1 and 2), and a derivational language such as Czech with additional affixes and other word-forming means more clearly. The author is to be recommended for bridging the gap with traditional (and, in my view, not negligible) theories and newer views. The work must necessarily have place in every slavist’s and bohemist’s book shelf.…