Action meanings in noun/verb conversion: native and foreign word-formation in Czech

Abstract

The study deals with Czech conversion pairs of a noun and a verb, both of which denote actions (test ‘test.n’ — testovat ‘to test’). Elaborating on previous research on prototypical verb-to-noun and noun-to-verb conversion in Czech, the direction in these pairs is determined based on whether the verb forms its aspectual counterpart by changing the theme (which is characteristic of the deverbal direction), or whether the suffixed counterpart is not available (typical of denominal verbs). The analysis, carried out on a corpus sample of 1,300 action nouns and directly related verbs, demonstrates that pairs with native roots mostly conform to the deverbal pattern, whereas the denominal direction applies to a smaller subset of the native sample but clearly prevails in the data with foreign roots. The denominal direction ascribed to foreign pairs is consistent with the typological hypothesis that verbs are borrowed rather as nouns and subsequently turned into verbs in the target language.

Keywords

• action nouns
• conversion
• denominal verbs
• grammatical aspect
• word formation