Specific English

You’d think the Old Man would okay air-conditioners for the offices. Можно подумать, что Старик одобрит кондиционеры в учреждениях.

More and more people came crowding in, to tapper-tap-tap with their feet. Все больше и больше людей входило, тесня друг друга, чтобы поплясать.

Из вышесказанного можно сделать вывод, что конверсия обеспечивает известную семантическую свободу слову, обогащая его, позволяя ему обрастать новыми значениями благодаря его свободному движению в предложении. Так грамматический строй оказывает свое влияние на лексику языка, приводя к многозначности слова.

Конверсия проникла даже в область словообразования. К словам одной части речи присоединяются аффиксы, свойственные другой части речи. Так, в литературе встречаются прилагательные, образованные от глаголов с помощью суффикса прилагательных -(е)у, – по аналогии с прилагательными, образованными с помощью этого суффикса от существительных: fishy, watery и т. д. Например:

«What’s the matter?» he enquired. «Is the starey

bird going?» «В чем дело? – спросил он. – Что, уходит, наконец, эта сова?»

Речь идет о женщине, которая не сводила глаз с молодой пары. Автор хотел подчеркнуть, что «глазеть» было обычной манерой этой особы. (Причастия staring оказалось недостаточно, ибо оно не передает постоянного свойства.)

Вот еще один пример необычного словообразования.

Zanetta, sixtyish, was prominent in community affairs. Занет, человек лет шестидесяти, был заметной фигурой в местных общественных делах. Суффикс прилагательного -ish, обозначающий небольшую степень качества, присоединяется к числительному.

Упражнения

I. Отметьте случаи конверсии в данных предложениях. Укажите, от какой части речи образованы данные слова. Переведите предложения.

А. 1. Не promised to will Ed a castle in India. 2. Her mother could shame her to tears with a reproachful glance. 3. He rose awkwardly from the deep chair, the sciatica (ишиас) knifing as he did. 4. Ruth cupped the base of his head and edged him with her curved hand quietly back to sleep. 5. That particular trouble had begun shortly after dark when an Aero Mexican captain, taxiing out for take-off, mistakenly passed to the right instead of left of a blue taxi light. 6. Mel pocketed his change from the cashier. 7. In intense pain, half-drowned, he surfaced. 8. It had been a slow, tricky job because steps (ступеньки) were icing as fast as they were cleared. 9. Money meant little to him, and he never much minded whether patients paid him or not. Since time was as unimportant as cash, he was just as willing to doctor them as not. 10. We generally anchor for the night. 11. He was evidently much taken with Erik, and the companionship of someone only a little older than himself had loosened his constraint so that he seemed to flower with a new adolescence. 12. But why was he sailing these lonely seas on a pearling lugger with a scoundrel like Captain Nichols was mysterious. 13. Somewhere in Keith’s mind a door, which had been closed, inched open. 14. «Never mind it, Elliott,«I said, «it may rain on the night of the party. That’ll bitch it.» 15. Isabel wirelessed him from the ship. 15. But the director, crazed with enthusiasm, had insisted on detailing his plans. 17. The vote climaxed some 50 years of efforts. 18. Only a slight moistness at eyes and mouth, a slight pale plumpness of cheek, aged him a little. 19. When he went on leave he hunted and, anxious to keep his weight down, he dieted carefully. 20. I shouldered a bag and set out. 21. More than 18,000 Arab houses were dynamited off the face of the earth. 22. We have carefully documented them with facts and evidence and witness. 23. It ages a worker fast. 24. But I do feel as though I were skylarking along on a pair of stilts. 25. Freddie detailed his own exciting triumphs in Queen Anne Street. 26. Mine, the black and white mare, rose on her hind legs, whinnied, teetered like a tightrope artist, then blue-streaked down the path. 27. Photographs of Holly were front-paged by the late edition of the «Journal-American». 28. A nurse, soft-shoeing into the room, advised that visiting hours were over. 29. I’m not hot-footing after Jose, if that’s what you suppose. 30. Tucked between the pages were Sunday features, together with scissored snippings from gossip columns. 31. The bank didn’t pension one off till after thirty years’ service. 32. Torpenhow was paging the last sheets of some manuscript. 33. It was a fine October evening with a solemn and sorrowing sky, full of stars.