Nieuwe woorden bouwen, bijvoorbeeld met lego: Zij legoot – sie spielt mit lego – sy speel lego’s. Conversie contrastief in het Nederlands, Duits en Afrikaans
Building New Words, e.g. with Lego: zij legoot – sie spielt mit lego – sy speel lego’s: Contrastive Conversion in Dutch, German and Afrikaans

Summary/Abstract: Alongside composition and derivation, conversion constitutes a highly productive word-formation process in the West Germanic language family. In addition to nominalised infinitives (essenV – das EssenN), there are expressions such as die FlöteN – flötenV or laufenV – der LaufN. In Dutch, conversion appears to be even more productive than in German, e.g. Dutch allows for hij voetbaltV or zij legootV which in German cannot be rendered with *er fußballtV, *sie legotV, but rather with periphrastic constructions: er spieltV FußballN, sie spieltV mit LegoN. Similarly, Afrikaans also requires periphrases in these cases: hy speelV sokkerN and sy speelV lego’sN. Combining empirical corpus research with a survey of language user attitudes, this research project aims to explore which forms of conversion occur in the three languages, which words can serve as the basis for such a conversion, and which converted words might come into everyday use.

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