A one-term course should then aim not only to deal with a portion of the chapters in the text; it should also lay a foundation that will enable students to continue to make use of the book after the course is completed. If you do not have a two-term sequence to deal with the structure of English, we recommend teaching certain introductory chapters and then filling out the term by choosing others that you and/or your students feel would be most useful. | 56 The Grammar Book It should be noted however that which words take which affixes is not always predictable. Students will sometimes attempt a new form with a derivational suffix that does not work suggestmenl or will think that a word has a common prefix when in fact the prefix is part of the root . relay resent . There is also potential confusion on native English speakers parts as well when having to choose between two words with different morphology that seem to be opposites or at least different but that actually have ven similar meanings . invaluable valuable slow up slow down admission admit-tance joyful joyous . A final point to be made is that when both a derivational and an inflectional suffix are fixed to the same word the inflectional suffix occurs last. weaknesses weaksness Conversion The other important productive lexical process in English is conversion. This occurs when one part of speech is converted into another part of speech without any derivational affixation. Most conversion in English takes place when the underlying verb has a very general meaning and the meaning of a noun object direct or prepositional becomes incorporated into the verb to show that something has been 1 added 2 taken away or 3 used for something. 1. He put butter on his bread. He buttered his bread. He poured water on the plants. He watered the plants. 2. Jo removed dust from the desk. Jo dusted the desk. I took the pits out of the dates. I pitted the dates. 3. He cut the log with a saw. He sawed the log. Sue gathered the leaves with a rake. She raked the leaves. This is a very productive process and new words or rather new functions for extant words arc always being coined. We recently heard someone say That book was a good read and novel conversions often accompany innovations for example we now e-mail messages and fedex packages. The example with read reminds us to mention that even though the dominant English conversion pattern occurs when noun meanings are .
