Summary

Conversion is a dynamic word-formation process whereby a derivative is formed from a base with the concomitant shift of morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties, and without a formal derivational mark. The application of conversion to languages with inflectional systems different from English and to various patterns depends on the flexibility of the concept itself: In a word-based approach, conversion is rather limited in languages with an inflectional system as Romance languages have. In a root-/stem-based approach, a much wider range of derivational patterns occur lacking a formal mark as conversion, and the inflectional marks obtained result from the word-class shift as a natural condition of conversion.