Конверсия

Во Введении мы уже говорили о том, что реакцией на синтаксическую скованность и постоянство структуры в английском языке является, в частности, конверсия. Она дает прежде всего определенную морфологическую свободу, выражающуюся в том, что одно и то же слово может быть употреблено в качестве различных частей речи, а следовательно, и выступать в функции различных членов предложения. Достаточно заглянуть в англо-русский словарь, чтобы убедиться в этом: одно и то же слово является и существительным, и глаголом, а иногда и прилагательным, и наречием. Это означает, что первоначально слово выступало в роли какой-то одной из этих частей речи, но затем, по конверсии, приобрело также качества другой части речи. Например:

blue — прилагательное — синий, голубой

blue — существительное — синий цвет, голубой цвет

blue — глагол — окрашивать в синий цвет; синеть

board — существительное — доска

board — глагол — настилать пол; обшивать досками

up — предлог — (вверх) по, в, на

up — наречие — вверх, наверх, наверху

up — глагол — поднимать

up — прилагательное — растущий, увеличивающийся;

следующий в большой город, столицу или на север

(о поезде, автобусе и т. п.) up — существительное — поезд, автобус и т. п., идущий

в большой город, столицу или на север*

По контексту всегда нетрудно определить, какой частью речи является то или иное слово благодаря твердому порядку слов английского предложения.

* Примеры взяты из «Большого англо-русского словаря» под ред. И. Р. Гальперина, М., «Сов. энциклопедия», 1972.

ПО

Пожалуй, наиболее часто встречающимся примером конверсии является переход существительных в глаголы и наоборот. Иногда бывает даже трудно сказать, чем первоначально было данное слово — существительным или глаголом, как, например, в таких парах: step — to step, blow — to blow, roar — to roar и т. д. Но в большинстве случаев исходное слово распознать все-таки можно. Так, несомненно, что в парах: face — to face, hand — to hand, pocket — to pocket, shoulder — to shoulder, eye — to eye и т. д. исходным словом было существительное, а производным от него — глагол, поскольку основное первоначальное значение в них — предметное. Очевидно также, что в парах: commission доверенность, полномочие; комиссия, комитет — to commission уполномочивать, поручать и station место, местоположение — to station помещать, размещать и т. п. исходным словом, судя по формальным признакам — суффиксам существительных (-ssion, -tion), тоже является существительное.

Даже сложные существительные и глаголы с постпозитивами легко поддаются конверсии. Например: dog's ear загнутый уголок страницы — to dog's ear загибать уголки страниц; to pull back задерживать, удерживать — pull-back препятствие, помеха; to take off взлетать (о самолете) — take-off взлет, старт.

Поддаются конверсии также и словосочетания «прилагательное + существительное», переходя в глаголы. Многие из них являются новообразованиями, часто окказиональными, не зафиксированными в словарях. Например:

She exhilirated Rusty Trawler by stiff-arming him into a corner. Она растормошила Расти Тролера, силой загнав его в угол.

В разделе «Определение» мы уже говорили о субстантивации прилагательных. Субстантивированные прилагательные — еще не существительные, но самая возможность и относительная легкость этой субстантивации во многом обусловлена наличием такого продуктивного способа словообразования, как конверсия. В некоторых случаях затруднительно бывает определить, имеем ли мы дело с окказиональной субстантивацией прилагательного или с конверсией. Но для практического пользования это не так важно, поскольку при переводе на русский язык мы в любом случае, будь то субстантивированное прилагательное или пе-

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решедшее по конверсии в разряд существительных прилагательное, передадим его предметно. Например:

I'm a subscriber to the Great Russian classics series, a monumental edition of all the Russian literary greats. Я подписался на серию «Великие классики русской литературы», монументальное издание произведений всех великих русских писателей.

Прилагательные также могут переходить в разряд глаголов, но не наоборот.

It was just an accident, why should it sour you against the world? Это был всего лишь несчастный случай. Зачем же из-за него злиться на весь свет?

Мало того, даже прилагательные в сравнительной и превосходной степени могут стать глаголами. Например:

Не wanted to better himself. Он хотел совершенствоваться.

In that low and squalid mind there was but one motive, the desire to get the better of his fellow men by foul means; it was a puckish malice that found satisfaction in besting another. В этой низкой жалкой душе жило лишь одно стремление, одно желание — любыми средствами восторжествовать над своим ближним; мелкая злоба, находившая удовлетворение в том, чтобы перехитрить другого.

Отчасти благодаря конверсии некоторые наречия приобретают в отдельных случаях совершенно не свойственное им значение предметности и выступают в функции подлежащего или прямого дополнения. Мы не хотим сказать этим, что они по конверсии перешли в разряд существительных, но уже само по себе существование такого способа словообразования дало возможность подобного функционирования наречий. Вот примеры:

Yesterday was my birthday. Вчера был день моего рождения.

Now, how can I leave here? Как же я могу уехать отсюда?

"You'll want somewhere to stay," he said. «Вам потребуется где-то остановиться», — сказал он.

Особо хотелось бы отметить как пример полифункциональности наречий употребление otherwise и so.

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Наречие otherwise может употребляться в качестве союза, выполнять функции обстоятельства образа действия, дополнения, определения. Например:

You must be careful. Otherwise I can't give a fillip for your life. Вы должны быть осторожны. Иначе (в противном случае, или) я и гроша медного не дам за вашу жизнь. (союз)

A few lads hung about old Thomas' fish shop, but otherwise the street was deserted. Несколько парней околачивались около рыбного магазина старика Томаса, но больше никого на улице не было. (букв.: «... но в прочих отношениях улица была пустынной».) (обстоятельство)

The other two airline representatives on the committee had at first taken the view that the airport management was doing its best under exceptional conditions. Captain Demerest argued otherwise. Два других представителя авиационной компании в комитете сначала выразили мнение, что руководство аэропорта делает все возможное в исключительно трудных условиях. Капитан Димирест утверждал обратное. (прямое дополнение)

"Now," Mel said, "about sabotage — potential and otherwise"' «А теперь, — сказал Мел, — о саботаже, потенциальном и любом другом». (определение)

Многозначно и полифункционально также наречие so. Мы не будем останавливаться на употреблении so в качестве союза. Оно выступает в функции обстоятельства меры и степени (перед другим наречием, прилагательным или местоимением), обстоятельства образа действия, даже в качестве дополнения, предикатива и определения. Очень часто, в тех случаях, когда мы говорим: «сделал это», «сказал это», англичанин скажет (буквально): «сделал так», «сказал так».

You've read the testimony. You just said so. Вы же читали показания. Вы только что это сказали. (прямое дополнение)

I didn't explain my correction. I ought to have done so. Я не объяснил своей поправки. А мне бы следовало это сделать. (прямое дополнение)

"Well, are you going with me?" "I guess so." Ну, так вы идете со мной? — Думаю, что да. (прямое дополнение)

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After the American-Spanish war of 1898 Puerto Rico became a colony of the USA and remained so till 1952. После испано-американской войны 1898 года остров Пуэрто-Рико стал колонией США и оставался колонией до 1952 года, (предикатив)

She's just the way the message said, only more so. Она как раз такая, как говорилось в радиограмме, только еще более такая. (определение)

Конверсии подвергаются даже междометия и звукоподражательные сочетания. Например:

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.

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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-

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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.

Б. 1. Fred Phirmphoot's job was to calculate how much could be stowed aboard Flight Two and where. 2. No mailbag, no individual piece of freight went into any position in the aircraft hold (багажник) without his say-so. 3. Have you been a stowaway on other airlines? 4. She had always been "in painting", as she put it, and there was no doubt in her mind that it was a come-down to be the mistress of a businessman. 5. Standish had been about to turn away, but something about the man attracted his attention. It was the way the newcomer was holding his case under his arm, protectively. Harry Standish had watched people many times, doing the same thing as they came through Customs. It was a giveaway that whatever was inside the case was something they wanted to conceal. 6. He watched the swim of faces as the train moved. 7. He certainly ought to speak to Randall sometime about the drink. 8. The money was rather a bother. 9. I did not want to expose Elliott to the humiliation of asking her to invite him to her big do. 10. The one hopeful sign was that Senator Michael Mullen confirmed that he was prepared to act as a go-between for the two movements. 11. I couldn't feel the drag in those eyes. I began to swim dizzily in their depths. 12. He saw the hurt creeping into her eyes, and he reached for her hand. 13. What they have negotiated is a sell-out of the rights of the British people to decide their own destiny. 14. The British government must tell the US that it will not tolerate any repeat in Portugal of the Chile "scenario". 15. They thought him inhuman. It was true that there was nothing come-hither in him. They were talking loudly and laughing, for they had all drunk enough to make them somewhat foolishly hilarious, and they were evidently giving one of their number a send-off. Lord, how I look forward to a dip in the Atlantic. I'd give anything for a good long swim. 18. In a rush I realised the house boat was someone's hide-out.

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В. 1. The crowd was thinning now. 2. Her features had fined down. 3. She always felt secure when Ellen was by her, for there was nothing so bad that Ellen could not better it, simply by being there. 4. It's a sure thing one of us can't show up in the cabin, or we'll alert him. 5. This was Tom Helliwell who now came crunching over the snow to meet him, his silver-gilt hair prettied by the dust of snow. 6. Maybe it was the whisky warming my stomach. 7. What ammunition they had was secreted in their home. 8. But while she was maturing politically, her husband became a reactionary. 9. I'd yearned so much for a ride in Riley's car that now the opportunity presented itself nothing, even the prospect that no one might see me, could have thinned my excitement. 10. Back of her there appeared to be an entire orphanage emptying out of the truck. 11. But he outsmarted me. 12. Such a splendid friend would not have wronged me. 13. Maude's cheeks pinked.

Г. 1. They never had become rich. But always, at the Marsh, there was ample. 2. Indeed it was strange to enter up that silent cove, protected by the green hill, in the still cool of the evening, and see there a sailing vessel. 3. The next day I took a local to the place where the mine was. 4. It irked him that even Ann did not treat Nancy Bowshott as an equal. 5. Now she was sitting behind closed doors with him and him alone, as the evening drew on, and hoping like a seventeen-year-old that perhaps he might invite her out to dinner.

II. Определите синтаксическую функцию выделенных наречий в следующих предложениях. Переведите эти предложения на русский язык.

А. 1. Tonight is important to me. 2. "What are you going to do," he asked, "when you leave here?" 3. "You're wrong there" I interrupted quickly. 4. In the ordinary way she would have been home at her apartment hours ago. But today had been exceptionally full, with two conventions moving in and a heavy influx of other guests. 5. My clear, surely you know Charleston! You've visited there. 6. I think I must find somewhere to sit. 7. Tomorrow's St Stephen's Day. 8. You have the effrontery to stand there telling me you've sold elsewhere! 9. Tonight was different. 10. I'd like to leave here no later than Thursday night. 11. "Where was his parish?" "Concep-

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cion* and the villages around. But he left there years ago." 12. Ashley was acting as if he thought she was just flirting with him. But he knew differently. 13. You grow up like your father. Try to be just like him, for he was a hero and don't let anyone tell you differently. 14. That would be all they needed to know until such an evil day when they might find out differently. 15. It'll be interesting to see what abroad''s really like. 16. He missed the absence of the outback, the absence of a totally untamed beyond. 17. He raised his hands awkwardly and lifted the hair back over her brow, to reveal her bland and smiling beneath. 18. It was as if she were perpetually haunted and mocked by a music of happiness which came from some inaccessible elsewhere. 19. He was as fit as a fiddle when he left here. 20. There is nowhere else for them to work. 21. It was hard to reconcile herself to the fact that she had nowhere to go. 22. Fortunately we had not that far to go.

Б. 1. He was shorter than Leamas remembered him; otherwise, just the same. 2. Anger had always come easily — except for those few brief years when Hester had taught him otherwise: to use patience and a sense of humour. 3. Call me if there's anything new that's important. Otherwise I'll be in touch with you. 4. At eighteen Andrew found himself alone, carrying a scholarship worth 40 pounds a year, but otherwise penniless. 5. Aunt Pitty knew nothing about men, either with their backs up or otherwise, and she could only wave her fat little hands helplessly. 6. She knew perfectly well that airlines never prosecuted stowaways, on the theory that publicity would be more harmful than otherwise. 7. "I've no luggage," Leamas replied, "except a tooth-brush and а тают." "That is taken care of. Are you ready otherwise?" 8. "What's his hame?" "Finegan. He's acting chief (замещает заведующего). Our regular chief is otherwise engaged." 9. The reason he had stayed, through most of the three-day storm, was to be available for emergencies. Otherwise, by now he would have been home with Cindy and the children. 10. Briefly, the policeman seemed ready to vent his own anger, then decided otherwise. 11. He would have preferred to have the note, but to insist would raise an issue, emphasising the incident, which otherwise might be forgotten. 12. She had been perfectly happy in her way, and it was pure sentimentality to wish that her way had been otherwise. 13. She hoped

* название местечка (исп.)

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everything would work out that way because it would be more difficult otherwise.

B. 1. I am so glad to have you with us. 2. You saw most of the places that tourists usually see. So this year you want a rest from sightseeing. 3. All the shops are closed and so are the theatres and most of the cinemas. 4. I may even get to be an airline vice-president. You just said so. 5. "Tell me, is it true? Are the Yankees coming?" "I'm afraid so." "Do you know so?" "Yes, Ma'm. I know so." 6. You say you wish to meet and make friends with as many people as possible, so I won't suggest a quiet fishing village. 7. "Who was it said all men are equal, Anne? Do you remember?" "Has anyone ever said so?" 8. Warren Trent lit a cigar, motioning to McDermott to take a cigarette from a box beside him. When he had done so, Peter said... 9. Until the war, life was never more real to me than a shadow show on a curtain. And I preferred it so. 10. It was a safe bet, Mel thought, that Cindy had been more than usually snippy with Danny, but, loyally, he wasn't saying so. 11. The planes had been close, exceptionally so, and for an instant his flesh had prickled with alarm. 12. That so many had turned out at all on such a night, leaving warm houses to do so, spoke eloquently of their concern. 13. Her father gave us this house as a wedding present, so we haven't to pay the rent. 14. "No smoking in here," the girl said. "Who said so?" said Julian. 15. They were selling papers right in the Bellevue-Stratford. They were so. 16. "He'll be ruined." "I don't think so." 17. I could see that the big man opposite me was trying to stop him; but he evidently held the old gentleman in considerable respect and could not venture to do so at all abruptly. 18. But she knew too well that it was her nature, she was born so and she must make the best of it.

III. Определите синтаксическую функцию слова down в следующих предложениях и переведите их на русский язык.

1. You aren't down. Nothing will down you. 2. She's got a down on him. She crossed his name out on the list herself. 3. Crusty colonels downing their crushed port are foaming at the mouth and knocking at the knees.

IV. Переведите следующие слова и словосочетания на русский язык.

tonight sixish, tennish, eightish, half-past-fivish, mid-nightish