FUNCTIONAL SHIFT AND DIRECTIONALITY

Comfort Adaobi Obodo

Abstract


Functional shift is characterized by a changeless form, new function, new word-class and a new meaning. This changeless form of a word being converted poses a lot of problems to language users since one may be faced with a situation to determine which word is derived from the other. In other words, which of the pair is a derivative and which is the root or base? This paper sets out to investigate the directionality of functional shift pairs with the intention of finding out the best criterion one can use to determine the directionality of the functional shift pairs. The study adopts diachronic and synchronic approach for the investigation.

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