Investigating zero-derivation in a VetMed/BioTech English corpus

Zero-Derivation, more commonly known as conversion, has been defined by many scholars (Bauer 1983; Pyles and Algeo 1993; Štekauer and Lieber 2005) as a word-formation process by which a word, belonging to one word-class, is transferred to another word-class without any concomitant change of form. It is a highly prolific mechanism for the production of new words, since there is no restriction on the form that can undergo conversion in English. Our paper deals with a corpus of factsheets created ad hoc over three academic years for teaching purposes in the domain-specific sectors of English for Veterinary Medicine and Biotechnology, where zero-derivation, as well as its sub-type, functional shift, commonly occur. In fact, it is not unusual in such texts to deal with terms which, from both a morphosyntactic and a lexical point of view, may seem transparent and lead to a predicted meaning; on the contrary, they represent large pitfalls at first sight. Among the many examples we have catalogued over time, we have decided to focus on some of the most peculiar occurrences, under a quali-quantitative perspective – the latter being processed via WordSmith Tools. In addition to classical words that go through zero-derivation in General English as well, such as head / to head, to fly / a fly, to cut / a cut, to call / a call, better / to better, wrong / to wrong, mastering knowledge of word-classes is undoubtedly necessary in VetMed/Biotech domains in order to recognize that, in sentences like: (1) “Noncultivable, apparently nonpathogenic, isolates have also been detected in wild salmonids.” (source: CFSPH, “Infectious Salmon Anemia”, March 2010), isolates acts as a noun, and not as a verb; (2) “An influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus emerges and spreads around the world, and most people do not have immunity.” (source: WHO, “What is a pandemic?”, February 2010), pandemic is a noun, and not an adjective; (3) “The first human vaccines against viruses were based using weaker or attenuated viruses to generate immunity.” (source: www.historyofvaccines.org), human is not an adjective, but a noun; and so on. A section of this paper shall be devoted to investigating functional shift – i.e., that sub-process underlying, for example, the increasingly widespread use of the term bacteria as a collective noun rather than as the plural form of bacterium [e.g.: “Essentially, a bacteria or virus simply won’t have enough eligible hosts to establish a foothold and will eventually die out entirely.” (source: http://www.publichealth.org)]. This paper aims at proving that, even in the scientific languages of Veterinary Medicine and Biotechnology, English implements word-formation mechanisms, thus resulting in creative transformations in morphology, syntax and meaning – most interestingly when such features intertwine with figurative language devices such as metaphors and metonymies, as well as the lexical issue of false friends in translating between English and Italian and vice-versa.