Dravidian

Abstract This chapter examines three cases of related words in Telugu and argues that conversion exists over and above other productive derivational processes in the language. The directionality of conversion is established using structural properties and semantic information. There is a preference to derive nouns from different categories rather than convert nouns to other categories. This specific orientation enables rule-formation which can capture all the instances of conversion in the language. The rules are formulated using feature matrices for lexical categories. Furthermore, a gradation is exhibited structurally and semantically in the different types of conversion. A distinction is made between lexemes and grammatical words, which can capture the differences across types of conversion.