The Syntax, Semantics and Derivation of Bare Nominalisations in English (original) (raw)

Event and argument structure in English zero-derived nominals

Talk SLE 2019, 2019

This paper is concerned with the morphosyntax of deverbal zero-derived nominals (ZNs, e.g., to walk > a walk-Ø), which have received much less attention in the literature than the suffix-based nominals (SNs, cf. walking, examination, assignment). In the generative literature, in particular, after Grimshaw's (1990) seminal work on SNs and their possibility to inherit verbal event structure realizing arguments, ZNs have been taken to lack all these properties: e.g., in syntax-based models of word formation, which take argument realization in deverbal nouns to indicate the inheritance of verbal functional structure from the base verb, ZNs have been analyzed as derived not from a verb but from an uncategorized root, as implemented in Borer (2013). The prediction of such accounts is that the interpretation of ZNs should be faithful to the ontology of the root and independent of verbal functional structure. Following Rappaport Hovav & Levin's (1998ff) ontology of verbal roots as expressing either manner (of events) or results, I show that some ZNs derived from result verbs denote events, which can only come about from the event structure of their base verbs. In support of this, such ZNs also realize argument structure, as plenty of corpus examples from the BYU corpora show. A further implication of this study is that zero deserves a derivational status similar to that of overt suffixes (contra Borer 2013).

Introduction. The semantics of nominals

Catalan Journal of Linguistics, 2004

* We would like to thank all the contributors for their papers and for their cooperation during the editing process. We are also very grateful to all of our referees, who provided careful and very helpful comments on the papers. Finally, thanks to Tom Rozario for his help with the preparation of the manuscripts.

Aspects of the Internal Structure of Nominalization: Roots, Morphology and Derivation

2012

This dissertation uses syntactic, semantic and morphological evidence from English nominalization to probe the interaction of event-structure and syntax, develop a typology of structural complexity within nominalization, and test hypotheses about the strict ordering of functional items. I focus on the widely assumed typology of nominalization found in Chomsky (1970). In particular, I show that derived nominals are structurally more complex than nominal gerunds; this has long been assumed to be the opposite. I provide a structural and morphological account of these forms of nominalization. In doing so, I explore a number of disparate topics such as: the importance of syncretism in apparently unrelated morphological elements for theories like Distributed Morphology; the role of prepositions in allowing or preventing binding relations and NPI-licensing, the exact nature of root-object union that allows idiomatic interpretations; the morphological reflexes of Case in the nominal system;...

Afterword: Nominalizations in syntactic theory

Lingua, 2011

This afterword constructs a working typology of nominalizations, based on but not restricted to the papers collected in this special issue. The typology is based on what we call the Functional Nominalization Thesis (FNT), a version of the model of “mixed projections” proposed in Borsley and Kornfilt (2000) which claims that nominal properties of a nominalization are contributed by a nominal functional projection; above that projection the structure has nominal properties, below it, verbal properties. We argue for four possible levels of nominalization, CP, TP, vP and VP. We show that certain internal syntactic phenomena are characteristic of different levels of nominalization: genitive subjects of nominalization at TP and below, genitive objects of nominalization at vP and below. We suggest that the inventory of categories implicated in nominalization is quite restricted: D, and nominal counterparts of ‘light’ verbal categories. We examine two alternatives to the FNT, the framework of Panagiotidis and Grohmann (2009) and Bresnan's (1997) head-sharing approach, and argue that our treatment is more appropriate under a minimalist approach, as it accommodates the facts within an independently motivated inventory of functional categories, without positing a special type of category limited only to nominalizations. We counter Bresnan's objections against a syntactic derivation of nominalizations by showing that a word's lexical integrity can be successfully violated by “suspended affixation” in syntactically derived nominalizations in Turkish while such integrity has to be respected in lexically derived nominalizations.

On the aspectual properties of English derived nominals

1998

English provides several distinct mechanisms by which verbs may be nominalized, as illustrated in (1-2). The form electing in (1a) is sometimes termed the “verbal” gerund, while the perfectly homophonous form in (1b) is termed the “nominal” gerund.

Aspects of Deverbal Nominalization inTee

2015

1a) Nouns formed from adjectives: ability (derived from able), carefulness (derived from careful), and difficulty (derived from difficult) 1b) Nouns formed from verbs: failure (derived from fail), nominalization (from nominalize), investigation (from investigate), movement (from move), reaction (from react) and refusal (from refuse) 1c) Gerundive nouns formed from verbs by adding the –ing suffix: drinking (derived from drink), dancing (from derived dance), teaching (derived from teach) 1d) Nouns derived from verbs through zero-derivation: (i) change, as in: Mary collected her change. (change = noun) and, as in: Mary will change her dress.(change = verb) (ii) murder, as in: The murder of the magistrate was terrifying. (murder = noun) and, as in: He will murder the man. (murder = verb) 2a) He answered the phone 2b) His answering the phone was surprising

On the Productivity of the Prototypical Noun to Verb Zero Derivation Process in English

International journal of multidisciplinary and current research, 2016

In English, the process of zero derivation is prototypical or marginal depending respectively on the presence or absence of changes in the corresponding lexemes. In the prototypical type of the process, when nothing changes in the source and the target lexeme and, in morphological terms, they are absolutely identical, of all directions, the most productive one is the zero derivation of verbs from nouns. This is due to the fact that English is an analytical language, with very few inflections, so that the formal overlapping of the lexemes is easily achievable. Therefore, all characteristics of this word formation process are portrayed in the noun to verb direction: from the source lexeme – the noun, another lexeme – a verb is created with absolutely the same form; slightly changed, expanded meaning achieved with cognitive transfer and metaphorical association; and which belongs to completely different lexical category, due to the different function and position of the newly created, ...

Event structure and argument realization in English zero-derived nominals with particles

Nordlyd

This paper is concerned with the morphosyntax of deverbal zero-derived nominals (e.g., to climb > a climb), which have received much less attention in the literature than suffix-based nominals (cf. the climb-ing, the examin-ation, the assign-ment). In the generative literature, in particular, after Grimshaw’s (1990) seminal work on suffix-based nominals and their possibility to inherit verbal event and argument structure, zero-derived nouns have been claimed to lack such properties: e.g., in syntax-based models of word formation, which take argument realization in deverbal nouns to indicate the inheritance of functional structure from the base verb, they have been analyzed as derived not from a verb but from an uncategorized root, as implemented in Borer (2013). Following Rappaport-Hovav and Levin’s (1998) theory of event structure and argument realization, I investigate zero-derived nouns built from verbs with preposed and postposed particles and show that they may realize argum...