On participial relatives and complementizer D0: A case study in Hebrew and French (original) (raw)

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.

The Realization of External Arguments in Nominalizations

In this paper, we discuss the restriction on the realization of non-agentive causers in nominalizations (see Adultery separated Jim and Mary. vs. ??the separation/*the separating of Jim and Mary by adultery). By comparing English to German and Romanian, we show that this restriction may have two sources: the event complexity of the nominalization or the lexical semantics of the preposition that introduces the external argument. First, the realization of non-agentive causers requires the presence of a result state component that is absent in German nominal infinitives and English ing-of gerunds. This leads to the inability of these nominalizations to host non-agentive external arguments. Second, the prepositions that introduce external arguments have a restricted distribution in Romanian and English nominalizations with the effect that the restriction appears in all Romanian nominalizations and in English derived nominals. The corresponding preposition in German is unrestricted, which explains why -ung nominals, which project a result state component, can realize non-agentive external arguments.

Nonreferential complements, nominalizations, and derived objects (Journal of Semantics 13, 2004)

Journal of Semantics , 2004

This paper gives a semantic account of adjective nominalizations and nominalizations of attitude verbs and argues that quantifiers like 'something' when taking the position of complements of copula, intensional transitive, or attitude verb have a nominalizing function, quantifying over the same sorts of objects that corresponding nominalizations stand for.

Aspects of the Grammar and Logic of Relative Terms

2020

We are familiar with the grammar and logic of relational predicates in predicate calculus, chiefly as transmitted through Whitehead and Russell. In natural languages however, relations are frequently expressed using what Peirce called relatives, that is, expressions like <i>brother</i>, <i>gift</i>, <i>head</i>, <i>effect</i>, <i>successor</i>, which require completion by one or more definite terms to yield general names or terms. Peirce developed a logic of such relatives which influenced Schröder and Tarski. Later, Leśniewski used relative terms such as <i>part</i>, <i>overlapper</i>, <i>class</i> etc. to formulate his mereology, rather than the predicates and operators subsequently and more standardly used. In this paper I con-sider aspects of the grammar and logic of such relative terms, particularly in regard to several areas of general logico-philosophical interest: cardinality; fun...