III.3
Nominalizations
Judith Meinschaefer
Institut für Romanische Philologie Freie Universität Berlin Habelschwerdter Allee 45 D-14195 Berlin
Fon +49-(0)30-838-54635 Email
[email protected]
Abstract Nominalizations are complex words, which, under a classical view of the architecture of the language faculty, belong to the domain of word-structure, or morphology. In the simplest cases, nouns can be derived from one-place predicates, like adjectives and intransitive verbs. In more complex cases, they derive from complex verbs and retain much of the syntactic and semantic complexity of their bases. Two fundamental questions have been at the core of the study of nominalization: On the one hand, which aspects of the event-structural and of the argument-structural complexity seen in the verbal domain are visible in the nominal domain, and which aspects are not? On the other hand, how does the morphological complexity of nominalizations relate to their event- and argument-structural complexity? With a focus on these two questions, the present article aims at presenting a state-of-the-art perspective on nominalization and its implications for the interfaces between morphology, syntax and semantics, with specific reference to Romance languages.
Keywords Nominalization, deverbal noun, event structure, argument structure, morphology
10.941 words 74.409 characters
1. Introduction Nominalization, and in particular deverbal nominalization, has served as a test case for the theoretical modelling of the interfaces between modules of the language faculty from early generative linguistics onwards (e.g., Lees 1966; Chomsky 1970). Nominalizations are complex words, which, under a classical view of the architecture of the language faculty, fall into the domain of word-structure, or morphology. At the same time, being derived from verbs, which may be considered the core elements of sentences and which determine many aspects of sentential syntax and interpretation, deverbal nominalizations exhibit much of the same syntactic and semantic complexity, whose explanation lies in the scope of syntax and semantics. The study of nominalization thus presupposes – and fosters – an understanding of the interaction of morphology, syntax and semantics. Two basic questions have been at the core of the study of nominalization: On the one hand, which aspects of the event-structural and of the argument-structural complexity seen in the verbal domain are visible in the nominal domain, and which aspects are not? On the other hand, how does the morphological complexity of nominalizations relate to their event- and argument-structural complexity? The present article aims to present a state-of-the-art perspective on these two questions, with specific reference to Romance languages. In doing so, we focus on deverbal nominalizations, (1a), leaving aside deadjectival nominalizations. However, it may be expected that deadjectival nominalizations, (1b), share many properties of simpler deverbal nominalizations, in particular the realization of the base’s argument as an optional case or preposition-marked complement to the noun.
(1)
a.
Smoke obstructs the view – the obstruction of the view by smoke
b.
The teacher is ill – the illness of the teacher, the teacher’s illness
Among deverbal nominalizations, two types may be distinguished: nouns referring to events, (2a), and nouns referring to participants of events, (2b). The latter may or may not have an event-related semantics (see McIntyre 2014; Roy & Soare 2014; Alexiadou & Schäfer 2010; Bowers 2011; Baker & Vinokurova 2009 for recent studies).
(2)
teach English to foreigners a.
the teaching of English to foreigners
b.
a teacher of English to foreigners
In the following, we focus on deverbal nominalizations with event reading. Two major topics to be dealt with are event structure and argument structure of deverbal nouns. Another important issue relates to the varying degree of verbality or nominality that may be found in different types of nominalizations, and that in previous studies has often been taken as evidence for the syntactic as opposed to the morphological, or lexical, derivation of one or the other type. Before addressing these core topics, we start with an overview of the various event-related readings presented by nominalizations and of the distributional criteria by means of which they can be distinguished. Although studying the implications of nominalization for a theory of linguistic interfaces unavoidably entails certain theoretical commitments as to how the linguistic modules interact, we aim, so far as possible, at a theory-neutral discussion. Still, an important issue is whether morphology works piece-based, arranging morphemes into complex words, or process-based, deriving complex lexemes from base lexemes. Given that much of the research on nominalization of the last two decades has been framed within Distributed Morphology, a piece-based approach in which nominalizations appear as complex syntactic structures containing a verbal base, we shall adopt the terminology of that approach, without endorsing any deeper theoretical commitments. The article is structured as follows. Section 2 illustrates the array of event-related readings presented by nominalizations. In section 3, a typology of syntactically varying nominalization structures is introduced, some of which dispose of verbal properties, while others have a purely nominal nature. Section 4 addresses the question how verbal event structure and aspectual structure appears in nominalization; their argument-structural complexity will be dealt with in section 5.
2. Readings of nominalizations 2.1. Different types of event nouns Of crucial importance to the discussion of nominalization and its challenges for the interface between morphology, syntax and semantics is a distinction introduced by Grimshaw (1990), who showed that deverbal nouns present systematic differences related to event and argument structure properties. She introduced a distinction between complex event nouns (CEN), simple event nouns (SEN) and result nouns (RN). Only the first share with their base verbs the property of taking arguments. The three classes can be distinguished on the basis of various
properties. CEN and SEN pattern together in referring to events, and are thus compatible with predicates like take place, (3a-b), while RN, referring to concrete or abstract objects, are not, (3c). SEN and RN, on the other hand, pattern together in not having an argument structure, (3b-c), while CEN inherit the argument structure of their base nouns, see (3a).
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French a.
Complex event noun (CEN) L’examination des dossiers par le conseil a eu lieu hier. ‘The examination of the files by the board took place yesterday.’
b.
Simple event noun (SEN) Plusieurs examens ont eu lieu hier. ‘Various exams took place yesterday.’
c.
Object/result noun (RN) *Tous ces examens sur la table ont eu lieu hier. ‘All these exams on the table took place yesterday.’
As to the distinction between CEN and SEN, an item’s having or not having a complex event structure and argument structure has often been claimed to be associated with various distributional differences, such as the compatibility with different types of determiners and the availability of pluralization, (4a-b), as well as with the compatibility of the singular noun with modifiers referring to event structure, (5a-b).
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French a.
Complex event noun (CEN): Only definite article, no pluralization possible ?*{Plusieurs + ces + des} utilisations du service par des mineurs ont eu lieu. ‘{Various + these + some} uses of the service by minors took place.’
b.
Simple event noun (SEN): Different types of determiners and pluralization {Plusieurs + ces + des} examens ont eu lieu hier. ‘{Various + these + some} exams took place yesterday.’
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French a.
Complex event noun (CEN) L’examination fréquente/continuelle des dossiers par le conseil est importante. ‘The frequent/continuous examination of the files by the board is important.’
b.
Simple event noun (SEN)
*L’accident fréquent/continuel sur cette route effraie tout le monde. ‘The frequent/continuous accident on this road frightens everyone.’
The distinction between CEN and SEN is not always straightforward, and a given deverbal noun often can have both readings. More recent research has shown that, e.g., whether a nominalization allows pluralization or not depends, among other things, on its aspectual properties (Mourelatos 1978; Roodenburg 2010; Iordăchioaia & Soare 2009; Iordăchioaia & Soare 2008; Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia & Soare 2008). Other classifications have been proposed, as well. Sleeman and Brito (2010a; 2010b) draw a distinction between five types of deverbal nominalizations, Borer (2003; 2013), in contrast, abstracts away from the difference between complex and simple event nouns, focusing on the distinction between argumenttaking event nouns and result nouns that lack argument structure (see also Alexiadou 2010a; Roy & Soare 2011a; Roy & Soare 2011b).
2.2. More fine-grained semantic distinctions In addition to event-related readings, deverbal nouns can have a variety of other interpretations (Melloni 2012; Ježek 2007; Melloni 2006): Among other things, they can denote the object resulting from the event referred to by the base verb, (6a), the means by which this event is brought about, (6b), or a state resulting from the event, (6c). One of the central questions addressed in research on this topic has been whether it is possible to predict the availability of different readings of the deverbal noun from the meaning of the base verb (Ježek & Melloni 2009; Melloni 2010; Bisetto & Melloni 2005).
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Readings of Italian result nominals (examples from Melloni 2006) a.
Result object
La costruzione è crollata inaspettatamente. ‘The construction collapsed unexpectedly.’
b.
Means
L’argentatura di questo anello è molto sottile. ‘The silver-plating of this ring is very thin.’
c.
State
Occorre rimuovere l’ostruzione di questa valvola. ‘It is necessary to remove the obstruction of this valve.’
Another strand of research, in which Romance languages have figured less prominently, has been concerned with the contribution of the context of the utterance to the interpretation of deverbal nouns, with the aim of identifying distributional diagnostics that allow unambiguous
differentiation between the different readings, cf. in particular Ehrich & Rapp (2000; see also Roßdeutscher & Kamp 2010; Hamm, Kamp & Lambalgen 2006; Brandtner & Heusinger 2010; Dölling 2013). More fine-grained semantic distinctions between different readings have been studied on the basis of verb classes such as psychological verbs (Fábregas & Marín 2011; Fábregas, Marín & McNally 2012; Fábregas & Marín 2012; Barque, Fábregas & Marín 2012) or stative verbs (Bücking 2012).
3. Lexical and syntactic nominalization Since the publication of Chomsky’s (1970) “Remarks on Nominalizations”, much research has focused on the distinction between lexically derived nominalizations, (7a), and nominalizations that are derived syntactically from a verbal base, (7b). On this view, nominalizations sharing most of their syntactic and semantic properties with their verbal bases are derived in the syntax, while, roughly speaking, those which differ semantically and syntactically from their base verbs (presenting differences that go beyond the mere contrast in having the outwards distribution of a verb vs. of a noun) are taken to be derived in the lexicon.
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English syntactic and lexical nominalizations; examples from Chomsky (1970) a.
John’s refusing the offer
b.
John’s refusal of the offer
Chomsky points out three differences between lexical and syntactic nominalization, as exemplified by the English examples in (7): (i) syntactic nominalization is fully productive, while lexical nominalization may be blocked in certain cases, (ii) the semantic relation between base and syntactic nominalization is fully regular, while that between lexical nominalization and its base may be idiosyncratic, (iii) the internal structure of a syntactic nominalization may be clause-like, while that of a lexical nominalization is fully nominal. Most approaches that distinguish between lexical and syntactic derivation are, however, not entirely clear with respect to how and where exactly the dividing line between syntactic and lexical nominalizations is to be drawn (see Kornfilt & Whitman 2011a for a discussion). Under the assumption that all morphological derivation is carried out in the syntax (as in Distributed Morphology), the distinction between lexical and syntactic nominalization reemerges as one relating to functional structure, with syntactic nominalizations presenting more complex funtional structure than lexical nominalizations (Harley & Noyer 1997; Harley
& Noyer 1998; Alexiadou 2001). Taking seriously Chomsky’s (1970:185) view that “the proper balance between various components of the grammar is entirely an empirical issue”, so that “we have no apriori insight into the trading relation between the various parts”, in what follows we retain his distinction between syntactic and lexical nominalization, discussing ‘syntactically’ derived nominalization in this section, and focussing on ‘lexically’ derived nominalizations in following sections. Romance nominalized infinitives (with the exception of French and Romanian, see below), as opposed to lexically derived deverbal nouns, present a case of syntactic nominalization. As shown by Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia & Schäfer (2011), drawing on Romanian and Spanish data, Romance nominalized infinitives come in different types, which are distinguished by a number of syntactic differences that may be related to the locus at which nominalization of a verbal projection takes place in the syntactic configuration. Let us look at the relevant structures in turn, considering various Romance languages.
3.1. Iberoromance and Italian The Spanish infinitive, when preceded by a determiner, allows nominal uses, with (8b) or without (8a) a complement, as well as fully verbal uses, followed by a direct object DP (8c) or even by a (pronominal) subject DP (8d); (Plann 1981; Hernanz 1999; Demonte & Varela Ortega 1998; Demonte & Varela Ortega 1997; Yoon & Bonet-Farran 1991; Miguel 1996; Hare 2001; Fábregas & Varela Ortega 2006).
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Spanish nominalized infinitives a.
el vestir y calzar (de las mujeres) era lo más importante ‘clothing and putting on shoes was the most important thing’
b.
Se escucha el lento abrir de una cerradura. ‘One hears the slow opening of a lock.’
c.
Fue fácil y rápido el aprobar nuestra participación en este proyecto. ‘Approving our participation in this project was easy and quick.’
d.
Nos favorece el pertenecer nosotros al municipio. ‘Our belonging to the municipality favours us.’
Verbal and nominal uses may be distinguished with regard to a variety of properties, not all of which are exemplified here: optionality vs. obligatoriness of complements, see (8a) as opposed to (8b), compatibility with case-marked complements vs. prepositional complements,
(8c, d) as opposed to (8b), modification by adverbials vs. adjectives, compatibility with clitic pronouns and auxiliaries, and the acceptability of plurals. Let us briefly mention that Spanish even allows nominalization of finite clauses, (9).
(9)
Spanish
El
que
tú
vengas
no me importa. (Plann 1981:204)
the
that
you
come
does not matter to me
‘That you come does not matter to me.’
Italian basically allows the same constructions as the Spanish nominalized infinitive, (10), (Salvi 1985; Zucchi 1993), though certain differences have been claimed to exist between the two languages (Szilágyi 2009; Vázquez 2002).
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Italian nominalized infinitives (examples from Salvi 1985:247) a.
l’avviarsi lento del treno ‘the slow starting of the train’
b.
l’aver-gli Giorgio sempre dato ragione the have.INF-him.DAT Giorgio always given right ‘Giorgio’s always having conceded to him’
3.2. French French allows purely verbal infinitives, as in (11a), and purely nominal infinitives, as in (11b), but no event-denoting nominal infinitives that have argument structure, as in (11c); (Kerleroux 1990; George 1976; Umbreit 2014; Sleeman 2010; Marzo & Umbreit 2013).
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French a.
Je l’ai entendu parler très bien l’italien. ‘I have heard him speak Italian very well’
b.
Le déjeuner a eu lieu à midi. ‘Lunch took place at noon.’
c.
*le rire des faiblesses d’autrui ‘laughing about other persons’ weaknesses’
Old French, however, had nominal infinitival constructions similar to those attested in Spanish (Sleeman 2010; Buridant 2005; Buridant 2008; Kerleroux 1990; Schaefer 1911),
where an argument of the infinitive could be realized as a prepositional complement, (12a-b) or as a direct object, (12c).
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Old French (examples from Schaefer 1911) a.
li trembler del leün ‘the trembling of the lion’
b.
a l’eschevir del seiremant ‘at the taking of the oath’
c.
au conter le duel qu’ele fist ‘at the telling of the sorrow she had’
Infinitives preceded by determiners are attested in documents of the 12th century, with their frequency decreasing from the 13th century onwards (Schaefer 1911). From the 16th century onwards, infinitives preceded by determiners do not have argument structure; only infinitives of the type le boire ‘the drink’, le dîner ‘the dinner’, le manger ‘the food’ are attested (Ewert 1949:183; Kukenheim 1967:78; Schaefer 1911). Unlike in Spanish, neither in Old nor Middle French are any examples attested for nominal infinitives with an overt subject (Mensching 2000:20). Sleeman (2010) relates the unavailability of nominalized infinitives, which may seem unexpected in the context of Romance, to the interaction of two factors: first, to the change in word order from OV to VO that occurred at the end of the old French period and that, according to Ackema & Neeleman (2004), had the effect of making nominalization by means of a null suffix unavailable, and second, to the reanalysis of the infinitive suffix from inflectional to derivational, so that its nominalizing function became restricted to V0. To date, the reasons for the ungrammaticality of event-denoting nominalized infinitives in French, and more generally, for the differences presented by Romance languages with regard to the availability of more or less verbal nominalization structures remain unclear.
3.3. Romanian Romanian is like French in not allowing nominalized infinitives with a verbal internal structure. The infinitive can be verbal, or nominal, as in (13), but in the latter case it cannot assign nominative or accusative case and it allows only adjectival, but no adverbial modification (Soare & Mardale 2007; Cornilescu et al. 2013; Cornilescu 2001; Cornilescu 2004; Cornilescu 1999).
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Romanian Infinitive Cumpărarea casei
a fost inutilă. (Cornilescu 1999:213)
buy.INF.the
was
house.the.GEN
useless
‘The buying of the house was useless.’
However, Romanian differs from French in that the nominalized infinitive can denote events and does have argument structure, realizing its arguments in the same way as lexical nominalizations. Note that Old Romanian, like Old French, allowed nominalized infinitives to occur with direct objects, (14).
(14)
Old Romanian
taierea
capul
lui
(Soare 2007:177)
cut.INF.the
head.the.ACC he.GEN
‘the cutting his head off’
Differently from other Romance languages, Romanian presents syntactic nominalizations of a second verbal category, the supine, morphologically a past participle (Soare 2007), which is like the Spanish nominalized infinitive in being either verbal, (15a), or nominal, (15b). The nominal supine allows adverbial modification, (15c).
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Romanian Supine a.
am
de
cules
căpşuni
have.1SG
to
collect.SUP
strawberries
(Soare 2007)
‘I have to collect strawberries’ b.
Cumpăratul
casei
a fost inutilă. (Cornilescu 1999:213)
buy.SUP.the
house.the.GEN
was
useless
‘The buying of the house was useless.’ c.
cititul
constant
read.SUP.the constantly
al ziarelor
(Alexiadou et al. 2011:27)
of journals.GEN
‘the constant reading of journals’
3.4. Summary Drawing on current versions of minimalist syntax, the parametric variation found in Romance nominalization structures has been related to differences in functional structure, in particular to presence vs. absence of verbal functional nodes like tense and aspect and of nominal
functional nodes like number and classifier (encoding the mass/count distinction) (Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia & Schäfer 2011). A challenge for future research is to explain why certain languages dispose of more or less restricted possibilities to form syntactic nominalizations than others, that is, why some languages allow more complex combinations of verbal and nominal functional structures than others. Similarly, the surprising fact that the combination of nominal and verbal functional structure within a single projection is possible, while being subject to rather severe restrictions, calls for an explanation (Kornfilt & Whitman 2011a). Finally, a point that has not been addressed here is the fact that nominalized infinitives and deverbal nouns derived by affixation typically present referential and distributional differences like those exemplified in (16), as first pointed out by Vendler (1967). A possible explanation might draw on the intuition that more strongly verbal nominalizations tend to denote facts, while more nominal nominalizations tend to denote events (Lambalgen & Hamm 2005; Asher 1993; Bücking 2012).
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Spanish a.
El {establecer una + establecimiento de una} relación es improbable. ‘Establishing a relation + the establishment of a relation is improbable.’
b.
El {?*establecer una + establecimiento de una} relación era gradual. ‘Establishing a relation + the establishment of a relation was gradual.’
4. Event structure and aspectual structure The present study focusses on event-denoting nominalizations, that is, nominalization structures that refer to the unfolding of an event in time. In section 2 above, it has already been noted that reference to events in the nominal domain occurs in two variants: Nouns can have a complex event structure (as is the case for CEN), or they can be simple event nouns (SEN). In what follows, we take a closer look at the event-related properties of deverbal nouns. Two dimensions of the temporal structure of events are relevant in this regard: First, the temporal complexity of the event itself, e.g., whether it comprises more than one subevent or not, and whether it implies a result state or not; second, the focusing or defocusing of other time-related aspects of the event, e.g., whether it is seen as unfolding in time, as completed, as incipient, or as occurring repeatedly or habitually.
4.1. Complex event structures That there is a correlation between the presence or absence of a nominalizing affix and the temporal complexity of the event denoted by a deverbal noun has often been noted. In particular, it has been claimed that only if there is an overt nominalizer can the derived noun have complex event structure (Smith 1972; Grimshaw 1990; Alexiadou & Grimshaw 2008; but see Fábregas 2014; Newmeyer 2009; Harley 2009 for counterevidence). Interpretational differences between nouns with, (17a), and without, (17b–c), nominalizer are illustrated below.
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French a.
Il a accroché les véhicules à la queue du convoi. ‘He bumped into the cars at the tail of the convoy.’ On a assisté à l’accrochage progressif des véhicules à la queue du convoi. ‘We witnessed the progressive bumping into the cars at the tail of the convoy.’
b.
Un clou a accroché son pantalon. ‘A nail hooked up his trousers.’ *L’accroc à/de son pantalon s’est produit hier. ‘The hook of his trousers happened yesterday.’ Il y a un accroc à son pantalon. ‘There is a hook in his trousers.’
c.
Ce film accroche les spectateurs dès le début. ‘This film hooks up the viewers right from the beginning.’ *L’accroche du spectateur doit se produire immédiatement. ‘The hook of the viewers must happen immediately.’ L’accroche du film paraît conventionnelle. ‘The trailer of the film seems conventional.’
In recent research, a fine-grained view of the syntactic dimension of event structure has gained ground, following research on the syntax-semantics interface by Ramchand (2008) and others. A crucial development has been the integration of a decompositional representation of event structure into syntactic tree configurations, so that interactions between the morphosyntactic structure of a nominalization and its event-structural interpretation can be more directly represented. One hypothesis that has been pursued in this framework assumes that nominalizing affixes relate to different sub-configurations of such syntactic-semantic tree
structures (Fábregas 2010; Sleeman & Brito 2010a). Thus, deverbal nouns can lexicalize the full array of the three subcomponents of vP, that is, the initiation (initP), process (procP) and result (resP) component, see (18), or they can lexicalize only individual subcomponents, see (19)–(20); examples after Sleeman & Brito (2010a).
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Portuguese: Lexicalization of initP, procP and resP A construção do campo de jogos para entreter as crianças trouxe beneficios para a comunidade.
(Sleeman & Brito 2010a:212)
‘The building of the playgound to entertain the children benefitted the community.’ (19)
Portuguese: Lexicalization of procP A construção du campo está parada há um ano. ‘The building of the playground has stopped a year ago.’
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Portuguese: Lexicalization of resP A construção é bonita. ‘The building is nice.’
4.2. Nominal and verbal aspect As to the second dimension, i.e., the focusing or defocusing of other time-related aspects of the event, it has long been noted that there is a nominal correlate to verbal aspect (Mourelatos 1978), that is, countability. Questions relating to the possibility of pluralizing event-denoting nouns are to be seen in this context, as well (Mourelatos 1978; Roodenburg 2010; Iordăchioaia & Soare 2009; Iordăchioaia & Soare 2008; Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia & Soare 2008). It has been proposed by Jackendoff (1991) and others that both verbal and nominal aspect can be subsumed under the broader term ‘boundedness’. Before continuing the discussion of aspect, let us briefly note that what is meant by verbal aspect is sometimes event-structural complexity as discussed in the previous paragraphs, but this term may also refer to grammatical aspect as found, e.g., in Slavic languages. Here we follow Smith (1997), who distinguishes between lexical aspect or Aktionsart on the one hand, that is, whether a verb phrase denotes, e.g., a state or an accomplishment, and viewpoint aspect on the other, that is, whether the event denoted by a verb phrase is seen as, e.g., being in progress (imperfective aspect), as being completed (perfective aspect), or as occurring repeatedly (iterative aspect). Having said this, it should also be pointed out that there are complex interactions between both levels, in particular in the nominal domain. Note also that in languages with a rich verbal aspectual system, such as Russian and Polish, aspectual markers
can occur inside nominalizations (Rozwadowska 2000). The same is true for Romance ‘syntactic’ nominalizations, such as the Spanish infinitive, which can occur in the form haber + Past participle. A frequently made claim is that deverbal nouns inherit the aspectual features of their base verbs (Mourelatos 1978; Brinton 1995; Brinton 2008; Fábregas & Marín 2011; Fábregas, Marín & McNally 2012; Haas, Huyghe & Marín 2008; Haas & Huyghe 2010, among others). Hence, deverbal nouns derived from unbounded, i.e., atelic, verbal bases, are unbounded themselves, i.e., mass nouns, see (21), while nouns derived from bounded, i.e., telic, verbs are bounded, i.e., count nouns; (22). Some of the distributional criteria for detecting boundedness in the nominal domain used in the following are adapted from Haas, Huyghe & Marín (2008).
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French a.
Max a patiné {pendant deux heures + *en deux heures}. ‘Max skated {for two hours + in two hours}’
b.
Max a fait {du patinage + *plusieurs patinages}. ‘Max did {some skating + various skatings}’
c.
deux heures de patinage ‘two hours of skating’
(22)
French a.
Le service secret a mis deux mois à assassiner le président. ‘It took the secret service two months to assassinate the president.’
b.
On a vu beaucoup {*d’assassinat + d’assassinats}. ‘We saw {much murder + many murders}.’
c.
?*plusieurs jours d’assassinat ‘various days of murder’
At the same time, it has often been pointed out that the ‘Aspect Preservation Hypothesis’ does not always hold, so that, e.g., nouns derived from atelic, and thus unbounded, activity verbs may refer to individualized instances of an event and may be countable; (23c).
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French a.
On a débattu cette question pendant des heures. ‘We debated this question for hours.’
b.
Il y a eu beaucoup de débat sur cette question.
‘There was much debate on this question.’ c.
Plusieurs débats sur cette question sont en cours. ‘Various debates on this question are going on.’
Note that the deverbal noun débat has no overt affix. That the event structural properties of such nouns appear to be special has already been pointed out in section 4.1. This and similar observations have lead researchers to assume that nominalizing affixes may function as aspect markers, coming with their own aspectual specification, or lacking such a specification (see, e.g., van Hout 1991; Engelhardt 2000; Siegel 1998; cf. Alexiadou 2010b for an overview; Ferrari-Bridgers 2006 for a case study on Italian). Aspectual properties of a few representative affixes are considered in the following paragraph. Before we do that, a caveat is in order: To date, there is consensus that at least three factors interact to determine the aspectual interpretation of a deverbal noun: not only the aspect of the nominalizing affix, but also that of the base verb, as well as temporal specifications introduced by the finite verb of the matrix clause containing the nominalization are relevant in this respect (Meinschaefer 2005a; Heinold 2011). For this reason, disentangling the aspectual contribution of individual nominalizing affixes has turned out to be a difficult task.
4.3. The contribution of the affix One of the clearest examples for the hypothesis that nominalizing affixes are aspectual markers is the Italian affix -ata, which serves to build the past participle as well as eventdenoting deverbal nouns (Ippolito 1999; Gaeta 2000; Acquaviva 2005), as in (24). According to Gaeta (2000), when affixed to a root denoting an unbounded activity, -ata derives a noun referring to an individualized and bounded portion of this activity. Others take it that the -t- in -a-t-a spells out the aspectual feature perfective, which is why it can be inserted into participial as well as nominalized structures (Ippolito 1999).
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Italian a.
Paolo ha nuotato per due hore. ‘Paul has swum for two hours.’
b.
Una nuotata in piscina rilassa i muscoli. (Gaeta 2000) ‘A swim in the pool relaxes the muscles.’
A similar claim has been made for the French affix -ée, which likewise occurs in both participles and nominalizations (Ferret & Villoing 2012; Ferret, Soare & Villoing 2010); (25). It seems, however, that matters are less clear for this affix as compared to It. -ata.
(25)
French; examples after Ferret, Soare & Villoing (2010) a.
chevaucher pendant deux heures ‘to ride for two hours’
b.
le jour de la chevauchée, une chevauchée de deux heures ‘the day of the ride, a two-hour ride’
A substantial amount of research has been devoted to the French affixes -age and -ment (Ferret, Soare & Villoing 2010; Ferret & Villoing 2012; Martin 2010; Uth 2008a; Kelling 2001, to cite only a few recent studies). If the opposition between both affixes is to be seen in terms of (lexical or viewpoint) aspect, it might be said that -ment nominalizes the change of state, i.e., resP in Ramchand’s (2008) model, see previous section, while -age nominalizes the causing process, i.e., initP (Uth 2008a), or that -ment is perfective, while -age is imperfective (Uth 2008b; Bally 1965; Dubois 1962). Others have maintained that the semantic contribution of these affixes is multidimensional, comprising aspectual, event-structural as well as argument-structural features (Martin 2010). Aspectual distinctions have likewise been an important topic in research on Romanian nominalizations. According to Cornilescu (2001), the Romanian nominalized infinitive is telic, while the supine is atelic. Others have argued that only the supine carries an aspectual specification, be it imperfective or pluractional, while the infinitive is not specified for aspect, but for number, which is one reason why it can be productively pluralized (Iordăchioaia & Soare 2008; Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia & Soare 2008; Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia & Soare 2010). 4.4. Summary Much progress has been made in the study of event structure of nominalizations over the last two decades; yet, a wide array of empirical, methodological as well as theoretical questions remain unanswered. As to the empirical domain, the contribution of nominalizing affixes is well-understood for a few clear cases like Italian -ata, but for others of the many competing nominalizers found in Romance languages matters are less clear. Likewise, restrictions on the combination of affixes and verbal bases that may be traced back to incompatibility of their aspectual specifications have hardly been studied from a systematic perspective. Some of the
reasons for this lie in methodological obstacles to studying the aspectual dimension of nominalization: While much research has been carried out on distributional criteria for verbal aspect, starting with the seminal work of Vendler (1957), to date there is no consensus about which tests are valid for determining the dimensions of nominal aspect that go beyond mere countability. Furthermore, it is notoriously difficult to disentangle the aspectual contribution of the affix, of the verbal base and of the matrix predicate under which an event-denoting nominal is embedded. More systematic research needs to be carried out to achieve a better understand of this complex interaction. Given that many deverbal nouns present lexicalized meanings, it is not clear whether corpus data – which have often been used in studying the aspectual contribution of affixes – is an appropriate tool when approaching these questions. Finally, on a theoretical level endo-skeletal analyses of the functional structure of noun phrases have been developed in the last two decades from which many of the above-made observations follow. Yet, to date we do not know much about why the observed restrictions on the event structure of nominals hold. Are they simply due to the – somewhat accidental – specifications of individual functional elements, i.e., nominalizers, or are there more general differences between nouns and verbs constraining interpretation? Furthermore, much remains to be said about the role of lexical-semantic (or ‘encyclopedic’) information tied to verbal bases in determining the interpretation of nominalizations.
5. Argument structure in nominalizations Another interesting aspect of the syntax of verbal lexemes is that they have the potential to bind arguments, thereby determining much of the syntactic structure of a sentence. Hence, nouns that are derived from verbs not only ‘inherit’ event-structure, but they may also inherit verbal argument structure. This holds at least for complex event nouns (CEN), see section 2.1. For a theory of linguistic interfaces, the observation that deverbal nominalizations have argument structure comparable to, but not entirely identical to verbs, is perhaps their most interesting aspect. Controversies in the literature on argument-taking deverbal nouns relate to, first, how much of verbal argument structure is inherited by the noun and second, how argument realization in deverbal nouns differs from that in verbs. As to the first question, it has often been claimed that only CEN dispose of an argument structure comparable to that of a verb, while SEN and result nouns have no arguments (Grimshaw 1990). More recent approaches take it, however, that a bipartite distinction between argument-taking nouns, which are always event-denoting, and non-eventive nouns without argument structure, is not only sufficient, but
also preferable for conceptual reasons in a framework in which nominalization as well as argument structure result from syntactic structure rather than from lexical specification (Borer 2003; Borer 2013; Borer 2012). Note also that ‘syntactic’ nominalizations, as discussed in section 3, do not always differ from verbs with respect to argument realization, depending on the amount of verbal or nominal structure they dispose of. Therefore, the discussion in the present section is focused on ‘lexically’ derived deverbal nouns.
5.1. Parallels and Differences As to the question of how the arguments of nominalizations are mapped to syntactic positions, let us start by pointing out a basic parallelism, attested at least in languages like English, between the subject and object of verbs like destroy, see (26–27a), and the prenominal and the postnominal possessor position of event-denoting deverbal nouns like destruction, see (26– 27b) (Chomsky 1970; Cinque 1980). In English, the prenominal possessor is marked with the genitive marker ‘s, and the postnominal possessor is realized as a prepositional phrase headed by of. In the examples given in (26–27), the subject bears the thematic role agent and the object may be classified as a theme. In contrast to Germanic, the Romance DP does not allow noun phrases as prenominal possessors; prenominal realization of the argument corresponding to the verbal subject is thus restricted to an anaphoric (possessive) determiner, see (27b).
(26)
(27)
English
French
a.
The enemy destroys the city.
b.
The enemy’s destruction of the city is still going on.
a.
L’armée détruit la ville.
b.
Sa destruction de la ville est en cours.
Despite the apparent parallelism in (26–27a) and (26–27b), the agent argument of a deverbal noun can be easily omitted, (28a), just as in a verbal passive, while the same does not hold for the theme argument; note that it does not hold for the agent of an active verb, either. Another unexpected observation is that in nominals, but not in verbs, all arguments can be omitted under certain conditions, even if the nominal has an eventive interpretation, (28b).
(28)
French
a.
La destruction de la ville (par l’armée) est en cours. ‘The destruction of the city by the enemy is going on.’
b.
La transmission a eu lieu jeudi dernier. ‘The transmission took place last Thursday.’
As has often been noticed, nouns do not assign (structural) case; hence, their arguments are preceded by prepositions that serve as case markers. Differently from most other Romance languages, complements of Romanian nominalizations surface as genitive-marked DPs, though they can also be mapped to prepositional phrases, see (29), adapted from Iordăchioaia (2008:76).
(29)
Romanian
demolarea
de cartiere vechi /
cartierelor vechi
demolish.INF.the
of quarters old
quarters.GEN old
‘the demolition of old quarters’
If only one participant is realized syntactically, be it linked to the postnominal or to the prenominal possessor position, it is interpreted as theme, cf. (30a)–(30a’), and it cannot be interpreted as an agent, cf. (30b)–(30b’), at least not for a deverbal noun like destruction.
(30)
French a.
la destruction de la villeTHEME
a’.
‘the destruction of the city’ b.
*la destruction de l’arméeAGENT ‘the destruction of the army’
saTHEME destruction ‘its destruction’
b’.
*saAGENT destruction ‘its destruction’
Various explanations of these facts have been proposed in the literature. In earlier lexicalist approaches, it has been postulated that derivation of an argument-taking noun from a verb suppresses the external argument of the predicate denoted by that verb, similar to passive formation (Grimshaw 1990; Picallo 1991), an assumption which later has been shown to be empirically inadequate (Iordăchioaia 2008; Alexiadou 2009; Markantonatou 1995; Meinschaefer 2003). One implication of Grimshaw’s hypothesis, at least under its original formulation, is that event-denoting, argument-taking deverbal nouns may be derived only from predicates disposing of an external argument, such as causative verbs like destroy, but not from others, such as certain psychological verbs and unaccusative verbs (Grimshaw 1990:120–123; Picallo 1991). The empirical inadequacy of this position has likewise been pointed out in subsequent studies. Note, however, that certain kinds of nominalizations, such as the Romanian supine, are in fact incompatible with psychological or unaccusative base verbs (Iordăchioaia 2008:79). Another strand of research, departing from the assumption that
the argument structure of an expression emerges from the syntactic structure in which it is embedded, has claimed that (event-denoting, argument-taking) deverbal nouns are unable to project an agent argument because their syntactic structure does not contain agent-projecting functional material, similarly to unaccusative verbs (Marantz 1997; Alexiadou 2001:112; Cornilescu 2004). More recent studies have concentrated on the interaction between various functional projections in the verbal and nominal syntactic domain and on the interpretational and argument structural differences between various types of nominalizations, arriving at a more differentiated picture (Sleeman & Brito 2010a; Sleeman & Brito 2010b; Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia & Schäfer 2011; Kornfilt & Whitman 2011b). 5.2. Nouns derived from different verbal bases To be sure, argument realization in deverbal nouns is a complex matter, depending to a large degree on the semantic and syntactic properties of the base verb. In what follows the basic generalizations will be layed out. Trivially, intransitive verbs may project their sole argument as a postnominal or prenominal possessor; this holds for unaccusative and unergative verbs alike, despite the fact that the argument of an unaccusative verbs is a theme rather than an agent, while that of an unergative verb may be classified as an agent rather than as a theme; see (31)–(32).
(31)
French: Unaccusative verb a.
Tintin observe l’arrivée fréquente de nouveaux concurrents. ‘Tintin watches the frequent arrival of new competitors.’
b.
Tintin observe leur arrivée à la gare. ‘Tintin watches their arrival at the station.’
(32)
French: Unergative verb a.
L’aboiement continuel d’un chien peut être une source de conflit. ‘The continuous barking of a dog can be a source of conflict.’
b.
Son aboiement continuel pendant la nuit me gêne. ‘Its continuous barking during the night disturbs me.’
Telic transitive verbs, like détruire ‘destroy’, map the theme argument on the postnominal, (33a), or prenominal, (33b), possessor, while the agent argument is either mapped nto a (optional) prepositional phrase headed by par ‘by’, (33a–b), or to the prenominal possessor,
(33c); note, however, that realization of the agent is only possible if the theme argument is overtly realized, too.
(33)
French
L’armée détruit la ville. ‘The army destroys the city.’
a.
La destruction *(de la ville) (par l’armée) est en cours. ‘The destruction (of the city) (by the army) is going on.’
b.
Sa destruction (par l’armée) est en cours. ‘Its destruction (by the army) is going on.’
c.
Sa destruction *(de la ville) est en cours. ‘Its destruction (of the city) is going on.’
Within the Romance family, some variation may be observed with respect to which preposition may introduce which type of argument. While in French – as well as in Spanish, Italian and English (Jaeggli 1986; Rappaport Hovav 1983; Grimshaw 1990) – an experiencer argument cannot be mapped to a prepositional phrase headed by par ‘by’ (Kupferman 2000), this is possible in Romanian (Iordăchioaia 2008:79); see (34). As shown by Alexiadou and collaborators (Alexiadou et al. 2011; Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou & Schäfer 2009), not only lexical properties of the preposition are relevant in this respect, but also structural properties of different kinds of nominalizations.
(34)
French a.
le mépris du peuple *par la classe politique ‘the contempt of the people by the political class’
Romanian (example from Iordăchioaia 2008:79) b.
dispreţuirea
maselor
de către
clasa politică
despise.INF.the
people.GEN
by
class political
‘the contempt of the political class towards the people’
Atelic transitive verbs, like attaquer ‘attack’, show a slightly different pattern of argument realization. As shown in (35a–b), they share the (33a) and (33c) pattern of destructionnominals, but realization of the theme argument is optional even if the agent is mapped to the prenominal possessor. In addition, they allow mapping of the agent onto the postnominal
possessor, (35c), with optional realization of the theme argument as a prepositional phrase headed by varying prepositions, depending on the verb’s semantics.
(35)
French
L’armée attaque la forteresse. ‘The army attacks the fort.’
a.
L’attaque *(de la forteresse) par l’armée est en cours. ‘The attack (of the fort) by the army is going on.’
b.
Leur attaque (de/contre la forteresse) est en cours. ‘Their attack (of/against the fort) is going on.’
c.
L’attaque de l’armée (contre la forteresse) est en cours. ‘The attack of the army (against the fort) is going on.’
Psychological verbs such as regretter ‘regret’, i.e., subject-experiencer verbs, map their arguments similarly to atelic transitive verbs, (36), with the exception that the experiencer argument cannot be realized by a PP headed by par ‘by’, at least not in French, see above.
(36)
French
Tintin regrette cette faute. ‘Tintin regrets this mistake.’
a.
Le regret de cette faute (*par Tintin) témoigne de sa compassion. ‘The regret of this mistake (by Tintin) gives evidence of his compassion.’
b.
Son regret (de/pour cette faute) témoigne de sa compassion. ‘His regret (of/for this mistake) gives evidence of his compassion.’
c.
Le regret de Tintin (pour cette faute) témoigne de sa compassion. ‘The regret of Tintin (for this mistake) gives evidence of his compassion.’
Finally, ditransitive verbs show a still more complex pattern. In a structure without prenominal possessor, (37a), the theme argument appears as the postnominal possessor (i.e., in a prepositional phrase headed by de ‘of’); the recipient is, as in the verbal construction, introduced by the preposition à ‘to’ and the agent may optionally be realized as a PP headed by par ‘by’. The prenominal possessor can realize all three arguments, theme, (37b), recipient, (37c), as well as agent, (37d), but neither the recipient nor the agent can be mapped on the postnominal de-phrase, (37e)–(37f).
(37)
French
Le présidentAGENT attribue la responsabilitéTHEME au ministreRECIPIENT.
‘The president assigns the responsability to the minister.’ a.
L’attribution de la responsabilité au ministre (par le président) a eu lieu hier. ‘The assignment of the responsability to the minister by the president took place yesterday’
b.
SonTHEME attribution au ministre (par le président) a eu lieu hier.
c.
SonRECIPIENT attribution de la responsabilité (par le président) a eu lieu hier.
d.
SonAGENT attribution de la responsabilité au ministre a eu lieu hier.
d’.
Le jury a justifié sonAGENT attribution du premier prix à la râpe à parmesan ...’ 1 ‘The jury justified their assignment of the first prize to the Parmesan grater ...’
e.
*SonTHEME attribution du ministreRECIPIENT par le président
f.
*SonTHEME attribution du présidentAGENT au ministre
5.3. Summary Though much progress has been made during the last decade concerning the analysis of patterns of argument taking nominals within exo-skeletal approaches, in particular with respect to the realization of an agent, to the argument structure of psychological verbs (Fábregas, Marín & McNally 2012; Meinschaefer 2003) as well as with regard to argument realization in particular kinds of deverbal nominalizations, like affixless nouns (Fábregas 2012; Fábregas 2014) or agent nouns (McIntyre 2014; Roy & Soare 2014; Roy & Soare 2012; Bowers 2011; Alexiadou & Schäfer 2010; Baker & Vinokurova 2009), a systematic perspective on the full array of argument mapping in nominalizations has been conceived of only from the perspective of lexicalist, endo-skeletal approaches, see Markantonatou (1995) for Greek, Stiebels (1999) for Nahuatl, Laczkó (2000; 2010) for Hungarian and Meinschaefer (2005b) for Romance. An analysis of the observations laid out above in an exo-skeletal approach to argument structure remains to be developed. Open research questions relate to a more fine-grained analysis of the influence of the semantics of the base verb and of the nominalizing affix on argument realization, as well as to the factors that allow nominalizations to surface without overt realization of a given argument, with the ultimate aim of explaining the systematic argument-structural differences between verbs and their nominalizations.
1
http://www.lenouvelliste.ch/fr/dossiers/detail/pages/articles/index.php?idIndex=2159&idContent=4661 24&idArticle=466206
6. Conclusion On a descriptive level, the present article has aimed at giving an overview of the variety of interpretations attested for deverbal nominalizations, of the large array of nominalized structures, ranging from genuinely nominal to fully verbal structures, and of their distribution in various Romance languages, as well as of the parallels and differences between verbs and deverbal nouns with respect to event and argument structure. We hope to have shown that the topic at hand has wide-ranging implications for a theory of the interfaces between morphology, syntax and semantics, i.e., of the interaction of modules concerned with form and with meaning. Syntax must derive the (widely varying) syntactic distribution of nominalizations, morphology must account for the contribution of different affixes, and semantics must capture event and argument structural as well as sortal properties (i.e., reference to objects, events, facts or propositions) of nominalizations. A theory of the interfaces between each module, finally, must explain how representations on each of the three levels constrain each other. In other words, it must derive attested deverbal nominalizations – while avoiding overgeneralization – with a given form and a given interpretation, it must account for the observed syntactic and semantic parallels and differences between verbs and nominalizations, and it must explain how these are determined by specific nominalizers. Despite the considerable progress that has been made during the last two decades, it seems that a long way needs yet to be travelled to attain such a theory.
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