Aspect and Valency in Nominals 9781501505430, 9781501514586

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Maria Bloch-Trojnar, Anna Malicka-Kleparska Aspect and Valency in Nominals

Studies in Generative Grammar

Editors Norbert Corver Harry van der Hulst Roumyana Pancheva Founding editors Jan Koster Henk van Riemsdijk

Volume 134

Aspect and Valency in Nominals

Edited by Maria Bloch-Trojnar Anna Malicka-Kleparska

ISBN 978-1-5015-1458-6 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-0543-0 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-0541-6 ISSN 0167-4331 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2017 Walter de Gruyter, Inc., Berlin/Boston Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Contents Maria Bloch-Trojnar and Anna Malicka-Kleparska The interaction of aspect and valency in nominal structures – A theoretical overview | 1 Odelia Ahdout Eventive Object Experiencer nominalizations in Hebrew | 31 Artemis Alexiadou On the complex relationship between deverbal compounds and argument supporting nominals | 53 Maria Bloch-Trojnar Aspectual constraints on the plural marking of argument supporting -nie/-cie nominals in Polish | 83 Ana Maria Brito Event nominalizations in -da in European Portuguese: A syntactic approach | 109 Bożena Cetnarowska Group adjectives, argument structure and aspectual characteristics of derived nominals in Polish and English | 131 Antonio Fábregas and Rafael Marín Lexical categories and aspectual primitives: The case of Spanish -ncia | 157 Lars Hellan A design for the analysis of bare nominalizations in Norwegian | 181 Gioia Insacco Argument structures in Italian nominalizations | 201 Lior Laks Morphological and semantic transparency in Hebrew agent noun formation | 229

VI | Contents

Chiara Melloni Aspect-related properties in the nominal domain: The case of Italian psych nominals | 253 Elena Soare Generic, habitual and episodic events in Romanian nominalizations | 285 Lucia M. Tovena Some constraints on the arguments of an event noun with special aspectual properties | 301 Editors | 329 List of contributors | 331 Index | 335

Maria Bloch-Trojnar and Anna Malicka-Kleparska

The interaction of aspect and valency in nominal structures – A theoretical overview 1

Scope and theoretical perspectives

The aim of this volume is to shed new light on the interactions of aspect and valency in the nominal domain from the perspective of frameworks couched in the generative lexicalist and constructional tradition. The book addresses currently debated issues in the study of nominalizations, such as aspect preservation in different types of nominalizations, the potential for pluralization and adjectival modification, argument licensing in relation to synthetic compounding, lexical representation of zero derived action nouns, and the argument licensing properties of nominals related to psych predicates. The contributions to this volume focus on empirical material from different language families (Germanic, Slavic, Romance, Hellenic and Semitic). Some data discussed here, e.g. from Polish and Norwegian, are relatively unknown to the linguistic community despite their inherent theoretical interest. All the papers dealing with languages that have been studied to a greater extent (English, Romanian, Portuguese, Spanish, Greek, Italian, Hebrew) focus on the aspects that have not yet been addressed. However, before we can embark on more advanced theoretical considerations, let us first delineate the two basic concepts, which are in focus, and are far from self-explanatory. The term aspect is to be viewed both in the sense of lexical and grammatical aspect, which are variously referred to in the literature, as shown in Table 1 below: Tab. 1: Terminology used with reference to aspect

Lexical aspect

Grammatical aspect

Aktionsart, semantic aspect, situation aspect, verb character, intrinsic verb meaning, Aristotelian aspect, actionality, aspectuality

viewpoint aspect, aspect proper, viewpoint, perspective point

DOI 10.1515/9781501505430-001

2 | Maria Bloch-Trojnar and Anna Malicka-Kleparska

Grammatical aspect, which is expressed by verbal inflection and periphrases, moulds the situation as complete (perfective aspect) or ongoing (imperfective aspect) (Comrie 1976; Brinton 1988), whereas lexical aspect refers to the inherent temporal characteristics of the verb, which may be static, dynamic, durative, punctual, telic/atelic (having a necessary endpoint or lacking it) (Vendler 1967; Dowty 1979). There is a semantic distinction between telicity, a semantic feature at the level of Aktionsart, and perfectivity, a semantic notion at the level of grammatical aspect.1 Both refer to the endpoint of a state of affairs, but in different ways (Declerck 1979; Depraetere 1995): (1)

a. He ate an apple. b. He was eating an apple.

The endpoint was actually reached in (1a), but both situations are telic at the Aktionsart level, which means that we can talk about an event having an endpoint in time independently of its having an explicit goal, result or change of state as a culmination of its Aktionsart. Depending on one’s theoretical underpinnings, the two aspectual categories are either kept distinct or conflated.2 Although the concept of aspect, in its most basic understanding, concerns the development of events through time, a particular theoretical approach to aspect determines whether this development is conceived of as being conditioned by

|| 1 Apart from event-internal temporality, which is concerned with the internal temporal structure of the event, there is event external temporality, which is concerned with the relationship between the run time of the event (ET) and the reference time (RT), as well as the relationship between RT and utterance time (UT) (Dowty 1986; Smith 1997; Ramchand 1997, 2004). 2 One of the most prominent advocates of aspect/Aktionsart conflation is Verkuyl (1972, 1993). He explicitly denies the merit of separating sentential aspect (the subjective way of viewing the event) from Aktionsart (the objective way of viewing the event). He replaces the two notions with a single notion of aspectuality, for which the parameters terminative and durative are critical. Even though Tenny (1994) ascribes to the view of the compositional nature of event delimitation, she acknowledges the relvance of the aspect/Aktionsart distinction. In Tenny’s model, aspect (which in her terminology is event structure) is basically syntactic in nature, while Aktionsart (aspect in her terms) is situated in the lexical representation, syntax and semantics and is conditioned by the shape of the verb phrase. The conceptual semantic view of boundedness as relevant for both Aktionsart and sentential aspect is offered in Jackendoff (1991, 1996). To account for the specific conceptualization of propositions, he devises a complex system of binary features such as bounded and internal structure, functions such as e.g. INCH (inchoative) and GR (grinding) and rules of construal. Crucially, he uses the same elements to compose Aktionsart and aspect phenomena.

The interaction of aspect and valency in nominal structures – A theoretical overview | 3

verbs themselves – on the basis of their lexical representation, including some arbitrary marking or specific semantics – or whether it is given momentum by the structure into which verbal elements are inserted, and, as a consequence, it may depend on the neighboring elements in the structure. Valency (or diathesis) describes the environment in which a given lexical element appears in a larger structure, more precisely the environment which is necessarily present with the item. This environment is critically formed by the arguments (obligatory participants) in a structure. The number and type of such participants are directly prompted by a cognitively relevant situation, but the ways of spelling out the participants may depend on the grammar of a given language. Consequently, the logical participants and the grammatical participants may differ (see e.g. Chomsky 1981; Landau 2010). Like aspect, valency can be treated as a phenomenon which is directly related to event structure and which is semantic in nature, or couched in syntactic structures and purely grammatical in its essence. The fact that the verb, its direct argument/object, its prepositional complements and/or its modifiers contribute to event delimitation raises the question of whether events emerge in the lexicon, in the semantics, or in the syntax. There are two basic approaches to the linguistic level on which events are properly represented: the projectionist/lexicalist, and the constructional/ syntax-driven approaches. However, projectionist approaches frequently incorporate certain constructional aspects, and the constructional approaches acknowledge some influence of lexical verb semantics on the temporal and aspectual organization of the event described in the sentence. The projectionist approaches take the position that lexical entries deterministically project (certain) properties related to their event interpretation onto the syntax. They are rooted in Chomsky’s (1986: 84) Projection Principle, which states explicitly that lexical properties and structural properties must be parallel. For instance, there are verbs which take the internal argument and there are structures which are transitive. These models adopt a bi-dimensional approach to aspect, i.e. they recognize the distinction between lexical and grammatical aspect. Syntax-oriented approaches, instigated by Hale and Keyser (1993), assume that event interpretation is encoded largely, or solely, in the syntax and thus they erase the qualitative distinction between both types of aspect (e.g. Borer 2005; Ramchand 2008; MacDonald 2008; Travis 2010). In the Distributed Morphology approach, as represented by Borer (2005), the meanings of verbs arise through the interaction of roots with functional heads. In addition to the outer (viewpoint) aspect projection, Borer (2005) puts forward the inner aspect projec-

4 | Maria Bloch-Trojnar and Anna Malicka-Kleparska

tion, which, together with the properties of DPs (quantity), results in telic properties of sentences. Verbal roots do not contribute to the telicity of a clause. Another prominent line of research in this tradition is the lexical decompositional approach to verb meanings, as represented by, among others, Ramchand (1997, 2004, 2008), Slabakova (2001), Kratzer (1996, 2004) and Svenonius (2004). In Ramchand (2004) the verb’s event structure is fully syntacticized.3 The syntactic representation of a transitive telic event has three projections, or layers of structure, each of which corresponds to a distinct event: causal/ initiational, process and result state. Each of these layers, in turn, has its own subject, i.e. the initiator, undergoer and resultee, respectively: [VP initiator [v’ [v cause] [[VP undergoer [VP undergoer [V process] [RP resultee [R’ [R result] XP]]]]]] The study of nominalizations, especially verb-related nominalizations, is a testing ground for various lexicalist and neo-transformational/constructional models. By putting forward category neutral entries, Chomsky (1970) started the debate on the amount of semantic and syntactic information that verbs and nouns share. Parallel to Grimshaw’s (1990) lexicalist model, syntactic research harks back to Lees (1960), thus giving rise to a competing neo-transformational or structural model, which argues for the presence of verbal functional layers in the nominal structure (e.g. Abney 1987; Borer 1993, 2003; Alexiadou 2001, 2009, 2010ab; Harley 2009). Chomsky’s position also instigated a strain of research which embraced the view of derivational morphology as being “isolated and removed from syntax” (Aronoff 1976: 5). This gave rise to studies which view deverbal nominalizations as products of derivational operations in the lexicon, where word formation rules of a specific type, called transpositions, turn verbs into nouns inheriting their Lexical Conceptual Structure but not Argument

|| 3 Ramchand’s syntactic representation is a syntacticized version of the classification of situation types put forward by Dowty (1979). Dowty (1979) divides verbal predicates into two broad categories: basic and derived. State predicates are basic, whereas non-state predicates are constructed out of state predicates with the help of three sentential operators DO, BECOME and CAUSE. Activities are derived with the help of the operator DO. Accomplishments, in addition to the DO operator, which captures the activity part of the accomplishment predicate, involve BECOME and CAUSE to capture the fact that the activity and the result state are causally related. Achievements involve only the BECOME operator, since they assert a near instantaneous change of state. The primitives of the Vendler/Dowty event typology have been adopted in studies on lexical verb semantics and the mapping of lexical properties of verbs onto syntactic structures. They have been made use of by e.g. Rappaport Hovav and Levin (1998, 2001).

The interaction of aspect and valency in nominal structures – A theoretical overview | 5

Structure, and where event participants may surface as non-obligatory nominal complements (e.g. Malicka-Kleparska 1988; Cetnarowska 1993; Bloch-Trojnar 2013). The projectionist–constructional dispute in the area of nominals will be the running theme of this volume and issues relating to the interaction of aspect and valency in the nominal domain will be presented from both perspectives. Artemis Alexiadou, Antonio Fábregas and Rafael Marín, Elena Soare, Ana Maria Brito and Bożena Cetnarowska take the constructional stand. Gioia Insacco, Chiara Melloni, Lucia Tovena, Odelia Ahdout, Lior Laks, Maria Bloch-Trojnar and Lars Hellan represent the lexicalist position or some other approach focusing on the theory of lexical representation.

2

Aspect

Both lexical and grammatical aspect may be important for the formation of various types of nominalizations. While grammatical aspect will be essential for a limited group of nominals sharing many properties with verbs, as illustrated by Romanian supines (Soare this volume), English verbal gerunds (Lees 1960: 66; Chomsky 1970; Schachter 1976), or verbal nouns in Slavic (Rozwadowska 1997; Bloch-Trojnar this volume), it is largely insignificant for the formation of Result, Simple Event and some Argument Supporting nominals, as well as synthetic nominal compounds (Alexiadou this volume). Aktionsart may be a factor relevant for the production of all types of nominals (Fábregas and Marín, Melloni, Ahdout, Bloch-Trojnar, Tovena this volume). Since lexical aspect has a greater bearing on the formation of nominal structures and since there is no unanimously accepted classification of situation types, we will devote more space to these issues below. However, the distinction between the two types of aspect can be captured in the proposed structures for nominals in the form of distinct projections dedicated to different types of aspect (Soare this volume). Lexical aspectual classifications of situation types may have various conceptual underpinnings, such as time instants or time intervals, paths, locations or causal chains (Dowty 1979; Jackendoff 1983, 1996; Croft 1991).4 By far the

|| 4 The classification put forward by Dowty (1979) is temporal. Jackendoff’s (1983, 1996) and Croft’s (1991) can be regarded as spatial and causal, respectively. For a comprehensive overview of the various approaches to the classification of situation types the reader is referred to Willim (2006: Ch.2).

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most influential has been Vendler’s (1967) classic proposal, which reflects differences in the inherent temporal nature of situation types:5 Tab. 2: Vendler’s classification of situation types

Situation type

Characteristics

Examples

states

static, durative, atelic, homogenous

believe, know, desire, love

activities

dynamic, durative, atelic, homogenous

run, walk, push a cart, drive a car

accomplishments

dynamic, durative, telic, non-homogenous

paint a picture, draw a circle, recover from an illness, run a mile, grow up

achievements

dynamic, punctual, telic, non-homogenous

recognize, spot, lose, die, reach the top, win the race

Various refinements regarding the number of distinguishing criteria and the number of resultant classes have been introduced into the original Vendlerian system.6 Some authors grant independent status to semelfactives (Moens and Steedman 1988: 17; Smith 1997). Kenny (1963: 123) does not recognize the distinction between achievements and accomplishments, but classifies them together as performances. The status of accomplishments has recently been questioned by Rappaport Hovav (2008) (cf. Rothstein 2012; Beavers 2012). Degree achievements are another controversial class (Piñón 2008). Croft (1999) introduces the term point state. Given the fact that the classes have been established on the basis of language specific constraints of English, other classes may be identified as and when data from other languages are taken into consideration,

|| 5 States are inherently static; they do not progress in time and, for that reason, do not sound natural in the progressive. Achievements are punctual, i.e. they are over the moment they begin. They do not sound natural in the progressive either, unlike activities and accomplishments which develop through time in successive phases. States and activities do not have an inherent endpoint, whereas accomplishments and achievements involve a change of state, and describe situations which have a natural endpoint or culmination. The former can occur with durative adverbials (for x time), the latter with time span adverbials (in x time) (Dowty 1979: 56–58). 6 The (non)homogeneity requirement is often rephrased with the use of the features ±telic or ±CS, where CS stands for Consequent State, to indicate that non-homogenous verbs involve a natural endpoint or culmination, a transition to a result state (Dowty 1979; Moens and Steedman 1988; Pustejovsky 1991; Smith 1997).

The interaction of aspect and valency in nominal structures – A theoretical overview | 7

e.g. in Polish (and Russian) there is a class of perfective activities called “pofectives” (Piñón 1993). As is evident from Vendler’s examples, entire predicates are involved in the determination of Aktionsart, i.e. telicity is established at the VP level, which gave rise to approaches which downplay the role of the lexical semantics of verbs, and stress the compositional nature of aspect. According to Verkuyl (1972, 1993, 1999)7 and Tenny (1992, 1994), telicity arises at the level at which the verb combines with its arguments, i.e. the VP and the clause. Whether a sentence with a potential accomplishment/activity verb is terminated (2b, 2d) or not (2a, 2c) depends on the structural environment in which it occurs: (2) a. b. c. d.

He drew for 10 minutes. He drew a circle in 10 minutes. Judith ate sandwiches for 10 minutes. Judith ate the sandwiches in 10 minutes.

The process of aspectual composition is governed by the Aspectual Compositionality Principle: [±SQA]  [±Terminative], i.e. if the direct object comes with a measure/cardinality statement over the entities in its extension (and is classified as [+SQA] “specified quantity of the argument”), the VP is telic. Noun phrases with determiners, quantifiers, measure expressions or cardinal numerals are all [+SQA]. Bare mass and plural nouns are [-SQA]. A measuring argument must be mapped onto the direct object of a transitive verb,8 or a syntactic subject if the verb is unaccusative. In order to account for problematic cases, such as (3) below, where the object is quantized and the VP is durative rather than terminative, Tenny (1992, 1994) argues that only an affected argument which measures out the event in which it participates can supply a temporal end-point: (3) John pushed the cart for hours.

|| 7 Although Kenny (1963) already mentions the implications of the types of objects for the aspect of a proposition, Verkuyl (1972) offers an extensive exemplification of such relationships coming from a variety of constructions. 8 The same argument mapped onto an oblique object in a PP does not result in a telic reading (Tenny 1994: 45; Smith 1997: 177; Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2002: 274): (i) a. John ate the apple in 2 minutes. b. John ate at the apple *in 2 minutes.

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A different idea regarding the contribution of verbs and arguments to aspect was voiced by Dowty (1991) (see also Krifka 1989; van Valin 1990). Dowty refers to the concept of homomorphism, where a predicate maps the argument homomorphically onto the event. When the argument is bounded in some way, the event itself is bounded as well. This concept differs from the compositional concept of aspect, since in the case of composition we are dealing with a sum, where particular elements may contribute, in principle, unequal inputs to the final result: in the homomorphism concept we are dealing with parallels, not ingredients. Telicity may arise if the internal argument stands in a homomorphic relationship to the event, i.e. it undergoes changes in successive phases commensurate with the temporal development of the event. The internal argument bears the thematic role of a Gradual Patient (Krifka 1989, 1992), or an Incremental Theme (Dowty 1991), i.e. it denotes an entity which gradually disappears or comes into existence as the event unfolds, as is the case with verbs of creation and consumption (write a letter, eat an apple, read a book, mow the lawn, destroy a city, build a house vs. see a zebra/zebras (Krifka 1992: 31)). Dowty (1991) extends homomorphism to verbs of motion and verbs of change of state. Consequently, homomorphism may hold between the event and the direct object (4a), between the event and the subject (4b) and between the event and the indirect argument (4c).9 (4) a. She crossed the desert in a week. b. John entered the icy water very slowly. c. John drove (a car) from New York to Chicago. According to Filip (1999), not only obligatory and optional arguments, but also adjuncts and discourse-level linguistic context, the extralinguistic context of the utterance, and general world knowledge introduce “telicity” and “homomorphism” into the semantic structure of sentences. In (5) below, we list the phenomena which are most frequently mentioned and most extensively discussed in the pertinent literature as contributing to telicity, i.e. (5a) – directional prepositional phrases or prepositional goal phrases deriving verbs of directed motion

|| 9 Beavers (2012) argues that many types of dynamic predicates (including motion, caused possession, creation/consumption, change of state) have the same underlying semantics, i.e. they involve a theme argument transitioning some scale that describes some change it undergoes in the event (a ternary θ-relation Figure/Path Relation). Different head verbs determine different scales (physical path, consumption path, possession scale, and property scale, respectively).

The interaction of aspect and valency in nominal structures – A theoretical overview | 9

(Rappaport Hovav and Levin 1998: 99; Smith 1997: 179),10 (5b) – an extent/ measure argument (as opposed to a “true” argument) added to an activity verb to supply a measure over a path of motion (Dowty 1979; Smith 1997; Rothstein 2004; Jackendoff 1996: 325), (5c) – an atelic predicate combined with a counting adverbial which denotes an iterated individuated event (Mourelatos 1981: 207; Filip 1999: 63–64), (5d) – directional particles with a telicizing effect (Talmy 2003: 60), (5e) – combining a resultative adjectival or prepositional predicate with aspectually ambiguous activity verbs (wipe, polish) (Ramchand 1997; Filip 1999; Hay et al. 1999), (5f) – verbs of motion and transitive accomplishments appearing in the scope of an in adverbial on their own and interpreted as having an implicit extent or goal argument, or a direct object (Moens and Steedman 1988: 21; Filip 1999: 66; Rothstein 2004: 157), (5g) – light verbs combined with a bare deverbal noun (Brinton 1998: 50; Filip 1999: 59; Talmy 2003: 60; Rothstein 2004: 184): (5) a. b. c. d. e. f. g.

John jogged to the lake in an hour. John walked a mile. vs. *A mile was walked by John. John pushed the cart twice in an hour. He breathed in/out. John wiped the table clean in two hours. Today at lunchtime I ate in the cafeteria. She gave her hair a comb *for five minutes.

Filip (2013) makes it clear that telicity is one of the many semantic guises of aspect, which, in different languages, may have very different “meanings”. To capture all those uses under a single label, she proposes that the perfective aspect interpretations depend on a single semantic operator which maximalizes the event interpretation to the most informative stage based event. Depending on the language type, the operator may be associated with the verb (Slavic languages), or with the verb phrase (Germanic languages).

|| 10 PPs with telic prepositions (e.g. into, to, over) denote an event of arriving at some destination, as opposed to verbs of motion with atelic prepositions (e.g. along, toward). Some prepositions are ambiguous (e.g. through, down). It is important that the telicizing effect of goal phrases occurs only with motion verbs, because they supply a path argument. Goal arguments do not individuate events (Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2002).

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3

Valency

The mapping of the semantic participants in a situation onto the grammatical arguments of the verb need not be isomorphic. This can in fact be quite intricate. A classic example of a mismatch between logical and grammatical participants can be observed in middle constructions in a variety of languages. Dispositional middles, like anticausatives, take affected arguments, for instance Themes, as their subjects. However, the flagpole of a dispositional middle verb is the (more or less) Agentive participant involved in the event labeled by the verb. Most frequently, the argument is just implicit in the semantic representation (6a), but it may be realized overtly, as illustrated by the data from Polish, by means of a PP or by the Dative used as a semantic case, as in (6b) and (6c), respectively: (6) a. Some brands tie better than others, having a more slippery surface.11 b. Wieczór zaczął się dla niego pechowo. evening.NOM.SG begin.PST.3SG refl for him bad.luck.ADV ‘The evening started badly for him.’ c. Wieczór zaczął się mu pechowo. evening.NOM.SG begin.PST.3SG refl he.DAT.SG bad.luck.ADV ‘The evening started badly for him.’ Other phenomena may also reveal the logical presence of the external argument (Fellbaum 1986; Ackema and Schoorlemmer 2006; Marelj 2004; Reinhart and Siloni 2004). The opposite occurs as well. Structurally present arguments can be just place holders and do not have to reflect logical participants in a predication. For instance, it in English occupying the subject position does not have to introduce a participant: (7) It is difficult to coin a new word. A different kind of flexible connection of event structure and argument structure is represented by Subject- and Object- Experiencer verbs, where the same event can be depicted by lexical verbs revealing different valency properties. Depending on the choice of verb, the external argument may be sentient or not,

|| 11 Example (6a) comes from the British National Corpus.

The interaction of aspect and valency in nominal structures – A theoretical overview | 11

yet the situation type remains unaffected (with the Experiencer and Experienced participants of the same type in both sentences), as in (8a) and (8b) respectively: (8) a. I like music. b. Music amuses me. The dominant approach in morphological research is to adopt an intuitive concept of valency, where the semantic and grammatical valency values coincide, leaving the discrepancies between the two representations to syntacticians. It should be noted, however, that this research area, viewed against aspectual phenomena, is valid as well, especially with respect to genericity (see Fried 2006; Malicka-Kleparska to appear). Valency changes which result in aspect relevant phenomena in the verbal domain are extensively discussed in Rosen (1999), Fagan (1992), Borer (2005), Ackema and Schoorlemmer (2006), Fried (2006), Janic (2013) and Alexiadou et al. (2015). The most extensively investigated valency changes include causativization vs. anticausativization, middle formation and reflexivization. They are not of our immediate interest. However, the participation of verbs in these alternations may have a bearing on the properties of related nominalized structures (see e.g. Ahdout this volume).

4

Nominalizations

Grimshaw (1990) was the first to systematically relate aspect and valency information in the study of nominalizations. In her seminal monograph, she distinguishes two types of deverbal nominalizations. Complex event nominals (CE nominals) are analyzable in terms of aspectual distinctions and have an associated argument structure like verbs, whereas simple event or result nominals lack both: (9) Complex Event nominals shooting, destruction, assignment

Simple Event / Result nominals destruction, assignment, buy, offer race, war, storm, trip

The destruction was complete. (the enemy’s) destruction of the city the destruction of the city (by the enemy) a good buy/race *a good buy of clothes the shooting of rabbits by Bill

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The different syntactic properties stem from the lexical specification of the affixes involved, and the type of their external argument, i.e. an event argument (Ev) or a referential argument (R) (Williams 1981; di Sciullo and Williams 1987; Higginbotham 1985). (10) Complex Event nominals Latinate suffixes; -ing - N, (Ev) shooting N, (Ev (x(y))) observation N, (Ev (x(y)))

Simple Event / Result nominals Latinate suffixes; zero derivatives - N, (R) observation N, (R) offer N, (R)

In a slightly modified version of this approach, nouns like examination are three-way ambiguous: they have a complex event reading, a simple event reading, and a result reading (Alexiadou and Grimshaw 2008: 2; Alexiadou 2009). Notably, the basis for this classification is their ability to take obligatory arguments, license event-related PPs, and the ability to pluralize. (11) a. The examination of the patients took a long time. b. The examination took a long time. c. The examination was on the table.

(Complex Event nominal) (Simple Event nominal) (Result nominal)

CE nominals behave like verbs since they license event-related PPs (in an hour, for an hour), and they “have arguments which are obligatorily present” (Alexiadou and Grimshaw 2008: 2) and cannot be made plural. On a “simple event” reading, like CE nominals, they denote an event, but are not associated with an event structure and hence lack the argument structure because they do not license event-related PPs and admit plural formation. Result nominals do not denote events, and behave like non-derived nouns (dog, event). Alexiadou and Grimshaw (2008: 2) maintain that “nominals derived from verbs with no (overt) affix behave as simple event nouns and/or individual nouns”. These and other differences between the two types are concisely summarized below:12

|| 12 Other characteristics of CE nominals, which have not yet been mentioned and are not observed in result nominals, include the following: θ-assigners, Agent-oriented modifiers (e.g. intentional), Subjects as arguments, by-phrases as arguments, and Implicit argument control.

The interaction of aspect and valency in nominal structures – A theoretical overview | 13

Tab. 3: The properties of Complex Event nominals and Simple Event / Result nominals

Complex Event nominals

Simple Event / Result nominals

Obligatory arguments Event reading Aspectual modifiers Modifiers like frequent, constant appear with singular Must be singular

No obligatory arguments No event reading No aspectual modifiers Modifiers like frequent, constant only with plural May be plural

Zero affixation is opaque to argument transfer, the suffix -ing is argument preserving, whereas -(a)tion and -ment are ambiguous/unspecified: (12) “zero” affixation [N [V] ∅]

(aspect: …)

affixation with -ing [N [V] -ing]

(aspect: telic/atelic/…)

affixation with -(a)tion; -ment [N [V] -(a)tion] [N [V] -(a)tion]



(aspect: …) (aspect: telic/atelic/…)

Grimshaw’s “event structure theory” can be contrasted with the “structure model”, in which nouns that have Argument Structure in their representation contain VPs and/or verbal functional layers (Parallel Morphology of Borer 1993, 2003 or Fu, Roeper, and Borer 2001; Alexiadou 2001, 2009, 2010ab; Roeper 2005; Harley 2009). In the structure model, the argument-taking properties of nominalizations depend on where the affix is attached. In a recent proposal by Alexiadou (2009), the zero affix can attach only to roots (13d), and zero derived nominals will lack argument structure. In verbal gerunds, -ing is the head of the AspP in a structure where a DP dominates a VoiceP, a vP and an AspP (13a). In -ing nominals, the AspP layer is absent (13b). Latinate suffixes are ambiguous in that they may attach directly to the root, giving rise to argument-less structures, as in (13d), or they may attach to a VP with its functional projections. There is no Voice projection to account for the fact that they never have external arguments (13c): (13) a. [D [AspP -ing [VoiceP [vP [√ b. [D [n -ing [VoiceP [vP [√

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c. [D [n d. [D [n

-ation [vP ∅

[√ [√

The problems besetting non-lexicalist approaches as pinpointed by, among others, Alexiadou and Grmishaw (2008), Newmeyer (2009), Melloni (2011) and Bloch-Trojnar (2011, 2013)13 concern, among other things, the obligatoriness of arguments, pluralization, and the behavior of zero-derived nominals.14 In their classification, Grimshaw (1990) and Alexiadou and Grimshaw (2008) insist on the obligatoriness of arguments in CE nominals and the treatment of zero-derivatives as lacking an aspectual interpretation and argument structure. However, Alexiadou (2009) weakens the former statement and speaks in favor of the optionality of argument structure licensing in the nominal system. According to Bierwisch (2009) and Reuland (2011), the difference between simple and complex nominalizations can be attributed to the optionality of nominal complement positions and not to the presence or absence of argument structure.

|| 13 Suffixed nominals devoid of satellite phrases can receive an actional and aspectual interpretation, as confirmed by the presence of aspectual modifiers (Newmeyer 2009): Dr. Krankheit’s operation (on Billy) took three hours (i) There are numerous examples, discussed in the literature (Cetnarowska 1993; Newmeyer 2009; Bloch-Trojnar 2011), in which bare nominals show a full range of arguments and co-occur with modifiers like frequent and constant (a feature of CE nominals; see Grimshaw 1990: 67). Moreover, both Latinate and native zero derived nominals can appear with NPs in the genitive corresponding to the direct object of the verb (Bloch-Trojnar 2011): (ii) the frequent release of the prisoners by the governor (iii) John had a lick of an ice cream. There also exist argument taking nominals which are count nouns (Newmeyer 2009): (iv) The apostle Peter’s three denials of Jesus 14 Needless to say, there is a number of more fine-grained theory internal inconsistencies specific to each approach which cannot receive full coverage in a presentation as concise as this (cf. Newmeyer 2009; Melloni 2011). For example, Grimshaw was criticized for the stipulative character of the argument-adjunct status of the by-phrase in nominals. It does not fit very well into the classification of syntactic satellites as arguments, adjuncts and modifiers (Lebeaux 1986). Melloni (2011: 41–42) criticizes Borer for neglecting the question of the external argument altogether. In Borer’s account, the external argument is a syntactic argument proper and hence obligatory. Consequently, the distinction between gerunds and derived nouns in -ing, which both can co-occur with the external argument, is absent in her approach. Newmeyer (2005) undermines Roeper’s (2005) account of nominalizations as having subjects, which are either overt or empty (PRO). Newmeyer (2009) offers a critique of the most recent minimalist analyses of frozen structure in nominals as argued for by Alexiadou (2001), and the impossibility of a particle shift in the DP as advocated by Harley and Noyer (1998).

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If nominalization is a lexical process in which a verb is turned into a noun, the structures with derived nominals should resemble structures with morphologically simple nouns, i.e. there is no reason why their complements should be obligatory, as in their verbal bases. Deverbal nominalizations, depending on their number specification, are preceded by appropriate determiners, and are modified by adjectives and prepositional phrase complements, which are optional. Both suffixed and zero derived nominals should confirm these theoretical predictions. The question of aspect preservation is a far less contentious issue both in the syntax-based and lexicalist frameworks. Fábregas, Marín and McNally (2012) put forward the Aspect Preservation Hypothesis related to the Monotonicity Hypothesis (Koonz-Garboden 2012) according to which the lexical aspect of a verb is preserved in the semantically neutral process of nominalization. Also, Malicka-Kleparska (1988), Cetnarowska (1993) and Bloch-Trojnar (2013) argue that lexical transposition does not alter the inherent Aktionsart properties of base verbs.

5

Synthetic compounds

Synthetic nominal compounds are a natural area of interest when aspect and valency are considered with respect to the nominal domain. There is no universal definition of synthetic compounding, although there are some features which distinguish it from other compound types (Lieber and Stekauer 2009). Synthetic compounds can be considered combinations made up of a verbal stem and a nonverbal stem functioning as the internal argument of the verb followed by a derivational suffix (Selkirk 1982). Hence, the non-verbal stem can be assumed to act as the direct object or an adjunct of the verb in a corresponding phrase. The external arguments (or subjects) are by and large excluded from the non-verbal position: (14) a. truck driver ‘lit. driver of trucks’ b. tax-evasion ‘lit. evading taxes’ c. home-made ‘lit. the thing made at home’ The verbal stems always occur as the right-hand element. The non-verbal stem may assume the category of a noun (school-teach-er, consumer protect-ion, task assign-ment, school clos-ure, snow remov-al, slum clear-ance), an adverb (well-be-ing), an adjective (new-com-er) or a numeral (first-aid-er).

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Wiese (2008: 254) asserts that “synthetic compounds are special because the construction [A B C] does not divide into a binary division [[AB] C] or, alternatively, [A [BC]] in an obvious way”, where A and B stand for stems and C represents a derivational suffix. There has been a long-lasting debate over the structure of English synthetic nominals. On the one hand, Lieber (1983) supports the [[AB] C] structure, asserting that the suffix is added to the compound externally. On the other hand, Selkirk (1982) and Lieber (2004) opt for the [A [BC]] structure. The [[AB] C] approach implies that the suffix is the head of the compound whereas the [A [BC]] perspective suggests that the deverbal noun is the head. All in all, the right-branching structure is assumed for synthetic compounds since there are no compounds of the to truckdrive type to support the left-branching [[AB] C] structure. This representation need not be universal, as evidenced by the data from Polish, where the suffix is the source of morpho-syntactic features for the entire compound (Kolbusz-Buda 2014), as exemplified in (15a) and (15b) below:15 (15) a. truck driver → [[truck]N [[drive]V [-er]N]N]N b. snopowiązałka ‘sheaf-binder’ → [[snop]N [wiązać]V]V [-(ał)ka]N]N As Borer (2012, 2013) has shown (see also Alexiadou this volume for Greek), synthetic nominal compounds cannot appear with aspectual adverbials in English, which would suggest that they do not share the aspectual projections characteristic of the basic verbs. However, this property may or may not coincide with the argument supporting nature of such compounds.

6

An overview of the chapters in this volume

This collection contains twelve papers which address aspect-valency interaction in nominal structures (nominalizations and compounds). Odelia Ahdout’s contribution, Eventive Object Experiencer nominalizations in Hebrew, examines nominals related to Object-Experiencer verbs, which are generally taken to be stative and to permit agents as external arguments to the exclusion of non-agentive causers (Chomsky 1970; Grimshaw 1990; Landau || 15 In Polish, where synthetic structures are more diversified than in English, both combinations, i.e. [AB] and [BC] are often non-existent. Therefore, the absence of *snopowiązać ‘to sheaf-bind’ cannot be taken as an argument against the [[AB] C] structure since the [BC] unit, i.e. the suffixed nominal *wiąz(ał)ka ‘binder’, is not attested either (Kolbusz-Buda 2014).

The interaction of aspect and valency in nominal structures – A theoretical overview | 17

2010). She argues that the claims formulated with respect to English psych nominalizations cannot automatically be extended to the analysis of the data from Hebrew. The universality of such a characterization of psych nominals is not corroborated by two types of eventive nominalizations in Hebrew (CE nominals in Grimshaw’s 1990 terms), which are derived from Object-Experiencer (OE) and Subject-Experiencer (SE) verbs respectively. In addition, they may realize the original external argument – both agents and non-agentive causers – via a causative preposition, a finding which is in line with Alexiadou and Iordăchioaia’s (2014) analysis of the data from Greek and Romanian. The author draws a further distinction within the class of OE nominals relative to the stativity– eventiveness axis. She attributes this lack of homogeneity to templatic variation: the nominalizations derived from verbs in one template are frequently stative (the author’s pi’el template, Class 1), whereas nominalizations derived from verbs in another template are eventive (the author’s hifi’l template, Class 2). The two types of nominals show different characteristics. The (implied) presence of the agent in the semantics of eventive nominalizations is supported by the ability to control into purpose clauses. In Class 1 nominals, in turn, the result nouns and stative nominals are frequent and neither control into purpose clauses nor a volitional external argument are grammatical with these constructions. According to the author, this state of affairs arises from the fact that the external argument is implicit (logically present) in Class 2 nominalizations and that it must be agentive. The author also discusses differences in argument structure between the two classes of OE verbs and their nominalizations, and draws parallels between the properties of verbs and their corresponding nominals. The proposed analysis capitalizes on the fact that Class 1 verbs have corresponding middle forms, while Class 2 verbs do not. Consequently, psych nominalizations can be derived from the middle forms for Class 1 verbs. The author also seeks to account for the gaps in the formation of nominals from ObjectExperiencer predicates. She does so in relation to the thematic and aspectual properties of the relevant psych verbs, in particular Pesetsky’s (1995) division of psych verbs into Cause-Experiencer verbs and Target/Subject Matter verbs. She claims that some nominals are incompatible with the non-experiencer argument being agentive, and thus the eventive meaning is not possible if we assume the “Agent exclusivity” requirement on their formation. The author takes a lexicalist perspective, where the derivation of nominalizations is linked with the properties of basic verbs. In her paper, On the complex relationship between deverbal compounds and argument supporting nominals, Artemis Alexiadou considers the significance of the AspectP and VoiceP in the formation of Greek synthetic and analytic com-

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pounds in comparison with argument supporting nominals. She also addresses the ban on deverbal nominals in NN phrasal compounds (due to the complex structure of the deverbal nominalizations). She analyses the valency properties of deverbal compounds and argument supporting nominals with a view to establishing whether these structures are related and whether compounds are derived by similar or the same mechanisms as nominalizations. The Greek data are of special interest since there are two types of compounds, synthetic and analytic, which seem to be related to nominalizations (e.g.: thirodamastis ‘lit. beast.tamer’, damastis thirion ‘lit. tamer beasts.GEN’, nominalization: o damastis ton thirion ‘lit. the tamer the beasts.GEN’). The author claims that synthetic compounds in Greek are simple event nominals since they disallow aspectual modifiers and by-phrases. However, they may have two sources. They may be structures of the type [DP [nP [vP [Root]]]], and differ from argument supporting nominals whose internal arguments are more complex (DPs), with the structural genitive case assigned by the AspectP. The presence of the same projection accounts for the aspectual modifiers compatible with these nominals, and the Voice projection allows the realization of the by-phrase. It follows that synthetic compounds lack both the Aspect and Voice projections. The semantic compositionality of such compounds results from the fact that the internal argument in their structure identifies the event introduced by v. As they lack higher complex projections like Aspect and Voice, they acquire idiomatic readings easily. The other source of synthetic compounds is a straight-forward nominalization of the verbal compound, fully morpho-syntactic in character, without idiomatic semantics. Analytic compounds, on the other hand, are not true compounds but rather dispositional argument supporting nominals. Their dispositional interpretation follows from the unquantized objects (bare plurals). Consequently, the type of phrase which is postulated for arguments in these compounds is the NumberP and not the DP. Since true phrasal NN.GEN compounds in Greek cannot accommodate the complex nominal structure with the NumberP or with the DP, they cannot be deverbal, and so they can only fit in simple nPs. The paper by Maria Bloch-Trojnar, Aspectual constraints on the plural marking of argument supporting -nie/-cie nominals in Polish, evaluates a recent syntax-based proposal relating to the ability of argument supporting nominals to realize the morphological plural. It may be expected, in the light of the proposed homogeneity of verbal and nominal categories, that nominals derived from bounded/perfective/telic verbs can be pluralized. In Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia and Soare (2010), Polish action nouns in -nie/-cie can contain both NumberP and AspectP in the nominal structure. They argue for a correlation between the [±count] feature on the ClassP and the inner aspect of the VP, to the effect

The interaction of aspect and valency in nominal structures – A theoretical overview | 19

that only argument supporting nominals with telic inner aspect have the ClassP [+count] and project the NumberP. The author sets out to verify the universality of this claim against an extensive body of data from the National Corpus of Polish (Przepiórkowski et al. 2012). She demonstrates that verbs of all situation types can give rise to plural argument supporting nominals. In addition to perfective achievement verbs, imperfective accomplishments, imperfective activities and states, as well as perfective semelfactive verbs may also serve as bases for the derivation of plural argument supporting nominals. The alleged regularity is not confirmed by the Polish data. It is not the inherent telicity of the situation types that matters. It may be the case that being delimited temporally or otherwise opens up the possibility of being iterated and thus pluralized. Since it is impossible to predict which argument supporting nominals give rise to plural forms, their ability to pluralize must be delimited by additional lexical constraints. Ana Maria Brito, in Nominalizations in -da in Portuguese: A syntactic approach, investigates the structural properties of event deverbal nouns in -da in European Portuguese (and also to some extent the Spanish correlates of such nominalizations). She shows that the derivation is not sensitive to aspectual properties of the basic verb, but to the properties of the verbal roots which require complementation with incremental theme arguments (Fábregas 2010) or with “rheme path objects” (Ramchand 2008). Traditionally, -da is regarded as a single affix. However, Ana Maria Brito extends Fábregas’ (2010) analysis of the Spanish data, and provides evidence in favor of treating the deverbal nouns as being formed from the past participle, and regarding the suffix as two separate morphemes, i.e. d which spells out the aspectual information, and a which contributes the event features. The aspectual features are introduced twice in the structure of deverbal nominals: in the aspectual projection the event nominals are [+/–bounded] , but unbounded in the n projection. -da formations preserve the aspectual properties of the root, and the suffix does not contribute telicity/atelicity by itself to the complex forms. The properties of -da nominals are also analyzed with various light verbs. The conclusion is that the -da nominalizations must be marked as unbounded in n as they are equivalents of mass, uncountable nouns, and hence cannot be pluralized and cannot co-occur with indefinites and demonstratives. On the other hand, in terms of aspect they would be either bounded or not, depending on the type of the root. The text is written in the construction-based framework. Bożena Cetnarowska, in Group adjectives, argument structure and aspectual characteristics of derived nominals in Polish and English, investigates the valency problems relating to the appearance of group adjectives with the argumental

20 | Maria Bloch-Trojnar and Anna Malicka-Kleparska

function in derived nominals in Polish and English. Relational group adjectives are denominal formations denoting countries, regions, professions and titles (such as, for instance, managerial, papal, presidential and their Polish equivalents). The position taken is that these adjectives can appear with argumenttaking nominals, including zero-derived nominals which lack other obvious traces of their verb-like internal syntax, and are devoid of overt morphology to support their complex argument structure. These claims are amply illustrated with examples from the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the National Corpus of Polish. The idea that the ability of the nominal to pluralize is a sufficient criterion for drawing the distinction between referential and argument supporting nominals is discarded here, since the ability to pluralize stems from the fact that nominals denote telic/bounded events which can be replicated, and not from the fact that they refer to objects. The analysis of the Polish material is bound to have interesting theoretical implications since verbal nouns clearly show the perfective/imperfective contrast and their representation must include an aspectual projection (Rozwadowska 1997). Group adjectives, by and large, show a tendency to modify imperfective verbal nouns, and in such structures they co-occur with other elements coming from the event syntax. According to the author, this regularity reflects the compatibility of the “mass” reading of imperfective verbs and the indefinite plural interpretation of the adjectives themselves. She argues that thematic group adjectives can occur in argument supporting nominals which exhibit more nominal properties than other complex event nominals. The “degree of nouniness” of derived nominals is confronted with insights from recent syntactic analyses of nominalizations (e.g. Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia, and Soare 2010; Alexiadou and Stavrou 2011; Sleeman and Brito 2010) and the paper is written in the constructionist framework. A construction-based generative perspective is also taken by Antonio Fábregas and Rafael Marín in their paper, Lexical categories and aspectual primitives: The case of Spanish -ncia. It is a case study of the Spanish nominalizer -ncia ‘-ance’ with far-reaching theoretical ramifications. The authors put forward a plausible hypothesis that there are category-neutral primitives shared by nouns, adjectives and verbs (such as boundaries and bodies) and that some heads are sensitive to these primitives rather than to their lexically-specific materialization as aspect. This explains why the same suffix characterizes what looks like deadjectival quality nominalizations and deverbal eventuality nominalizations. The suffix in question is sensitive to the boundaryless, intransformative character of the base, which does not bear a category label. Also, it produces both quality and eventuality nominalizations, provided that the latter are stative. Where it appears to combine with eventive bases, these bases are

The interaction of aspect and valency in nominal structures – A theoretical overview | 21

demonstrated to have a stative interpretation or to have assimilated to qualities. The proposed solution additionally allows us to get around the problems stemming from an analysis on which nominalizations in -ncia are derivationally/ formally related to adjectives in -nte. The suffix -ncia represents – it is argued – an extremely low nominalizer, appearing in the nominal structure below the head introducing the event variable. As such, it freely derives nominalizations from the roots which do not appear in Spanish verbs. Similarly, this positioning of the intransformative -ncia accounts for the derivation of the relevant nominalizations that share the roots with stative verbs since these verbs are noneventive. In the third class of forms analyzed in the paper, where the verbs corresponding to the nominalizations are eventive, the suffixation process targets their stative reading, or brings about a stative interpretation of the situation coded by the nominalization. This analysis is consistent with a strong tendency for idiomatization in the group of -ncia derivatives and possible cancellations of verbal morphology. In A design for the analysis of bare nominalizations in Norwegian, Lars Hellan addresses the vexed question of the relationship between verbal roots and their corresponding bare nominals. He offers a new perspective which may be of interest to researches working within the lexicalist and constructionist theories. The author demonstrates that, despite pervading formal and semantic discrepancies, bare nominals are related to corresponding verbs. The analysis of verbs of motion whose nominal counterparts lack a path reading and instead show an actional interpretation raises more general theoretical questions concerning lexical representation. It is a matter of debate whether various instantiations of a given form should receive separate entries. Lars Hellan compares bare nominalizations with morphologically marked nominals, in particular with the -ing nominals, in terms of aspectual properties and valency characteristics. The important claim made in this article is that general properties of language constructs should be stated only once in formal grammar. The proposed solution rests on a Type inheritance hierarchy, where the general content of the forms in question is defined as a more general sign, and “inherited” by the actual lexical items. Thus, various categories of words inherit characteristic properties from their roots, not marked for categories. The root type consists of a semantic core plus rudimentary morpho-phonological specification, and a verb entry is placed among its daughters with a full argument structure and grammatically attuned values of aspect and Aktionsart. Regularly derived nouns are expanded from this entry, including an entry for a bare nominalization, which is little more than the semantic core with no argument structure or connected aspectual or Aktionsart values. On the other hand, the lexical representations of -ing deriva-

22 | Maria Bloch-Trojnar and Anna Malicka-Kleparska

tives, apart from the same kind of root information, possess the argument structure, which they share with verbs, but not with bare nominals. The system of lexical representation proposed by the author also allows us to account for the contextual conditioning relevant to particular items. Bare nominalizations are not presented here as “derived” from verbs, but merely as inheriting the properties of their roots. Their lexical representations capture regular, type-related behavior, as well as their idiosyncratic properties. By contrast, the -ing nouns are derived from verbs and therefore share some of their properties such as, for instance, the argument structure. The framework of the paper is situated at the crossroads of the HPSG framework and lexicalism. The underspecification of roots in terms of category also forges a link with constructionist accounts. Gioia Insacco’s paper, Argument structures in Italian nominalizations, is empirically oriented and presents the results of an analysis of the La Repubblica corpus (a journalistic corpus which amounts to about 380 million tokens) with respect to the Aktionsart and valency properties of nominalizations with the suffixes -ata, -mento and -zione. The author identifies the argument structure and possible argument alternations in nominalizations with respect to the basic verbs. She also analyzes the thematic roles associated with the detected arguments and makes generalizations relating to their frequency. The conclusions from the data show that more than a half of the said nominalizations are derived from transitive verbs, but only a fraction realizes the entire argument grid. The Patient, if realized, in over 50 per cent of the cases surfaces in a PP introduced by di. The Agent argument is not so frequently realized but when it is spelled out it is predominantly introduced by the same PP as the Patient. Nominalizations may receive active and passive readings, with the di argument performing the Agent and Patient roles respectively. Other, minor, patterns are described as well, with reference to types of arguments, the way they are realized and the active or passive semantics of the nominalizations. Semantic and argumenttaking properties of nominalizations corresponding to the unaccusative and unergative verbs are also discussed. The author concludes that nominalizations predominantly realize a single argument. In the case of derivatives from transitive verbs, it is the Patient; for unaccusatives it is the Theme; and for unergatives it is the Agent. If subjects are not realized in the phrase headed by the nominalization, they are generic, or prompted by a wider context. In the case of nominalizations related to transitive verbs the flattening of the system of semantic roles can be observed, since both active and passive readings are expressed in formally identical ways. Such non-distinctive phrases with nominalizations form the core of the relevant corpus data. No ambiguity results in the case of nominals related to unaccusative and unergative verbs. The paper offers

The interaction of aspect and valency in nominal structures – A theoretical overview | 23

an overview of how the Italian system of nominalizations works when actual corpus data are considered. The findings constitute a challenge for both lexicalist and constructionist approaches. The former have to tackle the neutralization of the semantic contrast, whereas the latter have to confront the nonobligatoriness of arguments. The study lends support to lexicalist approaches to nominalization in which the realization of arguments is optional and where the realization of the Agent in transitive eventive structures does not necessitate the realization of the internal argument, as the adherents of Grimshaw’s theory would have it. In Morphological and semantic transparency in Hebrew agent noun formation, Lior Laks highlights the importance of semantic transparency in word formation and its implications for the study of thematic relations at the interface of verbal and nominal systems. He looks into the causes of irregular agent noun formation and doublet formation in compounds with agent nouns in Hebrew. The choice of a particular verbal pattern depends on the morphological and semantic transparency between the verb and the corresponding derived noun. The crucial role of morphological transparency provides support for the lexicalist word-based approach to non-concatenative word formation, which is by no means self-evident. According to the author, morphological transparency in a non-concatenative language should be viewed as the relationship between two forms which requires as few changes as possible, and the majority of Agentive nominals in Hebrew adhere to this principle. A significant role is also played by semantic transparency: Agent nominalizations are related to the external argument of the basic verb. In Hebrew, Agent nouns coincide in form with the participial pattern, which, in turn, is identical to the present form of the verb, and so the argument structure of the verb is easily traceable in the resulting nominal. It is demonstrated that variation deviations from the preferred pattern appear most frequently in compounds. The author explains this state of affairs by appealing to the influence of the non-verbal element on the transparency of the entire compound structure. Because the other argument is already spelled out, the transparency of the complex is guaranteed, even if the head itself is not that transparent. Chiara Melloni’s paper, Aspect-related properties in the nominal domain: The case of Italian psych nominals, is a voice in the debate concerning the preservation of aspectual properties in nominals. The author investigates nominals derived from psychological verbs of the Object-Experiencer class (see Pesetsky 1995; Belletti and Rizzi 1988). Of particular concern are nominalizations related to a subset of OE verbs which are capable of preserving the agentive/eventive semantics and the existence of which runs counter the general assumption that

24 | Maria Bloch-Trojnar and Anna Malicka-Kleparska

psych nouns in the OE class are uniformly stative and lack causative force (Lakoff 1970; Pesetsky 1995). The aspectual characterization of psych nominals is established with the aid of standard eventivity and stativity tests. The proposed analysis lends support to the Aspect Preservation Hypothesis proposed by Fábregas and Marín (2012) and Fábregas, Marín and McNally (2012) and it is argued that event nominals can be formed in those cases where the base verb lexicalizes a process/activity subevent (under the control of an Agent), which are absent in true OE verbs. In Generic, habitual and episodic events in Romanian nominalizations, Elena Soare presents an analysis of the system of supine nominals in Romanian, which can be habitual, generic, pluractional or episodic. The author claims that supine nominals fall into three (and not as traditionally supposed two) categories: simple nominals (I), which may co-occur with definite determiners, bare nominals (II) in prepositional contexts, whose prepositions are selected by the basic verbs and which take “weak” incorporated objects, and finally verbal nominals (III), introduced by a functional item not selected by the basic verb. In the case of class II nominals the incorporation of the non-specific object contributes the generic interpretation of the phrase headed by the nominal. In contrast to this group, class I has a pluractional reading. Different interpretations result from the aspectual build-up of the two classes. Class II has only the inner aspectual specification, which is contributed by the degree of specificity of the object, while those in class I have the AspP head in their structure introducing pluractionality. Class III covers clausal domains (CPs), with structural layers characteristic of clauses, e.g. tense projection, the projection introducing the subject, etc., and it shows the episodic meaning. To substantiate the distinction of the supines into the three classes, the author offers a number of syntactic tests. Additionally, particular types of supines differ not only in aspectual properties, but also in the cases assigned by the nominals to their arguments and in the semantic contribution of accompanying objects to the Aktionsart properties of phrases. For instance, class II supines have the habitual meaning and nonspecific character, with the degree of non-specificity being the highest with bare plural objects and implicit objects. The paper is written in a constructionoriented framework. The author, however, recognizes the importance of information contributed by words as whole units. Lucia Tovena, in Some constraints on the arguments of an event noun with special aspectual properties, describes an interesting class of Italian deverbal nominalizations in -ata, which can function both as simple event nouns and as argument supporting nouns in light verb constructions. The author considers the aspectual properties of verbs that can derive -ata nominalizations and

The interaction of aspect and valency in nominal structures – A theoretical overview | 25

points to atelic, homogenic predicates as possible bases, to the exclusion of achievements and accomplishments. The suffix itself is an event modifier that measures events. The events described by -ata nominals have to be controlled by an overt participant as their basic verbs do not bring with them any “perfection” of an event. In the case of argumentless -ata derivatives, the control must be secured by the event measuring suffix. The proposed representation of the suffix also explains the properties of other constructions in which nominalizations with -ata are used.

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Odelia Ahdout

Eventive Object Experiencer nominalizations in Hebrew 1

Introduction

This article describes nominalizations derived from various classes of Psych verbs in Modern Hebrew. The Hebrew data challenges previous claims regarding the semantics of Psych nominals, made mostly on the basis of English. First, English Object Experiencer (OE) nominals have been shown to often have stative readings which fail to preserve the causative semantics of the corresponding verb (Rappaport 1983; Rozwadowska 1988; Grimshaw 1990). In Hebrew, some OE nominals behave like those found in English, by having salient stative readings (1b), which do not preserve the change of state semantics of the basic verb (1a), while others have result noun readings, which denote the result of the process, but not the process itself (1c): (1)

a. ze bilbel/zi’aze’a/ye’eš oti it confused/shocked/discouraged me b. ani be-macav šel bilbul/za’azu’a/ye’uš I in-a-state of confusion/shock/despair c. bidur ‘entertainment’, pituy(im) ‘temptation(s)’, riguš(im) ‘excitement(s)’, timtum ‘stupidity’

However, some OE nominals are in fact eventive, and denote a change of state in the Experiencer argument. et ha-kahal (2) a. ha-manhig šilhev the-leader enraptured ACC the-crowd ‘The leader enraptured the crowd.’ b. šilhuv ha-kahal al yedey ha-manhig enrapture (of) the-crowd by the-leader ‘The enrapturing of the crowd by the leader’ (3) a. axiya ha-katan šel miri hifxid ota be-xavana her.brother the-small of Miri scared her on-purpose ‘Miri’s little brother scared her on purpose.’

DOI 10.1515/9781501505430-002

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b. ha-hafxada šel1 miri al yedey axiya ha-katan the-scaring of Miri by her-brother the-small ‘The frightening of Miri by her little brother’ Importantly, in many cases OE nominals are ambiguous between stative/result noun and eventive readings, the latter reading usually requiring coercion via the syntactic realization of the nominals’ arguments: (4) a. ha-moxrim pit-u et ha-ovrim ve-ha-šavim le-hikanes l-a-xanut the-salesmen lured-PL ACC the-passersby to-enter to-the-store ‘The salesmen lured the passersby into entering the store.’ b. pituy ha-ovrim ve-ha-šavim le-hikanes l-a-xanut the-luring the-passersby to-enter to-the-store al yedey ha-moxrim by the-salesmen ‘The luring of the passersby into entering the store by the salesmen’ A further surprising finding is that among the group of eventive OE nominals, a sub-group of nominals are eventive-only. These nominals are unique in the landscape of nominalizations in general, not only by virtue of their exclusively being interpreted as eventive, but also because they imply an agent causing a change of state in the object experiencer even in the absence of the external argument (see also Sichel 2010). In example (5a), the presence of the implicit agentive external argument is exemplified by its control of the subject of the purpose clause, and by an agentive adverb (mexuvan ‘intentional’) modifying the event. The agent-caused change of state reading is moreover the only available reading even in the absence of both external and internal arguments, e.g. (5b): (5) a. hat’ayat2 ha-carxanim ha-mexuvenet / kedey le-ha’alot the-deception (of) the-consumers the-intentional / in.order to-raise

|| 1 In this example the head nominal is followed by a genitive complement (šel ‘of’). An alternative construction used with nominals is the construct state (see footnote 2). 2 The last vowel [a] of the basic nominal form (as in example (5b) below) alternates with [at] when appearing in construct state.

Eventive Object Experiencer nominalizations in Hebrew | 33

et

ha-kniya šel ha-mucar the-purchasing of the-product ‘The intentional deceiving of the consumers / The deceiving of the consumers in order to raise the purchasing of the product’ b. ha’acava ‘causing sorrow (*sadness)’, hafxada ‘scaring (*fear)’, halxaca ‘stressing out (*distress)’, harga’a ‘calming down (*calmness)’, hat’aya ‘deceiving (*the state of being deceived)’ ACC

Unlike English, Hebrew OE nominals as a group exhibit a high rate of variability in event structures; some are stative-only (1a), others ambiguous – compare the nominalizations pituy ‘temptation’ in the result noun reading in (1c) vs. the eventive reading in (4b) – and still others are eventive only, and moreover always imply an agent (5). This paper aims at offering a preliminary explanation of the factors conditioning this variation. The central question arising from the Hebrew data regards the class of nominals which are not only eventive, but imply an agent. In English, even non-Psych nominals such as destruction are ambiguous between a process and a result state. How can the existence of a class of OE verbs which produces exclusively eventive nominals be accounted for? In order to answer this question, I examine two aspects in the behavior of Hebrew OE nominals: event structure, focusing on eventive vs. stative readings as shown above, and argument realization patterns. I note here that some of the variation in the event structure of OE nominals in Hebrew has been accounted for in Doron (2012), where it is claimed that the thematic role of the nonExperiencer argument determines the event structure of derived nominals. However, in this article I show that other, perhaps more substantial differences between the various groups of OE nominals exist, and claim that they can be accounted for using a previous analysis of the Hebrew verbal system (Doron 2003). More specifically, I attribute variation in event structure and argument structure of the type discussed here to the specific morphological forms in which the relevant OE verbs are hosted, i.e. to verbal morphology. Finally, I show that the data presented here have consequences for an ongoing theoretical debate. In the literature on Semitic morphology, some studies view templates as strictly grammatical, devoid of any semantic content (e.g. Ornan 1971). Other studies attribute to templates a grammatical function as the phonological spell-out of a morpho-syntactic feature, Voice (Arad 2005). Still others (e.g. Doron 2003) claim that the templates have specific semantic functions associated with them, for example characterizing the relation between the external argument and the event denoted by the verb. The variation in the be-

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havior of nominalization being determined by the morphological forms in which they are hosted suggests that the verbal forms differ in their internal make-up, supporting analyses along the lines of Doron (2003). The next section discusses basic facts about OE nominalizations in English, followed by a comparison to OE nominalizations in Hebrew.

2

Restrictions on English OE nominals

As mentioned above, in English, nominalizations of Psych verbs tend to be stative, and in such cases they do not preserve the causative semantics of the basic verb: (6) a. The results / my student (deliberately) disappointed me. b. My disappointment (at the results)

cause/agent stative only

Still, for a small number of verbs, the change of state reading in the nominal is more available than for other verbs, as in the case of the verb humiliate below. Note also that in the eventive predications in (7b) and (7c), only agents are grammatical, while non-agentive causers only appear in stative predications (7d): (7) a. b. c. d.

My enemy / the insult humiliated me. My enemy’s / *the insult’s humiliation of me My humiliation (*by the insult / by my enemy) My humiliation from the insult

agentive only agentive only cause/agent stative

The semantic selection of agentive external arguments over non-agentive ones in OE nominals has been termed “Agent Exclusivity” (Lakoff 1970; Grimshaw 1990; Iwata 1995; Pesetsky 1995; Marantz 1997; Harley and Noyer 2000; and examples in Rappaport 1983: 138, 140; Rozwadowska 1998: 156; Landau 2010: 143–146).3 As a consequence of “Agent Exclusivity” effects in nominals, when the verb cannot get agentive readings even when the external argument is hu-

|| 3 Similar semantic effects on external arguments are also apparent in some voice alternations, for example in Hebrew (Doron 2003) and Greek (Alexiadou and Doron 2012) verbal passives, as well as in some non-Psych nominalizations (see Sichel 2010).

Eventive Object Experiencer nominalizations in Hebrew | 35

man, i.e. potentially agentive, neither causes nor agents are grammatical in the nominals in (8c) and (8d): (8) a. b. c. d.

The results / my student (*deliberately) amazed me My amazement (at the results / at my student) *The results’ / *the student’s amazement of me My amazement (*by the results / *by my student)

non-agentive only stative only

Finally, notice that in this example as well, non-agentive causers in English appear only in stative predications (8b), as was demonstrated above in (7d).

2.1

Restrictions on Hebrew OE nominals

Native Hebrew words are built by intercalating a bi-/tri-/quadro-consonantal root and an abstract prosodic pattern of consonants and vowels, known in the literature as a template. All Hebrew verbs must appear in one of 7 verbal templates, two of which are designated for passive verbs. In Hebrew, morphological relatedness is determined on the basis of the shared consonantal root. Some interrelations between the verbal templates also exist, and these are based on shared morpho-phonological properties of the templates, a matter which is discussed in more detail in section 4. Verbs and their derived nominals share syllable structure; for example, the consonantal root x.š.v below, inserted in the verbal template pi’el4 in (9a), has a (morpho-phonologically) transparently related nominal and with the pi’el template in (9b). (9) a. Pi’el verbal template: CiCCeC;5 derived-nominal template: CiCCuC b. Pi’el verb: xišev ‘to calculate’; derived nominal: xišuv ‘calculation’ Two verbal templates host OE verbs; the first template is pi’el. OE verbs appearing in this template are henceforth referred to as Class 1 verbs. The second template is hif’il, and OE verbs hosted in this template are henceforth referred to as Class 2 verbs. Below is an example for a Class 1 verb and its nominal counterpart in (10a), and a Class 2 verb and derived nominal in (10b):

|| 4 I refer to the Hebrew verbal templates by their traditional names (which reflect the vocalic prosody of the active voice of the template). These names are hereby marked in italics. 5 C represents Semitic root consonants.

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(10) a. Class 1: verbal template CiCCeC + consonantal root š.l.h.b. – šilhev ‘to enrapture’; nominal template CiCCuC + š.l.h.b.– šilhuv ‘causing rapture’ b. Class 2: verbal template hiCCiC + root p.x.d. – hifxid6 ‘to scare’; nominal template haCCaCa – hafxada ‘scaring’ It is important to note that there are no noticeable differences in the distribution of lexical meanings between the two verbal templates: both templates host a variety of caused Psych states, for example annoyance (e.g. Class 1 ‘icben ‘to annoy’, Class 2 hirgiz ‘to irritate’), excitement (Class 1 rigeš ‘to excite’, Class 2 hilhiv ‘to excite’), amusement (Class 1 bider ‘to entertain’, Class 2 hicxik ‘make laugh, amuse’), and so on. There is no correlation, therefore, between the type of mental states denoted by the verbs and the morphological form in which these verbs are hosted. In the previous section, I claimed that verbs belonging to both classes may produce eventive nominals, Class 1 in example (2), and Class 2 in example (3). As in the limited number of eventive OE nominals in English, e.g. (7b), in Hebrew eventive OE nominals belonging to both classes also show “Agent Exclusivity” effects. This is reflected in the ungrammaticality of non-agentive causers in the nominal predication in (11b), (12b), in contrast with their grammaticality in the verbal predication in (11a), (12a): (11) a. ha-moxrim / ha-moda’ot pit-u et the-salesmen / the-advertisements lured.ACT.CLASS1-PL ACC ha-ovrim ve-ha-šavim le-hikanes l-a-xanut the-passersby to-enter to-the-store ‘The salesmen / the advertisements lured the passersby into entering the store.’ b. pituy ha-ovrim ve-ha-šavim le-hikanes l-a-xanut the-luring. ACT.CLASS1 the-passersby to-enter to-the-store al yedey ha-moxrim / *ha-moda’ot by the-salesmen / the-advertisements ‘The luring of the passersby into entering the store by the salesmen / *the advertisements’

|| 6 In Hebrew, there is a phonological rule whereby the phonemes /p/, /k/ and /b/ spirantize post-vocalically, to yield [f], [x] and [v], respectively.

Eventive Object Experiencer nominalizations in Hebrew | 37

(12) a. ha-mefakdim / ha-pkudot hit-’u the-commanders / the-commands mislead.ACT.CLASS2-PL et ha-xayalim ACC the-soldiers ‘The commanders / the commands mislead the soldiers.’ b. ha-hat’aya šel ha-xayalim al yedey ha-mefakdim the-misleading.ACT.CLASS1 of the-soldiers by the-commanders / *ha-pkudot / the-commands ‘The humiliation of the soldiers by the commanders / *the command’ In section 3, however, I fine-tune this generalization, in light of new data presented here. In section 1 I introduced the variability in the semantic readings available for Hebrew OE nominals as a group. I showed that Class 1 nominals are usually either stative-only or ambiguous, where the eventive readings of ambiguous nominals usually require the realization of all the arguments for disambiguation. Another example of a stative-only nominal is in (13b), where the nominal denotes only the resulting mental state, and is accordingly ungrammatical with a by-phrase introducing an agent: (13) a. ha-bos šeli dixdex oti the-boss my made-moody.ACT.CLASS1 me ‘My boss made me moody.’ b. ha-dixdux šeli (*al yedey ha-bos) the-moodiness.ACT.CLASS1 my by the-boss ‘My (state of) moodiness (*by the boss)’ Class 2 verbs, on the other hand, were shown to produce eventive nominals only, as in (3b), (5) and (12b), and are thus non-ambiguous. Table 1 summarizes via representative examples the possible types of readings OE nominals may get, according to the deriving verbal template. Doron (2012) explains the stativity of some Hebrew OE nominals on the basis of Pesetsky’s (1995) sub-classification of Psych verbs into two thematic groups: verbs in which the non-Experiencer argument is a Target/Subject Matter (T/SM verbs), and verbs in which it is a Causer. According to Pesetsky, Targets and Subject Matters are the entities towards which the Experiencer’s attention is directed, and thus trigger the mental state passively and directly. Unlike causers

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or agents, T/SMs cannot constitute a link in a causative chain, in which case they would trigger the mental state indirectly. Tab. 1: Available readings with OE nominals

Reading Verbal template Eventive (+ change of state)

Stative

Class 1 (pi’el)

usually requires realization of ye’uš ‘despair’ arguments, example (4b) bilbul ‘confusion’ za’azu’a ‘a state of shock’

Class 2 (hif’il)

haksama ‘charming s.o.’ hargaza ‘annoying s.o.’ hataša ‘causing exhaustion’

-

Result noun bidur ‘entertainment’ sipuk ‘satisfaction’ še’amum ‘boredom’

-

Following this idea, Doron suggests that T/SM verbs lack agentive readings altogether, even when the non-Experiencer argument is human. Recall that Psych nominals show the “Agent exclusivity” restriction, and only Psych verbs which may have an agent as an external argument would be able to derive eventive nominals. From these two observations – that T/SM-experiencer verbs are incongruent with agentive reading, and “Agent Exclusivity” – it follows that only Cause-experiencer verbs may produce eventive nominals, while Psych verbs T/SMs cannot. A slightly different way of phrasing this explanation is to claim that, as in the English verb amaze in (8), verbs which are non-agentive in Hebrew cannot derive eventive nominalizations. In the literature on Psych verbs, it has been observed (Alexiadou and Iordăchioaia 2014a: 120, and also see Rozwadowska 1988: 155–156) that some OE verbs are conceptually infelicitous with agents, while still allowing causers. While Doron contrasts cause-experiencer verbs and T/SM-experiencer verbs (the former compatible with agentive readings), stating that only the latter group is expected to produce eventive nominals, I suggest that the more precise contrast is between agentive and non-agentive verbs, where again following “Agent Exclusivity” constraints, only the former subset of Psych verbs may produce eventive nominals. Regardless of the exact explanation opted for, in both cases the positing of “Agent Exclusivity” is crucial. Showing that incongruence of OE verbs with agents correlates with the absence of eventive (or any) nominalizations is enough to account for the latter in terms of “Agent Exclusivity”.

Eventive Object Experiencer nominalizations in Hebrew | 39

Crucially, Doron explains variability in event structure in OE nominals in a manner which cuts across the two classes of verbs. In other words, the lack of eventive nominals7 is explained for both OE classes using a thematic factor. However, the behavior of OE nominals is more complicated; while Doron accounts for some of the existing variability, the overwhelming non-ambiguity of Class 2 nominals, restricted to eventive readings only vs. the ambiguity of Class 1 nominals – the latter behaviour much more characteristic of nominalizations in general (Grimshaw 1990), remain to be explained. In order to address these matters, I first demonstrate that OE nominals show another kind of variable behavior – in the types of argument realization patterns they exhibit. As will be made explicit in section 4, the differences in argument structure available for nominals depending on class membership in fact hint at possible sources for both semantic (event structure) and syntactic (argument structure) behaviors of each class of OE nominals in Hebrew. In the next section I introduce the new findings regarding event structures found with Hebrew OE nominals, and try to account for both semantic and syntactic variability on the basis of previous works in the realms of Hebrew morphology and Psych nominalizations.

3

Argument realization patterns in Hebrew OE nominals

Before I explain the second type of difference between nominals derived from each of the two OE verb classes, I first have to present another type of Psych nominals in Hebrew. These differ from OE nominals described so far in two aspects: first, they appear in morphologically-middle forms, as opposed to their active form, OE counterparts. Second, they have a Subject Experiencer (SE) configuration, where the Experiencer is the syntactic subject, and the nonExperiencer argument is only optionally realized, via a PP. The second aspect in which OE and SE nominals differ is thus that the latter have intransitive syntax.

|| 7 Class 2 nominals are almost never stative, and as such are irrelevant to Doron’s account of the lack of eventivity in OE verbs which take a T/SM argument. However, some OE verbs from both classes lack a derived nominal altogether, a behavior which is not encountered with nonPsych verbs hosted in these templates. Therefore, the relevance of Doron’s account to Class 2 verbs and nominals may be in explaining why some OE verbs in this class do not produce any nominal at all. Of course, this also holds for Class 1 verbs that fail to produce nominals.

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Semantically, these SE verbs are usually ambiguous between an eventive reading, denoting an entrance into a state, and a stative reading. In Hebrew, the middle form hitpa’el hosts SE alternates of the pi’el template (Class 1) OE verbs. (14a) has a Class 1 verb, and (14b) has its SE alternates in the middle form hitpa’el. The derived nominal of the SE verb is in (14c). (14) a. ha-mofa sixrer et ha-cofim the-show caused.giddiness.ACT.CLASS1 ACC the-spectators ‘The show caused the spectators to feel giddiness.’ b. ha-cofim histaxrer-u (me-ha-mofa) the-spectators became.giddy.MID.CLASS1-PL from-the-show ‘The show caused the spectators to feel giddy.’ c. ha-histaxrerut šel ha-cofim (me-ha-mofa) the-becoming.giddy.MID.CLASS1 of the-spectators from-the-show ‘The spectators becoming giddy because (of the show).’ Contra Class 1 verbs, Class 2 verbs do not have one consistent middle form hosting their SE alternates; inchoative (eventive) SE forms are usually hosted in nif’al, e.g. (15b). The middle form nominal derived from the SE verb is in (15c). Other SE forms corresponding to Class 2 verbs appear in the pa’al template (hosting Hebrew parallels of the English fear class, i.e. these verbs are stative rather than inchoative), and in hitpa’el (usually due to phonetic reasons). (15) a. ha-xarakim hig’il-u et ha-yeled the-insects caused.disgust.ACT.CLASS2-PL ACC the-boy ‘The insects disgusted the boy.’ b. ha-yeled nig’al (me-ha-xarakim) 8 the-boy got.disgusted.MID.SIMPLE from-the-insects ‘The boy got disgusted (by the insects).’ c. ha-higa’alut šel ha-yeled (me-ha-xarakim) the-getting.disgusted.MID.SIMPLE of the-boy from-the-insects ‘The boy getting disgusted (by the insects)’ In (14b), (14c), (15b) and (15c) above with middle forms, the Experiencer is the syntactic subject (i.e. the verb/nominal has a SE configuration), and that the syntax of both verbs and nominals is intransitive. Importantly, the non|| 8 Nif’al verbs and their derived nominals are hereby glossed as SIMPLE forms, following Doron’s terminology (Doron 2003).

Eventive Object Experiencer nominalizations in Hebrew | 41

Experiencer argument is introduced by a preposition which typically denotes causes or sources, mi/me- ‘from, for’, and accordingly cannot be interpreted as agentive. Also noteworthy is the fact the non-agentive preposition is the one licensed by non-Psych anticausative verbs participating in the causative alternation (see Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou, and Schäfer 2015 for similar argument realization patterns in Greek, German and Romanian anticausatives). The lack of consistent middle form hosting SE alternates of Class 2 verbs, vs. the consistent pi’el (active, Class 1)-hitpa’el (middle, SE) alternation will prove a crucial factor in determining both semantic and syntactic properties of OE nominalizations derived from the two different active forms. This is explained in light of Doron’s (2003) study, where it is claimed that while active pi’el and middle hitpa’el are related morphologically, and as such may constitute a Voice alternation, the middle form nif’al, hosting OE verbs in hif’il, is not morphologically related to hif’il. In other words, Class 1 nominals have SE alternates which are hosted in a morphologically-related verbal template, while Class 2 nominals do not. I return to this important matter in section 4 below. First, however, I move on to present the second kind of difference between the two classes of OE verbs in Hebrew: argument realization options. In Hebrew, not only nominals derived from middle verbs exhibit structures with a subject Experiencer and a cause introduced in a characteristic PP. Activeform Psych verbs may also produce such nominals. Crucially, this argument structure configuration is exclusive to Class 1 verbs, and ungrammatical for Class 2 verbs. In (16b) and (17b) below, the agentive argument structure is shown to be felicitous with OE nominals from both classes of OE nominals – in sections 1 and 2 it was already established that these nominals adhere to “Agent Exclusivity”. However, the non-agentive argument structure (reflected in the licensing of mi/me- ‘from’, instead of al yedey ‘by’) is only grammatical for Class 1 nominals. Compare (16c) with (17c). (16) a. ha-manhig / ha-ne’um šilhev et ha-kahal the-leader / the-speech enraptured.ACT.CLASS1 ACC the-crowd ‘The leader / the speech enraptured the crowd.’ b. ha-šilhuv šel ha-kahal al yedey ha-manhig the-enrapturing.ACT.CLASS1 of the-audience by the-leader ‘The enrapturing of the crowd by the leader’ c. ha-šilhuv šel ha-kahal (me-ha-ne’um) the-enrapturing.ACT.CLASS1 of the-audience from-the-speech ‘The enrapturing of the crowd (by the speech)’

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(17) a. ha-mefakdim / ha-pkudot hit-’u the-commanders / the-commands mislead.ACT.CLASS2-PL et ha-xayalim ACC the-soldiers ‘The commanders / the commands mislead the soldiers.’ b. hat’ayat ha-xayalim al yedey ha-mefakdim the-misleading.ACT.CLASS2 (of) the-soldiers by the-commanders ‘The misleading of the soldiers by the commanders’ c. hat’ayat ha-xayalim (*me-ha-pkudot) the-misleading.ACT.CLASS2 (of) the-soldiers from-the-commands ‘The misleading of the soldiers (*by the commands)’ It emerges then that (at least some) OE nominals derived from Class 1 verbs can appear with agents or causers, each introduced by the appropriate preposition.9 Comparing the middle-form, SE nominal and the corresponding activeform, OE nominal for the alternating Psych root šilhev ‘to enrapture’-hištalhev ‘to become enraptured’ yields near-synonymous readings, in which a change of state is triggered by a non-agentive causer (18b). The middle verb is given in (18a): (18) a. ha-kahal hištalhev (me-ha-neum) the-crowd became.enraptured.MID.CLASS1 from-the-speech ‘The crowd became enraptured (by the speech).’ b. ha-hištalhevut (šilhuv) the-becoming.enraptured.MID.CLASS1 causing.rapture.ACT.CLASS1 šel ha-kahal (me-ha-ne’um) of the-audience from-the-speech ‘The enrapturing of the crowd (by the speech)’ What is surprising in examples like (16c) is the incongruence between the active morphology and the intransitive syntax, which is characteristic of Hebrew middles in general.

|| 9 Some Class 1 nominals which are stative-only and are thus not felicitous with agents, such as the nominal in (13b), also exhibit this argument structure. The nominal clause then denotes a stative event as well: i. ha-dixdux šeli (me-ha-yaxas šel ha-bos) cf. (13b) the-moodiness.ACT.CLASS1 my from-the-treatment of the-boss ‘my moodiness (because of the treatment of my boss)’.

Eventive Object Experiencer nominalizations in Hebrew | 43

The table below summarizes the available argument realization patterns according to verbal template. As expected, SE nominals, which are hosted in middle forms in Hebrew, are incongruent with an agentive argument structure. On the other hand, Class 1 nominals are unexpectedly available with this argument structure in spite of being morphologically-active: Tab. 2: Argument realization options

Nominal

Verbal form Active forms

Middle forms

OE pi’el (Class 1)

OE hif’il (Class 2)

SE hitpa’el/nif’al

agentive

šilhuv the-enrapturing (of) ha-kahal the-audience al yedey ha-manhig by the-leader ‘The enrapturing of the crowd by the leader’

ha-hat’aya šel the-misleading of ha-xayalim the-soldiers (al yedey ha-mefakdim) by the-commanders ‘The misleading of the soldiers (by the commanders)’

-

nonagentive (causative PP)

ha-šilhuv šel the-enrapturing of ha-kahal the-audience me-ha-ne’um from-the-speech ‘The enrapturing of the crowd by the speech’

ha-hištalhevut the-becoming.enraptured šel ha-kahal of the-audience me-ha-ne’um (from-the-speech) ‘The enrapturing of the crowd (by the speech)’

An account covering both semantic variation, described in section 2.1, and variability in argument realization patterns – as both appear to correlate with morphology – becomes desirable. In the next section, I offer an explanation covering both variation phenomena, combining suggestions from two previous works, a study of the Hebrew verbal system by Doron (2003), and a study on non-agentive OE nominalizations in Greek and Romanian (Alexiadou and Iordăchioaia 2014a).

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4

Towards an explanation

Morphology, being the factor conditioning the kinds of readings available with OE nominals (stative or ambiguous Class 1 vs. eventive-only Class 2), as well as availability with a non-agentive argument structure (available only for Class 1), immediately presents itself as a possible source for these differences. More specifically, it is something about the verbal templates hosting the OE predicates – the pi’el template vs. the hif’il template – that seems to be responsible for the distinct properties of Class 1 vs. Class 2 nominalizations. Further support for an explanation in morphological terms can be obtained by examining the semantics of nominals derived from non-Psych causative nominals taking the hif’il form – the one hosting Class 2 nominals.10 Crucially, non-Psych causative verbs in this verbal template also derive eventive-only nominals, which rarely get stative or result noun readings. Moreover, as reflected in (19c), these nominals are interpreted as transitive and eventive even in isolation – in the complete absence of argument realization: (19) a. ha-poše’a he’elim re’ayot the-criminal concealed.ACT.CLASS2 evidence ‘The criminal concealed evidence.’ b. ha’alamat re’ayot concealing.ACT.CLASS2 (of) evidence ‘The concealment of evidence’ c. ha’alama ‘concealing, hiding’

hif’il non-Psych verb

hif’il non-Psych nominal

At this point, a few words should be devoted to the potential connection between the event structure and argument structure differences between Class 1 and Class 2 nominals. First, for Class 2 nominals, an agentive external argument is always implied, even when it is not syntactically realized. This is a semantic property correlated with eventivity, or with the implication of a caused change of state in the Experiencer. I suggest that the blocking of stative and result noun interpretations for Class 2 OE nominals is also reflected in the ungrammaticality of these nominals with a non-agentive argument structure, where the cause of the men-

|| 10 Causativity of a verb in hif’il is determined in the spirit of Doron (2003: 16–17): only verbs which have a non-causative alternate are considered causative in Doron’s system. See this section for further details.

Eventive Object Experiencer nominalizations in Hebrew | 45

tal state is introduced with a preposition which usually introduces causes or sources. Precisely this is possible for Class 1 nominals, which in turn show a very high rate of salient stative and result noun readings. In other words, there seems to be a connection between the restriction to eventive readings, and the unavailability of non-agentive arguments with the nominals. Therefore, accounting for the availability of a non-agentive argument realization pattern in Class 1 nominals compared to the lack thereof in Class 2 nominals seems to cover both event structure and argument structure differences. In the next subsection I introduce a study which deals with non-agentive nominals in Greek and Romanian, and constitutes a point of departure for an explanation of my observations on Hebrew.

4.1

Non-agentive nominals in Greek and Romanian (Alexiadou and Iordăchioaia 2014a)

Alexiadou and Iordăchioaia (2014a) discuss the conditions under which OE nominalizations license non-agentive causers as the trigger of the ensuing mental state. In section 1, I described a general property of OE nominals in English: they consistently ban causers as external arguments. I have also shown (section 2.1) that the same semantic restriction applies to Hebrew OE verbs. Nonetheless, example (16c) shows that in Hebrew, some OE nominals are in fact felicitous with non-agentive causers, introduced with a characteristic preposition. In Greek and Romanian, a very similar state of affairs is described. As expected from the “Agent Exclusivity” phenomenon, eventive Psych nominals in these languages are felicitous with an agentive external argument. However, some, but not all Psych nominals11 are also grammatical with a non-agentive PP, where the preposition is the one which usually surfaces with causative arguments. As in Hebrew, all non-active, SE verbs in Greek (non-active morphology) and Romanian (reflexive morphology) allow this argument realization option. The question that the authors tackle then is what factors condition the availability of non-agentive arguments with Greek and Romanian nominals. Alexiadou and Iordăchioaia claim that only OE verbs that have eventive SE alternates produce nominals which license non-agentive arguments (Alexiadou and Iordăchioaia 2014a: 123). It is thus suggested that the existence of an eventive SE (middle) form is required in order for “Agent Exclusivity” to be overrid|| 11 In these languages, there is no morphological distinction between OE and SE nominals. I return to this matter at the end of this section.

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den in the derived nominal, as the SE structure is the basis for non-agentive argument structures in Psych nominals. On the basis of this observation, the authors then predict that only alternating OE-SE pairs, wherein both alternates are eventive (i.e. denote a change of state in the Experiencer, Alexiadou and Iordăchioaia 2014a: 127, and see also Alexiadou and Iordăchioaia 2014b), will produce nominals which allow non-agentive as well as an agentive argument realization pattern, wherein the agentive configuration is the output of the merge of an OE verb with a nominal affix, while the non-agentive form is derived by a merge of the SE verb with a nominal affix. Importantly, as mentioned at the start of section 3, the existence of a morphologically-related middle (SE) verbal form is one factor which sets apart the two verbal templates hosting OE verbs; pi’el has a corresponding middle form, while for hif’il verbs, the middle form hosting (Psych and non-Psych) anticausative alternates is unpredictable. Applying to Hebrew the insights from Alexiadou and Iordăchioaia (2014a), it appears that the same factor which bans nonagentive causers in some Greek and Romanian Psych nominals is the one operating in Hebrew as well; pi’el, the verbal template in which Class 1 verbs appear, has one consistent middle form hosting its SE alternates (the hitpa’el template). Furthermore, many Class 1 nominals allow a non-agentive argument structure, as Alexiadou and Iordăchioaia predict for Greek and Romanian – two other languages in which many OE-SE alternating pairs exist. In contrast to the pi’el template, the verbal form hif’il in which Class 2 verbs appear crucially lacks a consistent middle form hosting its SE alternates, and accordingly, non-agentive argument realization is strictly banned with Class 2 nominals. Furthermore, the latter group of nominals is also restricted to eventive-only readings, which may be a reflection of the thematic restriction to agents. Where does the difference between the two verbal templates come from? What are the grounds for Doron’s claims that hif’il (the verbal template hosting Class 2 OE verbs) has no related middle forms, but pi’el (which hosts Class 1 verbs) does? In order to answer this question, I summarize the basic claims presented in Doron’s (2003) analysis of the Hebrew verbal system, which constitute the basis for her claims regarding Hebrew middles and their relations to Hebrew active forms.

4.2

Form and function in Hebrew verbal templates (Doron 2003)

In Doron’s system, all verbal templates are morphemes which spell out either Agency or Voice functional heads. “Agency” refers to the nature of the semantic

Eventive Object Experiencer nominalizations in Hebrew | 47

relation between the external argument and the event denoted by the verb. A modification by an Agency head involves the modification of this relation. On the basis of meaning contrasts between semantically-basic verbs (which appear in one of the basic “Simple” verbal templates, pa’al or nif’al) and modified verbs, Doron proposes two types of Agency. One type of Agency is represented by the hif’il morpheme, which according to Doron defines an event as a causative one, e.g. (20) hif’il verb hirti’ax ‘cause sth. to boil’ vs. semantically-basic verb ratax ‘to boil’ The other type of relation is termed “intensive”, and is represented by the pi’el morpheme. Modification by this head adds entailments to the basic event to the extent that the “intensive” verb denotes an action performed by an actor, who must be an animate being, e.g. (21) pi’el verb piter ‘to fire’ vs. semantically-basic verb patar ‘to excuse s.o. from sth.’ The term “intensive” reflects the observation that sometimes modification by this Agency head involves an increase in the length and intensity of the event (e.g. pi’el verb kipec ‘to bounce, prance’ vs. basic verb kafac ‘to jump’). Doron draws a syntactic distinction between hif’il verbs and pi’el verbs. Basing her claims on whether the application of the syntactic head involves an increase in valency, Doron proposes that while the pi’el verbal template is derived via a modification of the root, the hif’il template is derived via a modification of an existing verb (one of the semantically-basic ones). Modification of a root, as is the case for roots which are hosted in pi’el, does not include an increase in valency, as the modified event is changed only in its semantics, from a basic event to an action.12 Modification of a verb, as is the case for hif’il verbs, on the other hand, includes an increase in valency – the addition of a causing participant. The second type of functional heads is voice heads, which are the passive and the middle voice heads. According to Doron, unlike passives, which exist

|| 12 As Doron notes, an exception to this claim is pi’el verbs which modify unaccusative verbs, marked in middle morphology (which is also the case for Psych verbs appearing in this pattern).

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only if a corresponding active verb is available, middle verbs do not require an active verb as a basis for the derivation. This claim is exemplified by middle verbs derived from adjectives or nouns. This leads Doron (2003: 38) to suggest that middle verbs in Hebrew are derived via a modification of a root with a functional head μ. μ modifies the root by disabling the licensing of an external argument. Doron’s proposal adopted here – that hif’il verbs have no middle forms – stems from the definition of middle voice as a modification of a root rather than a modification of a verb. As noted above, the verbal head modifying basic verbs as causative, which is morphologically represented by the hif’il template, adds an argument (a cause) to a root with its internal argument, i.e. to a verb. As the middle voice head μ does not modify a root with its arguments, but may only modify the root itself, Doron derives the observation that Hebrew lacks a middle form corresponding to hif’il verbs. In contrast, this is not the case for pi’el verbs, which may be modified by the middle voice head μ. This is because the “intensive” Agency head apply on roots and not on verbs. The table below illustrates the representation of the Hebrew verbal templates as a system, as proposed by Doron (2003), with a sample of OE and SE verbs appearing in each template: Tab. 3: The Hebrew verbal system

Voice

Class Simple

Class 1

Class 2

Active

SE pa’al verbs (fear class)

OE pi’el ‘ixzev ‘disappoint’ ‘imlel ‘make miserable’ ‘icben ‘annoy’

OE hif’il hevix ‘embarrass’ hel’a ‘make weary’ he’eciv ‘sadden’

Middle (SE only)

nif’al (hosting SE alternates of hif’il OE verbs) navox ‘be embarrassed’ nil’a ‘become weary’ ne’ecav ‘become sad’

hitpa’el hit’axzev ‘get disappointed’ hit’amlel ‘become/be miserable’ hit’acben ‘become annoyed

Above, it was suggested that the lack of a morphologically related middle form is what both blocks stative/result nouns readings for Class 2 nominals, and makes them ungrammatical with a non-agentive argument structure. Moreover,

Eventive Object Experiencer nominalizations in Hebrew | 49

this has also been claimed for OE nominals in Greek and Romanian (Alexiadou and Iordăchioaia 2014a). It is however important to point out a crucial difference between Hebrew and Greek and Romanian. In the latter two languages, voice distinctions are not preserved in the derived nominals; thus, for alternating OE-SE verbs, one derived nominal allows both argument structure configurations: agentive and non-agentive. In Hebrew the voice alternation is preserved in the derived nominals as well, active (OE forms) and middle (SE forms) having distinct morphological forms in both verbs and nominals. Example (22a) has an OE Class 1 verb in the template CiCCeC (the underlying CV template of pi’el verbs). Its derived nominal (22b) appears in the formallyrelated nominal template CiCCuC: see (10a) above. Example (22c) has an SE Class 2 verb in the structure hitCaCCeC, with its derived nominal in the formallyrelated CV template hitCaCCut (22d) – see (10b): (22) a. ha-mofa / ha-kosem sixrer et the-show / the-magician caused.giddiness.ACT.CLASS1 ACC ha-cofim the-spectators ‘The show / the magician caused the spectators to feel giddiness.’ b. ha-sixrur šel ha-cofim me-ha-mofa the-causing.giddiness.ACT.CLASS1 of the-spectators from-the-show / al yedey ha-kosem / by the-magician ‘The spectators becoming giddy because of the show / by the magician.’ c. ha-cofim histaxrer-u13 me-ha-mofa the-spectators became.giddy.MID.CLASS1-PL from-the-show ‘The show caused the spectators to feel giddy.’ d. ha-histaxrerut14 šel ha-cofim me-ha-mofa the-becoming.giddy.MID.CLASS1 of the-spectators from-the-show ‘The spectators becoming giddy because of the show.’ This raises an important theoretical issue; in Greek and Romanian, the derived nominal is neutral with regard to its morphological form, i.e. it is not morpho-

|| 13 Phonetic rules cause metathesis of the template consonant t and the first root consonant when the latter is a sibilant. 14 See footnote 13. Furthermore, when the root is quadro-consonantal, an additional vowel e is inserted, yielding the template hitCaCCeCut.

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logically-marked as either active or middle. As such, it is not problematic to claim that the middle (SE) verbal structure is the basis for the derivation of both agentive (including voice, presumably derived from the OE verbal structure) and non-agentive (lacking voice, presumably derived from the SE verbal structure) nominals. In Hebrew, however, the active vs. middle distinction is cross-categorical and applies on both verbal and nominal forms, it is problematic to claim that e.g. the pi’el OE nominal šilhuv ‘enrapturing’, with the underlying templatic structure CiCCuC, in its non-agentive incarnation with a causative PP, is derived from the hitpa’el middle SE verb hištalhev ‘became enraptured’, which has the underlying verbal structure hitCaCCeC. In other words, in Hebrew nominal forms are morphologically marked in a way which unequivocally indicates their verbal origin and as such, it is not expected that a middle verbal form would produce an active nominal form. This important open issue must be left for future research.

5

Conclusions

In this paper, I show that in Hebrew, a language with a rich verbal and nominal morphology, derived nominals preserve meaning components which are lost in the derivation in languages where morphology is scarce, such as English. In many of the languages represented in the literature, nominalization is achieved via a limited number of nominalizing affixes, which attach to verbs arbitrarily, not following any morphological or semantic rule. This is not the case in Hebrew, where nominalizations are morphologically related to the base verbs. Moreover, it has been shown that there are interrelations between OE and SE forms in languages where there is a morphologically marked voice alternation. In Hebrew, only one class of OE nominals has agentive as well as nonagentive nominalizations. Here, I have suggested that this gap is related to the structure of the Hebrew verbal system, namely that OE verbs which appear in hif’il, the verbal template which does not have a morphologically-related middle form, are infelicitous with the argument structure which does not make room for the agentive argument. Regarding “Agent Exclusivity”, the Hebrew data on morphologically active nominals which license non-agentive causers extends the findings on Greek and Romanian (Alexiadou and Iordăchioaia 2014a), which have nominals felicitous with causers, to morphologically-active nominals as well.

Eventive Object Experiencer nominalizations in Hebrew | 51

From all the above it follows that morphology determines the semantic and syntactic properties of OE nominals in different ways: on the one hand allowing eventive OE and SE nominals, but on the other hand, restricting their possible event structures and argument realization patterns, depending on the verbal templates in which the OE predicate appears. One important observation is that OE nominals of one class are nonambiguous by exhibiting eventive semantics in all environments, thus having what seems to be an implicit agent (see Borer 2012, for similar claims for -ing nominals and synthetic compounds, and Sichel 2009). This finding, surprising by itself in the domain of Psych nominals (and nominals in general), constitutes evidence for theories claiming that external arguments in nominalizations are indeed arguments (e.g. Sichel 2009), rather than adjuncts (e.g. Grimshaw 1990; Kratzer 1996), despite their being non-obligatory. A more language specific issue for which the Hebrew data presented here has implications is the question of the semantic content of the Hebrew templates. The observations made here shed light on the possibility of there being some semantic and/or structural differences between the two transitive verbal templates pi’el and hif’il, as suggested by Doron (2003). The distinct interpretations and syntactic structures available with nominals depending on the verbal templates they are related to provide evidence for the view according to which the Hebrew templates have some systematic content.

References Alexiadou, Artemis, Elena Anagnostopoulou and Florian Schäfer. 2015. External arguments in transitivity alternations: a layering approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Alexiadou, Artemis and Edit Doron. 2012. The syntactic construction of two non-active voices: passive and middle. Journal of Linguistics, 48(01). 1–34. Alexiadou, Artemis and Gianina Iordăchioaia. 2014a. Causative nominalizations: Implications for the structure of psych verbs. In Asaf Bachrach, Isabelle Roy and Linnaea Stockall (eds.), Structuring the Argument: Multidisciplinary research on verb argument structure, 119–140. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Alexiadou, Artemis and Gianina Iordăchioaia. 2014b. The psych causative alternation. Lingua 148. 53–79. Arad, Maya. 2005. Roots and patterns: Hebrew morpho-syntax. Dordrecht: Springer Science & Business Media. Borer, Hagit. 2012. In the event of a nominal. In Martin Everaert, Marijana Marelj and Tal Siloni (eds.), The theta system: Argument structure at the interface, 103–149. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Doron, Edit. 2003. Agency and voice: The semantics of the Semitic templates. Natural Language Semantics 11(1), 1–67.

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Doron, Edit. 2012. The causative component of psych verbs. A class on “Morphosyntax and Argument Structure”. Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, May 8, 2012. Handout. Harley, Heidi and Rolf Noyer. 2000. Formal versus encyclopedic properties of vocabulary: Evidence from nominalizations. In Bert Peters (ed.), The lexicon-encyclopedia interface, 349–374. Amsterdam: Elsevier Press. Iwata, Seizi. 1995. The distinctive character of psych-verbs as causatives. Linguistic analysis 25(1-2). 95–120. Grimshaw, Jane. 1990. Argument structure. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Kratzer, Angelika. 1996. Severing the external argument from its verb. In Johan Rooryck and Laurie Zarig (eds.), Phrase structure and the lexicon, 109–137. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Lakoff, George. 1970. Irregularity in syntax. New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston. Landau, Idan. 2010. The locative syntax of experiencers. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Marantz, Alec. 1997. No escape from syntax: Don’t try morphological analysis in the privacy of your own lexicon. University of Pennsylvania working papers in linguistics 4(2). 201–225. Ornan, Uzi. 1971. Binyanim uvsisim, netiyot ugzarot [Templates and bases, inflections and derivations]. Hauniversita 16. 15–22. Pesetsky, David. 1995. Zero syntax: Experiencers and cascades. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Rappaport, Malka. 1983. On the nature of derived nominals. In Lori S. Levin, Malka Rappaport and Annie Zaenen (eds.), Papers in Lexical-Functional Grammar, 113–142. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club. Rozwadowska, Bożena. 1988. Thematic restrictions on derived nominals in thematic relations. Syntax and semantics 21. 147–165. Sichel, Ivy. 2009. New evidence for the structural realization of the implicit external argument in nominalizations. Linguistic Inquiry 40(4). 712–723. Sichel, Ivy. 2010. Event structure constraints in nominalization. In Artemis Alexiadou and Monika Rathert (eds.), The syntax of nominalizations across languages and frameworks, 151–190. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Artemis Alexiadou

On the complex relationship between deverbal compounds and argument supporting nominals 1

Introduction

The relationship between deverbal compounds (DCs) and argument supporting nominals (ASNs) has been controversially discussed in the literature. See e.g. Ackema and Neeleman (2004), McIntyre (2009), and especially Borer (2013) for a recent exposition of the problem and further references, and see also Roeper and Siegel (1978), Marantz (1989), Grimshaw (1990), di Sciullo (1992), and van Hout and Roeper (1998) among others for some earlier discussion. I will use the term DCs here to refer to compounds that have a deverbal nominal as their head, as in (1). (1)

a. truck driving b. truck driver c. document transmission (Borer 2013: 576)

(2) a. the driving of the truck b. the driver of the truck c. the transmission of the documents (Borer 2013: 576)

DC

ASN

As can be seen in (1) and (2), DCs in English do not seem to be so different from the corresponding ASNs. The compounds are formed out of a derived nominal and what looks like the internal argument of the nominal. In view of this, the

|| I am indebted to the editors of this volume, one anonymous reviewer, and Gianina Iordăchioaia for comments and discussion. Previous versions of this paper were presented at the Linguistics Colloquium at the University of Göttingen in January 2016, at the Linguistics Research Seminar at the University of Ulster in March 2016, and at the Nominals Workshop in Recife, in March 2016. I am thankful to these audiences for their input. The DFG grant AL554/8-1 is hereby acknowledged.

DOI 10.1515/9781501505430-003

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question then arises whether the two forms are related or not. Specifically, (1) and (2) raise the following question: are there special compound building mechanisms, or can compounds be accounted for under the mechanisms that are involved in nominalization? If the latter, then compounds as in (1) can be integrated into our models of ASNs. What then remains to be explained is the systematic differences between the two. To approach these questions, I will discuss English in comparison to Greek compounds. Greek is particularly interesting, as it has been argued to have both synthetic and phrasal DCs; see (3). (3) a. thiriodamastis beast.tamer ‘animal tamer’ b. damastis thirion tamer beasts.GEN ‘animal tamer / tamer of animals’

synthetic DC

(4) o damastis ton thirion the tamer the beasts.GEN ‘the tamer of the animals’

ASN

phrasal DC

It has been argued that (3b) is ambiguous between the non-episodic/profession reading (which (3a) has) and the ASN reading of (4). In English, there is no such ambiguity with (1), which only has a non-episodic reading. In Greek, the form of the phrasal compound is identical to that of the ASN, with some differences to be discussed; thus it is not immediately clear that (3b) indeed represents a form of compounding. I will first show, in line with Grimshaw (1990), that English DCs are quite close to ASNs, contra Borer (2013). Greek DCs, while they share some properties with English DCs, crucially differ in that they do not allow by-phrases. Building on Alexiadou (2001, 2009), Iordăchioaia et al. (2017), and Alexiadou and Schäfer (2010), I will argue that the difference between ASNs and DCs relates to the size/nature of the internal argument and the verbal structure available within ASNs, i.e. ASNs have more internal functional projections than synthetic DCs and the internal argument in English synthetic DCs is just an nP. The important notion relevant here for the internal argument is that of quantization; see e.g. Krifka (1986), Borer (2005), and also Ntelitheos (to appear). Quantized objects being full DPs check Case via Agree with a functional projection (AspectP in the nominal structure: van Hout and Roeper 1998; Alexiadou 2001).

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This is the case in ASNs of the type in (2). By contrast, unquantized objects in synthetic DCs need to check Case either via incorporation in Greek (cf. Harley 2009a, building on Baker 1988) or nP movement in English. Synthetic DCs provide evidence for the view that we should separate the presence of argument structure from the episodic vs. dispositional readings of the nominal involved, as argued for in Alexiadou and Schäfer (2010). In other words, compounds are a sub-type of nominalizations and fit well into models thereof. Along the same lines, what Ntelitheos (to appear) labeled phrasal deverbal compounds in Greek will also be shown to be a further sub-type of dispositional nominalizations, where the internal argument is a NumberP. Thus there are three types of dispositional nominalizations discussed in this paper: English type DCs, Greek type DCs, and Greek “phrasal compounds”. Since all these contain unquantized objects, a telic interpretation of the nominal structure that would involve the unfolding of an actual event is prohibited (see also Ntelitheos, to appear). The difference between these three types is once again the size of the internal argument as well as the internal functional structure of the ASN: the internal argument is a NumberP in Greek “phrasal compounds”, but a bare root in Greek DCs. The paper is structured as follows. In section 2 I will discuss the relationship between synthetic DCs and ASNs, and show that they are closer to ASNs than stated in Borer (2013). In section 3, I will offer a syntactic analysis thereof. Section 4 deals with “phrasal compounds” in Greek. Section 5 concludes my discussion.

2 2.1

DCs and ASNs Types of nominals

The puzzle posed by the data in (1)/(3) in relationship to (2)/(4) is the following: assuming that Grimshaw (1990) is right in proposing that only nominals that have a complex event structure can license arguments, how do synthetic DCs (and also phrasal compounds) fare with respect to criteria that diagnose such an event structure? While Borer (2012, 2013) forcefully argues in favor of sharp differences between ASNs and DCs, Grimshaw (1990), and di Sciullo (1992) provide arguments that DCs are similar to ASNs, in the sense that the non-head member of the compound corresponds to the internal argument of the corresponding verb and is satisfied within the compound. In order to revisit this discussion, let us consider Grimshaw’s (1990) classification in some detail.

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Grimshaw introduced a three-way ambiguity in the nominal system, which has been largely adopted by researchers in the area of nominalization. Specifically, she argued that we need to distinguish between nominals that have argument structure (AS) from those that lack AS. Grimshaw proposed that there are three classes of nominals, result nominals (RNs), simple event nominals (SENs), and complex event nominals (CENs), the crucial observation being that only what she calls complex event nominals have arguments (our ASNs). These three classes are distinguished from one another on the basis of several diagnostics. Some of them are listed in (5), and exemplified in (6). In (6), we see that ASNs license by-phrases as well as aspectual modifiers, while in (7), we see that the RN exam and the SEN trip do not. RNs differ from SENs in that, of course, the latter have event implications and cannot appear in contexts appropriate for concrete objects (suitable only for RNs), e.g. be on the table.1 (5) RNs no event reading no internal argument no agent modifiers no by phrases no aspectual modifiers frequent + plural N no article restrictions

SENs event reading no internal argument no agent modifiers no by phrases no aspectual modifiers frequent + plural N no article restrictions

(6) a. the frequent examination of the cat by the doctor b. the destruction of the city in 3 hours (7) a. b. c. d.

CENs event reading internal argument agent modifiers by phrases aspectual modifiers frequent + singular N only definite articles ASN

the frequent exams / frequent trips the trip lasted one hour the exam / *the trip was on the table *the exam by Bill / *the trip by Mary

Thus the question arises: how do DCs fare with respect to this classification? Researchers have given very different answers to this question. Grimshaw (1990), on the one hand, suggested that the head of DCs is an argument taking

|| 1 Note that Borer (2003) groups RNs and SENs under the label R(eferential)-nominals (see also Alexiadou 2009), but Grimshaw’s tripartite distinction seems to be relevant for compounds. See Borer (2012, 2013). RNs and SENs are grouped together under one and the same label to capture the fact that they are not ASNs. I will use the term ASNs here to refer to Grimshaw’s CENs.

Deverbal compounds and argument supporting nominals | 57

nominal, corresponding thus to her CENs; non-heads that are interpreted as internal arguments are indeed internal arguments, just like in ASNs: see also di Sciullo (1992). By contrast, Borer (2012) argues that DCs fail all tests for ASNs. Importantly, they lack event properties: see also Marantz (1989), Rappaport Hovav and Levin (1992), and van Hout and Roeper (1998). According to Borer (2012, 2013), since DCs lack complex event properties, they also lack AS. In the next section, I will examine how English and Greek DCs fare with respect to Grimshaw’s diagnostics. Building on Iordăchioaia et al. (2017), I will show that Greek DCs may have event implications, and that they seem to allow an internal argument in their structure, just like ASNs; unlike ASNs, they lack an external argument, they do not tolerate agentive adverbials and they disallow aspectual modifiers. By contrast, English DCs seem to have a bit more structure than their Greek counterparts, allowing by-phrases and agentive adverbials, but disallowing aspectual modifiers.

2.2

Applying Grimshaw’s diagnostics

Borer (2012, 2013) argued that in English DCs are unlike ASNs, as they seem to fail most of the diagnostics in (5). For instance, the deverbal noun head in DCs disallows by-phrases and aspectual adverbials, (8a). Thus it does not display the event structure properties that are typical of ASNs and which in both Grimshaw’s and Borer’s analysis would permit the licensing of AS. ASNs, as shown in (8b), fulfill these criteria. Borer thus concludes that synthetic DCs cannot realize arguments. (8) a. the house demolition (*by the army) (*in two hours) b. the demolition of the house by the army in 2 hours The contrast in (8) is meant to show that English DCs lack arguments. Borer, however, observes, that they can make reference to a simple event; in this respect they behave like SENs. Indeed, native speakers of English find strings such as (9c) well-formed: (9) a. The exam lasted 5 hours. b. The window breaking / furniture moving / kitten sinking started at 8am, took place in my back yard, and didn’t stop until I intervened. c. The book burning lasted 3 hours.

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Alexiadou and Ioardachioaia (2015) also note that DCs do not seem to pattern like Grimshaw’s RNs. (10a) is an RN context given in Grimshaw (1990) for the result reading of examination. In this environment, the corresponding ASN realizing the internal argument is disallowed. As (10b) indicates, the presence of the internal argument in DCs is also disallowed in this context. (10) a. The examination (*of the patient) was on the table. b. *The patient examination was on the table.

RN DC

A different analysis of DCs is put forth in Di Sciullo (1992), who applied all of Grimshaw’s diagnostics to English DCs, and shows that these are very similar to ASNs. Consider (11), her (30). As can be seen, DCs allow only definite determiners, they disallow pluralization, they license by-phrases as well as agentive adverbs, and finally they can be modified via modifiers such as frequent: (11) a. b. c. d. e.

The/*a/*one/*that taxi driving John did was exhausting. *The taxi drivings John did were fun. Taxi driving by John can be dangerous. John’s deliberate taxi driving did not please Harry. Harry cannot stand his frequent taxi driving.

Di Sciullo concludes that -ing DCs are similar to Grimshaw’s CENs. Grimshaw (1990: 70) also explicitly states that compounds headed by -ing are typically synthetic (in the sense that they include AS). She points out that ambiguity is expected with heads formed with affixes like -ion and -ment, since they can be either argument-taking or not, while heads that are zero-derived are expected to be root compounds, as zero derived nominals lack AS. Grimshaw (1990: 16) also points out that compounding an external argument will be impossible when the predicate takes an internal argument and an external one; the external argument of the compound obligatorily surfaces in a by-phrase – see (12), her (24) – or a possessive, as seen in (11d) above. (12) a. Book reading by students b. *Student reading of books In support of this, Gianina Iordăchioaia (p.c.) informs me that most native informants of a small pilot study would accept by-phrases introducing external arguments in DCs. Note that there seems to be a contrast in the acceptance of

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by-phrases: by-phrases in DCs sound more natural, when the DC is bare, i.e. not preceded by a determiner, and the judgments deteriorate when the DC is preceded by a determiner, i.e. *the house demolition by the army vs. house demolition by the army or Book reading by students vs. ??The book reading by students. It seems to me that in the presence of a determiner, by-phrases are disallowed. As di Sciullo has shown, DCs pattern like mass nouns. Mass nominals, in the presence of a definite article, are not easily amenable to a generic interpretation, which is the hallmark property of DCs, and seem to shift to the SEN interpretation, which does not tolerate by-phrases. Marantz (1989), as well as Borer (2013), in the spirit of Rappaport Hovav and Levin (1992), all argue that if no event reading is present in the structure, then no AS is expected. DCs seem to suggest otherwise; the internal argument does not seem to measure out the event in Tenny’s (1987) terminology, and aspectual modifiers are not licensed, but AS seems present. This supports the view put forth in Alexiadou and Schäfer (2010) that we need to sever the licensing of AS from the presence of an episodic/measuring out reading of the event. From this perspective, DCs are a sub-type of dispositional nominalizations: like ASNs, they are derived from verb phrases. It is just that their internal arguments have a different shape. Turning now to Greek, we observe the following. First of all, let me point out that, as discussed in Ntelitheos (to appear), and Ralli (2013), in Greek, DCs are formed by the following basic morpho-syntactic units: the verbal head, a verbal argument (in most cases the internal argument), a derivational morpheme (usually a nominalizer), and a linking element; see (13). As in English, the verbal argument seems to be saturating the internal argument of the verbal head, (13b): (13) a. plirofori-o - dho -tis information - give -er ‘informer’ b. *O Giorgos ine pliroforiodhotis hrisimon pliroforion. Giorgos is information.giver useful information.GEN ‘Giorgos is an informer who gives useful information.’ With respect to Grimshaw’s criteria, Greek DCs do not allow aspectual modifiers or by-phrases, while they can refer to events. Unlike English DCs, they can accept pluralization, and disallow modifiers such as frequent:

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(14) a. *kapnokaliergia apo agrotes tobacco-cultivation by farmers b. *kapnokaliergia ja 3 hronia tobacco-cultivation for 3 years c. I kapno-kaliergia sti Kavala arhise the tobacco cultivation in Kavala started to 19o eona. th during the 19 century ‘The tobacco cultivation in Kavala started during the 19th century.’ d. tosi diafimisi apo kapnokaliergies so much advertisement from tobacco-cultivations ‘So much advertising of tobacco-cultivations.’ e. *i sihni kapnokalliergia kurazi. the frequent tobacco cultivation tires ‘Frequent tobacco cultivation is tiresome.’ We can thus conclude that Greek DCs truly fail most of Grimshaw’s diagnostics. In this, they differ from their English counterparts. There is a further difference between English and Greek DCs. Iordăchioaia et al. (2017) show that DCs with an internal argument are just as productive as their corresponding ASNs, if a suitable context is provided and a slightly idiomatic meaning is intended: (15) a. b. c. d.

John is scratching a tree. John’s scratching of the tree John is doing some tree scratching. John seems to be a tree scratcher.

ASN DC DC

Other possible examples: flower watching/watcher, fork flipping/flipper etc. As these authors note, it is in fact hard to find a verbal/ASN construction that doesn’t already have an “established” internal argument DC. Second, the meaning of the compound need not be idiomatic, but may very well be compositional; see (15c–d). Their Greek counterparts behave differently: synthetic DCs are not productive in Greek, and several of the English DCs are translated as “phrasal compounds” in the language; I will come back to this in section 4.

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(16) a. ekpedeftis skilon trainer dogs.GEN ‘dog trainer’ b. katharismos tziamion cleaning windows.GEN ‘window cleaning’ These observations lead us then to reformulate our initial questions. How much structure is available within compounds, and where does the internal argument come from? Moreover, what explains the differences between Greek and English DCs?

3 3.1

Towards an analysis of DCs Background assumptions

I will assume that word formation involves combining roots with functional material and that it takes place in the syntax (Marantz 1997; Alexiadou 2001; Embick 2010; Harley 2009ab; Borer 2013). Moreover, in line with much recent work, I assume that arguments are introduced by functional heads and that VoiceP introduces the external argument (following Kratzer 1996), and vP or PPs the internal argument (following Alexiadou and Schäfer 2011; cf. Borer 2005; Lohndal 2014). v is the layer introducing event implications. I will furthermore assume that compositional interpretation emerges in the presence of Voice, as stated in the Voice generalization in (17), Marantz (1997), Anagnostopoulou and Samioti (2014): (17) Voice generalization: the only structure that is compositional is the one that includes Voice, the layer introducing the external argument From this perspective then, there are four nominalization structures that are relevant to our discussion, shown in (18), and (19)–(20) below. See Alexiadou (2001), and Alexiadou et al. (2013). (18d) is the structure assumed for RNs that lack event implications, while (18c) is the structure assumed for nominals that lack implicit external arguments, but do have event implications, and internal arguments. (18a) corresponds to the structure of ASNs with both internal arguments and implicit external arguments as well as aspectual modifiers – see

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(19) – while (18b) contains external and internal arguments, but lacks aspectual modifiers. (19) represents the structure for the ASN the training of the dog by John for 2 hours (cf. Alexiadou et al. 2011), which hosts an external argument in VoiceP and aspectual adverbials under AspP. (18) a. b. c. d. (19)

[DP [nP [AspectP [VoiceP [vP [Root]]]]]] [DP [nP [VoiceP [vP [Root]]]]] [DP [nP [vP [Root]]]] [DP [nP [Root]]]

Deverbal compounds and argument supporting nominals | 63

3.2

The syntax of DCs in English

The diagnostics applied in di Sciullo (1992) suggest that English DCs contain a structure in which at least VoiceP can be present, i.e. (18b), as by-phrases can be licensed, see (20). In (20) a bare NP appears as v’s argument. (20)

As in Iordăchioaia et al. (2017), (20) retains the insights from Harley (2009a) and Grimshaw (1990) on the argumental status of the non-head, but also accounts for the categorized nP and vP status of dog and train (cf. Borer 2013). √TRAIN moves to v and via head to head movement finally to n. The bare unquantized nP dog then moves to Spec,nP in order to be case licensed, cf. van Hout and Roeper (1998). As it appears below D, (10-11a), we can safely conclude that it does not move to Spec,DP, a position reserved for argumental DPs, which would also be made visible by the presence of genitive ’s, absent from DCs. (20) predicts that English synthetic compounds should contain verbalizing morphology and should allow by-phrases. We have seen evidence in favor of the latter claim and the former claim is also borne out. Borer (2013) cites examples such as rule-generalizing, a problem for Harley’s (2009a) analysis, which involved n-to-root incorporation. Assuming that -ize realizes v, such DCs are predicted to be acceptable. Let us now see how DCs differ from ASNs (CENs specifically) from the point of view of (20). As also stated in Alexiadou and Iordăchioaia (2015), in ASNs, internal arguments are more complex (usually DPs) and receive structural genitive/PP case, presumably from AspectP (Alexiadou 2001; van Hout and

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Roeper 1998). By-phrases are introduced by a Voice projection and aspectual adverbials by an Aspect projection (see e.g. Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou, and Schäfer 2015 for the former, and Alexiadou 1997; Cinque 1999 for the latter claim). The incompatibility of DCs with aspectual adverbs suggests that they lack Aspect. The licensing of by-phrases, however, suggests that these (may) include VoiceP. Observe here the difference from Borer’s (2013) framework: in the analysis put forth in e.g. Alexiadou (2001), (2009), Alexiadou et al. (2013), the absence of Aspect is not correlated with AS. In Borer’s system, where argument realization and aspect are tightly connected, the absence of aspectual structure implies that all AS is excluded in DCs. The partly compositional meaning of these DCs comes with the internal argument, which identifies the verbal event introduced by v (cf. Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2001; Grimm and McNally 2013). The fact that we have full productivity relates to the presence of Voice, in view of the Voice generalization in (17). In other words, Marantz (1997) and Anagnostopoulou and Samioti (2014) are right in proposing that idiomatic interpretation can be accommodated below Voice, but not above it. As a result, in the presence of an external argument, idiomatic interpretation is not possible. See also Borer (2013) on the presence of functional (argument introducing) layers and their contribution to the fixing of interpretation. A further difference between ASNs and DCs relates to the form of the internal argument. It is a bare noun in DCs, an nP. Being a bare noun it is unquantized. A similar situation, i.e. presence of bare arguments, is observed in a different context in Alexiadou and Schäfer (2010), building on Mittwoch (2005), and see the discussion in Grimm and McNally (2013). Mittwoch observed that there is a contrast between (21a) and (21b): (21) a. the felling *(of the tree) b. Indiscriminate felling is harmful to the environment. In (21b), the nominal is assigned a habitual reading. When habitual readings are present, internal arguments may be dropped or if present resort to alternative Case checking mechanisms. Building on this, Alexiadou and Schäfer (2010) suggested that unquantized objects could be present in the lexical semantics of predicates, but need not be projected in the syntax. However, if they are, they must check Case differently from DP/quantized arguments. Before I turn to the syntax of DCs in Greek, I will mention a puzzle for the analysis of DCs, discussed in Borer (2012), as it is problematic for her analysis. Borer (2012) noted that in English, if the non-head is construed as an argument,

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we have obligatory transitivity with -ing, unlike ASNs: see (22–24). Thus, as Borer signals, with alternating predicates, while the nominalization is ambiguous between a transitive and intransitive construal, in DCs with -ing, we have obligatory transitivity. Obligatory transitivity is not observed in DCs with other derivational affixes, e.g. -ation, -th etc. (24a) further shows that predicates such as wilt that do not have transitive construals cannot form DCs with -ing. By contrast, (24b) shows that the intransitivity is absent in the case of ASNs, according to Borer: (22) Causative-inchoative pairs, transitive reading only ship sinking window shuttering (23) Causative-inchoative pairs, derived verbs transitive reading only quick salt crystalizing slow soup cooling (down) (24) a. Compounds: transitives only tomato growing ship sinking #flower wilting b. AS Nominals: intransitives available the growing of the tomato the sinking of the ship the wilting of the flower Borer explains this by proposing that -ing spells out a rigid designator, ING, which is a function relating an Originator with a simple atelic event construal: (25) ING: ([Originator], [Eventatelic]) The structure in (20) immediately explains why the effect is present with -ing, and it can account for the fact that it is absent with -ation, since obligatory transitivity relates to the presence of a Voice projection in the present analysis, cf. Grimshaw (1990: 70). In other words, as also pointed out in Alexiadou et al. (2013), -ing nominals have Voice, while -ation nominals may lack Voice. With respect to (24b), an alternative analysis to the one put forward in Borer (2012) can be pursued. Alexiadou et al. (2013), building on Kratzer (1996), argue that -ing of nominals obligatorily contain VoiceP, and thus are interpreted as

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transitive. The effect is not present with other derived nominals, e.g. -ation, which lack Voice. This is particularly clear in cases where both -ing of and -ation nominals can be formed (crystalizing vs. crystalization). In the absence of an -ation nominal, as is the case in (24b), the -ing form can realize both structures (with and without Voice). What about (23)? As suggested in the previous paragraph, I expect the effect to arise when there are two competing forms, i.e. -ing vs. some other affix. When this happens, the transitivity effect survives in DCs exactly as it does in the case of -ing of nominals. -ing clearly seems to have the type of semantics described in Borer (2013). The question that arises is why nominal -ing behaves this way when it does not compete with other affixes. I believe the answer is to be found in the diachronic development of the affix, and in particular its presence in the progressive. Borer (2013) points out that there are some similarities between nominal -ing and progressive -ing. Progressive -ing has presumably its origin in a prepositional construction (Visser 1973), i.e. it was a nominalization embedded under a P, and some argue that the prepositional structure is still visible today: see e.g. Bolinger (1971). In other words, nominal and progressive -ing have a common source: see Alexiadou (2013). In earlier English (up to the 19th century), -ing was used in yet another construction, namely the passival progressive. This was composed on the basis of the present participle + BE and had a passive interpretation (the house was building = the house was being built). According to Scheffer (1975), the passival progressive was formed out of transitive verbs, while intransitive verbs could only combine with be in their past participle form to form the present perfect (John was arrived = John has arrived). It might very well be that -ing still preserves this passive interpretation in the nominal domain, hence its obligatory transitivity.

3.3

The syntax of DCs in Greek

Turning now to Greek DCs, there are two issues to explain: first, the lack of byphrases, and second, the productivity issue, i.e. the non-productivity of synthetic DCs. As noted above, several DCs are translated as phrasal compounds (or even A-N strings) in Greek. That is, “phrasal compounds” are productive, but not synthetic ones. I will turn to the analytic forms in the next section.

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(26) a. gremisma spition demolition houses.GEN ‘house demolition’ b. *spitogremisma house demolition Ntelitheos (to appear) argues that Greek DCs are nominalizations of N-V verbal compounds. In other words, unlike in English, we have a nominalization of a verbal compound. Evidence for this comes from the fact that Greek allows productive N-V verbal compounds. In the (a–b, c–d, e–f, g–h) pairs below, we see that there are two ways to express the verbal meaning. One is to have a bare NP in object position, and a second one involves n to v incorporation: (27) a. thiri-o-damazo. beasts-tame.1SG ‘I tame beasts.’ b. damazo thiria. tame.1SG beasts ‘I tame beasts.’ c. misik-o-sintheto. music-compose.1SG ‘I compose music.’ d sintheto musiki. compose.1SG music ‘I compose music.’ e. kapn-o-kaliergo. tobacco-cultivate.1SG ‘I cultivate tobacco.’ f. kalliergo kapno. cultivate.1SG tobacco ‘I cultivate tobacco.’ g. em-o-doto. blood give.1SG ‘I donate blood.’ h. dino ema. give.1SG blood ‘I donate blood.’ (28) shows that the verbal compounds can then be nominalized:

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(28) a. thiriodamastis ‘beast tamer’ b. misikosinthetis ‘music composer’ c. kapnokaliergitis, kapnokaliergia ‘tobacco cultivation’ ‘tobacco grower’ d. emodotis ‘blood donor’ Thus, we could follow Ntelitheos’s analysis and propose that in Greek, productive N-V verbal compounds are the result of n (actually a bare root in our terminology) incorporation into v, see Rivero (1992). Specifically, Ntelitheos (to appear) argues that the derivation is as follows: the noun merges as the complement of v, but this noun has not been quantized. At this point of the derivation, we have two heads, which creates a symmetrical structure. Kayne’s Linear Correspondence Axiom (Kayne 1994) suggests that the resulting structure cannot be linearized. Thus the noun has to move in order for the structure to linearize, presumably to a projection headed by the linking element -o- The nominalizer then nominalizes this part of the structure: (29) [nP tis [VP thiri-o- [damas- _____]]] This analysis explains the lack of by-phrases and predicts that for every DC in Greek, there should be a corresponding verbal compound. However, Kechagias (2005) shows that this does not hold for all DCs. There are also DCs for which no corresponding verb exists. (30) thavmat-o-pi-Ø-(os) ‘miracle maker’ anth-o-pól-Ø-is ‘flower seller’ (31) *thavmat-o-pi(o) ‘to miracle-make’ *anth-o-pol(o) ‘to flower-sell’ In many of these cases, the head of the compound cannot exist as an independent word, unlike the situation in (28). (32) *[pi(os)] *[pol(is)] Thus, something else is needed to explain the forms in (30).

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In principle, there are two explanations that come to mind. One could argue that some of these DCs are nominalizations of obsolete N-V verbal compounds. For instance, the verb run household does not exist in Modern Greek, but it was possible in earlier stages of Greek. Nevertheless, the DC is still used productively (thanks to Andreas Pairamidis for pointing this out to me): (33) a. οικοδεσποτείν… ‘run household’ b. ikodespotis ‘host’ Alternatively, it could be argued that some Greek DCs are quite similar to DCs in English – see also Michelioudakis and Angelopoulos (2013), who, however, adopt Harley’s (2009a) analysis. As with truck driving, there is no *truck drive cases, see also (34): (34) N-V verbal compound *eleokaliergo ‘olive cultivate’ *ialokatharizo ‘glass clean’

DC eleokaliergia ‘olive cultivation’ ialo-kathar-is-tiras ‘glass cleaner’

DC eleokaliergitis ‘olive grower’

The interesting thing about (34) is that the head of the compound bears verbal morphology, i.e. they are similar to the rule generalizing cases discussed in Borer. It has been argued that Greek has overt verbalizing morphology, which makes roots verbal (see Alexiadou 2009; Anagnostopoulou and Samioti 2014). (35) kathar-iz-o clean-v-1SG

kathar-is-tir-as clean-v-n

Iordachioaia et al. (2017) discuss the syntax of all types of Greek DCs and argue that DCs in Greek involve either nominalization of a verbal compound or root incorporation into v. See their paper for extensive discussion. Before proceeding to “phrasal compounds”, a final note on the linking element in Greek DCs, which I have not touched upon in this discussion. Ntelitheos (to appear) argues that the linking element has a syntactic representation in the structure, as mentioned above. Michelioudakis and Angelopoulos (2013) assume that the linking element should be analyzed as an allomorph of the incorporee. The arguments made in this section seem affected

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by the particular choice of analysis, and I will leave this issue open here, but see Iordachioaia et al. (2017).2

4

Phrasal compounds?

In this section, I turn to examples of the type (3b), and see (36). (36) epeksergasía dedoménon processing data.GEN ‘data processing’ The question here is whether Greek has phrasal compounds, since the language, like Romance, has true phrasal compounds in the non-deverbal domain, e.g. praktorio idiseon ‘news agency.GEN’. Thus it could be argued that what we see in e.g. (36) and (3b) are cases of compounds. In fact, such an analysis has been put forth in Ntelitheos (to appear). Ntelitheos notes that these strings have two stress domains; by contrast, synthetic compounds have only one stress domain, so DCs are really words, while strings, as in (36), are really phrasal. He further notes that, as in ASNs, the internal argument appears in the genitive: (37) kalliergitis kapnon grower tobacco.GEN ‘tobacco grower’ Ntelitheos points out that his “phrasal compounds” do not allow D- elements, (38a), which would be fine as an episodic ASN, and occasionally have noncompositional semantics, (38b).

|| 2 An anonymous reviewer asks whether proper names are licit within such compounds in Greek, as they seem to be allowed in English, e.g. Bush supporters. Such strings are completely out in Greek DCs, and can appear only within ASNs (note here that proper names in argument positions are obligatorily introduced by an article in Greek). Schlücker (2013) points out that in German, which also allows such strings, the non-head seems to saturate the internal argument of the verbal predicate. In ongoing work, I examine this question and show that this follows nicely from the different derivations assumed for DCs in English and in Greek.

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(38) a. *damastis ton thirion tamer the beasts.GEN b. eperksegastis dedomenon processor data.GEN (can only be a computer) ‘data processor’ Nevertheless, and unlike DCs, the genitive argument can be modified, and bear number as well as gender morphology. In fact, most forms in these contexts appear with plural morphology: (39) eperksegastis neon dedomenon processor new data.GEN.PL ‘processing of new data’ (40) ekpobi dilitiriodon aerion release poisonous gas.GEN.PL ‘release of poisonous gas’ On the basis of these criteria, Ntelitheos concludes that these strings are compounds, and differ from DCs in that they contain more verbal structure, which includes all functional projections but crucially not Case. In other words, phrasal compounds do have some projections of the type found in the verbal domain. He then analyzes the genitive Case on the internal argument as a kind of linker in terms of den Dikken (2006). I will show that Ntelitheos is right in assuming that such strings have more structure, and the readings they receive is due to the shape of their internal argument, but crucially they are not phrasal compounds. Rather, they are dispositional ASNs of the type discussed in Alexiadou and Schäfer (2010). One could argue that we could test the status of the genitive, i.e. whether it is an argument or not by appealing to the anaphora test. As is well known, DCs are anaphoric islands, and only DP arguments can be referential. However, we cannot apply the anaphora test, since Greek has indefinite argument drop, i.e. weak NPs can be resumed by null elements, Dimitriadis (1994). (41) Agorase fraules? Ne agorase. bought strawberries yes bought.3SG ‘Did he buy strawberries? Yes, he did.’

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Thus, applying this test to the strings in (36) would not be very informative. In order to test their status, therefore, I will employ some criteria discussed in Ralli (2013) as well as Grimshaw’s criteria above. Ralli (2013) concludes that these formations do not belong to compounding, by applying two further criteria. These are: a) Reversibility: the order of constituents may not be reversed in true phrasal compounds. The contrast between (42) and (43) shows that (43) is not a phrasal compound: (42) zoni asfalias belt safety.GEN

*asfalias zoni safety.GEN belt

(43) epeksergasia dedomenon processing data.GEN

true phrasal compounds

dedomenon epeksergasia data.GEN processing

Reversal of order is generally possible in Modern Greek with possessors, (44a), and internal argument of nominalizations, (44b); see Horrocks and Stavrou (1987), and Alexiadou (2001). Thus, on the basis of this test, the strings in (40) behave like ASNs:3 (44) a. to vivlio tu Jani the book the John.GEN ‘John’s book’ b. I katastrofi tis polis the destruction the city.GEN ‘the destruction of the city’

tu Jani to vivlio the John.GEN the book ‘John’s book’ tis polis i katastrofi the city.GEN the destruction ‘the destruction of the city’

|| 3 An anonymous reviewer asks about the cross-linguistic distribution of reversibility; in Greek, it has been argued by Horrocks and Stavrou (1987) that the movement of the genitive to Spec,DP is similar to focalization. In other languages, e.g. Polish, as the same reviewer points out, it is not possible to move the internal argument of the AS in prenominal position, something that seems to be limited only to possessors and agents, Cetnarowska (2014), who argues that prenoninal genitives are actually Topics, cf. Migdalski (2000) and Rappaport (2000). The situation in Greek is different: possessors as well as internal arguments can appear in pre-head position. Agents never can, as the language does not allow agents to be expressed via a genitive. They are introduced via a PP (Alexiadou 2001). In view of the fact that in Polish the prehead position is below demonstratives, as argued in Rappaport (2000), we can conclude that it is below DP, and hence possibly a thematic position, explaining why possessors and agents can appear there but not internal arguments, which would need to be A’-moved to some higher projection. The issue certainly merits further investigation.

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b) Insertion of parentheticals: this is not possible in true phrasal compounds, but it is possible in what Ntelitheos analyzes as phrasal compounds: (45) *i zoni, opos vlepete, asfalias the belt, as you see, safety.GEN (46) i epeksergasia, opos vlepete, dedemenon the processing, as you see data.GEN Again, this is possible with ASNs: (47) i katastrofi, opos akusate, tis polis the destruction, as you heard, the city.GEN We can provide further evidence that these forms behave like ASNs. First, byphrases are possible: (48) hriazomaste epeksergasia dedomenon apo embirus tehnikus. we need processing data by experienced technicians ‘We need data processing by experienced technicians.’ Second, similar to ASNs, they can be modified by adjectives such as frequent; Grimshaw (1990). Moreover, as noted in Grimshaw (1990) for CENs, they resist pluralization: (49) a. hriazete sihni epeksergasia dedomenon. needed frequent processing data.GEN ‘Frequent data processing is needed.’ b. *sihnes epeksergasies dedomenon frequent.PL processings data.GEN Thus, in agreement with Ralli, we have sufficient evidence that the above do not involve compounding. In fact, they are ASNs. Note here that applying Ralli’s tests to the phrasal forms that have a DC counterpart does not give different results. This means that all these phrasal strings are actually ASNs: (50) a. damastis thirion tamer beasts.GEN

thirion damastis beasts.GEN tamer

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b. damastis, opos vlepete, thirion tamer, as you see, beasts.GEN We have also seen that several English DCs are translated as analytic forms in Greek. On the basis of the criteria above, these also behave like nominalizations: (51) a. dog training b. ekpedefsi skilon training dogs.GEN (52) a. skilon ‘dog b. skilon ‘dog

dog trainer ekpedeftis skilon trainer dogs.GEN

ekpedefsi training’ ekpedeftis trainer’

This in turn would mean that there are no deverbal phrasal compounds in Greek, only synthetic ones, as discussed in the previous sections. The question that arises now concerns the fact that these strings have a reading similar to English DCs. From the perspective outlined in section 3, this is because both DCs and our phrasal strings contain unquantized objects. The presence of unquantized objects yields a dispositional interpretation that comes close to the reading of English/Greek DCs. The difference between synthetic DCs and e.g. (36), apart from the fact that (36) has an internal structure similar to (19), is that the internal argument is a NumberP and not an nP, i.e. it is not completely bare, but contains some functional material above nP. The presence of this material blocks incorporation. However, since it does not project a DP layer, it is not quantized. The difference between dispositional ASNs and other ASNs relates to the presence of a DP layer in the latter. In other words, the presence of the D layer leads to the “actual event” interpretation that ASNs have. This explains why “phrasal compounds” can also receive instrumental interpretations, (38b), as explained in Alexiadou and Schäfer (2010). Specifically, for all cases analyzed by Ntelitheos as “phrasal compounds” a syntactic analysis close to the one assumed for dispositional ASNs is in order: see Alexiadou and Schäfer (2010). From this perspective, phrasal compounds are a sub-type of dispositional ASNs, and have a structure comparable to that in (19), the difference being that the internal argument is a NumberP and not a DP. (53) [DP [nP [AspP [VoiceP [vP [NumberP] [√TRAIN]]]]]]

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Alexiadou and Schäfer (2010) argue in detail that dispositional nominalizations contain the whole mixed verbal-nominal structure of non-dispositional nominalizations. The types of objects that are excluded in dispositional nominals are those that have definite and/or specific readings, i.e. DPs; bare plurals are acceptable in dispositional contexts. As we have seen the internal argument of our dispositional ASNs is almost always a bare plural. This suggests that these contain NumberP. This means that internal arguments in dispositional ASNs are NumberPs, and not DPs, nor nPs, as is the case in English synthetic DCs. That bare nouns in argument positions in Greek are NumberPs has been argued by Alexopoulou and Folli (2011), who show that in Greek, bare nouns instantiate a Number phrase and no higher D layer, i.e. they can be argumental in the absence of D. This is not so in e.g. English, where nouns contain an empty D. Alexopoulou, Folli, and Tsoulas (2013) further show that bare nouns in Greek do not differ in their distribution from DP arguments. From the point of view of our nominalizations this means that both dispositional and nondispositional ASNs involve nominalization of a verbal source together with its argument structure. The internal argument can be a DP or a NumberP in Greek. The latter will lead to a dispositional reading of the overall nominal. In English DCs, however, the size of the internal argument is even smaller – just an nP – and as a result it will also yield a dispositional reading. The question that arises now is the following: if N-N.GEN phrasal compounds are generally possible in Greek, e.g. zoni asfalias ‘belt safety.GEN’, why are they excluded from deverbal formations? First of all, the genitive in these strings does not have an argument status. If it does not have an argument status, its licensing is subject to different principles as only arguments need to be Case licensed. Zoni asfalias ‘safety belt’ and praktorio idiseon ‘news agency’ seem very similar to a subtype of Romance phrasal compounds – see (54) – and have the form N1-N2.GEN, i.e. superficially identical to dispositional ASNs.4, 5

|| 4 Next to the two forms in (55) there is a third one: potiri krasi (i) glass wine (i) is a pseudopartitive; it can be analyzed as involving a Classifier, glass, that takes an NP as its complement. NP is transparent to modification, e.g. potiri kokino krasi ‘glass of red wine’. See Alexiadou, Haegeman, and Stavrou (2007) for further discussion. (ii) [ClassP glass [nP wine]]

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(54) bicchiere da vino glass DA wine ‘wine glass’ The N1-N2.GEN pattern often has a synthetic counterpart, (55b). (55) a. potiri krasiu glass wine.GEN b. krasopotiro ‘wine glass’ With respect to (55a), Alexiadou, Haegeman, and Stavrou (2007) state that examples of this type contain non-referential genitives. In the literature, such genitives are referred to as classifying or property genitives, as they denote a “kind of” relation. Note that in French such genitives cannot be translated with the des PP. In (56b) des enfants ‘of the children’ will be taken to be referential, referring to the children as possessors of the book. (56) a. Un livre d’enfants a book de children b. #un livre des enfants a book of–the children ‘the children’s book’ (55a–b) are identical in meaning. Both are non-compositional: for instance they both get a measure interpretation. (57) a. tria potiria krasiu zahari three glasses wine.GEN sugar b. tria krasopotira zahari three wine glasses sugar ‘three wine glasses of sugar’ || 5 Note that in Italian, the choice of P is relevant for the meaning of the compound; see (i) in footnote 4 above for Greek. In (i) DI is used to express the glass filled with wine meaning, while the N1-N2.GEN pattern is used to express the prototypical use reading in (55), from Delfitto, Fiorin, and Kula (2011). (i) bicchiere di vino glass DI wine ‘glass of wine’

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In these cases, N1 is without doubt the lexical noun. But where does the classifying genitive come from, since the genitive is not an argument? Androutsopoulou and Espanol-Echevarria (2003) proposed that determinerless classifying genitives as well as determinerless material genitives (in Romance) behave like adjectives. In their analysis, de is some form of agreement. These genitives do not project NumberP and arguably lack number features. The lack of Number features in contexts such as (55a) but not in e.g. (36) is particularly clear in Greek, where bare singulars in other contexts are not number neutral and can be shown to contain NumberP. Number neutrality entails compatibility with both atomic (singular) and plural interpretations (Farkas and de Swart 2010; Espinal 2010). As discussed in Alexopoulou, Folli, and Tsoulas (2013), Greek bare nouns are compatible both with qualitative and descriptive adjectives as well as classifying ones (59), unlike in Catalan, (58). (58) a. Per a aquest espectecle necessitareu for to this event need.FUT faldilla llarga/escocesa/ skirt long/kilt/plaid de quadres ‘For this event you will need a long skirt.’ b. *Necessiten faldilla feta a Singapur / neta need skirt made in Singapore / clean (59) a. Tha hriastite makria/skotzesiki/plise fusta. will need.2PL long/scotish/plaid skirt ‘You will need a long skirt/a kilt/a plaid skirt.’ b. Tha hriastite fusta rameni stin India / kathari fusta. will need.2PL skirt sewn in-the India / clean skirt ‘You will need a skirt sewn in India / a clean skirt’. Comparing, on the basis of this diagnostic, true phrasal compounds with dispositional ASNs shows that the former lack NumberP: (60) a. potiri kokinu krasiu glass red wine.GEN ‘a glass for red wine’ b. *potiri ekseretiku krasiu glass excellent wine

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(61) epeksergasia ekseretikon dedomenon processing excellent data.GEN ‘processing of excellent data’ We see then that there is an important difference between true phrasal compounds and DCs as well as dispositional ASNs having to do with the status of the genitive. The genitive is an argument in dispositional ASNs, but not in true phrasal compounds. An argumental genitive needs to be case licensed via some verbal functional projection as in ASNs. While genitives are nPs in true phrasal compounds they are not subject to any argument licensing requirement. Still, it is not possible for the second nP in true phrasal compounds to appear without any inflection, but see Ralli (2013) for some discussion of patterns where the second noun does not bear genitive, e.g. anthropos arahni ‘man spider, lit. spiderman’. Presumably, inflection is there to create an asymmetric structure, as suggested in Ntelitheos’s analysis. As a result, the NP receives default nominal case, genitive, if N-N compound formation (or A-N formation) is impossible.

5

Conclusions

In this paper, I have argued that synthetic DCs are closer to ASNs, as already anticipated in Grimshaw’s work. Specifically, I proposed an analysis thereof, according to which English synthetic DCs contain v, the layer that introduces internal arguments, which in the context of DCs are unquantized. In addition, English DCs, but not Greek ones, may contain VoiceP. I then showed that there seem to be no deverbal phrasal compounds in Greek, only ASNs with dispositional interpretation due to the form of the internal argument, a NumberP and not a DP. From this perspective, we have three sub-types of dispositional nominals, English DCs, Greek “phrasal compounds” and Greek DCs. The Greek ones also differ with respect to the size of the internal argument: it is root in synthetic DCs, but a NumberP in “phrasal” ones while English DCs include nP arguments. There are, however, true phrasal – non-deverbal – compounds in Greek, where the non-argumental genitive non-head has a smaller structure: it is a simple nP. The difference between DCs and true phrasal compounds relates to the status of the non-head: argument in the former vs. non-argumental in the latter.

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The overall discussion suggests that all types of synthetic compounds are actually sub-types of dispositional ASNs. English seems to be more productive in forming synthetic DCs, which is an alternative way to license an unquantized and smaller in size internal argument. The question that should be addressed in future research is why English lacks N-V verbal compounds. See Harley (2009a) and Iordachioaia et al. (2017) for a preliminary response.

References Ackema, Peter and Ad Neeleman. 2004. Beyond morphology: Interface conditions on word formation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Alexiadou, Aretmis. 1997. Adverb placement: A case study in antisymmetric syntax. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Alexiadou, Aretemis. 2001. Functional structure in nominals: Nominalization and ergativitiy. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Alexiadou, Artemis. 2009. On the role of syntactic locality in morphological processes: The case of (Greek) derived nominals. In Anastisia Giannakidou and Monika Rathert (eds.), Quantification, definiteness and nominalization, 253–280. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Alexiadou, Artemis. 2013. Nominal vs. verbal -ing constructions and the development of the English progressive. English Linguistics Research 2(2). 126–140. Alexiadou, Artemis, Elena Anagnostopoulou and Florian Schäfer. 2015. External arguments in transitivity alternations: A layering approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Alexiadou, Artemis and Gianina Iordăchioaia. 2015. Idiomaticity and compositionality in deverbal compounds. Paper presented at BCGL 8, Brussels, June 2015. Alexiadou, Artemis, Gianina Iordăchioaia and Florian Schäfer. 2011. Scaling the variation in Romance and Germanic nominalizations. In Petra Sleeman and Harry Peridon (eds.), The noun phrase in Romance and Germanic, 25–40. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Alexiadou, Artemis, Gianina Iordăchioaia, Maria Angeles Cano, Fabienne Martin and Florian Schäfer. 2013. The realization of external arguments in nominalizations. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 16. 73–95. Alexiadou, Artemis, Liliane Haegeman and Melita Stavrou. 2007. Noun phrase in the generative perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Alexiadou, Artemis and Florian Schäfer. 2010. On the syntax of episodic vs. dispositional -er nominals. In Artemis Alexiadou and Monika Rathert (eds.), The syntax of nominalizations across languages and frameworks, 9–38. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Alexiadou, Artemis and Florian Schäfer. 2011. There-insertion: An unaccusative mismatch at the syntax-semantics interface. Online Proceedings of WCCFL 28. https://sites.google.com/site/wccfl28pro/alexiadou-schaefer. Alexopoulou, Dora and Rafaella Folli. 2011. Topic-strategiees and the internal structure of nominal arguments in Greek and Italian. Manuscript, University of Cambridge and University of Ulster.

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Alexopoulou, Dora, Rafaella Folli and George Tsoulas. 2013. Bare number. In Rafaella Folli, Christina Sevdali and Robert Truswell (eds.), Syntax and its limits, 300–323. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Anagnostopoulou, Elena and Yota Samioti. 2014. Domains within words and their meanings: A case study. In Artemis Alexiadou, Hagit Borer and Florian Schäfer (eds.), The syntax of roots and the roots of syntax, 81–111. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Androutsopoulou, Antonia and Manuel Español-Echevarria. 2003. Romance prepositional genitives. Rivista di Grammatica Generativa 28. 3–17. Baker, Mark. 1988. Incorporation. A theory of grammatical function changing. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Bolinger, Dwight. 1971. The nominal progressive. Linguistic Inquiry 2. 246–250. Borer, Hagit. 2003. Exo-skeletal vs. endo-skeletal explanations. In John Moore and Maria Polinsky (eds.), The nature of explanation in linguistic theory, 31–67. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Borer, Hagit. 2005. The normal course of events. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Borer, Hagit. 2012. In the event of a nominal. In Martin Everaert, Marijana Marilj and Tal Siloni (eds.), The theta system, 103–149. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Borer, Hagit. 2013. Taking form. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cetnarowska, Bożena. 2014. The Topic Phrase within a Determiner Phrase: Fronting adnominal genitives in Polish. In Ludmila Veselovská and Markéta Janebová (eds.), Nominal structures: All in complex DPs, 147–161. Olomouc, Palacký University: Olomouc Modern Language Monographs. Cinque, Guglielmo. 1999. Adverbs and functional heads. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Delfitto, Dennis, Gaeta Fiorin and Nancy Kula. 2011. Syntactic gradients in compounding. Italian Journal of Linguistics 23. 301–325. Den Dikken, Marcel. 2006. Relators and linkers. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Dimitriadis, Alexis. 1994. Clitics and object drop in Modern Greek. In Proceedings of the Sixth Student Conference in Linguistics (SCIL-6), University of Rochester, Volume 23 of MITWPL, 1–20. Di Sciullo, Anna Maria. 1992. Deverbal compounds and the external argument. In Iggy Roca (ed.), Thematic structure: Its role in grammar, 65–78. Dordrecht: Foris. Embick, David. 2010. Localism and globalism in morphology and phonology. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Espinal, Maria-Teresa. 2010. Bare nominals in Catalan and Spanish: Their structure and meaning. Lingua 120. 984–1009. Farkas, Donka and Henriette de Swart. 2010. The semantics and pragmatics of plurals. Semantics and Pragmatics 3(6). 1–54. Grimm, Scott and Luise McNally. 2013. No ordered arguments needed for nouns. In Maria Aloni, Michael Franke and Floris Roelofsen (eds.), Proceedings of the 19th Amsterdam Colloquium, 123–130. http://www.illc.uva.nl/AC/AC2013/uploaded_files/inlineitem/ proceedings.pdf Grimshaw, Jane. 1990. Argument structure. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Harley, Heidi. 2009a. Compounding in Distributed Morphology. In Rochelle Lieber and Pavol Štekauer (eds.), The Oxford handbook of compounding, 129–144. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Harley, Heidi. 2009b. The morphology of nominalizations and the syntax of vP. In Anastasia Giannadikou and Monika Rathert (eds.), Quantification, definiteness and nominalization, 330–343. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Horrocks, Geoff and Melita Stavrou. 1987. Bounding theory and Greek syntax: Evidence for whmovement in NP. Journal of Linguistics 23. 79–108. van Hout, Angeliek and Tom Roeper. 1998. Events and aspectual structure in derivational morphology. In Heidi Harley (ed.), Papers from the UPenn/MIT Roundtable on Argument Structure and Aspect, MITWPL 32, 175–200. Iordăchioaia, Gianina, Artemis Alexiadou and Andreas Pairamidis. 2017. Morphosyntactic sources for synthetic compounds in English and in Greek. Journal of Word Formation 1. 4570. Kechagias, Axiotis. 2005. Generating words: Compounding in Modern Greek. London: University College London. MA thesis. Kayne, Richard. 1994. The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Kratzer, Angelika. 1996. Severing the external argument from its verb. In Johan Rooryck and Laurie Zaring (eds.), Phrase structure and the lexicon, 109–137. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Krifka, Manfred. 1986. Nominalreferenz und Zeitkonstitution. Zur Semantik von Massentermen, Individualtermen, Aspektklassen. Munich: The University of Munich. Dissertation. Lohndal, Terje. 2014. Phrase structure and argument structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marantz, Alec. 1989. Projection vs. percolation in the syntax of synthetic compounds. In Robert Davis (ed.), Selected papers from the Annual Spring Colloquium, 95–112. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, UNC Linguistics Circle. Marantz, Alec. 1997. No escape from syntax: Don’t try morphological analysis in the privacy of your own lexicon. In Alexis Dimitriadis, Laura Siegel, Clarissa Surek-Clark and Alexander Williams (eds.), University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics Vol. 4.2, 201– 225. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. McIntyre, Andrew. 2009. Synthetic compounds and argument structure. Ms. Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. Michelioudakis, Dimitris and Nikos Angelopoulos. 2013. The synchronic status of Nincorporation in deverbal compounds: Synchronic and diachronic evidence. Studies in Greek Linguistics 33. 209–227. Migdalski, Krzysztof. 2000. The determiner phrase hypothesis in Polish. Wrocław: University of Wrocław. MA thesis. Mittwoch, Annita. 2005. Unspecified arguments in episodic and habitual sentences. In Nomi Erteschik-Shir and Tova Rapoport (eds.), The syntax of aspect: Deriving thematic and aspectual interpretation, 237–254. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ntelitheos, Dimitrioas. To appear. A syntactic analysis of synthetic and phrasal compound formation in Greek. Issues in Mediterranean Syntax. Ralli, Angela. 2013. Compounding in Modern Greek. Dordrecht: Springer. Rappaport, Gilbert. 2000. Extraction from nominal phrases and the theory of determiners. Journal of Slavic Linguistics 8. 159–198. Rappaport Hovav, Malka and Beth Levin. 1992. er nominals: Implications for a theory of argument structure. In Tim Stowell and Eric Wehrli (eds.), Syntax and the lexicon, 127–153. New York: Academic Press.

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Rappaport Hovav, Malka and Beth Levin. 2001. An event structure account of English resultatives. Language 77. 766–797. Roeper, Tom and Muffy Siegel. 1978. A lexical transformation for verbal compounds. Linguistic Inquiry 9. 199–260. Rivero, Maria-Luisa. 1992. Adverb incorporation and the syntax of Modern Greek. Linguistics and Philosophy 15. 289–331. Scheffer, Johannes. 1975. The progressive in English. Amsterdam: North Holland. Schlücker, Barbara. 2013. Non-classifying compounds in German. Folia Linguistica 47(2). 449– 480. Tenny, Carol. 1987. Grammaticalizing aspect and affectedness. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dissertation. Visser, Fredericus. 1973. An historical syntax of the English language. Leiden: Brill.

Maria Bloch-Trojnar

Aspectual constraints on the plural marking of argument supporting -nie/-cie nominals in Polish 1

Introduction

The aim of this paper is to critically evaluate a recent syntax-based proposal relating to the ability of argument supporting nominals to realize the morphological plural. Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia and Soare (2010) attempt to determine the parameters of this ability with reference to action nouns in Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages. In this paper we will address their proposal concerning Polish action nouns in -nie/-cie since their account necessitates forging a definite link between NumberP and AspectP in the nominal structure. In the classic proposal of Grimshaw (1990: 54) pluralization is the hallmark of Simple Event or Result nominals, as opposed to Complex Event nominals, which preserve the verb’s argument structure. In other words, the ability to support arguments and the ability to pluralize would be mutually exclusive, as is corroborated by hundreds of entity denoting nominals such as organizations, prescriptions, decorations, buildings, governments and closures.1 This distinction carried over to all syntactically-oriented morphological frameworks, be they lexicalist or syntactic, with the usual proliferation of terminology. The relevant classes of nominals are called Argument-Structure Nominals (AS-Nominals) and Referential Nominals (R-Nominals) in Borer (2003), or “process nominals” and “result nominals” in Alexiadou (2001).2 Over the years various linguists have brought to light examples of argument supporting nominals in the plural, thus || 1 The Process–Result dichotomy in deverbal nominals, as in painting ‘act(ion) of painting’ vs. painting ‘picture’ with reference to their semantic and syntactic properties had been extensively discussed much earlier by, among others, Anderson (1984), Walińska de Hackbeil (1984), Lebeaux (1986), Zubizarreta (1987) and Malicka-Kleparska (1988). 2 Grimshaw’s proposal can be regarded as lexicalist by virtue of the fact that it views the lexical entry as the locus of argument structure specification. The lexical item is the skeleton around which the structure is built (Alexiadou and Rathert 2010: 2; Melloni 2011: 21–29). In the exo-skeletal framework of Borer (2003) or the proposal of Harley (2009), which adhere to the assumptions of Distributed Morphology (DM), the grammatical properties of items, as well as their meaning, are determined by the structure under which they are inserted.

DOI 10.1515/9781501505430-004

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questioning the universality of Grimshaw’s analysis. For example, in Newmeyer (2009: 102) we find an abundance of counterexamples, some of which are given in (1) below:3 (1)

a. b. c. d. e.

Mary’s constant refusals of the committee’s offer Paul and Frank’s many discussions of modern jazz The apostle Peter’s three denials of Jesus The custom officials’ inspections of suspicious baggage Coca Cola’s twelve interruptions of the Super Bowl game

There is also contradictory evidence from German (Bierwisch 1990/91: 58), Italian (Melloni 2011: 27), French (Roodenburg 2010), Dutch and Portuguese (Sleeman and Brito 2010) demonstrating that there is no direct and complete correlation between the ability to support arguments and non-countability. Research into the parallels between the verbal and nominal domains, which relates the categories of Aspect/Aktionsart of verbs and Number of nouns has been ongoing in diverse theoretical paradigms (Taylor 1977; Mourelatos 1978; Bach 1986; Krifka 1986, 1992; Langacker 1987; Jackendoff 1991; Brinton 1995, 1998). It has by now become axiomatic that there is a correlation between the telic/Perfective value of verbs and count nouns, on the one hand, and the atelic/ Imperfective values of verbs and mass nouns on the other. This is so because the former can be viewed as bounded, whereas the latter as unbounded. These findings are of crucial importance in the study of action nouns and are reflected in the analysis put forward by Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia and Soare (2010). However, an empirical question arises: is it only perfective/telic verbs that can give rise to plural argument supporting action nouns? Empirical facts are the best yardstick of the explanatory potential of competing theoretical proposals. In what follows, in section 2 I will first present a way of tackling the problem of plural argument taking nominals in Polish in the neo-transformational account of Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia and Soare (2010). In section 3 I will give an overview of the Polish data and pinpoint the areas which may be problematic for the proposed analysis. In section 4 I will argue that the lexicalist strain of research, as represented by Malicka-Kleparska (1988), Cetnarowska (1993) or Bloch-Trojnar (2013), which takes the view that nominalization operations are effected in an autonomous lexical component, divorced || 3 In Filip (1993: 89) and Mourelatos (1978: 425) we also find: (i) The climber’s two ascents of the mountain. (ii) There was a capsizing of the boat by Mary.

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from the rules of syntactic structure, may after all be better suited for accounting for the complexity of the Polish data.

2

The syntax-based account proposed in Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia and Soare (2010)

Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia and Soare (2010) look into the structural properties of argument supporting nouns (ASNs) to uncover the nature of the interaction between NumberP and AspectP and challenge accounts in which the two projections in the nominal structure are mutually exclusive.4 NumberP is the projection in the structure of nouns which show the singular–plural opposition. Therefore, mass nouns, devoid of number morphology, lack it. AspectP is projected by verbs which show the perfective–imperfective contrast independently of the inner aspect/Aktionsart. Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia and Soare follow Picallo’s (2006) assumption that the ability to pluralize, or project NumberP, is conditioned by the presence of a Class(ifier)P in the nominal structure. ClassP, in turn, is associated with a cluster of nominal properties, such as adjectival modification, gender features and case inflection. The category as such is assigned by the nominalizer, which is the head of nP (Maranz 2001). It introduces nominal internal structure and licenses the projection of ClassP and NumP.5 The presence of the nominalizer in the verbal structure opens up a range of possibilities depending on the height of its attachment (Abney 1987; Borer 1993; Alexiadou 2001, 2009). In syntactic nominalizations such as the English verbal gerund or the Romanian supine, there are no nominalizers and a verbal structure (AspectP) is embedded under D, as represented in (2).

|| 4 According to Alexiadou (2001), Rijkhoff (2002) and Fassi-Fehri (2005) the nominal structure cannot project both NumberP and AspectP. 5 There is no agreement in the literature as to the exact character of projections and the features they are associated with. For example, in Borer’s (2005) model #P projection licenses numerals above 1 and determiners such as many and much, whereas Class hosts morphosyntactic number features that the noun inflects for, and [n] gender or noun class information.

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(2)

In English -ing nominal gerunds, German -ung ASNs and Spanish nominal infinitives, the nominalizer attaches to the VP. The resulting nouns project nP and ClassP. NumberP can be projected if ClassP bears the feature [+count]. There is a correlation between the [±count] feature on ClassP and the inner aspect of the VP. “ASNs with telic inner aspect have ClassP [+count] and project NumberP, while ASNs with atelic inner aspect have ClassP [-count], which blocks the realization of NumberP” (Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia, and Soare 2010: 4), as represented in (3a) and (3b): (3) a.

b.

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Polish argument supporting -nie/-cie nominals preserve aspect distinctions and they are attested in doublets if there is a corresponding perfective/imperfective verb pair. Some examples of aspectual pairs, with overt morphological markers of aspect are presented in (4) below:6 (4) a. b. c. d.

Verbs czytaćIPFV – przeczytaćPFV ‘read’ odkryćPFV – odkrywaćIPFV ‘discover’ ocenićPFV – oceniaćIPFV ‘evaluate’ pukaćIPFV – puknąćPFV ‘knock’

Verbal nominals in -nie/-cie czytanie – przeczytanie odkrycie – odkrywanie ocenienie – ocenianie pukanie – puknięcie

As is evident from the examples in (5) below, verbal nouns are capable of licensing verbal arguments. The NP corresponding to the external argument of a transitive base verb mostly surfaces in the przez-phrase.7 The direct object in the accusative becomes a NP complement in the genitive case, whereas an adverb features as an adjectival modifier. (5) a. Jan szybko przeczytał książkę. John quickly read.PFV.PST.3SG book.ACC.SG ‘John has read the book quickly.’ b. Szybkie przeczytanie książki przez Jana zdziwiło nauczyciela. quick read.PFV.NMLZ book.GEN.SG by John surprised teacher ‘John’s having read the book quickly surprised the teacher.’

|| 6 The infinitive form of the verb in Polish terminates in -ć, preceded by theme-forming elements, e.g. czyt-a-ć ‘read’. The imperfective–perfective contrast is predominantly expressed by prefixation (4a), whereas its reverse, i.e. the perfective–imperfective distinction, by suffixation and morphophonological modifications (4b–c). The perfective meaning can also be rendered by the semelfactive suffix -ną (4d). Secondary Imperfectives (SIs) are a means of shifting a derived perfective verb into the imperfective class, as shown in (4b) above, i.e. kryć ‘cover.IPFV’ – odkryć ‘discover.PFV’ – odkrywać ‘discover.IPFV’. The class shift in question is implemented by means of the substitution of the thematic suffix -a and -i/-y in the base with -iwa/ywa and -a respectively in the SI. Other less productive means include the suffixes -wa and -ewa (Wróbel 1999: 565). The term Secondary Imperfective is in fact a misnomer, because it simply is an imperfective counterpart of a derived perfective verb (Bloch-Trojnar 2015). The relationship between the basic imperfective verb (kryć ‘cover’) and its perfective prefixed derivative (odkryć ‘discover’) introduces a semantic change going far beyond the durative–completed contrast. 7 Pronominal subjects surface as a pre-nominal genitive. The nominal in the genitive is also possible, but marked (Rozwadowska 1997).

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Co-occurrence restrictions with aspectual modifiers clearly show that verbal nouns preserve aspectual distinctions: książki w dwa dni / *przez dwa dni (6) a. przeczytanie read.PFV.NMLZ book.GEN.SG in two days / *for two days ‘having read the book in two days / *for two days’ b. czytanie książki przez dwa dni / *w dwa dni read.IPFV.NMLZ book.GEN.SG for two days / *in two days ‘reading of the book for two days / *in two days’ In line with the typology of verbal nouns put forward by Schoorlemmer (1995), Rozwadowska (1997) argues that Polish verbal nouns embed an Aspect Phrase. Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia and Soare (2010: 564) use the data from Polish to show that the co-occurrence of NumberP and AspectP in nominalizations is not impossible. Consider the example in (7): (7) Częste odkrycia nowych terapii raka frequent discover.PFV.NMLZ.PL new.GEN.PL treatment.GEN.PL cancer.GEN.SG przyniosły naukowcom międzynarodową sławę. bring.PST.3PL researcher.DAT.PL international.ACC.SG fame.ACC.SG ‘The frequent discoveries of cancer treatments brought the researchers international fame.’ They demonstrate that the plural of the corresponding imperfective nominalization, i.e. *odkrywania ‘discover.IPFV.NMLZ.PL’ is ungrammatical and so the projection of Aspect does not block the projection of NumberP. However, it is only the bounded (perfective) ASNs that allow pluralization. Consequently, imperfective argument supporting -nie/-cie nominals have the structure in (8a), whereas perfective ASNs that in (8b):8

|| 8 As pointed out by the anonymous reviewer, this proposal seems on the right track, but the parallelism could be expressed in an alternative way. Namely the head Asp might incorporate into -nie/-cie, forcing Class to display the same value for boundedness, through mere headcomplement selection. Then, both could, in fact, be called “bounded” to emphasize the parallelism.

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(8) a. odkrywanie

b. odkrycie/odkrycia

In the following section we will test this analysis against a greater body of data to see if it is only the perfective (bounded) verbs that can give rise to argument supporting nouns in the plural.

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3

Argument supporting -nie/-cie nominals capable of pluralizing

At the outset of the presentation of the Polish data let us stress that we are interested only in the cases of argument supporting plural nouns, i.e. nominals that preserve the aspectual characteristics of base verbs,9 which can co-occur with aspectual modifiers and which are capable of co-occurring with the whole range of satellite phrases corresponding to the internal and external argument of the base verb.10 In the following sections we shall examine the nominals’ capacity for pluralization depending on the Aktionsart and Aspect value of the base verbs. We start with achievements and accomplishments which form aspectual pairs. Then we turn our attention to activities and semelfactives which are analyzed as Aspect invariable, but not devoid of Aspect specification.11 || 9 The idea that aspectual properties of verbs are unaltered in the process of nominalization is currently uncontested in both lexicalist (Malicka-Kleparska 1988: 30; Bloch-Trojnar 2012, 2013) and constructionist research paradigms (Fábregas, Marín and McNally 2012; Koonz-Garboden 2012). 10 We will, therefore, disregard the products of the Universal Sorter which manifest the reduction of accompanying satellites. The Universal Sorter (Bunt 1985) allows reference to be made to kinds of substance denoted by the basic mass noun with the resulting readings of “sort”, “type” or “variety”. This reading is also available to abstract action nouns (Puzynina (1969: 107–124), e.g.: (i) Bywają różne wykonania /wychowania /wyzwolenia. there-are different perform.PFV.NMLZ.PL /bring_up.PFV.NMLZ.PL /liberate.PFV.NMLZ.PL ‘There are different ways of performing/upbringing/liberating.’ Puzynina maintains that the classifying function of the plural is categorial with states and momentary activities: (ii) Bywają różne zdziwienia /zdenerwowania. there-are different surprise.PFV.NMLZ.PL /upset.PFV.NMLZ.PL ‘There are different types of being surprised/being upset.’ (iii) Bywają różne ukłucia /uderzenia. there-are different prick.PFV.NMLZ.PL /hit.PFV.NMLZ.PL ‘There are different types of pricks/hits.’ However, it is not possible with nominals related to perfective verbs with a resultative, distributive or terminative tinge (zapukanie ‘having knocked’, powynoszenie ‘having carried (things) away’, (do)płynięcie ‘having swum somewhere’, czytywanie ‘reading habitually’). 11 Aspect in Polish is a grammatical category, in that every verb in a syntactic structure is either perfective or imperfective. According to Willim (2006: 253), aspect is represented syntactically as the functional Asp projection over VP, and Polish verbs realize overtly both values. For some verbal roots both values are available, for others the perfective only or imperfective only specification is possible. Laskowski (1999: 161–168) categorizes Polish verbs into three

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Admittedly, nominals with a full range of NPs and PPs corresponding to arguments of the base verb are relatively rare in discourse and, additionally, may seem artificial, awkward or marked (Rozwadowska 1997: 13). The bulk of examples presented below come from the Corpus of the Polish Language (Przepiórkowski et al. 2012). Sporadically, examples have been obtained though web searches. Before we proceed, a word on the semantic, morphological and morphosyntactic plurality is in order. Jackendoff (1991) proposes four conceptual-semantic classes of nouns characterized by two features [±b] and [±i], which stand for bounded and internal structure respectively. The presence or absence of spatiotemporal boundaries is indicated by boundedness; hence individuals are delimited whereas substances are unbounded. The feature [+i] characterizes entities divisible into conceptual atoms and entails a multiplicity of distinguishable units, whereas [-i] implies lack of internal structure and characterizes indivisible individuals.12

|| classes. Only accomplishment verbs and gradual transition verbs, which are potentially telic, form true aspectual pairs, e.g. budować ‘build’ – zbudować, czytać ‘read’ – przeczytać, pisać ‘write’– napisać, siwieć ‘go grey’ – osiwieć, próchnieć ‘decay, rot’ – spróchnieć. Imperfectiva tantum, i.e. verbs with the imperfective aspect only, subsume verbs which are durative and atelic: verbs of state or position such as spać ‘to sleep’, leżeć ‘lie’, stać ‘to stand’, należeć ‘to belong’, zależeć ‘to depend’, and activities such as uczęszczać ‘attend’, kapać ‘drip’, tańczyć ‘dance’, mówić ‘speak’, sąsiadować ‘to neighbour/border with’. Perfectiva tantum include achievements such as runąć ‘to collapse’, ocknąć się ‘to awake’, osłupieć ‘to be dumbfounded’, owdowieć ‘to become a widow(er)’, zdołać ‘manage’ and zgubić ‘lose’. They also subsume semelfactive verbs which denote one instance of an activity e.g. krzyknąć ‘cry out (once)’ and stuknąć ‘to knock’, and distributive verbs with the prefix po- based on secondary imperfectives, for example popodpisywać ‘to have signed’, poprzekupywać ‘to have bribed’. 12 Individuals are characterized by heterogenous part-structure and atomic reference, and define what counts as one instance. Aggregates or pluralities of individuals are divisible and are characterized by cumulative reference, a feature which they share with masses. Unlike masses, they have individuated atoms in their extension and determine what counts as one. If the meaning of a singular count noun is “one” that of the corresponding plural is “more than one”. This is a collection of individuals which cannot be referred to as a unit since it is unbounded and it is its individual atoms that are in focus. Entities which are semantically mass are characterized by cumulative reference and lack of spatiotemporal boundaries. Most importantly they do not have atoms or individuals in their denotation and do not determine what counts as one instance. They do not have conceptual individuals in their denotation and lack an individuating principle in their extension.

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(9) Feature values +bounded, -internal structure +bounded, +internal structure -bounded, -internal structure -bounded, +internal structure

Category individuals groups substances aggregates

Examples a cow, a book a herd, a committee, water cattle, books, rice

The linguistic property of countability cannot be determined solely on the basis of semantics. The same referent can be described as (several) cows or as a herd (of cows), i.e. by means of a collective count noun, or as cattle, i.e. by means of a collective mass noun.13 Nouns which are semantically mass are either singularis tantum (water, rice, beef) or pluralis tantum, which take plural agreement (pants). In line with Vendler’s (1967) classic proposal and allowing for some refinements (Bach 1986; Moens and Steedman 1988; Smith 1997) we divide verbs into five situation types. States are inherently static and durative. Achievements and semelfactives are punctual, i.e. they are over the moment they begin. Activities and accomplishments develop through time in successive phases. States, activities and semelfactives do not have an inherent endpoint, whereas accomplishments and achievements involve a change of state, and describe situations which have a natural endpoint or culmination. The former can occur with durative adverbials (for x time), the latter with time span adverbials (in x time). For some authors telicity is equated with a temporal endpoint and/or the consequent state (e.g. Brinton 1995, 1998). The position advocated here is to view telicity as a transition to a result state (Pustejovsky 1991; Moens and Steedman 1988; Smith 1997).

3.1

Achievement verbs

Plurality denotes aggregates of atomic units which can be identified with reference to the salience of perceptual boundaries. Achievement verbs, which are punctual (instantaneous, temporally delimited) and telic (having not only a temporal but a logical terminus) are regarded as prototypical individuals in the verbal domain. Therefore, ASNs related to achievement verbs which are both

|| 13 As pointed out by the anonymous reviewer, another relevant fact is that the same concept can be count in one language but not in another, e.g. people is count in English, but the Spanish equivalent gente is mass.

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telic and perfective are natural candidates for the NumP projection. Indeed, the prediction of Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia and Soare (2010) is borne out by the data. It is the perfective member of the aspectual pair that can give rise to an ASN in the plural. Consider some examples in (10): (10) a. wybićPFV – wybijaćIPFV ‘kick out’ akcje gości po wybiciach piłki action.PL guest.GEN.PL after kick.PFV.NMLZ.DAT.PL ball.GEN.SG przez bramkarza by goalkeeper ‘actions of the guests after kick-outs of the goalkeeper’ b. zatrzymaćPFV – zatrzymywaćIPFV ‘apprehend, arrest’ kolejne zatrzymania osób współpracujących further arrest.PFV.NMLZ.NOM.PL person.GEN.PL cooperating z oszustem with fraud.DAT.SG ‘further arrests of the people co-operating with the fraudster’ c. przesunąćPFV – przesuwaćIPFV ‘redeploy’ podać uzasadnienia (…) przesunięć środków give grounds for redeploy.PFV.NMLZ.GEN.PL resource.GEN.PL finansowych financial ‘account for the redeployments of financial resources’ The plural of the nominal formed from the perfective counterpart denotes an unbounded collection of individual occurrences of the action. There is a semantic affinity between this interpretation and the abstract noun based on the imperfective, pretty much the same as between grains and rice, where the former refers to an unbounded collection of identifiable individuals which can be accessed by the syntax, and the latter are a collection of individuals in conceptual but not morphosyntactic terms. One of the interpretations of the imperfective is a habitual reading (Laskowski 1999: 160). An ASN based on the imperfective verb will also be unbounded but will differ in that counting entities in its extension will not be possible, i.e. zwolnienia ‘individual instances of making people redundant’ in (11a) below bears a close semantic affinity to zwalnianie ‘making people redundant’ (11b), and so do wyłudzenia ‘incidents of cheating’ (12b) and wyłudzanie ‘cheating’ (12c):

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(11) a. zwolnićPFV – zwalniaćIPFV ‘lay off, make redundant’ b. W wielu firmach szykują się zwolnienia in many companies there will be lay_off.PFV.NMLZ.NOM.PL pracowników. worker.GEN.PL ‘Workers will be made redundant in many companies.’ c. To oznacza zwalnianie pracowników. this means lay_off.IPFV.NMLZ.NOM.SG worker.GEN.PL ‘This means laying workers off.’ (12) a. wyłudzićPFV – wyłudzaćIPFV ‘wheedle sth out of’ b. w sprawie przestępstwa wyłudzeń podatku VAT in case crime.GEN.SG wheedle.PFV.NMLZ.GEN.PL tax.GEN.SG VAT przez rodzinę łódzkich biznesmenów by family Łódź.REL.ADJ businessmen ‘in the case of incidents of wheedling VAT by a family of businessmen from Łódź’ c. śledztwo w sprawie wyłudzania podatku VAT inquiry in case wheedle.IPFV.NMLZ.GEN.SG tax.GEN.SG VAT przez firmę Wera by company Wera ‘an inquiry concerning the wheedling of VAT by the Wera company’ However, the regularity proposed by Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia and Soare (2010) runs up against two problems. First, the availability of the number projection is not automatic for the nominals related to all perfective achievement verbs. For example, the following are not attested in the corpus and are perceived as unacceptable by native speakers: zabićPFV – zabijaćIPFV ‘kill’ – *zabicia, umrzećPFV – umieraćIPFV ‘die’ – *umarcia, znaleźćPFV – znajdowaćIPFV ‘find’ – *znalezienia, upaśćPFV – upadaćIPFV ‘fall’ – *upadania. Even more problematic are the cases where the plural marking is found on the ASN related to the perfective verb and the imperfective one. Consider the examples in (13) below: (13) a. przeszukaćPFV – przeszukiwaćIPFV ‘search’ Dokonano wielu przeszukań miejsc conduct.PFV.PST.PASS many search.PFV.NMLZ.GEN.PL place.GEN.PL

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spotkań lewackich ugrupowań. meeting.GEN.PL leftist group.GEN.PL ‘There have been many searches of meeting places of leftist organizations.’ Amerykanie przeprowadzili 6,8 miliarda przeszukiwań Americans conducted 6.8 billion search.IPFV.NMLZ.GEN.PL stron internetowych. page.GEN.PL Internet.ADJ ‘Americans conducted 6.8 billion searches of websites.’ b. podpalićPFV – podpalaćIPFV ‘set fire to, burn’ silne bombardowanie (…) prowadzące do strong bombarding leading to licznych podpaleń ścian okopów numerous set_fire.PFV.NMLZ.GEN.PL wall.GEN.PL trench.GEN.PL ‘intense bombardment leading to numerous fires of trench walls’ na skutek bombardowań i masowych podpalań on result bombardment.GEN.PL and mass burn.IPFV.NMLZ.GEN.PL domów przez okupanta zostali pozbawieni mieszkań house.GEN.PL by occupant be.PST.3PL deprived house.GEN.PL ‘as a result of bombardments and mass burnings of houses by the occupant they were deprived of flats’ c. przesłuchaćPFV – przesłuchiwaćIPFV ‘interrogate’ Niegodne myśli nachodziły go podczas undignified thoughts came upon him during przesłuchań obdartych, wystraszonych dziewcząt. interrogate.PFV.NMLZ.GEN.PL ragged scared girl.GEN.PL ‘He had undignified thoughts during interrogations of ragged, terrified girls.’ AWS boi się przesłuchiwań kandydatów AWS fears interrogate.IPFV.NMLZ.GEN.PL candidate.GEN.PL na ministrów. on minster.ACC.PL ‘The AWS political party fears interrogations of candidates for ministers.’ d. rozstrzelaćPFV – rozstrzeliwaćIPFV ‘execute by shooting’ miejsca rozstrzelań bydgoszczan places shoot.PFV.NMLZ.GEN.PL inhabitant-of-Bydgoszcz.GEN.PL

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i księży and priest.GEN.PL ‘places of shootings of the inhabitants of Bydgoszcz and priests’ częste rozstrzeliwania partyzantów frequent shoot.IPFV.NMLZ.NOM.PL guerilla fighter.GEN.PL ‘frequent shootings of guerrilla fighters’ e. przerwaćPFV – przerywaćIPFV ‘terminate’ dokonuje się najmniej przerwań ciąży is done fewest terminate.PFV.NMLZ.GEN.PL pregnancy.GEN.SG ‘the fewest number of abortions is conducted’ nie służy zmniejszeniu liczby przerywań does not help decreasing number terminate.IPFV.NMLZ.GEN.PL ciąży pregnancy.GEN.SG ‘it is not conducive to decreasing the number of abortions’

3.2

Accomplishments

Interestingly, when we consider aspectual pairs where the imperfective verb acts as the primary member, the morphological plural is available for ASNs related to the imperfective verb and not to its perfective counterpart. In the examples in (14) below none of the plural ASNs contains the characteristic perfectivizing prefix: (14) a. bombardowaćIPFV – zbomardowaćPFV ‘bombard’ Nie doszłoby do najcięższych bombardowań not would-come to heaviest bombard.IPFV.NMLZ.GEN.PL niemieckich miast przez aliantów German city.GEN.PL by allies ‘There wouldn’t have been the heaviest bombardments of the German cities by the allies.’ b. badaćIPFV – zbadaćPFV ‘explore’ pieniądze wydane zostały nie na badania money spent was not on explore.IPFV.NMLZ.NOM.PL kosmosu space.GEN.SG ‘the money was not spent on space exploration’

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c. tłumaczyćIPFV – przetłumaczyćPFV ‘translate’ Stara się o tłumaczenia książki tries-to-arrange translate.IPFV.NMLZ.ACC.PL book.GEN.SG na francuski, japoński i angielski. on French Japanese and English ‘He is trying to get the book translated into French, Japanese and English.’ d. czytaćIPFV – przeczytaćPFV ‘read’ przeprowadzenie trzecich czytań tych projektów conducting third read.IPFV.NMLZ.GEN.PL these project.GEN.PL ustaw bill.GEN.PL ‘conducting the third reading of the bill projects’ e. szczepićIPFV – zaszczepićPFV ‘vaccinate’ szczepienia dzieci w szkołach vaccinate.IPFV.NMLZ.NOM.PL child.GEN.PL in school.LOC.PL ‘the vaccinations of children in schools’ On top of the tendency to select the imperfective rather than the perfective pair member as the base for the nominalization, the plural seems to arise at random, i.e. it is impossible to predict which accomplishment verbs are likely to give rise to the plural. There is none in the case of verb pairs such as pisaćIPFV – napisaćPFV ‘write’ – *pisania, *napisania, jeśćIPFV – zjeśćPFV ‘eat’ – *jedzenia, *zjedzenia, dzielićIPFV – podzielićPFV ‘divide’ – *dzielenia, *podzielenia.

3.3

Activities, semelfactives and states

Were the ability to form the morphological plural dependent solely on the presence of the feature [+telic] in the inner aspect of the verb, there should be no plural ASNs related to activity verbs, semelfactives and states, which are classed as [-telic]. However, plural ASNs are fairly frequent with imperfective activity verbs relating to communication. Consider the examples in (15) below: (15) a. Obrzydły mi twoje ciągłe narzekania. become-sick me your constant complain.IPFV.NMLZ.NOM.PL ‘I am sick and tired of your constant complaints.’ b. To pokrzykiwania ramola, these shout.IPFV.NMLZ.NOM.PL gaga.GEN.SG

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który czasy świetności ma za sobą. who time.PL glory.GEN has behind him ‘These are shouts of an old prick whose days of glory are gone.’ c. To tylko nawoływania nocnej straży these only call.IPFV.NMLZ.NOM.PL night guard.GEN.SG na zamkowych murach. on castle.ADJ wall.DAT.PL ‘These were just callings of the night guard on the castle walls / Night guards were simply calling on the castle walls.’ d. Z szczebiotań Lituni dowiadywała się from twitter.IPFV.NMLZ.GEN.PL Lituni.GEN.SG learn.PST.3SG Anna o kilku młodych ludziach. Anna about a few young people ‘Anna derived information about a few young people from Litunia’s twittering.’ Other imperfective activity verbs are attested as well: (16) a. poszukiwaćIPFV ‘search’ Rozpoczynamy poszukiwania łodzi. begin.PRS.3PL serach.IPFV.NMLZ.NOM.PL boat.GEN.SG ‘We begin searching for the boat.’ b. prześladowaćIPFV ‘persecute’ prześladowania Żydów w Rosji persecute.IPFV.NMLZ.NOM.PL Jew.GEN.PL in Russia na początku XX wieku on beginning 20 century ‘the persecution of Jews in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century’ Some activity verbs can be conceived of as consisting of minimal subevents, even though they are not associated with a natural endpoint. Consequently, there are imperfective–perfective verb pairs which contrast a verb which lexicalizes a series of subevents and a verb which denotes a single occurrence, such as kopaćIPFV ‘kick, iterative’ – kopnąćPFV ‘kick, semelfactive’, or a process which can be instantiated with a minimal temporal duration, e.g. krzyczećIPFV ‘shout’ – krzyknąćPFV ‘give out a shout’ (cf. Młynarczyk 2004: 124–126). The relationships between these verbs can be likened to that between a mass noun and a corresponding count noun. Mass nouns which appear in count contexts typically show the “(conventional) unit” or “portion reading” and are due to the Univer-

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sal Packager (Pelletier 1975). They may also denote an “instance” as in a great injustice, a difficulty, small kindnesses, home truths (Quirk et al. 1985: 1564). Plural ASNs related to both of these verbs are attested and they refer to the repetition of activities (ukłucia ‘pricks’, kaszlnięcia ‘coughs’, kopnięcia ‘kicks’), or the multiplicity of action internal subparts (drgania ‘quakes’, kołysania ‘cuddles’, zgrzytania ‘squeaks’): (17) a. wahać sięIPFV – wahnąćPFV ‘oscillate, swing’ Brak atmosfery oznacza ogromne lack atmosphere.GEN.SG mean.PRS.3SG huge wahania temperatur. oscillate.IPFV.NMLZ.NOM.PL temperature.GEN.PL ‘The lack of atmosphere means huge fluctuations of temperatures.’ Celował (…) obserwując wahnięcia pierścienia aim.PST.3SG watching swing.PFV.NMLZ.ACC.PL ring.GEN.SG na sznurku. on rope ‘He aimed observing the swings of the ring on the rope.’ b. drgaćIPFV – drgnąćPFV ‘vibrate’ Zignorowały złowrogie sygnały – drgania ignore.PST.3PL ominous signals vibrate.IPFV.NMLZ.NOM.PL ziemi. earth.GEN.SG ‘They ignored the ominous signals – the vibrations of the ground.’ Sekunda to 9192 631 770 drgnięć kryształka second is 9192 631 770 vibrate.PFV.NMLZ.GEN.PL cristal.GEN.SG cezu. caesium.GEN.SG ‘One second is equivalent to 9,192,631,770 atomic vibrations of the caesium crystal.’ Also states which are non-dynamic, atelic, durative situation types can occasionally give rise to plural ASNs as shown in (18) below: (18) a. cierpiećIPFV ‘suffer’ Franciszek wreszcie skrócił cierpienia Francis at last shorten.PST.3SG suffer.IPFV.NMLZ.ACC.PL

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tego nieszczęsnego konia. this wretched.GEN.SG horse.GEN.SG ‘At last Francis put an end to the suffering of this wretched horse.’ b. dążyćIPFV ‘strive’ Krebs popierał dążenia socjalistów Krebs support.PST.3SG strive.IPFV.NMLZ.ACC.PL socialist.GEN.PL do wyrwania się z powojennego marazmu. to break REFL from post-war marasmus ‘Krebs supported the aims of the socialists to break free from the postwar marasmus.’ In these contexts the plural could be replaced with the non-count cierpienie and dążenie. These nouns could be compared to depths and waters as opposed to depth and water. According to Acquaviva (2008) they both show mass semantics but the plural refers to manifold instantiation. Notably, the presence of the plural morphology is not to be equated with the ability to accept quantifiers and numerals *many waters, *three waters.14

3.4

Summary

On closer inspection it turns out that, by rights, verbs of all situation types can give rise to plural ASNs. In addition to perfective achievement verbs, also imperfective accomplishments, imperfective activities and states, as well as perfective semelfactive verbs may serve as bases for the derivation of plural ASNs. The alleged regularity is not confirmed by the data. The salience of conceptual boundaries is crucial for the ability to pluralize. It turns out that it is not the inherent telicity of the situation types that matters. It may be the case that being delimited temporally or otherwise opens up the possibility of being iterated and thus pluralized. Since it is impossible to predict which ASNs will give rise to plural forms, their ability to pluralize must be hedged about by additional lexical constraints.

|| 14 Since in these cases morphological plural marking has no effect on the syntactic properties, one might assume, as rightly pointed out by the anonymous reviewer, that displaying what seems to be a plural marker is not identical to projecting NumP. It could be that the “plural” is generated low (class, n, etc.) and unless it moves to Num it does not get interpreted as semantically plural. Consequently, plural nominals related to stative verbs would not constitute a counterexample to the generalization.

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As far as the haphazard application of the process is concerned it is also necessary to take into account the interaction of verbal nouns with deverbal nominalizations formed by means of conversion, i.e. without an overt nominalizer. Where plural argument supporting -nie/-cie nominals are unacceptable, their zero derived counterparts may frequently serve as suitable replacements. They are a puzzling class for two reasons. On the one hand, they could be derived directly from the root without containing aspectual information, and so their ability to pluralize would be uncontroversial. On the other hand, they show verb-like properties in that they can support verbal arguments.15 Consider some examples of argument supporting plural bare nouns: (19) a. rozbieraćIPFV – rozebraćPFV ‘partition’ *rozbierania – *rozebrania rozbiory Polski przez sąsiadów partition.NMLZ.NOM.PL Poland.GEN.SG by neighbours ‘the partitions of Poland by the neighbours’ b. próbowaćIPFV – spróbowaćPFV ‘try’ *próbowania – *spróbowania próby zmiany konstytucji przez większość try.NMLZ.NOM.PL change.GEN.SG constitution.GEN.SG by majority ‘attempts at changing the constitution by the majority’ c. budowaćIPFV – zbudowaćPFV ‘build’ *budowania – *zbudowania Bardzo intensywnie ruszyły kolejne budowy very intensely strat.PST.3PL subsequent build.NMLZ.NOM.PL domów jednorodzinnych i szeregówek. house.GEN.PL detached and terraced house.GEN.PL ‘There is a vigorous start to other building projects of detached and terraced houses.’

|| 15 In neo-transformational approaches zero derived nominals are consistently denied argument licensing potential and are dismissed as R-nominals. In lexicalist approaches, all types of nominal, regardless of their formal marker, can display the process–result ambiguity. According to Newmeyer (2009: 104), the fact that the majority of AS-nominals are morphologically complex is not the domain of I-language, but a historical accident. Furthermore, the existence of doublets and the non-occurrence of potential forms can be accounted for by making recourse to the operation of the mechanism of blocking (Aronoff 1976; Rainer 1988).

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4

Conclusion

Action nouns have traditionally been a testing ground for constructionist and lexicalist theories of morphology. Constructionist theories deny the need for an independent morphological component and argue that there is one computational system for combining morphemes and words. In this paper we set out to test the prediction that the presence of NumP and AspP in the nominal structure requires the [+telic] inner aspect of the VP, thus pointing only to achievement verbs (odkryć ‘dicover’) and verbs of directed motion (przyjść ‘come’) as capable of projecting NumP. ASNs related to these verbs show the properties of prototypical count nouns, i.e. they are endowed with the morphological plural, admit cardinal numerals and enumerative determiners in the syntax and denote a multiplicity of entities. However, which ones from within this category can undergo this process is unpredictable. Furthermore, the same properties can be observed in perfective nominals which are related to [-telic] semelfactive verbs, as shown in (20): (20) a. Zadali mu co najmniej dwa uderzenia give.PST.3PL him at least two hit.PFV.NMLZ.ACC.PL w głowę niebezpiecznym przedmiotem. in head.ACC.SG dangerous.INS.SG implement.INS.SG ‘They hit him at least twice in the head with a dangerous implement.’ b. Wzrasta prawdopodobieństwo powtórnego kopnięcia rise.PRS3SG probability another.GEN.SG kick.PFV.NMLZ.GEN.SG kolegi. colleague.GEN.SG ‘The probability of another kicking of a colleague is getting higher. / The probability that a colleague is going to be kicked one more time is rising.’ c. dwa machnięcia dźwignią two swing.PFV.NMLZ.NOM.PL lever.INS.SG ‘two swings of the lever’ d. Mężczyzna zginął od dziewięciu pchnięć man die.PST3SG from nine stab.PFV.NMLZ.GEN.PL noża w okolice szyi. knife.GEN.SG in area neck ‘The man died from nine stabs of the knife in the neck area.’ e. dwa klaśnięcia w dłonie z przodu two clap.PFV.NMLZ.NOM.PL in hands with front

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i dwa z tyłu za biodrami and two with behind hips ‘two claps of the hands in front and two behind the hips’ We have also observed that pluralization of ASNs based on imperfective accomplishments, activities and states is possible. By and large, however, ASNs are non-count nouns and as such cannot normally appear in a counting construction and their co-occurrence with a cardinal numeral is dependent on the presence of some unit of measurement which makes numerical quantification possible, as in e.g.: (21) a. *trzy łamania /złamania prawa three break.IPFV.NMLZ.NOM.PL /break.PFV.NMLZ.NOM.PL law.GEN.SG b. trzy przypadki łamania /złamania three incident.NOM.PL break.IPFV.NMLZ.GEN.SG /break.PFV.NMLZ.GEN.SG prawa law.GEN.SG ‘three incidents of law-infringement’ In each case it is not possible to justify the selection of particular members of a given subclass to express the number contrast: budynków przychodni (22) a. 81 podpaleń 81 set_fire.PFV.NMLZ.GEN.PL building.GEN.PL surgery.GEN.PL ginekologicznych gynecological.GEN.PL ‘81 burnings of the buildings (cases of setting fire to the buildings) of gynaecological surgeries’ b. Zdarzały się nawet przypadki podpalenia happen.PST3PL REFL even case.NOM.PL set_fire.PFV.NMLZ.GEN.SG działkowych domków. allotment.ADJ house.GEN.PL ‘There have even been cases of burning down of summer houses.’ The conclusion advanced in this paper is that the capacity of ASNs for pluralization should fall in the domain of the lexicon. This phenomenon continues to pose a challenge to construction-based approaches, since sufficient generalizations about the data are yet to be formulated. This, however, does not mean that

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it is impossible to discern tendencies and that such generalizations, in due course, will not be formulated. It is uncontroversial that achievements (culminations), which denote an instantaneous change of state and are [-durative, +telic], can give rise to countable ASNs. It is not obvious how these features are mapped onto [+bounded, -internal structure] in the corresponding nominal, i.e. we may not necessarily be dealing with a parallel one-to-one mapping. It is customary to assume that there is a parallel between telicity in the verb and boundedness in the nominal since the attainment of the inherent telos naturally delimits the situation. However, telicity should also be mapped onto [-i], i.e. transitions or [+telic] situations which imply the attainment of some goal, result or change of state. These are non-homogenous and therefore give rise to [-i] nominals characterized by heterogenous part-structure. The non-durative/episodic character of the situation contributes to atomic reference or boundedness in the nominal [+b], i.e. an instantaneous event is well-delimited, clearly individuated. The fact that verbs of other situation types can give rise to plural ASNs means that the nature of this mapping calls for further research and the capacity for pluralization cannot be reduced to the presence of the [+telic] specification on the verb. Another prominent class of verbs whose corresponding ASNs can pluralize are semelfactive verbs bearing the features [-durative, -telic], which means that the non-durative/episodic character of the situation may be just as important and that the features [+telic] and [-durative] need not be present in tandem. The fact that there are plural ASNs based on accomplishments, which are [+durative, +telic], seems to corroborate just that. The plural marking of ASNs related to states has been demonstrated not to have syntactic consequences and so can be disregarded. However, we are still left to account for the puzzling behavior of activities, whose features are the exact mirror image of achievements, i.e. [+durative, -telic]. How can their corresponding ASNs project NumberP? Furthermore, even in the identified categories the formation of the plural is not automatic – how is this possible? As long as we are unable to give satisfactory answers to these questions, we are better off assuming that the plurals of ASNs arise in “the privacy of our lexicons”.

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Alexiadou, Artemis and Monika Rathert (eds.) 2010. The syntax of nominalizations across languages and frameworks. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Alexiadou, Artemis, Gianina, Iordăchioaia and Elena Soare. 2010. Number/aspect interactions in the syntax of nominalizations: A distributed approach. Journal of Linguistics 46. 537– 574. Alexiadou, Artemis. 2001. Functional structure in nominals: Nominalization and ergativity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Alexiadou, Artemis. 2009. On the role of syntactic locality in morphological processes: The case of (Greek) nominals. In Anastasia Giannakidou and Monika Rathert (eds.), Quantification, definiteness and nominalization, 253–280. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Anderson, Mona. 1984. Prenominal genitive NPs. The Linguistic Review 3. 1–24. Aronoff, Mark. 1976. Word formation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Bach, Emmon. 1986. The algebra of events. Linguistics and Philosophy 9. 5–16. Bierwisch, Manfred. 1990/1991. Event nominalizations: Proposals and problems. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 40(1-2). 19–84. Bloch-Trojnar, Maria. 2012. The interaction of aspectuality and valency with countability and morphological marking in the process of verb to noun transposition. In Maria BlochTrojnar and Anna Bloch-Rozmej (eds.), Modules and interfaces, 47–79. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego. Bloch-Trojnar, Maria. 2013. The mechanics of transposition. A study of action nominalisations in English, Irish and Polish. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego. Bloch-Trojnar, Maria. 2015. Grammatical aspect and the lexical representation of Polish verbs. Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 51(4). 487–510. Borer, Hagit. 1993. Parallel Morphology. Ms, University of Massachusets. Borer, Hagit. 2003. Exo-skeletal vs. endo-skeletal explanations: Syntactic projections and the lexicon. In John Moore and Maria Polinsky (eds.), The nature of explanation in linguistic theory, 31–67. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Borer, Hagit. 2005. The normal course of events. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brinton, Laurel. 1995. The aktionsart of deverbal nouns in English. In Pier Marco Bertinetto, Valentina Bianchi, James Higginbotham and Mario Squartini (eds.), Temporal reference, aspect and actionality, vol.1, 27–42. Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier. Brinton, Laurel. 1998. Aspectuality and countability: A cross-categorial analogy. English Language and Linguistics 2. 37–63. Bunt, Harry C. 1985. Mass terms and model-theoretic semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cetnarowska, Bożena. 1993. The syntax, semantics and derivation of bare nominalisations in English. Katowice: Uniwersytet Śląski. Fábregas, Antonio, Rafael Marín and Louise McNally. 2012. From psych verbs to nouns. In Violeta Demonte and Louise McNally (eds.), Telicity, change, and state. A cross-categorial view of event structure, 162–184. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fassi-Fehri, Abdelkader. 2005. Verbal and nominal parallelisms (Documents & Reports 8). Rabat: Publications IERA. Filip, Hana. 1993. Aspect, situation types and nominal reference. Berkeley: University of California. Dissertation. Grimshaw, Jane. 1990. Argument structure. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.

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Harley, Heidi. 2009. The morphology of nominalizations and the syntax of vP. In Anastasia Giannakidou and Monika Rathert (eds.), Quantification, definiteness and nominalization, 321–343. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jackendoff, Ray. 1991. Parts and boundaries. Cognition 41. 9–45. Koonz-Garboden, Andrew. 2012. The Monotonicity Hypothesis. In Violeta Demonte and Louise McNally (eds.), Telicity, change, and state. A cross-categorial view of event structure, 139–161. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Krifka, Manfred. 1986. Nominalreferenz und Zeitkonstitution. Zur Semantik von Massentermen, Pluraltermen und Aspektklassen. Munich: University of Munich. Dissertation. [Published 1989, Munich: Fink.] Krifka, Manfred. 1992. Thematic relations as links between nominal reference and temporal constitution. In Ivan A. Sag and Anna Szabolcsi (eds.), Lexical matters, 29–53. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Langacker, Ronald. 1987. Nouns and verbs. Language 63(1). 53–94. Laskowski, Roman. 1999. Kategorie morfologiczne języka polskiego – charakterystyka funkcjonalna [Morphological categories of the Polish language – a functional characteristics]. In Renata Grzegorczykowa, Roman Laskowski and Henryk Wróbel (eds.), Gramatyka współczesnego języka polskiego. Morfologia [The grammar of contemporary Polish. Morphology], 151–224. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN. Lebeaux, David. 1986. The interpretation of derived nominals. In Anne M. Farley, Peter. T. Farley and Karl-Erik McCullogh (eds.), CLS papers from the General Session at the TwentySecond Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 231–247. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Malicka-Kleparska, Anna. 1988. Rules and lexicalisations. Selected English nominals. Lublin: Redakcja Wydawnictw KUL. Marantz, Alec. 2001. Words and things. Ms, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Melloni, Chiara. 2011. Event and result nominals. A morphosemantic approach. Bern: Peter Lang. Młynarczyk, Anna. 2004. Aspectual pairing in Polish. Utrecht: LOT. Moens, Marc and Mark Steedman. 1988. Temporal ontology and temporal reference. Computational Linguistics 14. 15–28. Mourelatos, Alexander. 1981. Events, processes, and states. In Philip J. Tadeschi and Annie Zaenen (eds.), Syntax and semantics 14: Tense and aspect, 191–212. New York: Academic Press. Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2009. Current challenges to the Lexicalist Hypothesis. An overview and a critique. In William. D. Lewis, Simin Karimi, Heidi Harley and Scott O. Farrar, Time and again. Theoretical perspectives on formal linguistics, 91–117. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Pelletier, Francis J. 1975. Non-singular reference: Some preliminaries. Philosophia 5. 451–465. Picallo, M. Carme. 2006. Some notes on grammatical gender and l-pronouns. In Klaus von Heusinger, Georg A. Kaiser and Elisabeth Stark (eds.), Specificity and the evolution/ emergence of nominal determination systems in Romance, 107–121. Konstanz: University of Konstanz. Przepiórkowski, Adam, Mirosław Bańko, Robert Górski and Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (eds.) 2012. Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego [The national corpus of the Polish language]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN. Pustejovsky, James. 1991. The syntax of event structure. Cognition 41. 47–81.

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Puzynina, Jadwiga. 1969. Nazwy czynności we współczesnym języku polskim [Action nouns in contemporary Polish]. Warszawa: PWN. Quirk, Randolf, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London & New York: Longman. Rainer, Franz. 1988. Towards a theory of blocking. The case of Italian and German quality nouns. In Geert Booij and Jaap van Marle (eds.), Yearbook of morphology 1988, 155–185. Dordrecht: Foris. Rijkhoff, Jan. 2002. The noun phrase. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Roodenburg, Jasper. 2010. Plurality from a cross-linguistic perspective: The existence of plural argument supporting nominalizations in French. Lingue e Linguaggio 1. 41–64. Rozwadowska, Bożena. 1997. Towards a unified theory of nominalizations. External and internal eventualities. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego. Schoorlemmer, Maaike. 1995. Participial passive and aspect in Russian. Utrecht: Utrecht University. Dissertation. Sleeman, Petra and Ana Maria Brito. 2010. Aspect and argument structure of deverbal nominalizations: A split vP analysis. In Artemis Alexiadou and Monika Rathert (eds.), The syntax of nominalizations across languages and frameworks, 199–217. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Smith, Carlota. 1997. The parameter of aspect. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Taylor, Barry. 1977. Tense and continuity. Linguistics and Philosophy 1. 199–220. Vendler, Zeno. 1967. Linguistics in philosophy. New York: Cornell University Press. Walińska de Hackbeil, Hanna. 1984. On two types of derived nominals. In David Testen, Veena Mishra and Joseph Drogo (eds.), Papers from the parasession on lexical semantics, 308– 332. Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society. Willim, Ewa. 2006. Event, individuation, and countability: A study with special reference to English and Polish. Kraków: Jagiellonian University Press. Wróbel, Henryk. 1999. Czasownik [The verb]. In Renata Grzegorczykowa, Roman Laskowski and Henryk Wróbel (eds.), Gramatyka współczesnego języka polskiego. Morfologia [The grammar of contemporary Polish. Morphology], 536–583. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN. Zubizarreta, Maria Luisa. 1987. Levels of representation in the lexicon and in the syntax. Dordrecht: Foris.

Ana Maria Brito

Event nominalizations in -da in European Portuguese: A syntactic approach 1

Introduction

The syntax and semantics of deverbal nominalizations have been the object of many studies, in particular since Grimshaw (1990), where the author relates argument structure to aspect. The study of how the event structure and the argument structure of a verb determine the meaning and form of deverbal nominalizations continues to be one of the major challenges as regards this topic. In this text I will examine the deverbal nominalization in -da in European Portuguese, concentrating on event nominals, due to space limitations. The main question to be discussed is whether it is the argument structure or the event structure of the verb root that determines the choice of the morpheme -da by a verb. Due to the fact that Portuguese, like other Romance languages, admits different suffixes being adjoined to the same verbal root, the first question must be related to a second one: what explains the fact that some roots select -ção, -mento or -da as nominalizing suffixes? A possible explanation would be to consider that these suffixes are “aspectual markers”, as argued for similar forms in French by Martin (2010) and for Portuguese by Rodrigues (2014). In this paper, while not rejecting the view that each nominal suffix has its own semantic features, we will explore the suggestion that -da is a special suffix that may combine with different types of verb roots due to its origin in the Past Participle, being formed by two distinct morphemes -d and -a and codifying two different bundles of semantic features. The text is organized in the following way: in section 2 I discuss the argument structure of the verb roots that give rise to nominals in -da; in section 3 the event structure of the same type of verbs and of the deverbal nominals in -da will be analyzed; and in section 4 a syntactic treatment in the framework of

|| This text is a modified version of Brito (2013, 2016). In its English version, it was presented at SLE, at the Aspect vs. verbal and nominal valency workshop, Leiden, 4-5 September 2015. I thank the audience at the workshop for comments and suggestions. This research has been funded by FEDER / POCTI U0022/2003.

DOI 10.1515/9781501505430-005

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Distributed Morphology will be presented, developing some proposals put forward by Bordelois (1995), Mondoñedo (2005), Fábregas (2010), and Resnik (2010) for Spanish. The conclusions are summarized in section 5.

2

Is it the argument structure of the verb that is crucial for the formation of nominals in -da?

In order to understand the types of verbs that may give rise to event nominals in -da, Bordelois (1993), for Spanish, proposed that only unaccusative verbs produce these nominals; an argument in favor of this would be the fact that a by phrase is forbidden, as in (1): (1)

*la llegada por Pedro1 ‘the arrival by Peter’

(2) la llegada de Pedro ‘the arrival of Peter, Peter’s arrival’ Bordelois recognizes that some transitive verbs allow nominals in -da, but they do not allow the expression of the agent (3)–(6), thus proposing that -da is related to ergativity: (3) *la mirada a las nubes por Pedro ‘the event of seeing the clouds by Peter’ (4) *la bebida de la leche por Juan ‘the event of drinking the milk by Juan’ (5) *la comida del pescado por Juan ‘the event of eating fish by John’ (6) *la vista de la ciudad por Juan ‘the event of seeing the city by John’

|| 1 When relevant the glosses will be presented; otherwise, only translations will be given.

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This proposal contrasts with the one for Spanish by Beniers (1977, 1998), who considers that this type of process may derive from transitive, pronominal and intransitive verbs. The same perspective is developed by Mondoñedo (2005), who emphasizes that a great variety of verbs give rise to this type of nominal, especially in Latin American Spanish. But of course there are restrictions on the choice of this suffix, in particular in languages where there is a certain “rivalry” between nominal suffixes, as in Romance languages.2 According to Fábregas (2010), the choice of different event nominal suffixes, such as -miento, -ción, -do/da has a syntactic and semantic explanation related much more to the argument structure of the verbs, more specifically a distinction between two types of internal arguments, than to the telicity/atelicity of the verb root, although the different type of suffix has aspect consequences, as we will see later on. Fábregas (2010: 71) defends the position that verbs of change of state “in which the change is measured with respect to a property of the internal argument”, that is, that select “incremental themes” such as pelar ‘to peel’, broncear ‘to bronze’, bordar ‘to sew’, barnizar ‘to varnish’, pintar ‘to paint’, have nominals in -da/-do in Spanish and not in -miento: (7) pelado/*pelamiento; bronceado/*bronceamento; bordado/*bordamiento “Incremental themes” are arguments of the verbs where “for every (relevant) proper part y of the Theme x, y stands in the relation ϴ denoted by the verb to some proper part e’ of e (…)” (cf. Martin 2010: 125). However, if according to Krifka’s (1998) conception, an “incremental theme” denotes an entity that gradually disappears or comes into existence as the event progresses and is related to verbs of creation and consumption (see (8a)), in Dowty (1991) the notion is related to verbs of motion and change of state, as in (8b):3 (8) a. Mary ate the sandwich. b. Jane mowed the lawn. In his text, Fábregas uses the notion “incremental theme” and “incrementality” as a looser notion than Krifka and one that is closer to Dowty, applying it in the || 2 As the text will confirm, the idea of “rivalry” between suffixes is only apparent, because, as Rodrigues (2014) clarifies, each affix has its meaning. 3 See also Bloch-Trojnar and Malicka-Kleparska (2015: 8).

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sense of “rhematic path objects” of Ramchand (2008: 34–35). For Ramchand, the event structure of a predicate is a hierarchical structure of functional aspectual categories, where each argument occupies a specifier or a complement position of the functional projections. In this model, there are two kinds of internal argument: rheme path objects and undergoers. A rhematic object / a rheme path object occupies the position of complement of the ProcessP and therefore is not the subject of any subevent; this is what happens with stative verbs and with the object of movement verbs, as in Karena jogged two miles; We walked the West Highland; Chris ran the Boston marathon; we danced the merengue; in these examples, the objects either measure the path or describe the path itself. On the contrary, undergoers are entities that experience a process but do not delimit the extension of that process; this is the case with the objects in John pushed the cart; Mary drove the car; Michael dried the cocoa beans; formally, undergoers occupy the position of specifiers of ProcessP (Ramchand 2008: 34– 35, 64–69; Fábregas 2010: 70). Using the distinction between rheme path objects and undergoers, Fábregas argues that in Spanish “verbs in which the change is measured with respect to a property of the internal argument, and therefore, select incremental themes”, such as pelar ‘to peel’, broncear ‘to bronze’, bordar ‘to sew’, have nominals in -do/-da, never -miento, as we have seen in (7): on the contrary, verbs of change of state that do have an “undergoer” as object, such as ocultar ‘to hide’, procesar ‘to process’, recibir ‘to receive’, someter ‘to submit’, silenciar ‘to silence’ have nominals in -miento and not in -do/-da (9) (Fábregas 2010: 71–72): (9) ocultamiento/*ocultado; procesamiento/*processado; recebimiento/*recebido; sometimiento/*sometido; silenciamiento/*silenciado This hypothesis makes interesting predictions for Spanish: degree achievements select undergoers as internal arguments, not paths, and therefore they give rise to nominals in -miento: enfriamiento ‘the event of cooling’, engrossamiento ‘the event of fattening’; psychological verbs that have an undergoer argument also produce nominals in -miento (sentimiento ‘the state of feeling’, reconocimiento ‘the state of reckoning’); direction movement verbs that denote the movement imparted to an object behave in the same way: desplazamiento ‘the event of displacing’, movimiento ‘the event of moving’, deslizamiento ‘the event of sliding’. On the contrary, verbs that denote inherent movement and that introduce a

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path, such as llegar ‘to arrive’, ir ‘to go’, vir ‘to come’, caer ‘to fall’, have nominals in -do/-da: llegada, ida, venida, caída (Fábregas 2010: 72–74).4 The author concludes that the choice of -do/-da and -miento is “sensitive to the argument structure of the verb they nominalize” (Fábregas 2010: 75). And if a verb has both components of undergoer and path regarding the selection of the internal argument – for example crecer ‘to grow’ – then we expect that it has two nominalizations; that is, we expect a certain “rivalry” between suffixes: the verb may form crecimiento ‘growth’, if we want to describe the fact that someone gets incrementally older or taller; and crecida ‘overflowing of a river’, when we want to form the nominalization related to the verb as an inherently directional one (Fábregas 2010: 75).5 Let us now consider the situation in Portuguese. Like Spanish, Portuguese also has many deverbal nominals in -do/-da.6 Unlike Spanish, however, -da is much more productive than -do as a deverbal event suffix, which shows that it is the feminine form that codifies the event reading, the masculine form essentially relating to the result/entity reading: bordado ‘embroidery’, vestido ‘dress’, legado ‘legacy’, partido ‘party’, among many others. There are, of course, some examples of masculine forms that may be event nouns in Portuguese, as in (10), where cuidado is used with the sense of ‘treatment’:

|| 4 The criticism by Rodrigues (2014) of this notion of incremental themes used by Fábregas (2010) is therefore not very fair, because the author uses it in a broad sense and very close to Ramchand’s notion of “rheme path object”. 5 A similar phenomenon occurs with recogimiento ‘calming down’ / recogida ‘collecting’, alzamiento ‘upraising’ / alzado ‘raising’. Compare (i) vs. (ii): El recogimiento de Juan tras el incidente (i) ‘The collecting of Juan after the incident’ (ii) La recogida de firmas (por parte de Juan) ‘The collecting of signatures (by Juan)’ The author also analyzes the nominalization in -ción in Spanish; we will make reference to -ção in Portuguese below (see again Fábregas 2010: 75–76). 6 A statistical analysis based on the use of nominals in -da in corpora or in dictionaries would be possible and necessary, in order to find out if it is possible to observe tendencies in the use of different nominal suffixes with the same verb root. A study of that type is beyond the scope of this paper. Here we only make reference to previous analyses and the descriptions of grammarians such as Said Ali (1964), Scher (2006), Vieira (2010) and mainly Rodrigues (2013) and (2014).

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(10) Assisti ao cuidado (manifestado) ao doente durante o período do seu internamento. ‘(I) witnessed the care/treatment (assigned) to the patient during his internment.’ Regarding the verb roots: an analysis conducted by Vieira (2010) for European Portuguese shows that many classes of verbs may give rise to nominals in -da: movement/displacement unaccusative verbs (chegar ‘to arrive’, entrar ‘to enter’, sair ‘to leave’); movement unergative verbs (caminhar ‘to walk’, correr ‘to run’); transitive verbs of different meanings (tomar ‘to take’, comer ‘to eat’, beber ‘to drink’, olhar ‘to see’, chamar ‘to call’, medir ‘to measure’, retirar ‘to leave’), and even a predicative verb estar ‘to stay’, may give rise to event nominals in -da. Because of this variety, they assume different aspect values, as in the examples (11)–(14):7 (11) A tomada da favela pela polícia numa semana foi surpreendente. ‘The taking of the favela by the police in a week was surprising.’ (12) A caminhada durante trinta minutos fez-me bem. ‘The walk during 30 minutes was good for me.’ (13) A entrada do exército às 10h foi uma decisão do presidente. ‘The entrance of the army at 10 o’clock was the president’s decision.’ (14) A estada do Presidente no Brasil em 2011 foi um sucesso. ‘The stay of the President in Brazil in 2011 was a success.’

|| 7 Rodrigues also claims that transitive bases (debulhar ‘to thresh’ > debulhada), unergative (chiar ‘to sizzle’ > chiada) and unaccusative ones (cair ‘to fall’ > caída) allow the derivation of nominals in -da, “expressing the identification of an eventive occurrence that is highlighted from the whole referent” (my translation) (Rodrigues 2013: 129). Vieira (2010) gives the following examples of (direct and indirect) transitive roots that can give rise to nominals in -da: olhar ‘to look’ > olhada, velar ‘to ensure’ > velada, chamar ‘to call’ > chamada, queimar ‘to burn’ > queimada, retirar ‘to withdraw’ > retirada, investir ‘to invest’ > investida, pincelar ‘to swab’ > pincelada. Comparing Spanish with Portuguese, we notice that this type of nominalization is even more productive in Spanish than in Portuguese: for instance, nadada ‘the swimming’, desaparecida ‘the disappearance’ are correct in Spanish, but ungrammatical in Portuguese.

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Let us verify whether Fábregas’ hypothesis according to which it is the nature of argument structure that determines the choice of this nominal suffix is on the right track. A transitive verb such as tomar ‘to take’, ‘to capture’ is a change of state verb in which “the change is measured with respect to a property of the internal argument” (Fábregas 2010: 71), combining with adverbials of time measure in “em”, with a specific internal argument (15), and with durative adverbials if the internal argument is a bare plural, as in (16): (15) A polícia tomou a favela numa semana. ‘The police took the “favela” in a week.’ (16) A polícia tomou favelas durante semanas. ‘The police took “favelas” during weeks.’ The verb and its nominalization combine well with adverbs/adjectives such as parcialmente ‘partially’, parcial ‘partial’, which indicates that both select incremental objects. (17) tomar a favela parcialmente / a parcial tomada da favela ‘to take partially the “favela” / the partial taking of the “favela”’ As for unergative verbs such as dormir ‘to sleep’, caminhar ‘to walk’, they are traditionally considered intransitive verbs and, at first sight, they do not obey any of the conditions referred to above for the choice of -da as the nominal suffix; however, one must note that they may select cognate objects (nominal and prepositional) (cf. Choupina 2013) and that these may also be considered incremental objects, where “the process is measured with respect to a property of the internal argument” (Fábregas 2010: 71), as the examples in (18) illustrate: (18) a. dormir um longo sono / um breve sono ‘to sleep a long / short sleep’8 b. caminhar por um caminho longo ‘to walk a long walk’

|| 8 Dormir uma dormida ‘to sleep a sleep’ is ungrammatical in Portuguese and only the semantic cognate object sono is possible (see Choupina 2013).

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Other verbs define an explicit path, as it is the case with verbs of inherent movement, as in (19): (19) a. chegar à cidade / a chegada à cidade ‘to arrive in the city’/ ‘the arrival in the city’ b. entrar no barco / a entrada no barco ‘to enter the boat’ / ‘the entrance into the boat’ c. partir para Paris / a partida para Paris ‘to leave for Paris’/ ‘the leaving for Paris’ Therefore Fábregas’ proposal, which combines the notions of “incremental objects” and “rheme thematic objects”, when applied to Portuguese seems to be on the right track. As for estar ‘to stay’, able to form estada or estadia ‘staying’ in Portuguese, this is a predicative verb, able to select a locative small clause, and is apparently not of the same nature as the other verbs. Some questions are justified: What is common to estar and chegar, entrar, but also tomar, investir? And what differentiates estar from ser in Portuguese and Spanish and why does this latter verb not justify a nominal in -da? It is important to remember that ser is a predicative verb that selects a small clause containing an individual predicate, as in A Maria é inteligente ‘Mary is intelligent’, while estar selects a stagelevel predicate, as in A Maria está grávida ‘Mary is pregnant’ or locative predicates, as in A Maria está em Lisboa ‘Mary is in Lisbon’. Starting from this, Brucart (2012), adopting a minimalist approach and using the distinction between interpretable and uninterpretable features, proposes that “estar is a copula that contains a terminal coincidence interpretable feature that prompts an abstract path interpretation”; “ser is the default copula that appears whenever there is no need to value an uninterpretable feature of terminal coincidence in the attributive relator” (Brucart 2012: 39–40). If we accept this idea, the idea that is common to chegar, entrar and estar is the (semantic) notion of path: with verbs of inherent movement (chegar ‘to arrive’, entrar ‘to enter’), the relevant notion is a concrete path; with estar, and accepting Brucart’s reasoning, the relevant notion is an abstract path, which is absent in ser, and that is why this verb does not give rise to a deverbal nominal in -da. Transitive verbs such as tomar ‘to take’, investor ‘to invest’, escrever ‘to write’ select an incremental object; some unergative verbs select a hidden or cognate object that may also be considered a rheme path object, using Ramchand’s terminology. To summarize: the type of argument structure is crucial for the derivation of deverbal nominals in -da in Spanish and in Portuguese. Nevertheless, the as-

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pectual dimension of these nominals and of the related verbs deserves a more detailed analysis. This is the goal of the next section.

3 3.1

Is it the event structure of the verb that is crucial for the formation of nominals in -da? Aspect values of nominals in -da: a first approach

It may be concluded from the above presentation that deverbal nominals in -da in general preserve the aspect value of the verb root and that this suffix is not specifically related to the telic/atelic or the bounded/unbounded (Jackendoff 1991) nature of the verb root. This is shown by the examples (11)–(14), here renumbered as (20)–(23): (20) A tomada da favela pela polícia numa semana foi surpreendente. ‘The taking of the favela by the police in a week was surprising.’ (21) A caminhada durante trinta minutos fez-me bem. ‘The walk during 30 minutes was good for me.’ (22) A entrada do exército às 10h foi uma decisão do presidente. ‘The entrance of the army at 10 o’clock was the president’s decision.’ (23) A estada do Presidente no Brasil em 2011 foi um sucesso. ‘The stay of the President in Brazil in 2011 was a success.’ The type of verb root and the linguistic context allows us to claim that in (20) we have the expression of an accomplishment,9 in (21) of a process, in (22) of a culmination and in (23) of a state.

|| 9 Moreover, with a deverbal nominal like tomada, derived from a transitive and in principle an accomplishment verb, tomar ‘to take’, other values may even be built from the context, mainly from the different form of the internal argument and from the correspondent adverbials, as illustrated by the following examples: (i) Assistimos à tomada de favelas por traficantes durante anos. ‘We assisted in the taking of “favelas” by traficants during years.’ (process)

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3.2

Combination with light verbs

It is important to note that nominals in -da may be combined with different light verbs, according to their aspect values. As Gonçalves et al. (2010) have shown, light verbs are not exactly parallel regarding the choice of the aspectual properties of the deverbal nominal with which they combine. The light verb fazer ‘lit. to do’, may “preserve the aspectual properties of the nominals”, as in (24), where caminhada ‘walk’ means a process, but it may also “change its properties”, as in (25), where caminhada means an accomplishment (Gonçalves et al. 2010: 457):10 (24) O João fez uma caminhada durante uma hora. ‘John made a walk during an hour.’

(process)

(25) O João fez uma caminhada em meia hora. ‘John made a walk in an hour.’

(accomplishment)

With the verb dar ‘lit. to give’, the combination is more restricted and this is why “it only combines with processes” (26), or “with accomplishments” (27) (Gonçalves et al. 2010: 458): (26) O João deu uma caminhada / uma corrida. John gave a walk / a running ‘John walked.’ (27) O João deu uma leitura ao artigo. John gave a reading of the paper ‘John read the paper.’

|| (ii) A tomada da favela trouxe paz à população. ‘The taking of the “favela” brought peace to the population.’ (result of the process/ culmination). 10 As several authors have argued, light verbs are one of the linguistic elements that contribute to telicity. This is why event deverbal nouns in this context denote a bounded portion of an activity and may be countable and pluralizable, as in O João fez duas caminhadas ‘John made two walks’ (cf. Rothstein 2004: 184; see also Bloch-Trojnar and Malicka-Kleparska 2015: 10). See also below.

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The verb ter ‘lit. to have’ is the most flexible one and that is why we find it frequently with nominals in -da, mainly with nominals derived from culmination verbs, the presence of a modifier being crucial, as in (28) (Gonçalves et al. 2010: 456, 460): (28) O atleta teve uma chegada triunfal. the athlete had an arriving triumphal ‘The athlete had a triumphal arriving.’ In Brazilian Portuguese (BP), examples such as dar uma lida ‘lit. to give a reading’ is grammatical, unlike in European Portuguese (EP): (29) dar uma lida (*EP; ok BP) to give a reading ‘to read’ The dominant meaning in (29) in BP is a quick and careless event, which, in EP, is much more related to the suffix -dela: dar uma olhadela ‘lit. to give a reading’ (‘to look quickly’), dar uma trincadela ‘lit. to give a bite’ (‘to bite’), dar uma piscadela ‘lit. to give a blink’ (‘to blink’) (cf. Cordeiro 2010; Rodrigues 2013: 130). The data presented above confirm that the formation of event deverbal nominals in -da is not highly influenced by the event structure of the verb root; such nominals may be combined with light verbs under certain restrictions; the suffix -da is semantically different from -dela, which is related to the meaning of a quick and careless event in EP; however, there are differences between EP and BP that are beyond the scope of this paper.

3.3

Rivalry between -da, -mento and -ção?

It is important to note that in Portuguese, as already seen for Spanish, although there are specific suffixes for event readings and for result/entity readings that are associated with different verbal roots,11 there are different nominal suffixes || 11 Rodrigues (2006) analyzes the different nominal suffixes in Portuguese and distinguishes those that are mainly related to the event reading (-agem, -aria, -ão, -ção, -mento, -dura, -nça, -nço, -ancia) and those that are mainly suffixes of individual/entity (-dor, -dora, -deiro, -deira, -douro, -doura, -tório, -ório, -ória/-tória, -nte, -vel, -al, -ão). As Brito and Oliveira (1997) and Rodrigues (2006, 2013, 2014) also show, there are suffixes that admit the two readings, as is the case with -ção.

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that can combine with the same verb root. Rodrigues (2006, 2014) gives many examples, among them (30) and (31): (30) From abalroar ‘to crash’: abalroamento, abalroada, abalroação, abalroadela (meaning, simplifying a lot, the event of crashing) (31) From descongelar ‘to thaw’: descongelamento, descongelada, descongelação, descongeladela (meaning, simplifying a lot, the event of thawing).12 Specifically, the suffixes -mento and -ção alternate in many Portuguese event nominals. Rodrigues (2006: 429–464) shows that -mento tendentially serves the expression of a temporally dispersed process, in principle more abstract, while -ção tendentially means a temporally homogeneous and unified process, normally punctual and more concrete. Some examples: from salvar ‘to save’, there is salvamento, the event of saving viewed mainly as the “process” and “not as the effect or the result”, as in salvação (normally with a religious dimension); from aflorar ‘to level’, ‘to flush’, there is afloramento, the concrete result of aflorar, as the consequence of a gradual and temporally dispersed event, while afloração means the event of aflorar in a definite way; from congelar ‘to freeze’, one can form congelamento and congelação, where -mento contributes to “the configuration of an event prolonged in time”, while -ção contributes to “the expression of the event in an absolute time interval” (my translation) (Rodrigues 2006: 442). A confirmation of this last difference is the behavior of the adjective gradual with the two nominals: note the ungrammaticality of *congelação gradual, versus the grammaticality of congelamento gradual, which is difficult to translate into English, due to the non-existence of such suffixes (Rodrigues 2006: 442).13 Similar phenomena occur in French, where -age, -ment and -ion may sometimes compete for the same verb root (Martin 2010). Consider some examples: from déchiffrer ‘to decipher’ we can derive déchiffrage and déciffrement; from siffler ‘to blow’, sifflage and sifflement; from isoler ‘to isolate’, isolement

|| 12 It is important to note that some of the examples given by Rodrigues (2014) of nominals in -da, such as descongelada, are acceptable only with light verbs (dar uma descongelada ‘lit. to give an unfreezing’) and especially in Brazilian Portuguese. 13 For these examples Rodrigues does not use the criterion of grammaticality, but the existence or nonexistence of these examples in real corpora (cf. Rodrigues 2006: 442).

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and isolation; from finir ‘to end’, finissement and finition; from casser ‘to break’, cassage and cassation; from fixer ‘to set’, fixage and fixation, among other examples. The main question is: are we facing a “rivalry” between affixes? Or have these affixes a specific meaning to the extent that they must be considered “aspectual markers”, using Martin’s (2010) terminology? Suppose that we adopt the notion of “event structure” from Grimshaw (1990), Pustejovsky (1991), Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995), Rodrigues (2014) or of “eventive chain” from Martin (2010) and explore the idea that a causative event may be described by the schema in (32), taken from Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995), where we can envisage the existence of three subevents: (32) [[x DO SOMETHING] CAUSE [y BECOME STATE] In (32) ‘DO SOMETHING is the event 1, CAUSE is the event 2 and BECOME STATE is the event 3. Rodrigues (2014), for Portuguese, proposes that when there are different suffixes in competition they are not rivals, but are semantically different and focus on a different part of the same causative eventive chain. In particular, “the suffix -ção will capture all three subevents at the same time”, “the suffix -mento will capture Subevent 2, without any mark respecting the way it occurs” and -da, as well as -dela “have the semantic features of [-slow, -careful, +Subevent 2].”14 Some comments are justified: first of all, the description (32) of the event structure used by Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995) is conceptually different from the one proposed by Ramchand (2008), where Event 1 is the cause or the initiation (InitP), Event 2 is the process (ProcessP) and Event 3 is the result (ResultP), as in Katherine broke the stick in pieces, where the three subevents are involved. If one defends the position that the different suffixes focalize the whole or only a subpart of the event structure, this difference should also be taken into account. As a matter of fact, the event suffix -ção is very often chosen by accomplishment verbs, which involve the three subevents (destruir ‘to destroy’ > destruição, construir ‘to build’ > construção, observar ‘to watch’ > observação); and the event suffix -mento is very often chosen by process verbs like

|| 14 In Rodrigues (2014), the claim is different from the one made by the same author in Rodrigues (2013), where there is no proposal about the features [-slow; -careful] for -da; on the contrary, as we have already seen above, the suffix -dela has in fact the features [-slow] and [-careful].

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desenvolver ‘to develop’ >desenvolvimento, envolver ‘to involve’ > envolvimento) which do not necessarily focus on what causes or originates them. See also the subtle differences in meaning suggested by Rodrigues for several deverbal nominals in -mento and -ção presented above.15 We can conclude that these suffixes act as “aspectual markers”, along the lines of Martin (2010: 136) for French and Rodrigues (2014) for Portuguese.16 But what about the nominal suffix -da? The examples in (20)–(23) clearly show that -da may be attached to different aspectual classes of verbs to form event nominals and, as a consequence, this suffix is not simply an aspectual marker; remember, among others, the examples of tomar > tomada, caminhar > caminhada, chegar > chegada, estar > estada. From this, we can therefore conclude that the suffix -da is not appended in order to focus on Subevent 2 in the event structure (32) as proposed by Rodrigues (2014); moreover, -da, in European Portuguese, is not necessarily related to the features [-slow, -careful]. An example such as (33) shows that with a deverbal nominalization formed from a transitive root like toma- all the phases of the accomplishment are involved, and not in a fast and careless way: (33) A lenta e difícil tomada da cidade pelo exército determinou o rumo da guerra. ‘The slow and difficult taking of the town by the army determined the course of the war.’ Also an example from CetemPúblico (par=ext20943-des-92a-2) shows that this nominal may be used in durative expressions: (34) O ministro falava durante a tomada de posse da comissão organizadora dos jogos (…) ‘The minister spoke during the swearing of the organizing committee of the games (…)’

|| 15 Rodrigues (2006: 453) also claims that falecimento, finamento and passamento, which can refer to death, have the feature [process]. 16 In Sleeman and Brito (2010b: 212–213), who argue for a split-vP analysis, a view of this kind has already been suggested: “(…) the final realization of nominalizations derive(s) from postsyntactic rules that give the adequate form to the nominals, specifically that give the final form of the nominal suffixes.” As a matter of fact, the nature of verbs that can choose -mento and -ção is very diverse and probably we can speak only of strong tendencies.

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All these data show, as Fábregas (2010) has proposed, for Spanish, that the suffix -da in Portuguese is not sensitive to the telic/atelic (or bounded/ unbounded) nature of the verb, but rather to the argument structure of the verb (cf. for Portuguese Brito 2013, 2016). Hence, -da is a peculiar suffix and its capacity to adjoin to such heterogeneous root bases must be explained.

4

Deverbal nominals in -da are related to the Past Participle – a syntactic approach to this derivational process

I will accept the view developed by Alexiadou (2001, 2004), and Alexiadou et al. (2011), according to which the morphological “history” of deverbal nominals is the result of the combination of an acategorial root with verbal functional categories (VP, vP, Asp) and with nominal functional categories (np, ClassP, NumP), when justified.17 According to this framework, a root moves to verbal categories and to nominal categories. The first verbal category is AspP, which codifies, at least, the telic or atelic (or bounded and unbounded) features, depending on the diversity of verb roots that may give rise to deverbal nominalizations.18 In order to explain the interaction between rheme path objects with some verb roots, already described in section 2, I will agree with Fábregas (2010: 84–96) that in the -da nominalization the feature telic or atelic in Aspect attracts the internal argument, contra Borer (2005), who claims that only a telic Aspect attracts the internal argument to the specifier position. But how to describe the specificity of nominals in -da in comparison to many other processes of deverbal nominalization?19 The classical analysis in || 17 Fábregas (2010) provides an explanation for the formation of deverbal nominals in Spanish that does not differ very much from that of Alexiadou, although he makes reference to Ramchand’s model. 18 Mandoñedo (2005), also defending the Past Participle origin of the event nouns in -da in Spanish, proposes the feature [+perfective]. However, two comments must be made: (i) there is diversity of verb roots regarding telicity; (ii) Past Participles are much more diversified than traditionally considered; see, among others, Sleeman (2011) for Dutch, French and English, and Duarte and Oliveira (2010), for Portuguese. 19 In morphological studies, there are at least three solutions to the deverbal nominal derivation (cf. Lacuesta and Gisbert (1999): (i) the suffix is -ada, without any relation to the past participle; (ii) the suffix is -do/-da, related to the past participle, being the thematic vowel -a or -i; (iii) there is a zero suffix. Beniers (1998), for Spanish, defends the idea that in post-verbal

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morphology is to consider that there is a -da suffix that is associated with a verb (Rodrigues 2013, 2014 for European Portuguese) or with a verbal root (Scher 2006 for Brazilian Portuguese);20 see also Resnik (2010) for Spanish (in a Distributed Morphology framework). In a different direction, however, Beniers (1977), Bordelois (1993), Mandoñedo (2005) and Fábregas (2010), for Spanish, propose that these deverbal nouns in -da are formed from the Past Participle.21 In Portuguese morphological studies the relation between the nominals in -da and the Past Participle is normally ignored. An exception is Said Ali (1964), who proposes a Past Participle (PP) origin for some Romance entity nouns like o bordado ‘the embroidery’, o legado ‘the legacy’, a bebida ‘the drink’ (examples from Portuguese) which suggests a gradual process of lexicalization of verbal forms (+V, -N) to pure nominal forms (-V, +N), using the traditional feature analysis of Chomsky (1970). In the present analysis, I will set aside entity nouns, such as those in (35a) and constructions with noun ellipsis, as in (35b), and concentrate on nominals in -da as event deverbal nouns. (35) a. a bebida ‘the drink’ b. a [-]N ferida foi levada para o hospital ‘the injuredfem one / person was taken to the hospital’ According to Mondoñedo (2005) and Fábregas (2010), in nominals in -da, there are two different morphemes: -d is the spell-out of the aspectual information of the participle and the feminine -a (in Spanish also the masculine form -o, as we have seen) is the spell-out of event features; the idea that event nominals are related to gender is presented in different ways by Picallo (1991), Bordelois (1993) and Alexiadou (2004).

|| derivation the suffix is -da, while in the post-nominal derivation the form is -ada (and its variants -ato, -ata). According to Rodrigues (2013) the suffix that allows the formation of deverbal nominals is -da and the forms -ada and -ida are due to the thematic vowel. For the analysis of denominal nominals see, among others, Cunha and Cintra (1984: 96), Rio-Torto (2013). Scher (2006) studies denominal nominals with the light verb dar ‘lit. to give’ in Brazilian Portuguese. 20 Scher (2006) claims that the suffix is -ada, mainly because the author analyzes many examples with a nominal origin, even if they have an intermediate verbal form: this is the case with cabeçada in dar uma cabeçada ‘to take a header’. These nominals have no Asp and the verbal head is empty; they are simple event nominals, countable and pluralizable. 21 Fábregas presents a morphological argument in favor of the preceding: when there are two forms of the PP, only the “irregular”, the short form, gives the event noun: a escrita ‘the writing = short form of the PP’ and not *a escrevida ‘the written’.

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But something more must be said about the features that Asp and n codify. In order to analyze deverbal nominals and their possible interpretations, Resnik (2010), inspired by Saab (2004) and Kornfeld (2009), argues, in the framework of Distributed Morphology, that there are two places in the structure for the feature [+/- bounded] or [+/- telic]. These places are Asp and n; this allows four possible combinations: (a) Asp [+b] n [+b]; (b) Asp [-b] n [+b]; (c) Asp [+b] n [-b]; (d) Asp [-b] n [-b]. Only the last two correspond to deverbal nominalizations because, although they may be derived from bounded and unbounded roots, they are in general equivalent to mass, uncountable nouns, non-pluralizable and not co-occurring with indefinites and demonstratives. As for result deverbal nominals, they are, like non-deverbal nouns, [+b] and they are countable and pluralizable (Resnik 2010: 413–14). Although I will accept the view that Asp and n may codify different values of the bounded/telic feature, two comments are necessary. The first one is that the semantic values of deverbal nominalizations are not reduced to event and result and more values may be found (Van Hout 1991; Brito, and Oliveira 1997; Sleeman and Brito 2010a,b, among others). The second comment is that, as we have seen in section 3, at least when combined with light verbs, deverbal nouns may co-occur with an indefinite article (dar uma corrida ‘to do a walk’), and may be pluralizable (dar três corridas ‘to do three runs’, fazer duas caminhadas ‘to do two walks’).22 Despite these two observations, I will develop Resnik’s reflection, reconciling it with the view that the deverbal nominal form -da is the result of the spellout of two different bundles of features: -d represents the Past Participle and a [+/- bounded] feature according to the root; -a represents feminine and the event reading, which means [-bounded]. In (37) I describe the “derivational” process of an event nominalization in -da derived from a transitive and agentive root (36), in principle an accomplishment root:23, 24

|| 22 According to Borer (2005) and Alexiadou (2009) deverbal nominals derived from atelic verbs are mass, while nominals derived from telic ones are capable of pluralizing. See, however, Brito and Oliveira (1997), Sleeman and Brito (2010a), and Bloch-Trojnar (this volume) for some cases where event nouns allow pluralization, even those that are derived from telic roots: (i) Os jornalistas assistiram a várias destruições de pontes. ‘Journalists witnessed several destructions of bridges.’ 23 Tense and aspect adverbials are projected as adjuncts to AspP in order to explain the compositionality of aspect interpretation. 24 According to Alexiadou, Iordǎchioia and Schäfer (2011: 33), in agreement with Borer (2005), the functional category ClassP “accommodates the inner aspect under a [+/- count] feature.

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(36) a tomada da cidade (pelo exército) ‘the taking of the town (by the army)’ (37)

In Alexiadou’s (2001) terms, the syntactic structure of a nominalization like this one would involve VoiceP in order to capture the by-phrase. In Sleeman and Brito’s (2010a) approach to deverbal nominalizations, there is no VoiceP and v varies in its agentive, non-agentive features. Note also that the DP/PP da cidade

|| Telic nominalizations, like count nouns, project [+count], which is the input for a further NumberP; atelic nominals, like mass nouns, project Class [-count], which blocks NumberP. While number gives information about the form (i.e., plural/singular marking), the [+/- count] specification indicates the semantic number: [-count] means semantic plurality; [+/-count] means semantic singularity (…)”. In this perspective, the authors propose that mixed categories do not justify either Asp or Num and propose only the feature [+/- count], dominating nP. Here, for the reasons already presented in the text, I propose the functional category NumP.

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moves to the specifier of AspP as described above and to the spec of nP in order to check its genitive case. The proposal was made for tomada ‘the taking’; with caminhada ‘the walk’ the relevant features would be [-bounded] in Asp and [-bounded] in n; with a nominal derived from an unaccusative root chegada ‘the arrival’ the features will be [+bounded] in Asp, [- bounded] in n.

5

Some conclusions

The analysis allows us to show that, as in Spanish, the formation of deverbal nominalization in -da in European Portuguese in general preserves the aspect value of the verb root and that this suffix is not specifically related to the telic/ atelic nature (bounded/ unbounded) of the verb root: transitive, unergative, unaccusative verbs and even a state predicative verb such as estar may give rise to this kind of nominal. According to Rodrigues (2014), this suffix is an aspectual marker because it focuses on one event of the event structure. However, if it relates to such different verb roots, the proposal that -da is an aspectual marker is not completely adequate. What is more important is the type of argument structure: verb roots that have “incremental themes” (Fábregas 2010) and “rheme path objects” in Ramchand’s (2008) terminology are the most favorable ones for this derivational process. As a means of capturing the heterogeneity of the verb roots in this type of event nominal formation, a syntactic treatment was proposed: the suffix -da seems to be related to the Past Participle, which suggests a gradual process of lexicalization. From this perspective, using the ideas of Mandoñedo (2005) and Fábregas (2010), I proposed a syntactic analysis for this type of derivation, in the Distributed Morphology model: the suffix -da would be the spell-out of two components: -d and -a. Exploring a proposal by Resnik (2010) I argued that the feature [+/- bounded] or [+/- telic] is accommodated in two places in the syntactic structure: in Asp and in n. In Asp it is [+/- bounded] according to the verbal root; in event deverbal nominalization n is [-bounded]. Although Spanish and Portuguese are very similar, we noticed some differences between the two grammars: while in Spanish the masculine -do is often related to event nominals, in Portuguese the masculine form is much more related to entity nouns and only the feminine form codifies the event reading.

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Cunha, Celso and L. F. Lindley Cintra. 1984. Nova gramática do Português contemporâneo [New grammar of Contemporary Portuguese]. Lisboa: João Sá da Costa Ed. Dowty, David. 1991. Thematic proto-roles and argument selection. Language 67. 547–619. Duarte, Inês and Fátima Oliveira. 2010. Particípios resultativos [Result participles]. In Ana Maria Brito, Fátima Silva, João Veloso and Alexandra Fiéis (eds.), Textos selecionados. XXV Encontro Nacional da APL, 397–408. Porto: Associação Portuguesa de Linguística. Fábregas, Antonio. 2010. A syntactic account of affix rivalry in Spanish. In Artemis Alexiadou and Monika Rathert (eds.), The syntax of nominalizations across languages and frameworks, 67–91. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Gonçalves, Anabela, Luís Filipe Cunha, Matilde Miguel, Purificação Silvano and Fátima Silva. 2010. Propriedades predicativas dos verbos leves: estrutura argumental e eventiva [Predicative properties of light verbs: argument and event structure]. In Ana Maria Brito, Fátima Silva, João Veloso and Alexandra Fiéis (eds.), Textos selecionados. XXV Encontro Nacional da APL, 449–464. Porto: Associação Portuguesa de Linguística. Grimshaw, Jane. 1990. Argument structure. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Jackendoff, Ray. 1991. Parts and boundaries. Cognition 41. 9–45. Kornfeld, Laura. 2009. Adjetivos derivados y cuantificación: la herencia de rasgos aspectuales [Derived adjectives and quantification: aspect features inheritance], ms. Krifka, Manfred. 1998. The origins of telicity. In Susan Rothstein (ed.), Events and grammar, 197–235. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Lacuesta, Ramón Santiago and Eugenio Bustos Gisbert. 1999. La derivación nominal. In Ignacio Bosque and Violeta Demonte (eds.), Gramática descriptiva de la lengua Española, vol. 3, 4505–4594. Madrid: Espasa. Levin, Beth and Malka Rappaport Hovav. 1995. Unaccusativity. At the syntax-lexical semantics interface. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Martin, Fabienne. 2010. The semantics of eventive suffixes in French. In Artemis Alexiadou and Monika Rathert (eds.), The semantics of nominalizations across languages and frameworks, 109–139. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Mondoñedo, Aysa C. 2005. Nominal participles, a case of categorical alternance: Eventive nominalizations in -da. ASJU 39(2). 161–174, available at http://www.ehu.es/ojs/ index.php/asju Picallo, M. Carme. 1991. Nominals and nominalizations in Catalan. Probus 3. 279–316. Pustejovsky, James. 1991. The syntax of event structure. Cognition 41. 47–81. Ramchand, Gillian. 2008. Verb meaning and the lexicon: A first phase syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Resnik, Gabriela. 2010. Derivación e interacción de rasgos: la delimitación en nombres y verbos derivados en español. In Alicia Avellana (ed.), Actas del V Encuentro de Gramática Generativa, 405–421. Nenquén: EDUCO. CDRom. Rio-Torto, Graça. 2013. Nomes denominais [Denominal nouns]. In Graça Rio-Torto (ed.), Gramática derivacional do Português [Derivational grammar of Portuguese], 95–112. Coimbra: Editora da Universidade de Coimbra. Rodrigues, Alexandra. 2006. Formação de substantivos deverbais sufixados em Português [Formation of suffixal deverbal nouns in Portuguese]. Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra. Dissertation.

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Rodrigues, Alexandra. 2013. Nomes deverbais [Deverbal nominals]. In Graça Rio-Torto (ed.), Gramática derivacional do Português [Derivational grammar of Portuguese], 114–161. Coimbra: Editora da Universidade de Coimbra. Rodrigues, Alexandra. 2014. Causative eventive chains and selection of affixes in Portuguese nominalisations. Lingue e Linguaggio 13(1). 159–184. Rothstein, Susan. 2004. Structuring events. A study in the semantics of lexical aspect. Oxford: Blackwell. Saab, Andrés. 2004. El dominio de la elipsis nominal en español: identidad estricta e inserción tardía. Nenquén: Universidad Nacional del Comahue. MA thesis. Said Ali, Manuel. 1964. Gramática histórica da língua portuguesa [Historical grammar of the Portuguese language]. São Paulo: Melhoramentos. Scher, Ana Paula. 2006. Nominalizações em -ada em construções com o verbo leve dar em Português Brasileiro [Nominals in -ada in light verb constructions with dar in Brazilian Portuguese]. Letras de Hoje 41(1). 29–48. Sleeman, Petra and Ana Maria Brito. 2010a. Nominalization, event, aspect, and argument structure: A syntactic approach. In Maia Duguine, Susana Huidobro and Nerea Madariaga (eds.), Argument structure and syntactic relations, 113–129. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Sleeman, Petra and Ana Maria Brito. 2010b. Aspect and argument structure of deverbal nominalizations: A split vP analysis. In Artemis Alexiadou and Monika Rathert (eds.), The syntax of nominalizations across languages and frameworks, 199–217. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Sleeman, Petra. 2011. Verbal and adjectival participles: Internal structure and position. Lingua 121(10). 1569–1587. Van Hout, Angelika. 1991. Deverbal nominalization, object versus event denoting nominals: Implications for argument and event structure. Linguistics in the Netherlands 8. 71–80. Vieira, Ilda. 2010. Nominalizações em -da: Uma aproximação [Nominals in -da: an approach]. eLingUp 2(1). 58–70.

Bożena Cetnarowska

Group adjectives, argument structure and aspectual characteristics of derived nominals in Polish and English 1

Introduction

Relational adjectives (RAs), which can be paraphrased as “pertaining to N, relating to N” (e.g. electrical, ambassadorial, dictatorial) have received a lot of attention cross-linguistically, since they show a mixture of adjectival and nominal properties (see, among others, Bosque and Picallo 1996; Alexiadou 2001, McNally, and Boleda 2004; Fábregas 2007; Marchis 2010). It has been argued that relational adjectives have the canonical denotation of a noun (Nikolaeva and Spencer 2013), in spite of showing inflectional properties of adjectives. Syntactic, morphological and semantic differences between relational and qualitative adjectives have been pointed out (see, for instance, Levi 1976 for English, Fábregas 2007 for Spanish, Marchis 2010 for Romanian, Cetnarowska 2015 for Polish). Such differences are exemplified in (1) and (2) below for English. Relational adjectives, such as electrical in (1), are not gradable and do not occur with degree expressions. They are generally infelicitous in the predicative position. Furthermore, they do not act as derivational bases for abstract nominalizations (terminating in -ness or -ity in English). Qualitative adjectives can be gradable, are felicitous in the predicative position and can derive abstract nouns, as is shown in (2) for the adjective lazy. (1)

a. b. c. d.

(2) a. b. c. d.

*a more electrical engineer *John was an exceptionally electrical engineer. *This engineer was electrical. *the electricalness of the engineer laziest engineers John was an exceptionally lazy engineer. This engineer was lazy. the laziness of those engineers

DOI 10.1515/9781501505430-006

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It needs to be added that the same form may correspond both to the qualitative and the relational usage. This is exemplified by the adjectives dictatorial in (3) and princely in (4). The adjective dictatorial is used as a relational adjective in (3a). It calls for the general paraphrase “pertaining to a dictator”, which is made more specific in a given context. In the noun phrase dictatorial regimes in Africa, the relational adjective dictatorial means “ruled by dictator(s)”. In (3b) the same form is employed as a gradable qualitative adjective which denotes a property typical of dictators, namely the propensity to control everything and to impose their will on other people. The relational adjective princely in (4a) can be paraphrased as “relating to a prince” (i.e. “made by a prince”). The qualitative adjective princely in (4b) exhibits the reading “befitting a prince, i.e. lavish”. (3) a. They sent arms to dictatorial regimes in Africa. b. Her father was very dictatorial.

(RA) (QA)

(4) a. Princely visit. In June Princess Diana took Chicago by storm, as huge crowds turned out to see her during her three day visit. (http://www.hektoeninternational.org/documents/bmj199668 princelyvisit.pdf) b. You already earn a princely sum teaching Alchemy or whatever it is at UCLA. (COCA)

(RA)

(QA)

Both dictatorial and princely belong to so-called “group adjectives”, which form a subgroup of relational adjectives and which will receive particular attention in this paper. Group adjectives, as exemplified further for English in (5), are derived from (or related to) nouns denoting countries, regions, professions and titles. They appear to pick out a group with a defining characteristic (Grimshaw 1990). They are regarded as “referential adjectives” by Giorgi and Longobardi (1991). (5) ambassadorial, gladiatorial, managerial, papal, priestly, professorial, presidential, Russian, senatorial, Spanish The term “Ethnic Adjectives” is employed by Alexiadou and Stavrou (2011) as a label for group adjectives derived from place names, e.g. Greek, European, Silesian. Ethnic adjectives and other group adjectives behave similarly to genitival noun phrases and they function as (or like) arguments, as indicated in (6a) and (7a). Albanian and presidential in (6a) and (7a) occur with head nouns which

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can be treated as predicates assigning theta-roles to their complements and modifiers. Therefore, they can be referred to as “thematic adjectives”1 (Bosque and Picallo 1996). In contrast, a non-thematic (i.e. a classificatory) adjective, e.g. Albanian in (6b) or presidential in (7b), “does not absorb a theta-role but it introduces a domain in relation to which the object denoted by the head noun is classified” (Bosque and Picallo 1996: 352). (6) a. Albanian victory b. Albanian shoes

(thematic RA) (non-thematic RA)

(7) a. Presidential visit b. presidential plane

(thematic RA) (non-thematic RA)

The discussion in the present paper will focus on group adjectives occurring as thematic adjectives with event-denoting derived nominals.2 As will be shown in section 2, syntacticians disagree on whether thematic adjectives are true arguments, modifiers or argument-like adjuncts. Moreover, as indicated in section 3, while some researchers assume that group adjectives are possible only with referential nominals, others allow for the occurrence of such adjectives with nominals denoting complex events. The hypothesis that thematic group adjectives can occur with argument-taking nominals will be defended here. Supporting evidence will be provided from English (in section 4) as well as from Polish (in sections 5-6). The occurrence of selected group adjectives with derived nominals will be examined on the basis of data coming from online corpora and Google searches, as well as on the basis of my own examples. An additional issue discussed in this paper (in particular, in section 7, concerning Polish ver-

|| 1 Bosque and Picallo (1996: 354) assume that thematic adjectives absorb thematic roles corresponding to external or internal arguments of nouns they modify. 2 Derived nominals can be defined as “nominal structures derived from other syntactic categories by means of derivational affixes” (Rozwadowska 2005: 24). The expression “derived nominal” is often employed as a synonym of “deverbal noun”, as in Grimshaw (1990: 49), where the noun examination is regarded as ambiguous between the complex event nominal and the result nominal. However, especially when used by proponents of syntactic approaches to nominalizations, the term “derived nominal” can refer to a noun phrase headed by a deverbal noun. The phrase the enemy’s destruction of the city is given as an example of a derived nominal by Rozwadowska (2005: 25, her example (1a)). Borer (2014: 72) regards collection as the head of the argument-supporting nominal the collection of multiple samples in order to document the spreading of mushrooms.

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bal nouns) will be the relatedness between the aspectual characterization of nominals and the felicity of thematic adjectives.

2

Thematic adjectives as modifiers, adjuncts or arguments

In postulating that thematic adjectives (in Spanish) absorb theta-roles assigned by heads of event or result nominals, Bosque and Picallo (1996) take a similar position to Levi (1976), Kayne (1984), and Giorgi and Longobardi (1991). The above-mentioned researchers show that thematic adjectives cannot co-occur with complements of head nouns which appear to saturate the same argument position. (8) a. *the Italian invasion of Ethiopia by Italian soldiers b. *(una) producción sedera de camisas ‘a production silky of shirts’ (Spanish, example (14a) in Bosque and Picallo 1996: 354) Bosque and Picallo (1996) assume that thematic adjectives are arguments, while classificatory adjectives are adjuncts. A slightly different position is taken by Grimshaw (1990), who treats thematic adjectives, such as Italian in the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, as so-called “argument-adjuncts”, which are licensed by the argument-structure of predicates but which are optional and do not satisfy argument positions. Classificatory adjectives, e.g. Italian in Italian cars, are regarded by Grimshaw (1990) as modifiers. A markedly different opinion is expressed by McNally and Boleda (2004) and Arsenijević et al. (2014). They argue that adjectives, in contrast to nouns, cannot be referential and cannot express arguments. Consequently, relational adjectives are assumed to have the status of modifiers and to denote descriptions of kinds of individuals. The argument-saturating effect of RAs is perceived to be a contextual effect, which results from the interaction between the semantics of the adjective and that of the head noun (McNally and Boleda 2004; Arsenijević et al. 2014). Relational adjectives frequently lack identificational reference and do not refer to specific entities, as can be shown for the adjectives gladiatorial, mana-

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gerial, senatorial and presidential in (9). Gladiatorial contests, for instance, are contests between some indefinite gladiators. (9) a. the site of gladiatorial contests in the second and third centuries A.D. (COCA) b. a pie chart displayed at the next managerial meeting (COCA) c. Gorham’s suggestion sparked a renewed debate among the now-familiar advocates of senatorial and presidential control (COCA) However, it cannot be argued that the lack of referentiality always makes group adjectives ill-suited for the status of arguments. At least the group adjectives in (10) can be interpreted as pointing to some specific entities, i.e. a specific pope or a particular president. (10) a. Papal arrival: U.S. Marines salute Pope John Paul II as he arrives in Queens. (COCA) b. The papal call for a new approach to global governance has been repeated by others. (COCA) c. the Presidential change of heart on taxes (COCA) Furthermore, it can be argued for Polish that group adjectives, such as prezydencki ‘presidential’, can (marginally) act as antecedents for the reflexive possessive swój ‘self’s’, as shown in (11) (see Cetnarowska 2015 for more discussion).3 (11) niedawne prezydenckiej problemy recent presidential problems.NOM ze swoimij podwładnymi with self’s subordinates.INS ‘recent presidential problems with his/her subordinates’

|| 3 The anonymous reviewer points out that relational adjectives in Norwegian cannot be coreferential with the reflexive pronoun sine ‘his-REFL’ but can co-occur with sine egne ‘his own’. Polish relational adjectives are felicitous with the adjective własny ‘own’, e.g. prezydenckie problemy z własnym sztabem ‘presidential problems with (his) own staff’.

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3

Referential and argument-supporting nominals

A distinction which is particularly important for the discussion in the sections to follow is the difference between referential nominals (R-nominals) and argument-supporting nominals (ASNs). It is employed by, among others, Alexiadou and Stavrou (2011) and Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia, and Soare (2010), as a continuation of the split between result nominals and complex event nominals proposed by Grimshaw (1990). So-called complex event nominals (i.e. argumentsupporting nominals) contain both the argument structure as well as the event structure, according to Grimshaw (1990). In syntactic approaches to nominalizations (as adopted by, among others, Alexiadou 2001; Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia, and Soare 2010; Borer 2005; Sleeman and Brito 2010), argument-taking nominals must have verbs in their derivational history. In other words, complex event nominals must contain verbal projections. Consequently, they show a number of verb-like properties. Apart from exhibiting their verb-like ability to take arguments (in particular, the ability to take internal arguments), they can be accompanied by aspectual modifiers (e.g. constant, frequent), Aktionsart modifiers (i.e. temporal adverbials) (such as for a week, in a week), agentoriented modifiers (e.g. deliberate) and VP-adverbs (such as immediately, promptly). (12) a. The examination of the unconscious patient in 15 minutes would be impossible. b. The arrival of the trains promptly at the station (Alexiadou and Grimshaw 2008, example (15a)) c. Even in India, the constant refusal to criminalize marital rape is indicative of how we view married women as property, exclusively owned by their husbands to be treated and mistreated at their fancies.4 Argument-supporting nominals are regarded as uncountable5 by Grimshaw (1990). In contrast, referential nominals can occur in the plural. They consist of two types of nominals: result nominals and simple event nominals. Result nom-

|| 4 The source for example (12c) is http://www.fairobserver.com/region/africa/the-kenyanmarriage-bill-is-patriarchy-the-new-democracy-83729/#sthash.tXelBFNU.dpuf 5 A different view is expressed by Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia, and Soare (2010). See also BlochTrojnar (this volume).

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inals are object-denoting, e.g. assignment in (13). Simple event nominals, such as race in (14), can follow the predicate last or take x time, yet they are said to take no arguments.6 Instead, they occur with optional complements. (13) a. The assignments were long. b. *The assignments of the problems were long. (14) a. The examination took a long time. (from Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia, and Soare 2010: 539, example (1a)) b. The race (through the desert) will last two weeks. Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia, and Soare (2010) assume that both complex event nominals and referential nominals are derived in the syntactic component but they differ in the amount and type of functional projections dominated by the node DP. In complex event nominals DP dominates nominal functional projections (such as, among others, nP, ClassifierP, or a Number Phrase)7 which, in turn, dominate verbal functional projections, such as AspectP and/or VP. In referential nominals the DP dominates various other nominal projections but no verbal functional projections. Alexiadou and Stavrou (2011) postulate that thematic adjectives8 have an argument-like flavor but they cannot occur with argument-supporting nominals. In other words, derived nominals accompanied by thematic adjectives are analyzed as either result nominals or simple event nominals. The evidence they provide in support of their observation is the lack of thematic adjectives with English gerundive nominals (i.e. verbal gerunds), e.g. *the Italian criticizing Albania. It can be argued, however, that gerundive nominals are more “verbal” than other complex event nominals and lack (some) nominal projections in their syntactic representations. This would account for their incompatibility

|| 6 According to Grimshaw (1990), simple event nominals denote events but have no internal aspectual analysis. Due to the lack of event structure, they lack argument structure. Differences between complex event nominals, simple event nominals and result nominals are discussed by Alexiadou, Haegeman, and Stavrou (2007: 495–307). 7 Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia, and Soare (2010) demonstrate that some nominal projections are missing in various types of complex event nominals, depending on their mixture of nominal and verbal characteristics. 8 Alexiadou and Stavrou (2011) make this claim with reference to a subgroup of thematic adjectives, namely ethnic adjectives in Greek.

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with adjectival modifiers, as in *their unexpected attacking Albania and *the Italian invading Ethiopia.9 When discussing the “degree of nouniness” of derived nominals, one can take recourse to the work by Sleeman and Brito (2010), who point out that nominalization is a gradual process. They recognize two types of process nominals and regard them as two types of complex event nominals (CENs). The “more verbal” CENs, which they refer to as “Stage 1” CENs, take two arguments: the obligatory of-phrase, which represents the internal argument, and the agentive by-phrase. This follows, according to Sleeman and Brito (2010), from the presence of vP with the feature “agentive”. In “more nouny” (i.e. “Stage 2”) CENs the vP has no agentivity feature. When the agent-like participant is present, it is expressed by a genitive. I will propose that derived nominals accompanied by thematic adjectives can be regarded as complex event nominals (presumably as “Stage 2” CENs), even though they exhibit more “nouny” behavior and contain more nominal functional layers than gerundive nominals. In section 4 I will provide examples of such nominals from English, focusing on those which contain one of the group adjectives mentioned in section 1.

4

English group adjectives with argumentsupporting nominals

In order to find examples of English group adjectives occurring within complex event nominals, I scrutinized noun phrases with the English denominal adjectives listed in (15), as attested in the 450-million-word Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). (15) ambassadorial, dictatorial, gladiatorial, papal, presidential It must be admitted that the adjectives in question rarely occur in the COCA as thematic adjectives. If we were to adopt the view of McNally and Boleda (2004) that all relational adjectives are modifiers, we would be able to account for the syntactic status and the semantic interpretation of the overwhelming majority of || 9 Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia, and Soare (2010) postulate that English verbal gerunds include verbal structure embedded directly under the node DP, with no intermediate nominal functional projections present.

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the occurrences of such adjectives as gladiatorial, dictatorial and ambassadorial in the COCA corpus. In the case of the lexical item ambassadorial, there are 73 occurrences in the corpus, only nine of them being potentially thematic adjectives. The remaining ones are either examples of classificatory adjectives accompanying object-denoting nominals (as in (16)) or instances of qualifying adjectives, as in (17). (16) a. ambassadorial residence b. ambassadorial jobs (17) the persuasive, ambassadorial Marsalis at the helm (COCA) The attributive adjective ambassadorial is theta-related when it is followed by a name of a simple event, as in (18), or by a result noun, as in (19). (18) a. an ambassadorial tour (COCA) b. U.S.-China ambassadorial talks had been under way for more than four months at Geneva (COCA) (19) a. ambassadorial gifts from different periods (COCA) b. some past ambassadorial nominees (COCA) Group adjectives may exhibit ambiguity between thematic and classificatory usage, as is observed for Spanish adjectives by Bosque and Picallo (1996). The interpretation of the English adjective ambassadorial as thematic or classificatory in the phrase ambassadorial agreement depends on the further syntactic or situational context.10 (20) ambassadorial agreement i. reached by ambassadors ii. concerning ambassadors

(thematic RA) (classificatory RA)

The adjectives ambassadorial, gladiatorial and dictatorial are not attested in the COCA in complex event nominals. And yet, examples can be found – in the

|| 10 The single occurrence of the phrase ambassadorial agreement in COCA contains the classificatory usage of the adjective. The need for the interpretation “concerning ambassadors” is indicated by the sentence which appears later in the COCA excerpt, i.e. “(…) the three groups in Bosnia have agreed to distribute the ambassadorships overseas”.

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COCA corpus – of other group adjectives, such as papal and presidential, premodifying event nouns followed by of-phrases functioning as their internal arguments. Consequently, the derived nominals in (21) and (22) can, arguably, be regarded as argument-supporting ones, even though the nominals in question do not contain other indicators of verb-like internal syntax (such as adverbs or Aktionsart modifiers). (21) a. an oral compromise was reached at Nicomedia in 711, which led to the papal approval of the Trullan Council (COCA) b. The present system of papal appointment of bishops, which violates ancient church teachings, must go. (COCA) c. It is evident that Catholic teaching on indissolubility has been adapted to permit papal dissolutions of any marriage that is not sacramental (COCA) (22) a. They resented the Parliament’s intrusion, but they also had some illusions as to papal support of their cause. (COCA) b. to block presidential control of the armed forces (COCA) c. the Presidential change of heart on taxes as seen by two of Congress’s top budgetmakers (COCA) While the head nouns in the nominal constructions in (21) contain overt nominalizing suffixes, e.g. -al in approval in (21a), the event nominals in (22) are headed by zero-derived deverbal nouns, i.e. control, support, change. Grimshaw (1990) and Alexiadou and Grimshaw (2008) assume that nominals which lack overt affixes cannot be argument-supporting ones. If they denote events, they are treated by Grimshaw (1990) as names of simple events. However, the position taken by Grimshaw (1990) and Alexiadou and Grimshaw (2004) has been rejected (or modified significantly) by researchers adopting other theoretical frameworks. Newmeyer (2009) and Bloch-Trojnar (2011, 2013), among others, argue that nominal constructions headed by zero-derived nouns in English are felicitous with modifiers characteristic of complex event nominals, as indicated in (23). (23) a. The frequent release of the prisoners by the governor (Bloch-Trojnar 2011: 67) b. arrangements for the use of English ports and airfields by NATO forces (Cetnarowska 1993: 74)

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Even researchers who adopt the framework of Distributed Morphology, including Harley (2009), admit that (at least some)11 zero-derived nouns can be heads of argument-supporting nominals. The zero-derived event nouns in (22a) and (22b) are uncountable (as manifested by the lack of any preceding article) since they denote activities, i.e. support and control. In contrast, in (21c) the head noun carries the plural marker, i.e. dissolutions, which may raise doubts over the complex event status of the derived nominal (see Grimshaw 1990). However, in the more recent work by Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia, and Soare (2010) it is pointed out that the ability to pluralize does not necessarily indicate that the nominal is a referential one. Instead, argument-supporting nominals can occur in the plural if they denote bounded events. Events can be bounded by virtue of showing telicity (telic Aktionsart) or by showing perfective grammatical (outer) aspect. The verb dissolve denotes a telic event, i.e. a process involving a natural end-point, hence its nominalization is predicted to be countable.12 The sections to follow will deal with properties of Polish relational adjectives and derived nominals which contain them.

5

Polish group adjectives

As is shown in (24), relational adjectives in Polish are derived by various suffixes, including -owy, -ny, -any, -alny, -ski/-cki, and the zero suffix (i.e. the paradigmatic formative) -ø (see Szymanek 2010 for more examples). (24) a. b. c. d. e.

laserowy ‘pertaining to laser’ szkolny ‘pertaining to school’ siostrzany ‘sisterly’ ministerialny ‘ministerial’ bokserski ‘pertaining to a boxer or boxers’

(-owy) (-ny) (-any) (-alny) (-ski)

|| 11 Harley (2009) suggests that zero-derived nominals derived from French/Latinate roots allow complex event interpretation. Bloch-Trojnar (2011, 2013) argues that zero-derived nominals based on native roots can also be argument-supporting, e.g. a kick of the football (see also Wierzbicka 1982 and Cetnarowska 1993). 12 Further examples of event nominals which are countable and telic include presidential resignations, gladiatorial executions, managerial sackings. See Willim (2006), especially Chapters 2.4.-2.6., for discussion of event typology, aspectual classes of verbal predicates in Polish and English, and the relationship between telicity and countability of events.

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f. studencki ‘pertaining to a student or students’ (-cki) g. górniczy ‘pertaining to a miner or miners’ (-ø) Some of the relational adjectives in (24) can be regarded as group adjectives (e.g. bokserski ‘pertaining to boxers’, studencki ‘pertaining to students’, górniczy ‘pertaining to miners’). In many Slavonic languages (including Russian, Czech and Slovak, see Corbett 1987), relational group adjectives can be juxtaposed with possessive adjectives, which can be regularly derived by means of the -inor -ov- suffix, attached to Christian names, titles or kinship terms. However, the formation of denominal possessive adjectives is no longer productive in Polish. Possessive adjectives are avoided in Polish and are regarded as outdated or dialectal forms, e.g. ?bratowy ‘relating to the brother’, ?ojcowy ‘paternal, relating to the father’, ?papieżowy ‘papal’, ?prezydentowy ‘presidential’. As is argued by Cetnarowska (2015), Polish group adjectives behave in some respects like possessive adjectives (in other Slavonic languages), e.g. in being able to realize arguments of head nouns in derived nominals or in showing the (restricted) ability to act as antecedents for personal pronouns and reflexive possessives. Researchers who discuss cross-linguistic data have suggested that possessives can be treated as the surface realization of subjects in nominals which are not argument-supporting ones, but which are Referential Nominals. Grimshaw (1990), Alexiadou (2009), and Alexiadou and Grimshaw (2008) assume that in argument-supporting nominals subjects are arguments realized as by-phrases (and not as possessives). This is not the only possible position, though. As was mentioned in section 3, Sleeman and Brito (2010) identify two types of complex event nominals (which are argument-taking ones). In “more verbal” CENs the external argument is expressed as a by-phrase, but in “more nouny” CENs the agent-like participant, when present, is expressed by a genitive. In the case of Polish intransitive nominals13 (discussed at length by Rozwadowska 1997), their single argument can be realized syntactically as an adnominal genitive (when it is a lexical noun phrase) or as a possessive (in the case of pronouns). The use of agentive adjuncts (e.g. przez kogoś ‘by somebody’) is not allowed. If a group adjective is available, it can be used to express the

|| 13 Intransitive nominals include nominals derived from intransitive verbs. Moreover, as argued by Rozwadowska (1997), nominalizations of some transitive verbs (such as psych verbs) should be regarded as intransitive nominals. Alexiadou (2001) takes a different position and assumes that all derived nominals (also those derived from transitive verbs) are intransitive since they are treated as ergative constructions.

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single argument of intransitive nominals as well, as shown in papieski przyjazd ‘papal arrival’. This pattern is shown in (25). (25) a. mój przyjazd / *przyjazd przez mnie / *przyjazd mnie my arrival / arrival by me / arrival me.GEN ‘my arrival’ b. przyjazd Piotra / *przyjazd przez Piotra / ??Piotrowy przyjazd14 arrival Piotr.GEN / arrival by Piotr / Piotr.PA arrival ‘Piotr’s arrival’ c. papieski przyjazd / przyjazd papieża / *przyjazd przez papieża papal arrival / arrival pope.GEN / *arrival by pope ‘the pope’s arrival’ d. twój śpiew / *śpiew ciebie / *śpiew przez ciebie your singing / singing you.GEN / singing by you ‘your singing’ e. studencki śpiew / śpiew studentów / *śpiew przez studentów student.ADJ singing / singing students.GEN / singing by students ‘students’ singing’

6

Transitive event nominals in Polish

A controversial issue is the recognition of transitive event nominals15 in Polish. Rozwadowska (1997) and Willim (1999) postulate that the occurrence of two arguments in a Polish noun phrase is possible only in the case of referential nominals. This is shown in (26), where the deverbal result noun kolekcja ‘collec-

|| 14 Topolińska (1984: 365) finds denominal possessive -in-/-ow- adjectives acceptable in Polish event nominals. She mentions such intransitive nominals as Jurkowe chrapanie (lit. Jurek.PA snoring) ‘Jurek’s snoring’. However, (as mentioned previously), such forms are currently regarded as infelicitous and rare. 15 Transitive nominals can be defined as “nominals in which both the Agent and the Patient/ Theme arguments are expressed, but the Agent does not surface in an agentive PP or in an oblique form” (Cetnarowska 2005: 78, see also Rozwadowska 2005 and Willim 1999). The nominal the barbarians’ destruction of Rome is a transitive nominal whereas Rome’s destruction (by the barbarians) could be regarded as an intransitive nominal. In Slavonic languages, such as Polish, transitive nominals contain two adnominal genitives, or one adnominal genitive and one possessive pronoun, corresponding to the internal and the external argument, as shown in (27).

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tion’ is accompanied either by a pre-head possessive pronoun and a post-head genitive phrase (as in (26a)), or by two post-head genitives (as in (26b)). znaczków (26) a. Twoja kolekcja your.SG collection.NOM stamp.GEN.PL ‘your collection of stamps’ b. kolekcja znaczków Piotra collection.NOM stamp.GEN.PL Piotr.GEN ‘Piotr’s collection of stamps’ Willim (1999), following Puzynina (1969), argues that the occurrence of a possessive adjective necessitates the manner (or degree) interpretation of Polish derived nominals. Thus, she regards the transitive nominal in (27) as a referential nominal. Let us add, however, that the manner reading of the nominal jego ujęcie tematu ‘his grasping of the matter’ is implied by its immediate syntactic context, i.e. the occurrence of the verb podziwiać ‘admire’. (27) Podziwiam jego ujęcie tego tematu admire.1SG.PRES his grasping.NOM this matter.GEN ‘I admire his grasping of the matter’ (Willim 1999: 200, example (40d)) Willim (1999) provides the ill-formedness of the sentence in (28) as another piece of evidence indicating that there are no transitive event nominals in Polish. (28) (*) Ich odbudowa kraju trwała pięć lat. their restoration.NOM country.GEN lasted five years ‘Their restoration of the country lasted five years.’ (Willim 1999: 201, example (42a)) Admittedly, the sentence in (28) sounds much worse than the sentences in (29). (29) a. Odbudowa kraju trwała pięć lat. restoration.NOM country.GEN lasted five years ‘The restoration of the country lasted five years.’ b. Odbudowywanie przez nich kraju trwało pięć lat. restoring.IPFV.NOM by them country.GEN lasted five years ‘The process of them restoring the country lasted five years.’

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However, it can be assumed that the infelicity of (28) is partly due to the “double slot filling”, i.e. the co-occurrence of ich and kraju, which seem to compete for the role of Patient/Theme.16 As is shown in (30) by some sentences culled from NKJP, the third person pronouns accompanying derived nominals often represent internal arguments in Polish, no matter whether they occur in the pre-head or post-head position (see Cetnarowska 2005 for more discussion). (30) a. Stocznie można łatwo zlikwidować ale shipyards.ACC may.IMPRS easily close_down.INF but ich odbudowa lub budowa od fundamentów their rebuilding.NOM or building.NOM from foundations.GEN wymaga wielkich nakładów inwestycyjnych require.3SG big.GEN expenditures.GEN investment.ADJ.GEN ‘One can easily shut down shipyards but their rebuilding or building them anew (from their foundations) requires big investment expenditure.’ b. Lecz odbudowanie ich okazać się może but rebuilding.NOM them.GEN prove.INF REFL may.IMPRS zadaniem po prostu niewykonalnym. task.INS for simply unfeasible.INS ‘But the task of rebuilding them may turn out to be impossible.’ Polish noun phrases containing possessive adjectives (or possessive pronouns) which realize syntactically the external argument of the head noun, and containing adnominal genitives which correspond to the internal argument, are regarded as acceptable by Topolińska (1984) and Jędrzejko (1993), as is exemplified by the nominals in (31): (31) a. Jankowe/jego czytanie książek Janek.PA/his reading books.GEN ‘Janek’s/his reading books’ (Jędrzejko 1993: 63) b. Mamine szycie na maszynie bluzek z jedwabiu mum.PA sewing on machine blouses.GEN from silk.GEN ‘mum’s sewing silk blouses using a sewing machine’ (Topolińska 1984: 366) || 16 This is the view taken by Cetnarowska (2005: 80), due to the suggestion given by Ireneusz Bobrowski (p.c.).

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c. Janowe opieranie nóg na stole Jan.PA leaning legs.GEN on table.LOC ‘Jan’s putting his feet up on the table’ (Topolińska 1984: 366) Admittedly, event nominals such as those in (31) are not common (in written Polish) since speakers prefer to use the by-phrase in order to express the external argument of a deverbal noun derived from a transitive predicate, as indicated in (32). (32) czytanie książek przez Janka reading.NOM books.GEN by Janek.GEN ‘Janek’s reading books’ Nevertheless, some examples of transitive nominals can be found in the National Corpus of Polish (as well as in Google searches), in which the external argument of a transitive event noun is realized syntactically by a group adjective, e.g. prezydencki ‘presidential’, papieski ‘papal’, profesorski ‘professorial’, as in (33). (33) a. papieska nominacja abp. Dziwisza papal nomination.NOM archbishop.GEN Dziwisz.GEN na metropolitę krakowskiego on metropolitan.ACC Cracow.ADJ.ACC ‘papal appointment of Archbishop Dziwisz as Metropolitan Archbishop of Cracow’ (NKJP) b. Daj Boże, żeby prezydencki objazd give.IMP God.VOC that presidential touring.NOM województw coś zmienił. voivodships.GEN something.ACC change.3SG.PAST ‘May the presidential tour of (Polish) provinces change something!’ (NKJP) c. profesorskie protesty przeciwko professorial protests.NOM against przyznaniu dziennikarskiej nagrody granting.DAT journalist.ADJ.GEN award.GEN ‘professors’ protests against the journalists’ award being granted (to someone)’ (NKJP)

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d. rządowa wyprzedaż wczasów governmental sale.NOM holidays.GEN ‘the sale of (governmental) holiday resorts by the government’ (www.gniazdko.com/rzadowa-wyprzedaz-wczasw) Polish event nominals in (33) are headed by substantiva deverbalia (deverbal nouns), i.e. suffixal deverbal nouns containing the suffix -acja, -aż, -ka, -ek, -ot, -anina or zero-derived nouns containing the paradigmatic formatives -ømasc and -øfem (cf. Puzynina 1969). The head nouns are countable (e.g. protesty ‘protests’, wyprzedaże ‘sales’, objazdy ‘tours’), yet they can be regarded as names of complex events due to the occurrence of their internal arguments. The aspectual characterization of event nouns in (33) is a fairly complex matter. Rozwadowska (2000) observes that substantiva deverbalia derived from action verbs are usually ambiguous between the durative and the “completed” reading. She supports her observations with the examples quoted in (34), modified from Puzynina (1969: 88). (34) a. Podział imperium rzymskiego wpłynął division.NOM empire.GEN Roman.GEN influenced.3SG na jego osłabienie. on its weakening ‘The division of the Roman empire caused its weakening.’ b. Jednokomórkowce rozmnażają się przez podział komórek. unicellulars.NOM reproduce.3PL REFL by division.ACC cells.GEN ‘Unicellular organisms reproduce by division of cells.’ (Rozwadowska 2000: 243, examples (4a) and (4b)) The nominal in (34a) shows the “completed” (i.e. “culmination”) reading and it can be paraphrased by a perfective verbal nominal, as in (35a). The nominal podział komórek in (34b) can be paraphrased by an imperfective verbal nominal (see 35b).17 imperium rzymskiego wpłynęło (35) a. Podzielenie dividing.PFV.NOM empire.GEN Roman.GEN influenced.3SG

|| 17 The noun podział ‘division’ in (34) appears in the singular. It seems possible, however, to use the plural form podziały ‘divisions’ both when either the “development” reading or the “culmination” reading appears.

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na jego osłabienie. on its weakening ‘The division of the Roman empire caused its weakening.’ b. Jednokomórkowce rozmnażają się unicellulars.NOM reproduce.3PL REFL przez dzielenie komórek. by dividing.IPFV.ACC cells.GEN ‘Unicellular organisms reproduce by division of cells.’ Bloch-Trojnar (2013) demonstrates that Polish deverbal nouns are related semantically both to perfective and imperfective verbs, although they show formal (i.e. morphological) affinity either to both perfective and imperfective forms (e.g. sprzeciw ‘objection’), or to perfective forms only (e.g. podział ‘division’). This is shown in (36) and (37) below.18 (36) a. podział (-ømasc) komórek (lit. division cells.GEN) ‘cell division’ b. podzielić się ‘to divide.PFV’ c. dzielić się ‘to divide.IPFV’ (37) a. prezydencki sprzeciw (-ømasc) ‘presidential objection’ b. sprzeciwić się ‘to object.PFV’ c. sprzeciwiać się ‘to object.IPFV’ Consequently, when studying aspectual characteristics of derived nominals in Polish, it is convenient to investigate event nominals headed by -nie/-cie nouns. This will be the topic of section 7.

|| 18 The perfective verb podzielić (się) ‘to divide.PFV (itself)’ differs from its imperfective equivalent dzielić (się) ‘to divide.IPFV (itself)’ in the presence of the perfectivizing prefix, which is also contained in the noun podział ‘division’. The difference between the perfective verb sprzeciwić się ‘to object.PFV’ and the imperfective verb sprzeciwiać się ‘to object.IPFV’ lies in the choice of the thematic vowel, which is not included in the deverbal noun sprzeciw ‘objection’.

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7

Aspectual properties of Polish verbal nouns with group adjectives

Suffixal gerundive nouns terminating in the -nie/-cie suffix are referred to as substantiva verbalia (verbal nouns) in Puzynina (1969). Verbal nouns (like their base verbs) form aspectual pairs (see 38). (38) a. b. c. d.

wylać ‘to shed, to pour_out.PFV’ wylewać ‘to shed, to pour_out.IPFV’ wylanie (wody) ‘pouring out (the water).PFV’ wylewanie (wody) ‘pouring out (water).IPFV’

They also preserve argument structure and take internal arguments (represented by adnominal genitives, as in (39)). The external argument can be realized syntactically by an agentive adjunct PP (przez dyrektorów ‘by managers’ in (39a)) or by a group adjective (as in (39b)). (39) a. wylewanie łez przez dyrektorów shedding.IPFV.NOM tears.GEN by managers.GEN ‘shedding tears by managers’ b. dyrektorskie wylewanie łez managerial shedding.IPFV.NOM tears.GEN ‘shedding tears by manager(s); managerial shedding of tears’ Apart from preserving argument structure and aspectual distinctions, verbal nominals exhibit other verb-like properties, discussed at length by Rozwadowska (1997) and Bloch-Trojnar (2013). They can occur with aspectual (Aktionsart) modifiers, reflexive clitics, negative particles, agent-oriented modifiers, adverbial modifiers and rationale clauses (i.e. purpose clauses). Some of those verblike characteristics are exhibited by the verbal nouns in (40) which are accompanied by group adjectives.19 The verbal noun nieprzychodzenie ‘not coming.IPFV’ in (40a) occurs with the negative particle. The verbal noun in (40b)

|| 19 One of the differences between verbal nominals with and without group adjectives is the unacceptability of adverbial modifiers with group adjectives. Compare, for instance, zerwanie rozejmu jednostronnie przez Koreę Północną ‘breaching truce unilaterally by North Korea’ and ?*północnokoreańskie zerwanie rozejmu jednostronnie ‘North-Korean breach of truce unilaterally’ (compare with (41a)).

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occurs with the reflexive clitic się (i.e. spóźnianie się ‘coming late’) and is accompanied by the agent-oriented modifier celowe ‘intentional’ and the purpose clause. (40) a. Studenci rozliczą (…) profesorskie students.NOM appraise.3PL.FUT professorial nieprzychodzenie na zajęcia not_coming.IPFV.ACC on classes.ACC ‘Students will make professors account for their not coming to classes.’ (serwisy.gazetaprawna.pl › Praca › Edukacja) b. Denerwuje mnie to studenckie celowe irritate.3SG.PRES me.ACC this student.ADJ intentional spóźnianie się na wykłady, żeby zademonstrować coming_late.IPFV.NOM REFL on lectures.ACC to demonstrate.INF brak zainteresowania przedmiotem lack.ACC interest.GEN subject.INS ‘I am annoyed by students’ coming late to classes intentionally to demonstrate their lack of interest in the subject.’ Cetnarowska (2015: 141) provides further examples of verbal nouns modified by group adjectives (including ethnic adjectives). The verbal nouns in (41) and (42) take internal arguments and occur with aspectual modifiers (ciągłe ‘constant’ and stałe ‘constant’) or with agent-oriented modifiers (i.e. umyślne ‘deliberate’). The examples in (41) contain perfective verbal nouns, while the noun phrases in (42) are headed by imperfective verbal nouns. (41) a. północnokoreańskie jednostronne zerwanie rozejmu North-Korean unilateral breach.PFV.NOM truce.GEN ‘North Korean unilateral breach of truce’ b. umyślne prezydenckie ułaskawienie gangsterów deliberate presidential pardoning.PFV.NOM gangsters.GEN ‘(the) president’s pardoning (the) gangsters intentionally’ poselskie ignorowanie Marszałka Sejmu (42) a. stałe constant parliamentary ignoring.IPFV.NOM marshal.GEN Sejm.GEN ‘the members of Parliament’s constant ignoring of the Sejm Marshal’ b. ministerialne odrzucanie kolejnych apeli ministerial rejecting.IPFV.NOM further.GEN appeals.GEN

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środowiska naukowego scientific.GEN community.GEN ‘the (repeated) rejection of further appeals of the scientific community by the ministry’ c. ciągłe amerykańskie prowokowanie constant American.NOM provoking.IPFV.NOM władz rosyjskich authorities.GEN Russian.GEN ‘the constant American provoking of the Russian authorities’ Although both perfective and imperfective verbal nouns are attested in the examples given above, group adjectives appear to be more felicitous with imperfective verbal nouns. The change of the grammatical aspect (from imperfective to perfective) diminishes the felicity of the sentences in (43a) and (44a) – their more felicitous equivalents given in (43b) and (44b) contain agentive by-phrases. (43) a. ??poselskie zignorowanie Marszałka Sejmu parliamentary ignoring.PFV.NOM marshal.GEN Sejm.GEN ‘the members of Parliament’s ignoring of the Sejm Marshal’ b. zignorowanie Marszałka Sejmu przez posłów ignoring.PFV.NOM marshal.GEN Sejm.GEN by MPs ‘the ignoring of the Sejm Marshal by MPs’ rosyjskich (44) a. ??amerykańskie sprowokowanie władz American.NOM provoking.PFV.NOM authorities.GEN Russian.GEN ‘the American provoking of the Russian authorities’ b. sprowokowanie władz rosyjskich przez Amerykanów provoking.PFV.NOM authorities.GEN Russian.GEN by Americans ‘the provoking of the Russian authorities by Americans’ Furthermore, perfective nominals headed by verbal nouns containing the negative particle or the reflexive clitic sound degraded when a group adjective is added. Thus, the infelicitous nominals headed by perfective verbal nouns in (45) can be compared with the well-formed nominals headed by imperfective verbal nouns in (40).

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(45) a. ??profesorskie nieprzyjście na zajęcia professorial not_coming.PFV.NOM on classes.ACC ‘professors’ not having come to classes’ b. ??studenckie spóźnienie się na wykład student.ADJ coming_late.IPFV.NOM REFL on lecture.ACC Intended meaning: ‘(the) students’ having come late to the lecture’ Although I pointed out that group adjectives allow specific definite reference (e.g. in the case of the adjectives prezydencki ‘presidential’, papieski ‘papal’, królewski ‘royal’), they more commonly refer to plural entities, thus their default interpretation is the group reading. Moreno (2015: 12) suggests that “[r]elational adjectives are underlying underspecified nouns with a structure similar to that of default mass nouns”. The greater felicity of group adjectives with imperfective verbal nouns may be due to the compatibility of the “mass” reading of imperfective nominals (postulated by Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia, and Soare 2010) with the (indefinite) plural interpretation of group adjectives.

8

Conclusions

According to Alexiadou (2001) and Alexiadou and Stavrou (2011), the occurrence of thematic group adjectives turns event nominals into Referential Nominals. The presence of group adjectives is expected to correlate with other “nouny” characteristics of derived nominals, such as the possibility of plural marking and the impossibility of adverbial modifiers. The overwhelming majority of the sentences culled from the COCA and the NJKP corpus illustrate the occurrence of group adjectives as non-argumental and non-referential satellites, as predicted by McNally and Boleda (2004). However, Polish and English group adjectives are able to exhibit specific definite reference in selected contexts, as in the nominals the papal arrival and prezydenckie problemy ze swoimi podwładnymi ‘presidential problems with his subordinates’. Additionally, Polish group adjectives can (marginally) bind reflexive possessive pronouns. Group adjectives in English can be attested with transitive nominals accompanied by theta-related satellites (corresponding to internal arguments). Such argument-supporting nominals are headed by suffixal or zero-derived nouns. Event nouns in English which are accompanied by thematic group adjectives are mainly countable names of achievements (e.g. approval). There are also instances of group adjectives with uncountable event nouns denoting activities (control, support).

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Polish group adjectives (like possessive adjectives) are predicted to occur mainly with intransitive event nominals (or single participant nominals, cf. Rozwadowska 1997) and referential nominals. However, they are attested also with transitive event nominals, accompanied by adnominal genitives which represent internal arguments. The “nouniness” of Polish and English event nominals with group adjectives makes them similar to the “Stage 2” type of complex event nominals in Sleeman and Brito (2010), i.e. to more “nouny” CENs. Such event nominals cannot be modified by adverbs and they can take plural marking. Polish argument-supporting verbal -nie/-cie nominals exhibit a particularly interesting mixture of verbal and nominal characteristics in the presence of a group adjective. They preserve aspectual distinctions (hence are postulated to contain an AspectP in their syntactic representations) and take internal arguments. They can occur with reflexive clitics, negative particles, agent-oriented modifiers and aspectual modifiers. An issue which calls for further investigation is the greater felicity of group adjectives with Polish verbal nouns derived from imperfective verbs.

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Bloch-Trojnar, Maria. 2013. The mechanics of transposition. A study of action nominalisations in English, Irish and Polish. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego. Borer, Hagit. 2005. In name only. Structuring sense, Volume I. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Borer, Hagit. 2014. Derived nominals and the domain of content. Lingua 141. 71–96. Bosque, Ignacio and Carme Picallo. 1996. Postnominal adjectives in Spanish DPs. Journal of Linguistics 32. 349–385. Cetnarowska, Bożena. 1993. The syntax, semantics and derivation of bare nominalisations in English. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego. Cetnarowska, Bożena. 2005. Passive nominals in English and Polish: An optimality-theoretic analysis. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego. Cetnarowska, Bożena. 2015. Categorial ambiguities within the noun phrase: Relational adjectives in Polish. In Joanna Błaszczak, Dorota Klimek-Jankowska and Krzysztof Migdalski (eds.), How categorical are categories? New approaches to the old questions of noun, verb, and adjective, 115–154. Boston & Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, Inc. Cinque, Guglielmo. 1994. On the evidence for partial N-movement in the Romance DP. In Guglielmo Cinque, Jan Koster, Jean-Yves Pollock, Luigi Rizzi and Raffaella Zanuttini (eds.), Paths towards Universal Grammar. Studies in honor of Richard S. Kayne, 85–110. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Corbett, Greville. 1987. The morphology/syntax interface: Evidence from possessive adjectives in Slavonic. Language 63(2). 299–344. Fábregas, Antonio. 2007. The internal syntactic structure of relational adjectives. Probus 19 (1). 135–170. Giorgi, Alessandra and Giuseppe Longobardi. 1991. The syntax of noun phrases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grimshaw, Jane. 1990. Argument structure. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Harley, Heidi. 2009. The morphology of nominalizations and the syntax of vP. In Anastasia Giannakidou and Monika Rathert (eds.), Quantification, definiteness and nominalization, 321–343. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jędrzejko, Ewa. 1993. Nominalizacje w systemie i w tekstach współczesnej polszczyzny [Nominalizations in the system and the texts of the modern Polish language]. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego. Kayne, Richard. 1984. Connectedness and binary branching. Dordrecht: Foris. Levi, Judith N. 1976. The syntax and semantics of nonpredicating adjectives in English. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club. Marchis, Mihaela. 2010. Relational adjectives at the syntax-morphology interface in Romanian and Spanish. Stuttgart: University of Stuttgart. Dissertation. McNally, Louise and Gemma Boleda. 2004. Relational adjectives as properties of kinds. In Olivier Bonami and Patricia Cabredo-Hofherr (eds.), Empirical issues in formal syntax and semantics 5, 179–196. Berlin: Lang. http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/eiss5. Accessed 1 July 2016. Moreno, Mihaela Marchis. 2015. Relational adjectives at interfaces. Studia Linguistica 69 (3). 304–332. Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2009. Current challenges to the lexicalist hypothesis. An overview and a critique. In William D. Lewis, Simin Karimi, Heidi Harley and Scott O. Farrar (eds.), Time and again, 91–117. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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Nikolaeva, Irina and Andrew Spencer. 2013. Possession and modification – A perspective from Canonical Typology. In Dunstan Brown, Marina Chumakina and Greville G. Corbett (eds.), Canonical morphology and syntax, 207–238. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Puzynina, Jadwiga. 1969. Nazwy czynności w języku polskim [Action nouns in Polish]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. Rozwadowska, Bożena. 1997. Towards a unified theory of nominalizations. External and internal eventualities. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego. Rozwadowska, Bożena. 2000. Aspect in Polish nominalizations. Journal of Slavic Linguistics 8. 239–261. Rozwadowska, Bożena. 2005. Derived nominals. In Martin Everaert and Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.), The Blackwell companion to syntax, vol. II, 24–55. Oxford: Blackwell. Sleeman, Petra and Ana Maria Brito. 2010. Aspect and argument structure of deverbal nominalizations: A split vP analysis. In Artemis Alexiadou and Monika Rathert (eds.), The syntax of nominalizations across languages and frameworks, 199–217. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Szymanek, Bogdan. 2010. A panorama of Polish word-formation. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego. Topolińska, Zuzanna. 1984. Składnia grupy imiennej [The syntax of a nominal group]. In Maciej Grochowski, Stanisław Karolak and Zuzanna Topolińska (eds.), Gramatyka współczesnego języka polskiego. Składnia [Grammar of contemporary Polish. Syntax], 301–389. Warszawa: PWN. Wierzbicka, Anna. 1982. Why can you have a drink when you can’t *have an eat? Language 58(4). 753–799. Willim, Ewa. 1999. On the syntax of the genitive in nominals: The case of Polish. In István Kenesei (ed.), Crossing boundaries. Advances in the theory of Central and Eastern European languages, 179–210. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Willim, Ewa. 2006. Event, individuation and countability. A study with special reference to English and Polish. Kraków: Jagiellonian University Press.

Corpora COCA = Davies, Mark. 2008-. The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): 520 million words, 1990-present. http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/. NKJP = Przepiórkowski, Adam, Mirosław Bańko, Robert Górski and Barbara LewandowskaTomaszczyk (eds.) 2012. Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego [The national corpus of the Polish language]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.

Antonio Fábregas and Rafael Marín

Lexical categories and aspectual primitives: The case of Spanish -ncia 1

Introduction: what we talk about when we talk about nominalizations

The study of morphological category-change has been linked to the question of how lexical categories relate to each other since at least Chomsky’s (1965) featural decomposition (see also Halle 1973; Jackendoff 1975; Lieber 1981). In this context, one of the most suggestive lines of research has been the intuition that lexical categories share a basic vocabulary of primitives, such as a notion of boundedness, that is instantiated in different ways in each case (Mourelatos 1978; Bach 1986; Jackendoff 1997; Ross’s 1973 Category Squish is also relevant from this perspective). Aspectual information, being the more discussed instantiation of (un)boundedness, lies at the heart of this question. Inside the general program of research that explores the hypothesis that lexical categories share some basic vocabulary, Fábregas and Marín (2012) proposed the Aspect Preservation Hypothesis: the aspectual information of a deverbal nominalization is built from the space of possibilities that the base verb allows.1 In other words: anything that is aspectual in nature, in the syntactic sense of licensing specific types of modifiers, prepositional phrases and auxiliary verb combinations, must come from a verbal structure. Nominalizers signal that the structure has moved from a verbal domain to a nominal domain, and at that point aspect cannot be defined: if anything, the notion of boundedness and its likes are interpreted at that point as count/mass, collective nominals, etc. In Fábregas and Marín (2012) it was claimed that nominalizers such as Spanish -ción, English -(at)ion and German -ung are transparent with respect to aspectual information, and are unable to ignore it or overwrite it. In that work, it was argued that when the nominalization takes the lexical verb as its base (as opposed to a bigger verbal constituent containing || 1 In the lexicalist literature, this hypothesis is in fact almost always tacitly assumed, when not reflected in the claim that category-changing operations in principle do not manipulate the aspectual information of the base. See, among others, Malicka-Kleparska (1988), Cetnarowska (1993) and Bloch-Trojnar (2013).

DOI 10.1515/9781501505430-007

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grammatical aspect), state-denoting nominalizations were restricted to those verbal bases that, independently, contained a state subcomponent (typically in the form of a lexically-denoted result state). Take (1) and (2) as an illustration. (1)

a. The Russians destroyed Dresden for two years. ≯ Dresden was destroyed for two years. b. ??/*a destruction of two years

(2) a. The storm interrupted the communication for two hours. > The communication was interrupted for two hours. b. an interruption of two hours The verb destroy (1) lacks a result state component in its semantic denotation (although it is clearly implied pragmatically): the for-modifier in (1a) cannot be interpreted as measuring how long Dresden was destroyed after the Russians attacked; it can be interpreted as measuring the duration of a destroying event. Correspondingly, (1b), intended to mean ‘the state of being destroyed for two years’, is ungrammatical. Some speakers accept the event reading allowed by (1a), where we talk of an event that took two years to be completed, but the state reading is out. In contrast, interrupt carries a result component, as shown by the interpretation of (2a), with the for-phrase measuring the duration of the state of being interrupted. (2b), therefore, allows the state interpretation. This kind of contrast brings initial plausibility to the claim that aspect must be defined in the verbal domain, but the hypothesis makes some other predictions that were not discussed in Fábregas and Marín (2012). If it is true that categories share some primitives, we expect also that some nominalizers must be sensitive to the presence or absence of those primitives in the bases they combine with, rather than to their lexically-specific instantiation in V, N or A. This is not visible in affixes like -ción/-ation/-ung, which are default deverbal nominalizers in their respective languages, but the account predicts, in principle, that such cases should exist. The goal of this article is to present a case study of the Spanish nominalizer -ncia, which we will argue illustrates this situation: it combines with verbs and other bases provided that the interpretation of the base does not involve any change, instantiated with the primitives “[” and “]”, denoting initial and final boundaries of an entity (Piñón 1997). This, we will argue, extends to all uses of this affix, and allows for a unification between what otherwise seems to be a quality-nominalization use and an event-nominalization use. This analysis also

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throws some light on an old puzzle in Spanish morphology, namely the relation between -ncia and the adjectival suffix -nte. This article is structured as follows: in section 2 we will introduce the facts related to the distribution of -ncia, and we will highlight some puzzles. Section 3 shows that some apparent counterexamples are in fact cases where the event of the base has been stativized. Section 4 presents an analysis where the exceptions are integrated in a unified description of what -ncia does. Section 5 explores the consequences of the analysis for the relation between -ncia and -nte, and section 6 presents the conclusions.

2

The puzzle: a suffix with a weird distribution

The suffix -ncia has not been much studied, with a few exceptions (Malkiel 1945; Pattison 1975: 75; Pena 2005; NGLE 2009: section 6.3p–v; Cano and Jaque 2011; Fábregas 2016a: 355–364). Pharies (2002: 70–71) notes that in its Latin origin it was a morphologically complex form consisting of the oblique present participle form -nt- and the quality nominalizer -ia. Whether the same decomposition applies to the Spanish suffix -ncia, as -nte ‘-ant’ and -ia ‘-ity’ is a controversial matter.

2.1

Quality nominalizations

The most productive use of -ncia in contemporary Spanish is as a quality nominalizer glossed as ‘the property of being X’, where X is an adjective in -nte related to the base (3). (3) arrogancia ‘arrogance’, beligerancia ‘belligerence’, benevolencia ‘benevolence’, coherencia ‘coherence’, constancia ‘perseverance’, continencia ‘continence’, contundencia ‘force’, corpulencia ‘corpulence’, demencia ‘insanity’, displicencia ‘contempt’, eficiencia ‘efficiency’,

fragancia ‘fragrance’, impaciencia ‘impatience’, impertinencia ‘impertinence’, indulgencia ‘indulgence’, inocencia ‘innocence’, insolencia ‘insolence’, inteligencia ‘intelligence’, negligencia ‘negligence’, opulencia ‘opulence’, petulancia ‘arrogance’, prudencia ‘caution’,

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elocuencia ‘eloquence’, estridencia ‘stridency’, excelencia ‘excellence’,

relevancia ‘relevance’, temperancia ‘temperance’, transparencia ‘transparency’…

Most of the bases left when -ncia is decomposed act as bound roots in Spanish: for instance, in fraga-ncia ‘fragr-ance’, the base fraga- cannot be used as an adjective or verb in Spanish. The meaning of fragancia, then, is explained by association with the adjective fraga-nte ‘fragr-ant’. Even when a base acting as a verb can be isolated (e.g., arroga-ncia ‘arrogance’, arguably related to the contemporary verb arrogar ‘assume a task’), the meaning of the nominalization relates to the meaning of the corresponding adjective in -nte: arrogancia ‘arrogance’ is the quality of being arrogante ‘arrogant’, not the action or result of assuming a task. That it is necessary to gloss the nominal with an adjective that at least on the surface is not present in the base is in itself problematic: the potential solution that -ncia is actually -nte + -ia, advanced before, has some obvious complications, noted in Cano and Jaque (2011), among others. That decomposition would predict that any form in -ncia has an equivalent in -nte, or, in other words, that any noun in -ncia is built over a form in -nte. However, this is obviously false: for instance, from ganar ‘earn’, ganancia ‘profit’ is attested, but *ganante is unattested and felt as ungrammatical (similarly vaga-ncia ‘idleness’, but *vaga-nte). Another problem for this hypothesis is that sometimes the equivalent is not a form in -nte, but in -nto: purule-ncia ‘purulence’ relates to purule-nto ‘purulent’, while *purule-nte does not exist, showing that at least two different suffixes would have to be behind -ncia. Thus, the decompositional solution to the problem cannot be empirically right. Let us call this Puzzle #1 of -ncia: (4) -ncia in quality nominalizations associates to the meaning of -nte, even though -nte is not contained in -ncia With these bound-root bases, and still close to a quality interpretation, we find other subclasses. In (5), we have some examples where the noun denotes the disposition to display some kind of (physical) behavior. In such cases, the corresponding adjective in -nte has the dispositional meaning. Something effervescent does not need to have produced bubbles in actuality: it must be the case, though, that under facilitating circumstances, it will necessarily produce them, hence the dispositional interpretation.

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(5) efervescencia ‘effervescence’, luminiscencia ‘luminescence’, incandescencia ‘incandescence’ In a few cases, the appropriate gloss seems to be ‘situation that instantiates a property’. A few cases in this group, like doce-ncia ‘teaching’, specifically refer to the habitual activity of acting as a doce-nte ‘teacher’ (cf. also delincue-ncia ‘delinquency’ and delincue-nte ‘delinquent’): (6) adyacencia ‘adjacency’, ausencia ‘absence’, deficiencia ‘deficiency’, docencia ‘teaching’, inminencia ‘imminence’,

itinerancia ‘itinerancy’, pertinencia ‘pertinence’, presencia ‘presence’, transhumancia ‘seasonal-migration’, vigencia ‘validity’

A few describe the period of time during which an entity is X (7): (7) adolescencia ‘adolescence’, infancia ‘childhood’, lactancia ‘lactation’,

pubescencia ‘pubescence’, senescencia ‘ageing’

As it is the case with many quality nominalizations, there are a few instances where the noun denotes an entity characterized by X: (8) licencia ‘licence’, reminiscencia ‘memory’,

2.2

turbulencia ‘turbulence’, tumescencia ‘tumescence’

Eventuality nominalizations: stative bases

Let us now move to the formations in -ncia that take a verbal base. A second puzzle related to -ncia is that next to the quality nominalizations just examined, the suffix also produced eventuality nominalizations, specifically statedenoting nominalizations from purely stative verbs, as evidenced by (9): (9) coexistencia ‘coexistence’, complacencia ‘complacence’, conveniencia ‘convenience’, creencia ‘belief’, dependencia ‘dependence’,

ignorancia ‘ignorance’, permanencia ‘permanence’, pertenencia ‘membership’, precedencia ‘precedence’, preferencia ‘preference’,

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discrepancia ‘discrepancy’, dolencia ‘ailment’, estancia ‘stay’, existencia ‘existence’,

querencia ‘affection’, repugnancia ‘disgust’, tendencia ‘tendency’…

Evidence that here the nominalization denotes a state and not a quality comes from, among other things, the availability of temporal modifiers:2 (10) a. una esta-ncia de dos horas a be.in.place-ncia of two hours ‘a stay of two hours’ b. *una inoce-ncia de dos horas an innoce-nce of two hours As independent evidence that -ncia is most productive with stative verbs, consider the fact that convenie-ncia ‘convenience’ is a possible nominalization, coming from the verb convenir ‘to be advisable’, while the eventive verb venir ‘come’ – which is morphologically related to con-venir – lacks a nominalization *venie-ncia. The existence of this second class of nominalizations in -ncia motivates Puzzle #2 with -ncia:3

|| 2 Another difference between the two classes has to do with negative in-prefixation. In- does not combine with verbs (Wasow 1977). Quality nominalizations are related to adjectives, so -ncia nominalizations of this kind are (correctly) expected to allow this prefix (ia); in contrast, the state-denoting nominalizations do not allow it (ib). (i) a. in-consta-ncia ‘unrealiability’, in-cohere-ncia ‘incoherence’ b. *in-esta-ncia ‘un-stay’, *im-precede-ncia ‘un-precedence’ Some -ncia nominalizations are ambiguous between the Quality-reading and the State-reading; in-prefixation is associated to the Quality-reading, and as expected in that case they reject temporal modifiers: (ii) a. una (*in-)existencia de diez años an in- existence of ten years b. una (*in-)dolencia de diez años an in- dolence of ten years 3 As an anonymous reviewer points out to us, this puzzle extends to English. Szymanek (1988: 63–68) notes that while -ance/-ence is specialized in action nominals (accept – acceptance, emerge – emergence), and -ancy/-ency tends to produce quality nominals (redundant – redundancy, adjacent – adjacency), there are cases where -ance/-ence has both interpretations and the nominal is thus ambiguous in the same case as Spanish -ncia: persist/persistent – persistence, resist/resistant – resistance, indulge/indulgent – indulgence.

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(11) -ncia can produce both quality and eventuality nominalizations However, there is an intuitive relation between a quality nominalization and a state: both are non-eventive. The minimal distinction, we assume, is that states are after all temporal objects that can be placed in time, while qualities are sets of properties without any temporal variable (cf. among many others Carlson 1977; Bosque 1990; Maienborn 2003). Then, it is not so surprising that -ncia produces, in addition to quality nominalizations, eventuality ones if those are restricted to stative verbs.

2.3

Eventive bases

However, the situation is not so simple: verbs that are clearly eventive can also be taken as bases by -ncia. This is Puzzle #3 of -ncia formation. (12) Even though most -ncia formations are related to bases without eventivity, there are formations with an eventive base. Here are some of the -ncia formations with eventive bases. (13) a. convalecer ‘convalesce’ > convalecencia ‘convalescence’, convivir ‘live together’ > convivencia ‘living together’, presidir ‘preside’ > presidencia ‘presidence’, regir ‘rule’ > regencia ‘ruling’, militar ‘militate’ > militancia ‘militance’, observar ‘observe’ > observancia ‘observance’, residir ‘reside’ > residencia ‘residency’, vivir ‘live, experience’ > vivencia ‘experience’, vigilar ‘watch’ > vigilancia ‘vigilance’, persistir ‘persist’ > persistencia ‘persistence’, perseverar ‘persevere’ > perseverancia ‘perseverance’, resistir ‘resist’ > resistencia ‘resistance’ b. exigir ‘demand’ > exigencia ‘demand’, proceder ‘come-from’ > procedencia ‘origin’, provenir ‘come-from’ > proveniencia ‘origin’, trascender ‘transcend’ > trascendencia ‘transcendence’, alternar ‘alternate’ > alternancia ‘alternance’, aparecer ‘appear’ > apariencia ‘appearance’, asistir ‘attend’ > asistencia ‘attendance’,

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c. d.

e.

f. g.

coincidir ‘coincide’ > coincidencia ‘coincidence’, sugerir ‘suggest’ > sugerencia ‘suggestion’, suplir ‘substitute’ > suplencia ‘substitution’ absorber ‘absorb’ > absorbencia ‘absorbency’, adherir ‘adhere’ > adherencia ‘adherence’ vagar ‘wander’ > vagancia ‘idleness’, ver ‘see’ > videncia ‘clairvoyance’, mangar ‘steal’ > mangancia ‘corruption’ comandar ‘command’ > comandancia ‘rank of major’, competir ‘compete’ > competencia ‘ability to compete’, resonar ‘echo’ > resonancia ‘resonance’ descender ‘descend’ > descendencia ‘offspring’, ganar ‘earn’ > ganancia ‘profit’ comparecer ‘appear-in-court’ > comparecencia ‘appearance-in-court’, transferir ‘transfer’ > transferencia ‘transfer’

All these bases pass at least some standard tests on eventivity (as opposed to stativity): for instance, they can be combined with an event-internal locative (14) and they can be taken as infinitival complements by perception verbs (15); both properties are rejected by purely stative verbs (16). (14) a. Juan observaba la foto en su oficina. ‘Juan observed the photo in his office.’ b. Juan sugirió esta solución en su oficina. ‘Juan suggested this solution in his office.’ vigilar la oficina. (15) a. Lo vi him saw watch the office ‘I saw him watch over the office.’ b. Lo vi adherirse a la pared. it saw stick to the wall ‘I saw it stick to the wall.’ (16) a. *Juan sabe inglés en su casa. *‘Juan knows English in his house’ b. *Lo vi saber inglés. him saw know English *‘I saw him know English’

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Note that the counterexamples in (13) are divided into seven classes; the reason for this classification will become clear in section 3, where we will argue that, far from being real counterexamples, the existence of these formations is predicted by a theory where -ncia is a nominalizer that looks for a base that meets the strict subinterval property.

3

Addressing the eventive bases

In this section we will discuss the different groups of counterexamples in (13). We will argue that, with the possible exception of the small group in (13g), in all the other cases the eventive base is either non-dynamic, has a non-dynamic reading or is interpreted in a dispositional, habitual or potential way that forces non-dynamicity when it is taken as complement of -ncia. Let us now address, in turn, each one of the groups.

3.1

Group A: Davidsonian states

The verbs in group A behave as Davidsonian states (Maienborn 2003). Davidsonian states are intransformative verbs (Fabricius-Hansen 1975); that is, verbs that denote an event of keeping a certain situation unchanged. Prototypical examples of these verbs in Spanish are dormir ‘sleep’, esperar ‘wait’ and gobernar ‘rule’: they are eventive and among other things accept progressive periphrasis, but – like states – they satisfy the strict subinterval property (Bennett and Partee 1978) because they do not denote any dynamic process which involves a change. Take, for instance, convivir ‘to live together’: if it is true that John and Mary lived together between the 2nd of May 1988 and the 17th of December 2005, then it follows that at any instant within this period, no matter how short, John and Mary lived together. The existence of these verbs as bases of -ncia strongly suggests that the relevant property of -ncia is that it takes bases which are non-dynamic, not that it takes bases that are not eventive. Like quality nominalization, which by definition express properties that do not involve a change across time, stative verbs – both pure states and Davidsonian states – are intransformative in the strong sense that they describe situations that do not involve any change across time. Thus, we state the following generalization:

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(17) -ncia combines with bases that express situations that do not involve any change across time

3.2

Group B: Eventive verbs with a state interpretation

Take now the group in (13b); all these verbs have an eventive reading (see for instance (18)), but this is not the reading that the -ncia nominalization takes. (18) a. Juan procedió con el análisis. Juan proceeded with the analysis ‘Juan started the analysis.’ b. Juan exigió una explicación. ‘Juan demanded an explanation.’ c. Juan coincidió con Luis en la fiesta. Juan coincided with Luis at the party ‘Juan met Luis at the party.’ These verbs either have a stative reading (19), or contain as part of their denotation a (result) state component (20). (19) a. Este vino procede de Bilbao. ‘This wine comes from Bilbao.’ b. La situación exige una respuesta. the situation demands an answer ‘The situation makes an answer necessary’ c. Dos rectas coinciden en un punto. ‘Two lines coincide at one point.’ (20) Juan asistió a la fiesta durante dos horas. Juan attended to the party for two hours ‘Juan went to the party, and stayed there for two hours.’ That this reading is the one selected by -ncia is immediately proven by (i) the fact that the meaning of the nominalization, in cases where the event meaning and the stative meaning differ, is systematically the one corresponding to the stative version (cf. (18a) vs. (19a) and (21)) and (ii) by its inability to be subject of take place and other eventivity tests (Grimshaw 1990) (22). (21) proveniencia ‘origin’ (not ‘starting moment’, ‘initiation’, etc.)

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(22) *Su {asistencia /exigencia /coincidencia /sugerencia} tuvo lugar… his attendance /demand /coincidence /suggestion took place… Consequently, this second set confirms, rather than falsifies, the current hypothesis: when the verb is combined with -ncia the reading selected must be stative, if the verb allows it, or is built over the result state associated with the verb, as is the case with the verb attend, where -ncia denotes the state following the moment in which an entity arrives in a place, while it stays there.

3.3

Group C: Eventive bases interpreted as dispositionals

We know, additionally, that eventive verbs can be turned into states in a variety of modal interpretations. For instance, generics (Carlson 2011) or middles (Lekakou 2005) are obtained when a modal operator binds the event. The verbs in group (13c) are eventive, but the interpretation that they get with -ncia is dispositional: what the noun denotes is the disposition to perform an event if there are facilitating circumstances, i.e. something can be said to be moisturizing even if it has not moistened anything, but its internal properties would ensure that it moistens if the proper external circumstances are in place (namely, that it is taken out of its container and spread over the skin). Obviously, a dispositional property is intransformative and stative, because it does not state that an event takes place; rather, it describes an object through the events it could participate in given its internal properties. (23) a. absorbencia ‘absorbency’: ‘disposition to absorb liquids’ b. adherencia ‘adherence’: ‘disposition to stick to surfaces’ Again, the interpretation of these otherwise eventive bases confirms that -ncia is related to a stative, intransformative reading. Furthermore, remember that some quality nominalizations (those in (5) above) also conveyed this kind of meaning.

3.4

Group D: Eventive bases interpreted as habituals

Another non-episodic interpretation of an eventive verb is habituality (Carlson 2011, who distinguishes this notion from mere iterativity, which is episodic), whereby instead of denoting single, specific occurrences of an event anchored to a specific world and time, one states the continued, characteristic participation of an entity in that event. Habituals are statives under a number of

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tests, not only by virtue of their lacking an anchored specific event: like stative descriptions (24a) and middle statements (24b), they use the imperfective past in Spanish (24c). (24) a. Juan era alto. Juan was.IPFV tall ‘Juan was tall.’ b. Este tipo de libro se leía bien. this type of book SE read.IPFV well ‘This type of book was easy to read.’ c. Juan fumaba un paquete al día. Juan smoked.IPFV one pack per day ‘Juan used to smoke one pack per day.’ The -ncia nominalizations in (13d) have a habitual flavor: they describe typical actions, that are easily interpreted as hobbies, jobs of sorts and characteristic activities used to describe the entities that take part in them. Like other nouns related to verbs, but not denoting episodic events, such as natación ‘swimming’ or prostitución ‘prostitution’, they cannot be the subject of take place. Note that these other nouns are also used to describe characteristic activities and occupations. (25) a. vagancia ‘acting idle’ b. mangancia ‘corruption’ c. videncia ‘clairvoyance’ (26) *Su {vagancia /videncia /natación} tuvo lugar… her idleness /clairvoyance /swimming took place… Again, non-eventivity arises in the context of -ncia, and the resulting noun is used rather to characterize a typical activity of an entity; the connection with quality nominalizations is apparent also here.

3.5

Group E: Eventive bases interpreted as potentials

Another modal context where a stative interpretation arises is potentials. Among the pieces of evidence that show that a potential auxiliary produces a stative predicate from a possibly eventive verb, we find that the resulting

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periphrasis rejects the progressive form (27a) and accepts the probability reading of the future (27b) (Jaque 2014). (27) a. *Juan está pudiendo cantar. Juan is being.able to.sing b. [Context: “How could he buy such a huge house?”] - No sé, podrá pagarla. not know, can.FUT pay-it ‘No clue; I guess that he can pay it.’ The nominalizations in (13e) have a potential flavor, as they typically denote the ability or capacity to (potentially) participate in an event. As usual, stating that an entity is able in principle to participate in an event does not entail actual participation, and is hence non dynamic and intransformative. (28) a. comandancia ‘rank of major’: ‘capacity or permission to command people’ b. competencia ‘competence, ability to compete’ c. resonancia ‘resonance, ability to resonate’ (29) *Su {comandancia /competencia /resonancia} tuvo lugar… his/its command /competence /resonance took place… Describing an entity through the capacities it has to participate in different events is another way to describe its properties, given that the potential abilities of an entity are determined by its characteristics; again, there is an obvious connection with quality nominalizations.4

3.6

Group F: Participant nominalizations

But there are still some cases where the base is clearly eventive, and the -ncia nominalization is possible. The nouns in (13f) seem related to an eventive || 4 An anonymous reviewer notes that a prediction of this analysis could be that -ble adjectives, which carry a potential meaning, should be bases for -ncia. We are, however, not aware of such examples. There are two reasons for this gap: one is that -idad is the nominalizer that combines regularly with -ble bases, possibly in a case of lexical selection; the second is that -ble contains other pieces of information, like passive voice, in addition to its modal and adjectival meaning. Whether this lexical gap is explained in one or the other way is left for future research.

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reading of the verb: ganar ‘earn, win’ lacks a stative reading and a state subcomponent. The verb descender ‘descend’ has a stative reading (30), but it is unclear that the nominalization descendencia ‘offspring’ is related to it. Even though a ‘parenthood’ reading is possible with this verb (31a), it is never used to describe anything that is not a relation between two species (31b). (30) El camino desciende por la montaña. the road descends by the mountain ‘The road goes down along the mountain.’ (31) a. La gallina desciende del dinosaurio. the chicken descends from.the dinosaur ‘Chickens come from dinosaurs.’ b. #Juan desciende de mi tío. Juan descends from my uncle Intended: ‘Juan is the offspring of my uncle.’ However, both ganancia ‘profit’ and descendencia ‘offspring’ are participant nominalizations, specifically result objects. To the extent that they denote entities that come as a result of an event, and not the event itself, they are (by lack of eventivity) stative. But, moreover, notice that they are mass nouns: (32) a. *dos descendencias / mucha descendencia *‘two offsprings’ ‘much offspring’ b. *dos ganancias / mucha ganancia ‘two profits’ ‘much profit’ We have only identified two such result nominalizations, coming from eventive verbs, so any generalization with respect to them is obviously arbitrary. However, noting that count nouns are attested with -ncia as well (e.g., exigencias ‘demands’), we would like to suggest, perhaps irresponsibly, that the mass nature of these nouns could be related to the preference of -ncia for intransformative, stative and, therefore, unbounded bases: the base is not only reinterpreted as a result manifested in a produced entity, but also this entity is mass and not bounded.5 || 5 For explicitness, we assume that boundedness is a marked notion in both aspect and countability: being atelic or mass (that is, unbounded) is defined by absence of properties. A bare NP or VP structure is by default unbounded. In order to define these objects as bounded, a desig-

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3.7

Group G: Recalcitrant counterexamples. Real eventive bases?

However, group (13g) are nominalizations that behave as eventive in the sense that they can be subjects of take place: (33) Su {comparecencia en el juicio / transferencia a otro equipo} tuvo lugar… ‘His appearance in the trial / transference to another team took place…’ We could only find two nominalizations in this group, which obviously cannot be taken as a claim that there are no more nouns like this in -ncia, but at least suggests that this class is small compared to the other, stative/intransformative classes. Still, such cases must be addressed in the context of the present discussion. If, as we believe given our examination of the data, this class of eventive nominalizations in -ncia is very small, a straightforward solution would be to resort to listing, treating them as lexical exceptions. These nominalizations would be instances of an idiosyncratic selection of the nominalizer by the verbal exponent at a morphophonological level: in the same way that, arguably, a base like govern- selects the nominalizer -ment and not -ation, here the bases comparece- and transfere- would be associated, in their lexical entries as exponents, with a specification that the nominalizer taken to form the noun would be -ncia, and not, say, -ción ‘-ation’. This possibility simply cannot be argued against, but we want to briefly explore a more configurational analysis where the exceptional nature receives a structural analysis. Consider the series of nominalizations in (34): (34) a. b. c. d. e. f. g.

trans-fere-ncia ‘transference’ di-fere-ncia ‘difference’ re-fere-ncia ‘reference’ pre-fere-ncia ‘preference’ in-fere-ncia ‘inference’ circun-fere-ncia ‘circumference’ de-fere-ncia ‘deference’

|| nated head must be introduced in the structure in both cases. We propose to call such head Bound in order to make it categorically neutral; it would be the kind of notion that in the nominal domain projects as a Divisor along the lines of Borer (2005).

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Out of this series, only the first is an eventive nominalization, but as can be seen, all of them can be decomposed (with structural and semantic consequences, as Marantz 2005 noted for the class of de-stroy) into a base fereand a prefix; all of them combine with -ncia to produce the nominalization. Furthermore, and this is a crucial fact, the only prefix in the series that is associated with the notion of transition from one point to the other is trans-: the other prefixes convey a stative, not transitional, meaning (circun- ‘around’, pre‘before’, di- ‘non coincident’) or are semantically devoid in this context (re-, de-). That the only eventive nominalization is the one carrying the transitional prefix trans-, while -ncia is attached to fere- is very suggestive. It suggests, we believe, that fere- should be treated as a non dynamic base, and the eventivity of (34a) is actually due to the presence of the transition defined by trans-. To be very clear: our reasoning would imply that -ncia combines with the base before the prefix is merged, because otherwise the complement of the nominalizer would carry eventivity. (35) [trans [[fere] ncia]] Clearly, even if our story is tenable, more research is warranted to find independent support for the structure in (35); as one anonymous reviewer notes, the decomposition in (35) should imply that the prefix is merged above the nominalizer, so that the nominalizer avoids selecting an object with eventive semantics, but the non-existence of a form like *fere-ncia is in principle a counterexample to this claim. Perhaps this case must, after all, be treated as a listed exception. Moving now to the case of comparecencia ‘appearance in court’, there is an interesting property of this nominalization that also suggests that its structure is slightly different. Note that this nominalization contains the verbalizing suffix -ece, including a theme vowel (36) compar-ec-e-ncia root-verbalizer-ThV-nominalizer This is important because most nominalizations in -ncia related to verbs in -ece lack, in fact, this suffix: (37) a. obed-ec-e ‘obey’ > obed-(*ec)-ie-ncia ‘obedience’ b. apar-ec-e ‘appear’ > apar-(*ec)-ie-ncia ‘appearance’

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To the best of our knowledge the suffix is kept only in our counterexample, in the Davidsonian state conval-ec-e-ncia ‘convalesce’ (which is already stative) and in the old words par-ec-e-ncia ‘resemblance’ (par-ec-e ‘resemble’) and cr-ec-e-ncia ‘increase’ (cr-ec-e ‘increase, grow’), which are not attested in contemporary texts. This suggests, again, that something structural is going on in (36), because it is not just exceptional for its (perhaps listed) meaning. Again, this requires further research, but one could be tempted to claim that the suffix -ncia is not introduced in this word in a position that it can control the cancellation of -ec-; from this position, it will not have an eventive base in its complement, but perhaps just the root compar-.

4

What this tells us about the nature of -ncia

Leaving aside this last group, the results that we have obtained paint the following picture of -ncia: (38) The suffix -ncia always takes bases that are intransformative/non-dynamic Thus it is productive in the following cases: a) to produce quality nominalizations, as qualities are non-dynamic b) to derive nouns from both purely stative and Davidsonian-stative verbs When combined with a dynamic base, the base is interpreted in a nondynamic sense, including dispositionality, habituality and potentiality, among other possible meanings. This solves Puzzles #2 and #3 of -ncia. Starting from #3, we have seen that when the base is dynamic, the interpretation assigned to the nominalization is stativized in some way. For reasons of space, let us illustrate with the dispositional reading (e.g., absorbence). Stativization can be performed in two ways, structurally: first, it can be obtained “by absence” if the event argument is not introduced in the structure. This would mean that the suffix -ncia is introduced below the structural position where such argument is introduced (39a). Second, stativity can be obtained “by presence”, namely by merging stativizing operators (e.g., modals) above the event variable; this implies that -ncia can be introduced relatively high in the structure, and embed quite a rich verbal structure (39b). (39) a. [NP -ncia [VP ]] b. [NP -ncia [XP Opstative [vP [VP ]]]]

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We do not have at this moment any empirical argument for or against one of these accounts. For concreteness, however, we will assume (39b). (40) illustrates the structure with the dispositional absorbencia; we assume Lekakou’s (2005) ascriptional operator to convey the dispositional semantics: by virtue of its internal properties, an entity will absorb liquids if there are facilitating circumstances. (40) [NP -ncia [XP Opascrip [vP [VP -e- [absorb]]]]] Thus, what is relevant for -ncia is that its complement is non-dynamic: that is, as we expect from locality, the information that is embedded below the head of its complement is not relevant to the computation of the non-dynamicity of the complement. Interestingly, non-dynamicity is satisfied both by quality nominalizations and by stative verbs and stative interpretations of eventive verbs. It is at this point that we move to Puzzle #2. Even though adjectives expressing qualities and verbs expressing eventualities (dynamic and non-dynamic) belong to very different categories, from the perspective of boundedness and their satisfaction of the strict subinterval property, they are identical. The suffix -ncia produces both, not caring whether the result is a quality that pairs the nominalization with an existing adjective or is a stative situation that is somehow related to a verb. This is expected if there are indeed cross-categorial primitives defining notions like (un)boundedness and -ncia happens to be a suffix that is sensitive to these primitives rather than to the category label of its complement. From our examination of the facts, it follows that in order to describe this suffix correctly one must ignore the question of whether the result is an eventuality or a quality, which are lexically-specific notions, and go directly to a lexically-neutral notion of “absence of change”. Assuming Piñón’s (1997) primitives, what -ncia requires in its complement is an object that lacks an initial or a final boundary (41a) and contains simply a body – an extension without internal limits – which by default will be interpreted as absence of change (41b). (41) a. ‘[’/‘]’ b. -------Consequently, Puzzle #2 dissolves: -ncia produces both kinds of nominalization because its selectional requisites are sensitive to the primitives used to build qualities and aspect, not to their lexically-specific instantiation as other kinds of

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elements. The suffix -ncia will combine with bases that do not involve any rate of change, and this includes roots interpreted as qualities (42a), stative verbs (42b) and eventive verbs under the scope of stativizing operators (42c). (42) a. [NP -ncia [√elega]] ‘elegance’ b. [NP -ncia [VP e [√exist]]] ‘existence’ c. [NP -ncia [XP Op [vP [VP a [√vag]]]]] ‘idleness’

5

The relation between -nte and -ncia

We are at this point in a position to address the traditional problem of how to account for the relation between -nte and -ncia. Let us start with a summary of the facts: 1. Historically, it is clear that -ncia is nt+ia; however, this cannot be right for contemporary Spanish, as there are -ncia formations without a -nte counterpart. 2. The interpretation of an -ncia formation, when the noun denotes a quality, is built over the interpretation of the -nte form, which is not morphologically its base. Part of the connection between -nte and -ncia, even if they were completely different affixes, follows from our account of the interpretation of -ncia. The suffix -ncia requires a stative/intransformative interpretation from its base; qualities are by definition intransformative, so we expect that even when the base is an event verb, the reading that will obtain will be one where the base is taken as denoting a situation or even qualities of an entity (in dispositional, habitual and potential readings, for instance). It has also been argued (Cano 2013) that the affix -nte selects non-telic bases such that when it combines with telic, eventive bases a stative reading is imposed. Fábregas (2016b; see also Rainer 1999) notes that among these readings we typically find dispositional (43a) and habitual (43b) interpretations: (43) a. contamin-a-nte contaminate-ThV-NTE ‘that would contaminate’ b. agobi-a-nte stress-ThV-NTE ‘that typically stresses others’

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What we see here is that Spanish -nte, as -ncia, is sensitive to the absence of initial and final boundaries, as it forces the stativization of an eventive base. Like -ncia, it also creates adjectives from quality-denoting bases (elega-nte ‘elegant’), purely stative verbs (distar ‘be.away’ > dist-a-nte ‘distant’) and Davidsonian states (vigilar ‘watch over’ > vigil-a-nte ‘guard’). That both affixes, being distinct in Spanish, share a common selectional restriction (an intransformative primitive ------) is plausibly explained by their historical relation: in the past, one is built over the other, and -ncia kept the sensitivity to ‘-----’ that -nt(e) carried with it. Once -ncia contains the same restriction as -nte it is not surprising that they will trigger the same kind of interpretation with both, to the extent that the description associated with -ncia will coincide with the description that, with the same base, is associated with -nte. For instance, arroga-ncia ‘arrogance’ and arroga-nte ‘arrogant’ end up meaning the same quality (a tendency or disposition to believe that one can assume any task) because its base, arrogar ‘assume a task’, is eventive and must be reinterpreted as a stative description to satisfy identical restrictions for -ncia and -nte. Consequently, this is our claim: -ncia and -nte do not have any derivational relation. They are connected to the extent that both impose intransformative readings on their bases, which produces an identical tendency to denote qualities instead of events. We are however not claiming that both affixes have exactly the same behavior: our claim is just that they act in the same way with respect to their rejection of boundaries and transitions. Necessarily, being different exponents, they must be different in other ways, but their specific differences, which ultimately explains why there are words with -nte without an -ncia counterpart (firma-nte ‘sign-atory’ / *firmancia) and vice versa (gana-ncia ‘profit’ / *gana-nte) is an independent question that we will not discuss here.

6

Conclusions

In this article, we have argued that -ncia is a nominalizer that is sensitive to the cross-categorial primitives contained in the base rather than to their specific instantiation in a lexical category. We have claimed that this explains three puzzles in the behavior of -ncia: that it produces both quality and eventuality nominalizations, because it is sensitive to the absence of initial and final boundaries in the base; that it is related to -nte even though it is not derivationally built from it because both affixes share this restriction; and finally that it can take eventive bases because under -ncia those bases are

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interpreted as stative, and assimilate to qualities in many cases. Even though there are two potential lexical exceptions, this result empirically supports the claim that natural languages build categories using a common set of categoryneutral primitives shared by nouns, adjectives and verbs, as this pattern of data is expected if -ncia is sensitive to common features contained both in adjectives and verbs. Before finishing this article, however, a final remark is in order: as the reader has certainly noticed, not all nominalizations with -ncia are mass nouns, and it is unclear whether mass nouns are ever morphological bases for -ncia nominalizations. We have seen that in some instances, namely when the noun is just a result nominalization and unboundedness is not manifested aspectually or in any other way, the noun must be mass, but this is generally not a necessary condition for -ncia nominalizations (even though quality nominalizations tend to be mass). We believe that this raises questions with respect to two issues relating to the hypothesis that cross-categorial primitives exist. The first one is whether a cross-categorial primitive imposes a reading that must be satisfied in one dimension or consists of a structural head that imposes readings across all dimensions. In other words: if unboundedness is manifested in dimension A (for instance, scalar structure), does this mean that other potential dimensions, like countability or Aktionsart in the same structure are not free to be bounded or unbounded because unboundedness is already satisfied in some dimension, or do all dimensions have to match in unboundedness? The answer is not clear to us, and we lack plausible theoretical reasons that favor one answer or the other, so it is clearly an empirical matter that has to be settled by a careful examination of the facts. The second question that we believe is raised by our facts is whether countability and the count/mass contrast is actually the right opposition with which to examine boundedness in the nominal domain. The reason is that it is a binary opposition, and we know that both in scalar structure and Aktionsart the attested number of classes is not reduced to two: there are two atelic predicate classes, at least, that are further differentiated by their dynamicity. If the correspondence across categories is perfect, one expects either that count mass is part of a more fine-grained typology or that this divide is not the right empirical domain to track the projection of boundedness in the nominal domain. However, these questions greatly exceed the limits of this paper. We leave the matter here, hoping that at the very least we have captured readers’ attention and convinced them that these matters are still in need of detailed investigation.

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References Bach, Emmon. 1986. The algebra of events. Linguistic and Philosophy 9. 5–16. Bennett, Michael and Barbara Hall Partee. 1978. Toward the logic of tense and aspect in English. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club. Bloch-Trojnar, Maria. 2013. The mechanics of transposition. A study of action nominalisations in English, Irish and Polish. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego. Borer, Hagit. 2005. In name only. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bosque, Ignacio. 1990. Sobre el aspecto de los adjetivos y participios. In Ignacio Bosque (ed.), Tiempo y aspecto en español, 177–214. Madrid: Cátedra. Cano, María de los Ángeles and Matías Jaque. 2011. On the aspectual interpretation of deverbal formations in Spanish: Weak and strong patterns of suffixation. Unpublished Manuscript, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Cano, María de los Ángeles. 2013. Las derivaciones en -nte y -dor: estructura argumental y complejidad sintáctica en una morfología neoconstruccionista. Madrid: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Dissertation. Carlson, Gregory. 1977. Reference to kinds in English. Amherst: University of Massachusetts. Dissertation. Carlson, Gregory. 2011. Habitual and generic aspect. In Robert I. Binnick (ed.), The Oxford handbook of tense and aspect, 828–852. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cetnarowska, Bożena. 1993. The syntax, semantics and derivation of bare nominalisations in English. Katowice: Uniwersytet Śląski. Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Fábregas, Antonio and Rafael Marín. 2012. The role of Aktionsart in deverbal nouns: State nominalizations across languages. Journal of Linguistics 48. 35–70. Fábregas, Antonio. 2016a. Las nominalizaciones. Madrid: Visor. Fábregas, Antonio. 2016b. Deconstructing the non-episodic reading of Spanish deverbal adjectives. Word Structure 9. 1–41. Fabricius-Hansen, Cathrine. 1975. Transformative, intransformative and cursive verbs. Berlin: De Gruyter. Grimshaw, Jane. 1990. Argument structure. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Halle, Morris. 1973. Prolegomena to a theory of word formation. Linguistic Inquiry 4. 451–464. Jackendoff, Ray. 1975. Morphological and semantic regularities in the lexicon. Language 51. 639–671. Jackendoff, Ray. 1997. The architecture of the language faculty. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Jaque, Matías. 2014. La expresión de la estatividad en español. Niveles de representación y grados de dinamicidad. Madrir: Universidad Autónoma de Mdrid. Dissertation. Lekakou, Marika. 2005. In the middle, somewhat elevated. The semantics of middles and its crosslinguistic realization. London: University of London. Dissertation. Lieber, Rochelle. 1981. On the organization of the lexicon. New Hampshire: University of New Hampshire. Dissertation. Maienborn, Claudia. 2003. Die logische Form von Kopula-Sätzen. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

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Malicka-Kleparska, Anna. 1988. Rules and lexicalisations. Selected English nominals. Lublin: Redakcja Wydawnictw Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego. Malkiel, Yakov. 1945. Probleme des spanischen Adjektivabstraktums. Neophilologische Mitteilungen XLVI. 171–191. Marantz, Alec. 2005. Objects out of the lexicon. Unpublished ms., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mourelatos, Alexander P. D. 1978. Events, processes and states. Linguistics and Philosophy 2. 415–434. NGLE. Real Academia Española y Asociación de Academias Americanas de la Lengua. 2009. Nueva gramática de la lengua española. Madrid: Espasa. Pattison, David G. 1975. Early Spanish suffixes. Oxford: Blackwell. Pena, Jesús. 2005. Interferencias entre paradigmas derivativos. A propósito de los sustantivos en -ncia, -ada y -ería. In Graça Maria Rio-Torto, Olívia Maria Figueiredo and Fátima Silva (eds.), Estudos en Homenagem ao Professor Doutor Mário Vilela (vol. 1), 305–323. Porto: Faculdade de Letras de Porto. Pharies, David. 2002. Diccionario etimológico de los sufijos españoles. Madrid: Gredos. Piñón, Christopher. 1997. Achievements in an event semantics. In Andrew Lawson and Eun Cho (eds.), Proceedings of SLT VII, 273–296. Ithaca, NY: CLC Publications, Cornell University. Rainer, Franz. 1999. La derivación adjetival. In Ignacio Bosque and Violeta Demonte (eds.), Gramática Descriptiva de la Lengua Española, 4595–4645. Madrid: Espasa. Ross, John D. 1973. Nouniness. In Osamu Fujimura (ed.), Three dimensions of linguistic theory, 137–258. Tokyo: Tokyo English Corporation. Szymanek, Bogdan. 1988. Categories and categorization in morphology. Lublin: Redakcja Wydawnictw Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego. Wasow, Thomas. 1977. Transformations and the lexicon. In Peter Culicover, Thomas Wasow and Adrian Akmajian (eds.), Formal syntax, 327–360. New York: Academic Press.

Lars Hellan

A design for the analysis of bare nominalizations in Norwegian 1

Introduction

By a bare nominalization (BN) we mean a noun whose form can appear as, or be similar to, the stem of a verb, and which carries no derivational affix; that is, none of the affixes standardly used for the construction of nouns from verbs. In Norwegian, such affixes include -ing, -else, -sjon as the most regular. For each of them, the relation to the meaning induced can vary from verb to verb, but the gender of the noun induced is always the same: -else and -sjon always induce masculine gender; -ing always induces masculine or feminine, according to norm and style.1 BNs, in contrast, have a gender defined specifically for each noun, dependent neither on the associated verb nor on aspects of the form of the noun; some examples are given below: Tab. 1: Gender of some Norwegian bare nominalizations

Masculine

Neuter

gang related to gå ‘go’

fall related to falle ‘fall’

søvn related to sove ‘sleep’

løp related to løpe ‘run’ hopp related to hoppe ‘jump’

The present paper will outline an analysis which accommodates this property of BNs, along with the circumstance that BNs typically have a meaning partially shared with a verb. Early work in generative grammar assumed that a BN is syntactically derived from a verb through a transformation; Chomsky (1972) noted that the relationship between derived nouns and verbs is far less regular

|| 1 Norwegian Nynorsk uses feminine and Norwegian Bokmål uses masculine, but with subnorms favouring feminine. || I am grateful to the editors, an anonymous reviewer, and Dorothee Beermann, for constructive comments.

DOI 10.1515/9781501505430-008

182 | Lars Hellan

than many alternations operative at sentential level, thereby reserving the transformation mechanism for syntax and allocating noun formation in the lexicon, assuming that mechanisms enforcing irregularity can be consistently located here. This is an overall design which has been explored in many frameworks subsequently, some of them holding that the relationship between a verb and a derived noun can still be construed as derivational, but then through processes operating in the lexicon. Chomsky’s proposal itself also included the conception of a common abstract argument structure schema valid for both deverbal nouns and verbs, the X-bar schema, with the implication that accounts of commonality between verbs and deverbal nouns can be stated in reference to such a schema, rather than in terms of derivation from one form to another. This is an approach we may call underspecification, and in our proposal concerning derived nouns in Norwegian we will explore both ideas – we will suggest an account for BNs in terms of underspecification, and for affixal deverbal nouns, derivation. Although the domain of investigation is of course empirical, our focus here will be close to a priori, in that we will consider certain specific analytic strategies for the phenomena in question as a preliminary for subsequent empirical investigations. These strategies being of a certain general interest, we thus devote the paper to an exposition and discussion of them. A framework particularly suited for encoding analyses in terms of underspecification is Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) (cf. Pollard and Sag 1994; Sag and Wasow 1999; Sag et al. 2003), using the formalism of Typed Feature Structures (cf. Copestake 2002), with its explicit and constrained design for modeling single as well as multiple type inheritance. HPSG also has a welldeveloped formalism for lexical description including derivational rules at lexical level, and so provides a basis for the articulation of such an analysis as we have in mind. Importantly, also, standard HPSG design comes with a welldeveloped, grammatically integrated, architecture for semantic specification. This is essential for the explication of our approach, since the main content of a BN sign, apart from a form non-systematically related to that of a verb and a gender, is its meaning; a major feature of our analysis will be a construal of a type of “minimal” or “root” sign consisting in essence of a situational meaning, and from this minimal sign, full-fledged lexical signs for a verb and a BN are expanded.2

|| 2 A specific asset of HPSG, shared with not so many other frameworks, is that it serves as basis for large, so-called “deep”, computational grammars, where analytic assumptions can be tested in a total grammar environment far beyond what even the most stringent reasoning allows for when done in the abstract. The existence of a Norwegian grammar of this kind (cf.

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Designs developed in Distributed Morphology (cf., e.g., Alexiadou (this volume)) have telling points in common with the present proposals, as we mention in section 5. In a general perspective, aesthetics and economy alike favor defining recurrent signs and sign components just once in a grammar, in such a way that this one-time definition suffices to account for the role of the sign or sign component in all of its occurrences or instantiations. One obvious instance of this principle is that a given word should be defined once and for all as an entry in the Lexicon, with the combination possibilities defined in morpho-syntax doing the remaining work of accounting for occurrences of the word. Derivation is another instance, whether in word derivation or in transformation-like operations: certain essential features common to a set of constructs – let us call them characteristic features – are defined for just one construct, and the circumstance that the other constructs also have these features is induced by the derivational operations. A third instance is type inheritance: characteristic features are defined on the supertype, and are inherited down to subtypes. This philosophy of “once-and-for-all” specification is constitutive to our proposed design, with the instances mentioned as implementations. The number of BNs in Norwegian comes close to a thousand, and this paper serves to make explicit some of the theoretical assumptions to be carried into a broader investigation of them. The website https://typecraft.org/tc2wiki/ Bare_Nominalizations_in_Norwegian displays a current list of BNs, and an outline of how the corpus is envisaged.

2

Outline of proposal

Our proposal will be outlined around one single instance of a verb – BN – affixderived noun triplet, namely the verb løpe ‘run’, the BN løp, and the affixderived noun løping ‘running’. The following examples illustrate salient properties of the nouns. In (1) (phrased in a somewhat medical report style), the understood agent of the BN fall is “she”, while the agent of løp is fairly indeterminate, involving the horse, but mainly in the sense of an equipage partaking in a competition or exercise.

|| https://typecraft.org/tc2wiki/Norwegian_HPSG_grammar_NorSource) provides us with a technological background useful for assessing the consistency and scalability of the proposals to be made.

184 | Lars Hellan

(1)

Hun var sykmeldt grunnet fall fra hest under løp. she be.PST sickleaved grounded fall from horse under run.BN ‘She was given sick-leave because of a fall from a horse during a run.’

With the derived noun løping instead of løp, in contrast, the understood agent would be “she”, preserving the participant role array associated with the verb. Since “she” could hardly be on a horse and be running at the same time, this would actually be a somewhat funny construction; the following sentence illustrates the point better: (2) Hun gikk med krykker grunnet overanstrengelse she walk.PST with crutch.PL grounded over-exertion av achillessenen under løping. of achille-tendon.DEF under run.NMLZ ‘She was walking with crutches due to over-exertion of her Achilles-tendon while running.’ In this pair, it will seem that løping has an understood agent being bound by the c-commanding subject, and thus has elements of a verbal argument structure, even though it is definitely a noun.3 As noted at the outset, derivation with -ing leads to a gender assignment induced by the affix, such that the formation of løping can be conceived derivationally. The circumstance that the BN løp has neuter gender is a property clearly within the range of characteristic properties of this form, and characteristic properties are exactly what should not be supplied to an item through derivation.4 A problem with assigning løp and loping different provenances of characteristic specification, however, is that they do have a characteristic property in common as well, namely their meaning (and of course also phonological factors). Thus, what we need is a model of grammar allowing us both to define the nouns løp and løping with a partly common semantics, and at the same time not situate løping and løp in a common derivational track from the verb løpe. To this end we introduce a system of lexical entries functioning as a partial type inheritance hierarchy, where a sign structure with a situational semantics, but underspecified for parts of speech and valency, counting as root, can be inherited

|| 3 The nouns formed with -ing probably correspond to English deverbal nouns formed with -ing, but we do not try a precise comparison here. 4 Thus it will be out of the question to assume something like zero-derivational rules producing the BNs of the various genders.

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both by a verb and a noun entry. This design can create a noun entry with properties partly like those of a given verb, but without going via the lexical entry for that verb. For instance, the underspecified root structure may represent the concept of running, being inherited on the one hand by the verb entry løpe ‘run’, with aspectual protractedness, directional motion semantics and the corresponding valency frame, and on the other hand by the noun entry løp, which specifies neuter gender, but leaves valency non-determined. For visualization, the type inheritance may be portrayed as a vertical relation, as depicted in Figure 1, relative to which a track involving derivational processes could be shown a horizontal track taking off from verb entry. Root: Semantic core + rudimentary morpho-phonological specification --------- [Type inheritance] ---------Noun entry for BN Verb entry (

) |

[Derivation] Fig. 1: Inheritance design for basic lexical entries

Essential here is that while the common characteristics of the verb løpe and the BN løp are specified at the root node, their lexical entries are defined at the daughter level, not as derived constructs, but as subtypes in the type inheritance hierarchy, independently of derivational relations. Type inheritance is by necessity monotonic, so that all of the root information for løpe/løp is present in the lexical entry of løp, but beyond that the lexical entry is open for all further specification needed. As for the opposite mechanism, derivation, we are of course not assuming that it generally be “productive” in any sense – a nominalizing affix may apply to only a few verb stems, but as long as the resulting properties can be packed into a many-instance package rather than be assigned anew for each case, the economy gain of derivation is obtained.

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3

Formal and theoretical assumptions

The analysis uses the format of attribute-value matrices (AVMs) governed by types, as laid out in Copestake (2002).5 In an AVM, attributes, here written in capital letters, have values, written in small letters. The values are generally types, defined in hierarchies of super- and sub-types. Types can be further defined relative to chosen parameters, which are written as attributes, and said to be introduced, or declared, by the type in question;6 in principle the value of an attribute can thus introduce a new attribute, whose value can introduce a new attribute in turn, whereby one gets paths of attributes; in expositions, the intermittent types are often omitted. In the AVM below, GF is the attribute introducing grammatical functions, and its sub-attributes are conceived partly like the inventory used in LFG, for instance with SUBJ for “subject”, and OBJ for “(direct) object”.7 ACTNTS (for “actants”) represents semantic argument structure, characterized through the attributes ACT1 and ACT2 (“actant 1” and “actant 2”) (see below for discussion of these notions and their relation to the notion of role). The GF and ACTNTS values are interlinked through pointers entered as values of the ACT attribute, which can at the same time be seen as the referents – introduced by the attribute INDX – of the grammatical functions. Thus, the paths SUBJ [INDX [1]] and ACT [1] both lead to the same individual, or index. The GF and ACTNTS values thereby together give a representation of a sign. The AVM below could for instance be used in a representation of a sentence like John kicks Peter: (3)

|| 5 This is an introduction to the Linguistic Knowledge Builder (LKB) system, which underlies one of the computational platforms of HPSG, but also formalizes the general build-up of an HPSG grammar, cf. Pollard and Sag (1994). 6 The following two principles govern the introduction of attributes: [A] A given type introduces the same attribute(s) no matter which environment it is used in. [B] A given attribute is declared by one type only (but occurs with all of its subtypes). 7 While the use of such attributes is a defining part of LFG (Bresnan 2001), a more common construct for this type of information in HPSG is ARG-ST(ructure) – cf. Sag and Wasow (1999). A standard HPSG representation also includes valency lists, which we are not showing here; in both respects the format chosen here is mainly for simplicity.

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The attribute ACTNTS representing semantic argument structure, the format allows one to model cases of failed linking – a syntactic item lacking a semantic counterpart as the expletive subject in (4a), or the opposite, exemplified in (4b): (4) a. Expletive subject (There is a boy sitting outside):

b. Implicit object (The boy is eating.):

The attributes ACT1 and ACT2 etc. as used here are partly role labels, partly enumeration markers. As enumeration markers, they list the participants present in the situation expressed (including implicit ones), starting with ACT1, and using ACT2 only if there is an ACT1, and using ACT3 only if there is an ACT2. (This is analogous to the conventional listing of arguments of an operator in logical notation, where in expressions like P(x,y) one introduces a comma only if there is more than one argument; the convention in linguistics goes back at least to Tesnière 1959). As role markers, when there is more than one argument, they express something close to macro- or proto-roles, so that when there is an ACT1 and an ACT2, ACT1 is the role associated with emanation of force, and ACT2 is the impacted part relative to the force; an ACT3 would then express a slightly less directly involved participant than the ACT2, such as the recipient or benefactive in a ditransitive sentence.8 When there is only one actant, it will be marked as ACT1, regardless of its role. (Again, this is analogous to conventional logical notation). This persists through syntactic “derivation”. Thus, for instance, although in a sentence like the apple was eaten, the apple is a subject, it will correspond to the ACT2 participant. When judging the noun løping in (2) as having an argument anaphorically bound to the subject of the clause, it will be reasonable to see this argument as

|| 8 In these contrasts, the ACTs have the same intuitive basis as Dowty’s (1991) proto-roles. A richer use of the corresponding labels ARG0, ARG1, … is found in PropBank, representing fixed roles (cf. http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2010/pdf/73_Paper.pdf). These conventions all however contrast with the use of ACT1, … in the present system, in that the latter also has an enumerating function, as described.

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another instance of an ACT1, in search for a c-commanding anchor such as the c-commanding subject hun. Thus, semantic argument structure is not very remote from syntactic structure. The lack of a need for the identification of an understood participant of løp in (1), then, suggests that in the sign structure of this item, a level like semantic argument structure may well be missing. In maintaining the design in Figure 1, this raises the question of what kind of meaning structure løp has, and, if inheriting its semantics from a root sign, what kind of semantic structure this root sign has in turn. Distinguishing between no more than three (or four) participant types, the ACTn attributes by no means purport to fully differentiate between all types of roles that can be recognized, and there is thus room for definitions of richer spaces of semantic specification, some of which may be relevant for the representation of a meaning for løp and the root sign. In general, a semantic representation should expose what sets the meaning of the sign represented apart from the meaning of other signs; and at the same time expose what the meaning of the sign in question has in common with the meaning of other signs. From the perspective of participant roles, such a demand for expressiveness calls for structures beyond what has so far been mentioned, and one approach is to introduce ROLE as an attribute inside of ACTn, with explicit role notions as value, as in (5a). An alternative would be to go directly to role labels as attributes, and not via the ACTn, as in (5b); either way, this brings the general notional apparatus of semantic/thematic roles into the format of semantic argument structure:9 (5) a. Representing roles:

b. Alternative

In many cases one needs to leave role status underspecified. This can be easily done in the format in (5a) by using as the value of ROLE simply a super-type of

|| 9 This is well justified, since role specification is convenient also for grammatical purposes (a view which goes back at least to Panini’s karaka system – cf., e.g., Barthakuria (1997)).

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all the candidate role names, e.g., role, whereas in the format in (5b), an actant cannot be indicated without stating a specific role. Still, the question we are considering now is whether a semantic level of specification can be defined independently of semantic argument structure. Many scholars have recognized domains of semantics going beyond that of argument structure, and we outline here a format for representing one such domain, that of situation types, suggesting this as a candidate for the root node specification.10 The set of possible situation types to be distinguished for a language is large11 – it seems plausible to assume that an inventory should distinguish at least as many types as there are verbs in the language – say, 10,000, counting general and less general types together. Given that these types can be ordered into super-types at various levels, such a system will be a multiple inheritance hierarchy. Its higher types will presumably be relevant for all languages, while some language particular types may emerge as lower types. Formally speaking, when a system takes such a degree of complexity, it will be convenient if one can use attributes allowing for specification of parameters that differentiate subtypes of a given super-type. Figure 2 illustrates this design with a segment of a possible situation type hierarchy: here the higher nodes represent types of higher generality, and the attributes introduce role specifications typical of these types. The attributes are inherited down the tree, and certain of the lower types in turn introduce new attributes; explicit mention of inherited attributes is made only when their values partake in identity relations not defined at a higher level, as in the type ejection. This hierarchy is for illustration only, both in the organization of types, their labels, and the labels for roles. (Note that the Eng-

|| 10 Such a “deeper” level will be intuitively closer to the semantic spaces explored in traditions like Langacker (2008), Wierzbicka (1996), and Pustejovsky (1995). For a division like the one we want to capture, proposals in Melchuk (2004) and Levin and Rappaport Hovav (2005) are relevant for comparison. Among distinctions in the latter that do not have a direct counterpart in the present proposal is the one between simple and complex events, where complex events consist of a resulting phase and a phase leading up to it (transitive break being a suggested example). Among generalizations based on the distinction is that transitive verbs with a complex event semantics cannot undergo object omission, which it is suggested accounts for why break does not allow object omission while eat does. As far as feature design is concerned, the event complexity distinction in question will in our system be found in the Aktionsart types, not in particular attribute-value specifications. 11 As exemplified in for instance FrameNet, cf. https://framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu/fndrupal/.

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lish verbs entered at the bottom line to instantiate the types represented at the nodes above them, are not types per se in the hierarchy).12

Fig. 2: Excerpt of a possible situation-type hierarchy

In considering whether such a representation of situation types can serve as a format for semantic representation at the root node, we start with an aspect of formal consistency. The system in Figure 2 uses role names as attributes, which is in principle a design of the type illustrated in (5b) above, so that adopting the design illustrated in Figure 2 might seem to formally contradict the strategy we || 12 This follows the principles stated above: [A] A given type introduces the same attribute(s) no matter which environment it is used in. [B] A given attribute is declared by one type only (but occurs with all of its subtypes). HAEC (see below) and haeccitas, the medieval notion of “this-ness”, serve for co-referentiality pointers. This style of attribute-enriched type hierarchy is used, e.g., in Davis (2000), although with different types and attributes. Note that in expositions where for any transitive verb X the semantic roles are dubbed X-ER and X-EE, like “KICKER” and “KICKEE”, no type system reflecting [A] and [B] can underlie such attributes, since this would defy the whole idea of attributes in a type system used as a classifying device – the “-ER”/“-EE” attributes would all have to be introduced at the very leaf nodes of the hierarchy.

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had chosen for semantic argument structure, namely the one illustrated in (5a). However, in the design now at stake, a possible situation type specification will be independent of argument structure in the root node and in the BN item, and with monotonicity of inheritance as assumed, it will enter a verbal sign as a component separate from the argument structure. This allows these components to have partly different designs, as long as necessary interconnections can be defined. We now demonstrate how an interconnected “cohabitation” between situation type representation and semantic argument representation can be designed. As an attribute hosting situation types, we use SIT. The type ejection in Figure 2 will come out as specified in the value of SIT in the following representation, with the inherited role attributes AGENT, LAUNCHER, MOVER and LAUNCHED; the role LAUNCHER can for instance represent an arm, which is essential in throwing, and whatever is “launched” is also a mover, as indicated by the coindexing. This information being explicit under SIT, it is less explicitly reflected under ACTNTS, since the “launcher” item is not represented in the standard argument structure associated with a verb like throw in English. For the SIT items which are reflected in semantic argument structure, coindexing between SIT and ACTNTS marks the linkages. (6) Cohabitation of semantic argument structure and situation structure:

Having thereby a format where syntactic and semantic argument structure and situation structure can all be represented in a sign, we can also formally design the sign inheritance structure sketched in Figure 1 by locating just SIT in the root node and in the BN, and all of SIT, ACTNTS and GF in the verb sign, as illustrated in Figure 3:

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Root: SIT ------- [Type inheritance] --------Verb: SIT + ACTNTS + GF

BN: SIT

Fig. 3: Inheritance design for semantics and argument structure

It may be noted that the information “agent” is represented both in the ACTNTS and the SIT matrix, as a value of ROLE in the former, as an attribute in the latter, which is formally consistent, but may seem redundant. Less redundant however is the circumstance that “theme” as a ROLE value under ACTNTS corresponds to the attributes MOVER and LAUNCHED inside SIT, which is an explication of the notion “theme”. The usefulness of such a double layer of semantic specifications is as follows: at one level we want an inventory of role labels closely associated with syntactically realized arguments, covering also the cases where such arguments are implicit, as discussed above. At another level we may want a somewhat freer navigation space, such as is expected within lexical semantics but in which the two levels are explicitly connected, which allows there to be a principled connection to the other level even when one is addressing just one of them. Thus, a reason mentioned for choosing (5a) over (5b) is the need for sometimes being able to leave a role specification open; in the overall model now proposed, this kind of concern is covered both in the ACTNTS specification and in the principled possibility of leaving SIT altogether non-specified, something that is obviously welcome in cases where we want to leave situation type open.

4

The analysis in some detail

Taking the verb løpe ‘run’ and the corresponding BN løp ‘run’ as examples of the present design, we encode the SIT of løp(e) as having a type and attributes corresponding to what the node marked ‘run’ has in Figure 2; in addition comes Aktionsart specification as suggested in Figure 4 below, a partial hierarchy combining Aktionsart and general situation types, some types thus borrowed from Figure 2, some types reflecting a possible type hierarchical rendering of aspectual systems as outlined in Vendler (1967) and Smith (1991, 1997) (the purpose being again illustrative, rather than making claims as to the specific notions and labels shown). The root sign is given in (7):

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(7) Root sign:

Fig. 4: Partial type system for integration of situation types and Aktionsarten

The sign inheritance design we are suggesting will provide the AVM in (8) as a candidate for serving as the sign of the BN løp ‘run’; SIT is as in the root sign, whereas orthography, part of speech and gender are stated to be part of the characteristic properties of the sign, constituting its lexical entry. (8) BN sign:

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Likewise inherited from the root (7) will be the lexical entry of the verb, viz. (9); added here are syntactic argument structure (GF) and semantic argument structure (ACTNTS): (9) Verb sign:

The specifications of ORTH aside, the structure in (7) is a super-type of both (8) and (9), so that the information in (7) can be seen as being inherited down into the signs for the verb løpe ‘run’ and the BN løp ‘run’; this is thus an illustration of the design in Figures 1 and 3. By what is added in (9) – the attribute GFs and ACTNTS – we specify the verb as the item having a full-fledged argument structure. We assume that the attribute GF is necessarily present in all verb entries, and that general lexical mapping rules regulate which GFs can go with which ACT; the introduction and index alignment for GF in (9) is thus not defined for that verb specifically. In contrast, the introduction of GENDER as neuter in (8) is very specific to this lexeme. An adequate lexical semantics will obviously involve far more specification than the features we have introduced so far. In particular, as opposed to the common temporal modeling represented by the aspectual features used, a BN and a verb generally contrast sharply in what we (following Smith 1991, 1997) may call viewpoint, a verb typically situating its viewpoint “inside” an event, whereas a BN takes a more “outside” view. Features reflecting this distinction can be appropriately added to (8) and (9) maintaining monotonicity, being thereby compatible with the present design. For the contrast, we also illustrate derivation as here considered, namely noun formation with -ing, derived from the verb structure (9). As suggested, such a noun should have an ACTNTS argument structure, as in (10) (and also the viewpoint specification mentioned). It will be assumed that GF is absent here in order to reflect a general principle to the effect that nouns do not take

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syntactic arguments, beyond those that are generally possible with relational nouns. Thus, the -ing derivational rule does not per se delete the GF specification of the verb.13 (10) Sign for the noun løping ‘running’:

5

Discussion

The idea of type inheritance over sign structures was particularly pursued in HPSG-related literature around the turn of the century, including Riehemann (2001) for derivation of adjectives from verbs, and Ginzburg and Sag (2000) related to complex sentential structures and accounts of constructional factors. Discussions of related mechanisms are found in the Construction Grammar literature: see, e.g., Hilpert (2014). The phenomenon we have focused on here is in comparison structurally rather simple as far as morpho-syntax goes, but to our knowledge no account in terms of type inheritance over sign structures, contrasting with derivation, has been proposed for the type of data here considered. Distributed Morphology is a framework where a notion like our root, neutral with regard to part of speech, plays a distinctive role. Here the lowest node in a verb-based projection is a part-of-speech-neutral sign, and this sign undergoes a process of successive acquisition of morphological and other features as it climbs up the projection line. We cannot go into a discussion of whether this acquisition could subsume both type inheritance and derivation in the terms of Figure 1, and what the role of assignment of lexically characteristic properties is || 13 There being no level of GFs, there is no basis for calling roles like the agent implicit in a case like Løping er sunt ‘Running is healthy’ but the role is of course understood, by virtue of the root and argument structure semantics.

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in such a framework, and indeed also assignment of argument structure. See Alexiadou (this volume) for a treatment of related phenomena in this framework. One of the possible pitfalls of underspecification-based analyses positing specific items a and b as subtypes of a super-type x, is where the specification space in principle allows the existence of more subtypes than just a and b, with the consequence that either the system will leak in unwanted respects, or laborious amendments will have to be made to the system. The underspecification aspect of the present approach resides in the expansion of a sign from having just the attribute SIT to having SIT, ACTNTS and GF. This expansion does not reside in assigning further subtypes in an already established type hierarchy like that suggested in Figure 2, but in the addition of a new attribute at an outer level, thus leaving the already established situation type hierarchy closed. This provides a more controlled underspecification design than if the sign expansion were to reside in just extending an already established type hierarchy.14 Even with the well developed architecture of types in HPSG, which includes lexical types and super-types, an innovation in the present analysis is that of lexical super-types linked to specific lexical items: a root sign is lexically rather specific, but at the same time it is a super-type of distinct lexical entries. “Entry identity” is not something which can be inherited; therefore a layer of types which are not entries, but general only to the extent that each type subsumes a single pair verb-entry – BN-entry, is required. How such a layer is to be formally implemented in detail is something we do not comment on here.15 A perspective we have ignored here is that of multiple usages of lexical items. It would be naïve to assume that usages of a given item can all be accounted for in terms of type inheritance and derivation – quite often it will seem that the array of usages of a given item constitutes rather a network of family resemblance.16 What we claim here is that a given usage can always receive a concise formalization in terms of AVMs, and that sign constellations as dis-

|| 14 The attributes SIT, GF and ACTNTS are themselves technically hosted in a type hierarchy declaring these attributes, but this hierarchy is very restricted. 15 This includes how to deal with inheritance of phonological/orthographic form. Discrepancies between verbs and BNs like those shown in the left column in Table 1 above, with consonant persistence but change of vowel, are not untypical, although on a rough estimate they constitute only around 5% of cases (for a dynamic update on such relations, see https://typecraft.org/tc2wiki/Bare_Nominalizations_in_Norwegian). There is hardly any tradition in HPSG for formalizing such matters, although a general mechanism which could be extendible to Semitic root morphology is of course highly desirable. 16 See, for instance, Geeraerts (2010).

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cussed here can indeed be accounted for in terms of typed AVMs, type inheritance, and derivation. How to build this kind of architecture into a larger one of multiple usages, is a matter of another investigation.

6

Conclusion

A design preference in formal grammar is that the characteristic properties of a given construct be stated only once. Like all deverbal nouns, bare nominalizations (BNs) in Norwegian share much of their semantics with a verb, but using the verb as a derivational source of the BN is precluded since a characteristic property like the gender of a BN cannot be predicted from any verbal base; likewise the phonological/orthographic form of BNs vary unpredictably, relative to putative verbal sources. On this basis we have suggested that the lexical entries of BNs are non-derived, but that verbal and nominal entries alike can be organized in part-of-speech-independent type hierarchies of lexical signs with inheritance of specification from underspecified root signs into complete signs, the latter constituting entries of the linguistic lexicon. A BN and its partner verb thereby both inherit information from a root sign, specified mainly by a semantic core common to the two. Contrary to BNs, -ing nominalizations in Norwegian carry a fairly regular relationship to verbs corresponding to their stem, hence -ing nominalizations are derived from a lexical verb entry, and do not constitute lexical entries by themselves. Assuming a lexicalist grammar model, these derivations take place in a lexicon component of the grammar, and so nevertheless feed into syntax in the same way as other lexical items. Relative to such an overall model, we have suggested a two-level model of lexical semantics. One level – the situational level – is suited to characterizing the core meaning common to a BN and a verb, and is thus part of the root sign dominating the two. The other level, which we call semantic argument structure, is present in a verb and aligned with its syntactic frame, but absent from a BN. In its relative formal fine-grainedness, this model builds on designs defined within HPSG, although it envisages a richer space of semantic description than is so far standard in this tradition. As was made clear at the outset, as a pre-exploration for a larger investigation of BNs in Norwegian, the present demonstration has focused on just one type of BN and one construction in which it can enter; these are representative, but certainly not to such an extent that one can draw conclusions concerning BNs in Norwegian on the whole, nor on how other BNs and constructions in which they can enter will differ from the present case. For one construction type

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to be seen in light of the present approach to BNs, namely light verb constructions, see Hellan (2016).

References Alexiadou, Artemis. This volume. On the complex relationship between deverbal compounds and argument supporting nominals. Barthakuria, Apurba Chandra. 1997. The philosophy of Sanskrit grammar (A critical study of Karaka). Calcutta: Punthi Pustak. Bresnan, Joan. 2001. Lexical Functional Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell. Chomsky, Noam. 1970/1972. Remarks on nominalization. In Jacobs Roderick and Peter Rosenbaum (eds.), Readings in English Transformational Grammar, 184–221. Waltham, MA: Ginn. Copestake, Ann. 2002. Implementing Typed Feature Structure Grammars. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Davis, Anthony. 2000. The hierarchical lexicon. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Dowty, David. 1991. Thematic proto-roles and argument selection. Language 67(3). 547–619. Geeraerts, Dirk. 2010. Theories of Lexical Semantics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ginzburg, Jonathan and Ivan A. Sag. 2000. Interrogative investigations: The form, meaning, and use of English interrogatives. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Grimshaw, Jane. 2005. [1993]. Semantic structure and semantic content in lexical representation. In Jane Grimshaw (ed.), Words and structure, 75–89. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Hellan, Lars. 2016. Light Verb Constructions as valency modeling. A study of Norwegian. Presented at SLE 2016, Naples. Hilpert, Martin. 2014. Construction Grammar and its application to English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Langacker, Ronald. 2008. Cognitive Grammar: A basic introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Levin, Beth and Malka Rappaport Hovav. 2005. Argument realization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Melchuk, Igor. 2004. Actants in semantics and syntax I: Actants in semantics. Linguistics 42(1). 1–66. Pollard, Carl and Ivan A. Sag. 1994. Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Pustejovsky, James. 1995. The Generative Lexicon. Cambridge, MA: Massachusets Intsitute of Technology Press. Riehemann, Susanne Z. 2001. A constructional approach to idioms and word formation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University. Dissertation. Sag, Ivan, and Tom Wasow. 1999. Syntactic Theory. A formal introduction. Stanford: CSLI Publications. Sag, Ivan, Tom Wasow and Emily Bender. 2003. Syntactic Theory. A formal introduction. Stanford: CSLI Publications. Smith, Carlota. 1991, 1997. The parameter of aspect. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Tesnière, Lucien. 1959. Éleménts de syntaxe structurale. Paris: Klincksieck.

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Vendler, Zeno. 1967. Linguistics in philosophy. New York: Cornell University Press. Wierzbicka, Anna. 1996. Semantics, primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gioia Insacco

Argument structures in Italian nominalizations 1

Objectives and methodology of research

According to Grimshaw’s theory (1990), it is possible to identify three types of nominals: nouns denoting complex events, nouns denoting simple events and result nominals. The first type has an associated event structure and an argument structure which must be satisfied; hence the obligatoriness of its arguments.1 On the contrary, nouns denoting simple events do not have any associated event structure and do not take obligatory arguments. Finally, result nominals do not have any argument structure, since they have a result interpretation.2 This tripartite analysis of nominals is not always valid in Italian (Thornton 1988, 1990, 1991; Castelli 1988; Gaeta 2002; Fiorentino 2004, 2008; Insacco 2015). In fact, as will be demonstrated below, a deverbal noun without an accompanying prepositional phrase does not necessarily have to receive a non-actional interpretation.3 The aim of this paper is to analyze the argument structure of a subset of Italian nominalizations – characterized by the suffixes -ata, -mento and -zione – taken from La Repubblica corpus.4 From a methodological point of view, the analysis involves the following phases: the first step is the extraction of the most frequent (75) nominalizations, all of them have been analyzed for their first 30 occurrences (a total of 2,250 tokens are considered). Then, each nomi|| 1 The “complex event” used to name only those nominals with obligatory arguments, refers to the fact that they are derived from verbs whose event structure is composed of different aspectual subparts. Complex event nominals preserve this complex structure. Since argument structure is obtained from both the aspectual and the thematic analyses of a predicate, only nominals that have both of them are argument taking. 2 The difference between complex event nominals and simple event nominals can be understood by applying a series of diagnostics. 3 Not only in Italian, but also in other languages Complex Event Nominals do not have obligatory arguments (Williams 1985; Gross and Kiefer 1995, Kiefer 1998; Koptjevskaja-Tamm 1993; Giorgi and Longobardi 1991; Zubizarreta 1987; Law 1997; Newmeyer 2009). 4 La Repubblica corpus (website http://sslmitdev-online.sslmit.unibo.it/) is an Italian journalistic corpus containing the year’s issues of the same daily newspaper from 1985 to 2000 for a total of 380 million tokens (Baroni et al. 2004).

DOI 10.1515/9781501505430-009

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nalization is classified on the basis of the verb from which it morphologically derives. The source verb is defined on the basis of the transitivity parameter; therefore, transitive nominalizations, unaccusative nominalizations, unergative nominalizations and double argument structure nominalizations are taken into consideration. Successively the argument structures – and the possible argument alternations – of the selected deverbal nouns are identified, in relation to the argument structure of their source verbs. Finally, the most frequent argument patterns are examined.

2

Classification of the source verb

More than half of the selected nominalizations – about 60% – derive from transitive verbs, 18% from unaccusative verbs, 15% from unergative verbs; finally, 7% select a double argument structure. The following diagram shows the abovementioned data.

Fig. 1: Nominalization types on the basis of source verbs

2.1

Transitive nominalizations

More than 60% of the nominalizations taken from La Repubblica derive from transitive verbs, namely from verbs that usually select an Agent and a Patient. Except for three nominalizations – autorizzazione ‘authorization’, collegamento ‘connection’ and liberazione ‘liberation’ – which derive from three-argumental transitive verbs, all the others derive from bi-argumental transitive verbs.

Argument structures in Italian nominalizations | 203

Rarely – only in 2.5% of occurrences – do transitive nominalizations realize the entire argument grid; the most frequently realized argument is the Patient (over 68% of occurrences). By contrast, the Agent is realized in only 13% of the occurrences. Moreover, nominalizations, sometimes, may not realize any argument at all; this option is manifested in 22% of the occurrences (cf. Section 2.1.3). The diagram below shows the likelihood of transitive nominalizations realizing the Patient, the Agent, the entire argument grid and no argument.

Fig. 2: Argument role realization in transitive nominalizations

2.1.1

Syntactic codification of the Patient

From a syntactic point of view, the Patient is realized by the prepositional phrase headed by the preposition di ‘of’ in about 50% of the occurrences: (1)

Indag-ano per la viola-zione de-lla legge 197. investigate-PRES.3PL for the violate-NMLZ of-DET law 197 ‘They investigate the violation of law 197.’

(2) una corretta valuta-zione de-l quadro clinico medical a correct evaluate-NMLZ of-DET case ‘a correct evaluation of the medical case.’ More rarely, the Patient may be realized by means of the following patterns: – possessive adjectives, in 28% of the occurrences:

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(3) Una volta affitt-ato il vagone, la sua manutenzione… a time rent-PST.PTCP the coach the its maintenance ‘After renting the coach, its maintenance…’ –

relational adjectives, in 10% of the occurrences:

l’ euro è il punto di non ritorno de-lla (4) Fare make.INF the euro be.PRES.3SG the point of NEG return of-DET costru-zione europea. built-NMLZ European ‘Making the Euro is the point of no return of the European growth.’ –

relative pronouns, in 5% of the occurrences:

porzione di un complesso abitativo rurale (5) Si vend-e pass sell-PRES.3SG portion of a complex residential rural, la cui realizza-zione risal-e a-l 1935. the whose realize-NMLZ date-PRES.3SG to-DET 1935 ‘We are selling a part of a rural house, whose realization dates back to 1935.’ –

the prepositional phrase with a ‘to’, in 2% of the occurrences:

necessario apport-are una corre-zione (6) È be.PRES.3SG necessary make-INF a correct-NMLZ a-lla linea Pertini. to-DET line Pertini ‘It is necessary to make a revision to Pertini Line.’ –

the prepositional phrase with per ‘for’:

il mio apprezza-mento per l’ opera (7) Ho espresso express.PST.3SG the my appreciate-NMLZ for the work svolta. done.PST.PTCP ‘I have expressed my appreciation for the work done.’ –

an indirect infinitive clause, introduced by the preposition di ‘to’, in 1.5% of the occurrences:

Argument structures in Italian nominalizations | 205

(8) Ho la sensa-zione di ten-ere qualcosa tra le man-i. have.PRES.1SG the sense-NMLZ to keep-INF something in the hand-PL ‘I have the sensation of holding something in my hands.’ –

a direct infinitive clause, introduced by the conjunction che ‘that’, in 1% of the occurrences:

la sensa-zione che l’ arto ci sia (9) Ho have.PRES.1SG the sense-NMLZ that the limb CL be.SBJV.PRES.3SG ancora. still. ‘I have the sensation that my limb is still here.’ –

the simple juxtaposition of the Patient to the nominalized form (2% of the occurrences):

iniziativa durante i giorn-i de-l (10) Hanno preso l’ take.PST.3PL the initiative during the.PL day-PL of-DET rapi-mento Moro. kidnap-NMLZ Moro ‘They took the initiative during the days of the Moro kidnapping.’ The following diagram represents the percentage of the different syntactic ways in which the Patient is realized.

Fig. 3: Syntactic realizations of the Patient

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2.1.2

Syntactic codification of the Agent

Unlike the Patient, the Agent is more rarely realized, in just 13% of the occurrences. The syntactic realizations of the Agent are often identical to the ones used for the Patient: – the prepositional phrase di ‘of’ + NP, in 55% of the occurrences: (11) La società attend-e ancora l’ autorizza-zione de-l Tesoro. the society wait-PRES.3SG still the authorize-NMLZ of-DET Treasury ‘The company is still waiting for the Treasury authorization.’ –

a possessive adjective, in 35% of the occurrences:

la sua (12) “Siamo contro gli estremism-i”, è stata be.PRES.1PL against the extremism-PL be.PST.3SG the his rassicurante dichiara-zione. encouraging declare-NMLZ ‘“We are against extremisms”, was his encouraging declaration.’ –

a relational adjective, in 10% of the occurrences:

(13) L’ autorizza-zione ministeriale ancora non è arrivata. the authorize-NMLZ ministerial still NEG arrive.PST.3SG ‘Ministry authorization has not arrived yet.’ The possibility to realize Agent and Patient through the same syntactic patterns causes a superficial flattening of argumental differences; as a consequence, some ambiguity sometimes occurs, as in (14): di un allievo (14) L’ imita-zione the impersonate-NMLZ of a student ‘The impersonation of a student’ In (14), the prepositional phrase di un allievo can have two different semantic interpretations. The first interpretation sees the student as the Agent of the verb imitare ‘impersonate’, while in the second one the student is the Patient of the same verb. In the first case, the nominalization has an active interpretation and the student is the subject of the verb ‘impersonate’ (→ the student impersonates someone); on the contrary, in the second case the nominalization is passive and

Argument structures in Italian nominalizations | 207

so the student would be the object of the impersonation (→ someone impersonates the student). Sometimes, in order to avoid ambiguity, the Agent is introduced by past participles specifying the cause of the action expressed by the nominalization, as in “generated by/produced by/realized by…”; this occurs in 4% of the occurrences. (15) La forte ridu-zione de-ll’ acidità de-llo stomaco the strong decrease-NMLZ of-DET acidity of-DET stomach prodotta da-i farmac-i. cause.PST.PTCP by-DET drug-PL ‘The strong decrease of stomach acidity caused by drugs.’ Furthermore, the Agent can be realized by the prepositional phrase da parte di ‘by’; this is the case of nominalizations realizing both arguments, as in (16) where the roles are realized in different syntactic codifications in order to prevent ambiguity. (16) Il paga-mento di mazzett-e da parte de-i dirigent-i The pay-NMLZ of bribe-PL from part of-DET director-PL ‘The payment of bribes by directors’ The following diagram shows the percentage of the different syntactic realizations of the Agent.

Fig. 4: Syntactic realizations of the Agent

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2.1.3

Syntactic realization of the entire argument grid

It is very rare for a nominalization to realize both arguments. Only in 2.5% of the occurrences do transitive nominalizations realize both the Agent and the Patient. This result seems to suggest a similarity between nominalization and passivation: in both cases, they tend to superficially realize only the Patient to the detriment of the Agent, which tends to be obscured, making the corresponding clause impersonal. In the main literature on the subject, these nominal constructions are defined as “passive nominalizations” because of the exclusive presence of the Patient, which makes the interpretation passive (Giorgi 1988; Picallo 1991, 1999). If we paraphrase the nominalizations in (17) and (18), we will have passive clauses: (17) La violazione della legge 197 > La legge 197 è stata violata. ‘the violation of law 197’ > ‘Law 197 has been violated.’ > Il quadro clinico è stato valutato. (18) La valutazione del quadro clinico ‘the evaluation of the medical case’ > ‘The medical case has been evaluated.’ Three transitive nominalizations – autorizzazione ‘authorization’, collegamento ‘connection’ and liberazione ‘liberation’ – select a third argument, in addition to the Agent and the Patient. The third argument can be a Goal, a Comitative or a Place and it is realized in 46% of occurrences. Three-argument nominalizations never realize the whole argument grid. Therefore, if the third argument is realized, the other arguments will probably not be encoded. Furthermore, transitive nominalizations do not express any arguments in 22% of the occurrences; this is often linked to the property of nominalizations of not having any event meaning, but rather a resultative one (Grimshaw 1990). (19) Il dipinto fa parte de-lla colle-zione de-l museo. the painting be.PRES.3SG part of-DET collect-NMLZ of-DET museum ‘The painting is part of the museum collection.’ Sometimes, even eventive nominalizations may not realize any arguments; in this case the nominalization tends to be preceded by a demonstrative adjective which, being a deictic, makes the arguments immediately recoverable, even though they are not syntactically realized. Therefore, demonstratives often play

Argument structures in Italian nominalizations | 209

an anaphoric role, that is, a topic role which makes the argument grid unnecessary, since it is already part of the interlocutors’ shared knowledge. ne-l concordato. (20) La ragione di questa viola-zione si trov-a the reason of this violate-NMLZ CL be-PRES.3SG in-DET agreement ‘The reason for this violation is in the agreement.’ Leaving the Agent and the Patient unexpressed increases the process of gradual abstraction of predication: because of the deletion of the referential and localtemporal coordinates, the predication is extracted from the uttered event. The following table gives the rates of transitive nominalizations that realize an Agent, a Patient and a possible third argument, no argument and the entire argument grid. Tab. 1: Argument structure realization in transitive nominalizations

Nominalization

Agent

Patient III Argument Ø Argument Entire Grid

amministrazione ‘administration’ 13%

27%

-

60%

0%

apprezzamento ‘appreciation’

37%

93%

-

0%

20%

autorizzazione ‘authorization’

57%

10%

50%

10%

0%

cambiamento ‘trasformation’

20%

83%

-

17%

13%

chiamata ‘call’

30%

20%

-

53%

3%

collegamento ‘connection’

3%

40%

76%

17%

0%

collezione ‘collection’

20%

60%

-

23%

0%

correzione ‘correction’

13%

80%

-

10%

3%

costituzione ‘establishment’

0%

7%

-

27%

0%

costruzione ‘construction’

3%

83%

-

20%

3%

creazione ‘creation’

3%

87%

-

10%

0%

definizione ‘definition’

17%

63%

-

20%

0%

dichiarazione ‘declaration’

50%

30%

-

23%

3% 0%

distribuzione ‘distribution’

3%

73%

-

23%

finanziamento ‘financing’

20%

47%

-

33%

0%

fondazione ‘foundation’

0%

70%

-

30%

0%

fumata ‘smoke’

7%

20%

-

73%

0%

insegnamento ‘teaching’

27%

47%

-

27%

0%

inquinamento ‘pollution’

17%

73%

-

10%

0%

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Nominalization

Agent

Patient III Argument Ø Argument

Entire Grid

isolamento ‘isolation’

0%

73%

-

27%

0%

licenziamento ‘layoff’

0%

90%

-

10%

0%

liberazione ‘liberation’

0%

70%

13%

20%

0%

manutenzione ‘maintenance’

0%

83%

-

17%

0%

pagamento ‘payment’

0%

80%

-

20%

0%

presentazione ‘presentation’

67%

83%

-

10%

0%

produzione ‘production’

3%

67%

-

30%

0%

protezione ‘protection’

33%

47%

-

13%

3%

pubblicazione ‘publication’

0%

77%

-

23%

0%

rafforzamento ‘reinforcement’

0%

100%

-

0%

0%

rapimento ‘kidnapping’

0%

86%

-

14%

0%

riconoscimento ‘identification’

23%

93%

-

6%

23%

riduzione ‘reduction’

0%

90%

-

10%

0%

risanamento ‘renovation’

0%

93%

-

7%

0%

ristrutturazione ‘restoration’

0%

67%

-

33%

0%

scalata ‘climbing’

57%

43%

-

10%

10%

sensazione ‘sensation’

7%

90%

-

3%

0%

-

27%

3%

spiegazione ‘explanation’

21%

53%

tradimento ‘betrayal’

43%

37%

traversata ‘crossing’

17%

57%

valutazione ‘evaluation’

23%

80%

-

6%

10%

violazione ‘violation’

6%

93%

-

6%

6%

2.2

-

20%

6%

67%

3%

Argument combinations of transitive nominalizations

A transitive nominalization may – rarely – realize both verbal arguments. The simultaneous realization of the Agent and the Patient can occur by means of these syntactic patterns: – [Agent] + [nominalization] + [Patient]: (21) La loro spiega-zione de-l blackout the their explain-NMLZ of-DET blackout ‘Their explanation of the blackout’

Argument structures in Italian nominalizations | 211

–

[nominalization] + [Patient] + [Agent]:

segreto da parte di un uomo (22) La viola-zione de-l The violate-NMLZ of-DET secret from part of a man ‘The violation of a secret by a man’ (23) La forte ridu-zione de-ll’ acidità di stomaco prodo-tta the strong reduce-NMLZ of-DET acidity of stomach produce-PST.PTCP da-i farmac-i by-DET drug-PL ‘The strong decrease of stomach acidity caused by drugs’ Examples (21)–(23) suggest that when a transitive nominalization realizes both verbal arguments, the Patient will tend to occupy the same position: the one following the nominalization. The Agent, however, can appear in two positions: it can be either in post nominalization position, or it can immediately follow the Patient, which, in turn, occupies the post-nominalization position, as shown below.

– Agent + [nominalization] + Patient – [nominalization] + Patient + Agent

Fig. 5: Syntactic patterns of argument relation in transitive nominalizations

Three of the analyzed transitive nominalizations (autorizzazione ‘authorization’, collegamento ‘connection’, liberazione ‘liberation’) are three-argumental, since they select a third argument (a Goal, a Comitative and a Place, respectively). When a third argument is expressed, at least one of the remaining two will not be realized. As a consequence, the analyzed three-argumental transitive nominalizations never realize the entire argument grid. The most frequent argument combinations and the corresponding syntactic realizations are the following: – [nominalization] + [Patient and Comitative]5 la locomotiva e il (24) Il collega-mento telefonico tra the connect-NMLZ telephonic between the locomotive and the

|| 5 In this combination, Patient and Comitative are realized in the same prepositional phrase.

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personale viaggiante staff travelling ‘The telephone connection between the locomotive and the travelling staff’ –

[nominalization] + [Comitative]

(25) Durante un collega-mento con Mosca during a connect-NMLZ with Moscow ‘During a connection with Moscow’ –

[nominalization] + [Goal]

deputato radical (26) L’ autorizza-zione a proced-ere contro il the authorize-NMLZ to proceed-INF against the deputy radical ‘The authorization to proceed against the radical member of parliament’ (27) Il parlamento di Strasburgo non ha concesso the Parliament of Strasbourg NEG grant.PST.3SG l’ autorizza-zione a-ll’ arresto. the authorize-NMLZ to-DET arrest ‘The Parliament of Strasbourg has not granted the authorization for the arrest.’ –

[nominalization] + [Agent] + [Goal]

autorizza-zione de-ll’ Opec di pratic-are scont-i. (28) L’ the authorize-NMLZ of-DET Opec of apply-INF discount-PL ‘The authorization of Opec to apply discounts’ autorizza-zione de-i palestines-i a rappresent-ar-li. (29) L’ the authorize-NMLZ of-DET Palestian-PL to represent-INF-CL ‘The authorization of Palestinians to represent them’ autorizza-zione notarile ad us-are il simbolo Svp. (30) L’ The authorize-NMLZ notarial to use-INF the symbol Svp ‘The notarial authorization to use Svp symbol’

Argument structures in Italian nominalizations | 213

–

[Agent] + [nominalization] + [Goal]

(31) La loro autorizza-zione ad oper-are the their authorize-NMLZ to operate-INF ‘Their authorization to operate’ –

[nominalization] + [Goal] + [Agent]

autorizza-zione a-lla ratific-a da parte de-l (32) L’ the authorize-NMLZ to-DET ratify-NMLZ from part of-DET Parlamento Parliament ‘The authorization of the Parliament to ratify’

2.3

Unaccusative nominalizations

18% of the nominalizations taken from La Repubblica derive from unaccusative verbs, namely verbs that select a Theme as the first and only argument.6 This role is realized in 70% of the occurrences. One third of unaccusative nominalizations – andata ‘going’, durata ‘duration’, opposizione ‘opposition’, preoccupazione ‘worry’ and soddisfazione ‘satisfaction’– are bi-argumental, so they select a further argument in addition to the Theme. This second argument is realized in 20% of the occurrences. As we have just seen for transitive nominalizations, unaccusative ones also tend to express only one argument, so if they express the second argument, the Theme will tend to be obscured. Biargumental nominalizations realize both arguments in only 11% of the occurrences. Finally, as transitive nominalizations, unaccusative ones can also occur without specifying any argument. This is the case in about 30% of the occurrences. All these data are summarized in the diagram below.

|| 6 The unaccusative definition deployed for nominals put together nouns derived from verbs that are not amenable to the same unaccusative analysis: for instance andare and preoccuparsi do not belong to the same morpho-syntactic class, and are also thematically distinct.

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Fig. 6: Argument role realization in unaccusative nominalizations

2.3.1

Syntactic realization of the Theme

The syntactic resource that is mainly used to realize the Theme is the prepositional phrase di (‘to’) + NP: nel corso de-l 2009… (33) La diminu-zione de-gli occupat-i The decrease-NMLZ of-DET employee-PL in course of-DET 2009… ‘The decrease of the employees in 2009…’ giallo leg-ato a-lla spari-zione (34) Il The mystery link-PST.PTCP to-DET disappear-NMLZ di documentazione elettorale… of document electoral ‘The mystery linked to the disappearance of electoral documents.’ Examples (33) and (34) underline the property of the phrase di ‘of’ + NP of having more functions, since, as we saw before, it can encode the Agent and the Patient in transitive nominalizations. However, in contradistinction to them, in unaccusative nominalizations this phrase never causes ambiguity, since it can only correspond to the Theme. The Theme can also be realized through the devices described before for the encoding of Agent and Patient roles: – use of relational adjectives: (35) Il falli-mento libanese… the fail-NMLZ Lebanese ‘The Lebanese bankruptcy’

Argument structures in Italian nominalizations | 215

–

use of possessive adjectives:

denaro continu-a a scend-ere, ma (36) Il costo de-l the price of-DET money keep-PRES.3SG to fall-INF but la sua diminu-zione dipender-à… the its decrease-NMLZ depend-FUT.3SG ‘The price of money keeps falling, but its decrease depends on…’ –

use of relative pronouns:

(37) Si

tratta di pezz-i di scarso valore, CL be.PRES.3SG of item-PL of low value la cui spari-zione… the their disappear-NMLZ ‘They are low end items and their disappearance…’

The following diagram shows the percentage of the different superficial realizations of the Theme.

Fig. 7: Syntactic realizations of the Theme

The percentage of Theme realization is higher in nominalizations characterized by the suffixes -mento and -zione than in those having the suffix -ata. In fact, the

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nominalizations in -ata do not usually denote events or processes, but rather concrete objects or “nouns of once”7 (Gaeta 2002; Acquaviva 2005; Simone 2003, 2004). Table 2 describes the distribution of unaccusative nominalizations that realize the Theme, the second argument, no argument and the entire argument grid. Tab. 2: Argument realization in unaccusative nominalizations

Nominalization

Theme

II Argument

Ø Argument

Entire Grid

andamento ‘evolution’

90%

-

10%

90%

andata ‘going’

30%

20%

70%

17%

cascata ‘fall’

57%

-

43%

57%

circolazione ‘circulation’

87%

-

13%

87%

diminuzione ‘decrease’

83%

-

17%

83%

durata ‘duration’

70%

23%

6%

0%

entrata ‘entrance’

50%

-

50%

50%

fallimento ‘failure’

87%

-

13%

87%

mobilitazione ‘deployment’

60%

-

40%

60%

nevicata ‘snowfall’

100%

-

-

100%

opposizione ‘opposition’

63%

17%

33%

10%

8

preoccupazione ‘worry’

73%

40%

6%

20%

soddisfazione ‘satisfaction’

57%

10%

37%

7%

sparizione ‘disappereance’

80%

-

20%

80%

2.3.2

Argument combinations of unaccusative nominalizations

The overwhelming majority of the analyzed unaccusative nominalizations select only one argument role: the Theme, which is encoded according to the syntactic ways illustrated in Table 2. A small number of unaccusative nominalizations (andata ‘going’, durata ‘duration’, opposizione ‘opposition’, preoccupazione ‘worry’, soddisfazione ‘satisfaction’) selects a second verbal argument, in addi|| 7 “Nouns of once” (a calque of ‘ismu al-marrat’, a label of traditional Arabic grammar) are a sort of “degenerate” Process Nouns since they encode events without any appreciable duration or, to put it otherwise, dot-like events, in which the beginning and the final points coincide. 8 In nevicata, the Theme is incorporated in the root of the nominalization.

Argument structures in Italian nominalizations | 217

tion to the Theme. This argument – a Time, a Location or a Cause – can be realized by itself or in combination with the Theme. The most frequent combinations of arguments are the following: – [nominalization] + [Time] (38) Un progetto de-lla dur-ata di due ann-i a project of-DET last-NMLZ of two year-PL ‘A two-year project’ (39) Un finanziamento con dur-ata 18 mes-i a loan with last-NMLZ 18 month-PL ‘An 18-month loan’ –

[Theme] + [nominalization] + [Place]

(40) La sua and-ata a Cuba the his go-NMLZ to Cuba ‘His going to Cuba’ –

[nominalization] + [Theme] + [Place]

papa a Liegi (41) L’ and-ata del the go-NMLZ of-DET pope to Liegi ‘The going of the pope to Liegi’ –

[nominalization] + [Theme] + [Cause]

padre che la famiglia corresse (42) La preoccupa-zione de-l the worry-NMLZ of.DET father that the family run-SBJV.IPF.3SG risch-i risk-PL ‘His father’s worry about his family in danger’ Pci di romp-ere l’ isolamento (43) La preoccupa-zione del the worry-NMLZ of-DET Pci of break-NMLZ the isolation crescente increasing ‘The worry of Pci about breaking the increasing isolation’

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(44) La preoccupa-zione de-l governo per possibil-i bagn-i the concern-NMLZ of-DET government for possible-PL bath-PL di sangue of blood ‘The Government concern for a future bloodbath’ (45) La preoccupa-zione estern-ata da Gattuso the worry-NMLZ express-PST.PTCP from Gattuso per essere fin-ito in panchina for be.INF finish-PST.PTCP in bleacher ‘Gattuso’s worry about his going to the bleachers’ Unaccusative nominalizations realize the whole argument grid more frequently than transitive nominalizations. In these cases the Theme can occupy either the pre or post-nominalization position. The second argument (Location, Time or Cause) can never precede the nominalization and therefore it always immediately follows the nominalization or the Theme, which, in turn, follows the nominalization.

– Theme + [nominalization] + Location/Time/Cause – [nominalization] + Location/Time/Cause + Theme – [nominalization] + Theme + Location/Time/Cause

Fig. 8: Syntactic patterns of argument relations in unaccusative nominalizations

2.4

Unergative nominalizations

15% of the nominalizations taken from La Repubblica derive from unergative verbs. These nominalizations do not all share the same argument grid. About half of unergative nominalizations select just one argument, namely an Agent, which is realized with a higher percentage (45% of the occurrences) than in transitive nominalizations. The other unergative nominalizations select a second argument and show these percentages: they realize the Agent in 31% of the occurrences, the second argument in 29% of the occurrences and no argument in 30% of the occurrences. Finally, when an unergative nominalization selects a second argument, it will tend to realize also the Agent.

Argument structures in Italian nominalizations | 219

Fig. 9: Argument role realization in biargumental unergative nominalizations

Nominalizations such as chiacchierata ‘chat’, collaborazione ‘collaboration’, conversazione ‘conversation’ and parlata ‘parlance’, select a Comitative as second argument, which is expressed in 42% of occurrences. From a semantic point of view, the Comitative can be defined as a sort of “joint Agent” and it can or cannot be syntactically realized within the same phrase of Agent: (46) La leale collabora-zione tra le istituzion-i the fair collaborate-NMLZ among the organization-PL ‘The fair collaboration among the organizations’ Montalbano e (47) La conversa-zione tra the converse-NMLZ between Montalbano and un contadino siciliano a farmer Sicilian ‘The conversation between Montalbano and a Sicilian farmer’ (48) Una conversa-zione di Alessandro Baricco e a converse-NMLZ of Alessandro Baricco and Alberto Manguel Alberto Manguel ‘A conversation between Alessandro Baricco and Alberto Manguel’ Agent and Comitative are seldom expressed through two different phrases, as in (29) and (30):

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(49) La conversa-zione di Stella Pende con un grande appassionato the converse-NMLZ of Stella Pende with a big fan di Chopin. of Chopin ‘The conversation between Stella Pende and a big fan of Chopin’ (50) La sua collabora-zione con gli inquirent-i the his collaborate-NMLZ with the.PL investigator-PL ‘His collaboration with the investigators’ Another group of unergative nominalizations selects a Goal or a Beneficiary as the second argument. These nominalizations realize the second argument in about 30% of occurrences. This table summarizes the unergative nominalizations that realize the Agent, the second argument, no argument or the entire argument grid. Tab. 3: Argument Structure realization in unergative nominalizations

Nominalization

Agent

II Argument

Ø Argument

Entire Grid

camminata ‘walk’

20%

-

80%

20%

chiacchierata ‘chat’

13%

27%

60%

6%

collaborazione ‘collaboration’

87%

53%

13%

53%

conversazione ‘conversation’

33%

47%

43%

33%

funzionamento ‘operation’

93%

-

7%

93%

litigata ‘quarrel’

60%

67%

27%

47%

parlata ‘parlance’

23%

-

77%

0%

partecipazione ‘participation’

53%

37%

27%

17%

passeggiata ‘stroll’

27%

-

73%

27%

reazione ‘reaction’

73%

13%

17%

7%

sfilata ‘parade’

40%

-

60%

40%

telefonata ‘call’

50%

40%

30%

20%

2.4.1

Argument combinations of unergative nominalizations

Unlike transitive and unaccusative nominalizations, in unergative nominalizations the second argument – a Comitative, a Goal or a Beneficiary – is both real-

Argument structures in Italian nominalizations | 221

ized by itself and, more frequently, in relation with the Agent. The most frequent argument combinations are the following: – [nominalization] + [Comitative] (51) L’ aspra litig-ata con Tietmeyer the bad argument-NMLZ with Tietmeyer ‘The bad argument with Tietmeyer’ –

[Agent] + [nominalization] + [Comitative]

con il giudice (52) La mia litig-ata the my argument-NMLZ with the judge ‘My argument with the judge’ –

[nominalization] + [Agent + Comitative]9

tra Italia e Stati Uniti (53) La litig-ata the argument-NMLZ between Italy and State United ‘The argument between Italy and United States’ di Matarrese e Nizzola (54) Una litig-ata a argument-NMLZ of Matarrese and Nizzola ‘An argument between Matarrese and Nizzola’ le istituzion-i (55) La leale collabora-zione tra the fair collaborate-NMLZ among the.PL organization-PL ‘The fair collaboration among the organizations’ –

[nominalization] + [Agent] + [Comitative]

(56) Una conversa-zione di Stella Pende con un appassionato a conversate-NMLZ of Stella Pende with a fan di Chopin of Chopin ‘A conversation between Stella Pende and a fan of Chopin’

|| 9 In this case, Agent and Comitative are in the same phrase.

222 | Gioia Insacco

–

[nominalization] + [Goal]

(57) La partecipa-zione a-lla gara the partecipate-NMLZ to-DET competition ‘The participation in the competition’ –

[nominalization] + [Goal] + [Agent]

governo de-i cet-i subaltern-i (58) La partecipa-zione a-l the participate-NMLZ to-DET government of-DET class.PL low.PL ‘The participation in the government of low classes’ –

[nominalization] + [Agent] + [Goal]

a-l Capital (59) La partecipa-zione de-i produttor-i agricol-i the participate-NMLZ of-DET producer-PL agricultural-PL to-DET Wealth ‘The participation of agricultural producers in the Wealth’ –

[Agent] + [nominalization] + [Goal]

complotto (60) La mia partecipa-zione a-l the my participate-NMLZ to-DET plot ‘My participation in a plot’ –

[nominalization] + [Beneficiary]

ufficio di corrispondenza canades-e (61) La telefon-ata a-ll’ the call-NMLZ to-DET department of correspondence Canadian ‘The phone call to the Canadian correspondence department’ –

[nominalization] + [Agent] + [Beneficiary]

da-l senatore a Luciano Moggi (62) Una telefon-ata fatta a call-NMLZ make.PST.PTCP by-DET senator to Luciano Moggi ‘A phone call to Luciano Moggi by the senator’ (63) La telefon-ata de-lla signora Thatcher a Ronald the call-NMLZ of-DET mrs Thatcher to Ronald ‘Mrs Thatcher’s phone call to Ronald Reagan’

Raegan Raegan

Argument structures in Italian nominalizations | 223

–

[nominalization] + [Agent and Beneficiary]10

donn-e (64) Un’ innocente telefon-ata tra a innocent call-NMLZ between woman-PL ‘An innocent phone call between women’ (65) Una telefon-ata tra la compagna di Ruggiero e a call-NMLZ between the girlfriend of Ruggiero and un’ amica a friend ‘A phone call between Ruggiero’s girlfriend and her friend’ –

[Agent] + [nominalization] + [Beneficiary]

(66) La sua telefon-ata a Eltsin the her call-NMLZ to Eltsin ‘Her phone call to Eltsin’ Examples (51)–(66) show that when an unergative nominalization realizes the entire argument grid, the agent can occupy three syntactic positions: prenominalization, post-nominalization or post-second argument. The second argument – a Comitative, a Beneficiary or a Goal – which is always introduced by a preposition, can never occupy the post-nominalization position: it can only occupy the post-nominalization position, preceding or following the Agent.

– Agent + [nominalization] + Comitative/Beneficiary/Goal – [nominalization] + Agent + Comitative/Beneficiary/Goal – [nominalization] + Comitative/Beneficiary/Goal + Agent

Fig. 10: Syntactic patterns of Argument relations in unergative nominalizations

|| 10 In this case, Agent and Beneficiary are in the same phrase.

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2.5

Double argument structure nominalizations

7% of the analyzed nominalizations do not select only one argument structure, but show argument alternation, as shown in Table 4, where each nominalization has a double argument structure. Tab. 4: Nominalizations with double argument structure

Nominalization

Argument Structures

determinazione ‘determination’

TRANSITIVE MEANING: ‘determinare’|‘to determine’→ La determinazione del prezzo ‘the price determination’ UNACCUSATIVE MEANING: ‘essere determinati’|’to be determined’ → La determinazione di Berlusconi ‘Berlusconi’s determination’

fermata ‘stop’

TRANSITIVE MEANING: ‘fermare’|‘to stop’ → In seguito alla fermata di alcune unità produttive ‘After the halt of some production units’ UNACCUSATIVE MEANING: ‘fermarsi’|‘to be stopped’ → La prospettiva di una fermata generale dei lavoratori calabresi ‘The perspective of a collective stoppage of Calabrian workers’

realizzazione ‘realization’

TRANSITIVE MEANING: ‘realizzare’|‘to realize’ → La realizzazione concreta di vetture ecologiche ‘The concrete realization of an eco-friendly car’ UNACCUSATIVE MEANING: ‘essere realizzati’| ‘to be realized’ → L’equità e la realizzazione individuale sono state misurate attraverso… ‘Equity and personal realization have been realized through…’

manifestazione TRANSITIVE MEANING: ‘manifestare’ → ‘demonstration’ La manifestazione di affetto attraverso gesti è associata a… ‘The demonstration of love through gestures is associated with…’ UNERGATIVE MEANING: ‘manifestare’ → Alla manifestazione laburista a Tel Aviv c’erano moltissime persone. ‘At the labor demonstration in Tel Aviv there were a lot of people.’

From a syntactic point of view, a transitive, unergative or unaccusative argument grid shows the same characteristics as explained before: when a nominalization has a transitive interpretation, it will tend to express the Patient, to the detriment of the Agent and vice versa; when a nominalization has an unergative interpretation, it frequently realizes the Agent; finally, when it has an unaccusative interpretation, it will realize the Theme, which is often the only semantic role.

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3

Conclusions

The present analysis highlights two phenomena: – the verbal argument decrease; – the flattening of superficial argumental differences. As for the first point, most nominalizations taken from La Repubblica tend to realize only one argument (Fiorentino 2004, 2008): the Patient in transitive nominalizations, the Theme in unaccusative nominalizations and the Agent in unergative ones. Transitive nominalizations tend to obscure the Agent and this allows us to establish a parallelism between nominalization and passivization, since in passive constructions, the Agent also tends to be obscured because of pragmatic needs: we can choose not to realize the Agent, since it is irrelevant to the purpose of the message, or when we do not want our interlocutor to know who triggered the action. Furthermore, nominalizations without an overt subject determine a predication with an undefined and unspecified subject. In this way, the event is presented as more general, since the argument activating the action is not expressed. The unexpressed subject can be either generic, as for example people or more specific, and identifiable in the context, but conveniently left implied. As for the second point, Agent, Patient and Theme can be realized through the same syntactic resources, viz., the prepositional phrase di ‘of’ + NP, possessive adjectives and relational adjectives. This can cause ambiguities in transitive nominalizations, especially when only one argument is expressed, since the same superficial codification can correspond both to the Agent and the Patient. The formal flattening of semantic roles does not cause ambiguity in unaccusative or unergative nominalizations; in fact, in these cases the Patient is not part of the argument structure and the multifunctional syntactic resources – the phrase di ‘of’ + NP, possessive adjectives and relational adjectives – can only correspond to a Theme if the nominalization derives from an unaccusative verb, or to an Agent if it derives from an unergative verb.

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References Acquaviva, Paolo. 2005. I significati delle nominalizzazioni in -ata e i loro correlati morfologici. In Anna Thornton and Maria Grossmann (eds.), La formazione delle parole: atti del XXXVII convegno della Società Linguistica Italiana, 17–29. Roma: Bulzoni. Baroni, Marco, Silvia Bernardini, Federica Comastri, Lorenzo Piccioni, Alessandra Volpi, Guy Aston and Marco Mazzoleni. 2004. Introducing the la Repubblica corpus. A large, annotated, TEI(XML)-compliant corpus of newspaper Italian. In Maria Teresa Lino, Maria Francisca Xavier, Fátima Ferreira, Rute Costa, Raquel Silva, Carla Pereira, Filipa Carvalho, Milene Lopes, Mónica Catarino and Sérgio Barros (eds.), Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation LREC (Lisbon, May 26-28 2004), 1771–1774, Paris: ELRA European Language Resources Association. Castelli, Margherita. 1988. La nominalizzazione. In Lorenzo Renzi, Giampaolo Salvi and Anna Cardinaletti (eds.), Grande grammatica italiana di consultazione, 333–356. Bologna: Il Mulino. Fiorentino, Giuliana. 2004. Nomi d’azione e subordinazione in italiano. Studi e saggi linguistici 42. 9–41. Fiorentino, Giuliana. 2008. Action nouns and the infinitive in Italian. Romanische Forshungen 120. 3–28. Gaeta, Livio. 2002. Quando i verbi compaiono come nomi. Milano: Franco Angeli. Giorgi, Alessandra. 1988. La struttura interna dei sintagmi nominali. In Lorenzo Renzi, Giampaolo Salvi and Anna Cardinaletti (eds.), Grande grammatica italiana di consultazione, 273–311. Bologna: Il Mulino. Giorgi, Alessandra and Giuseppe Longobardi. 1991. The syntax of noun phrase: Configuration, parameters and empty categories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grimshaw, Jane. 1990. Argument structure. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Gross, Gaston and Ferenc Kiefer. 1995. La structure événementielle des substantifs. Folia Linguistica 29. 43–66. Insacco, Gioia. 2015. Strutture argomentali e cicli lessicali delle nominalizzazioni italiane. Rome: Roma Tre University. Dissertation. Law, Paul. 1997. On some syntactic properties of word-structure and modular grammars. In Anna Maria Di Sciullo (ed.), Projections and interface conditions: Essays on modularity, 28–51. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kiefer, Ferenc. 1998. Les substantives déverbaux événementiels. Langages 131. 56–64. Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria. 1993. Nominalizations. London: Routledge. Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2009. Current challenges to the Lexicalist Hypothesis. An overview and a critique. In William. D. Lewis, Simin Karimi, Heidi Harley and Scott O. Farrar, Time and again. Theoretical perspectives on formal linguistics, 91–117. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Picallo, Maria Carme. 1991. Nominals and nominalizations in Catalan. Probus 3/3. 279–316. Picallo, Maria Carme. 1999. La estructura del sintagma nominal: las nominalizaciones y otros sustantivos con complementos argumentales. In Ignacio Bosque and Violeta Demonte (eds.), Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, 363–393. Madrid: Espasa.

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Simone, Raffaele. 2003. Masdar, ‘ismu al-marrati et la frontière verbe-nom. In José M. Girón Alconchel (ed.), Estudios ofrecidos al profesor J. Bustos Tovar, 901–918. Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Simone, Raffaele. 2004. L’infinito nominale nel discorso. In Paolo D’Achille (ed.), Generi, architetture e forme testuali. Atti del VII convegno della Società Internazionale di Linguistica e Filologia Italiana, 73–96. Firenze: Cesati Editore. Thornton, Anna. 1988. Sui ‘nomina actionis’ in italiano. Pisa: University of Pisa. Dissertation. Thornton, Anna. 1990. Sui deverbali italiani in -mento e -zione (I). Archivio Glottologico Italiano 75. 169–207. Thornton, Anna. 1991. Sui deverbali italiani in -mento e -zione (II). Archivio Glottologico Italiano 76. 79–102. Williams, Edwin. 1985. PRO and subject of NP. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 3. 297– 315. Zubizarreta, Maria Luisa. 1987. Levels of representation in the lexicon and in the syntax. Dordrecht: Foris.

Lior Laks

Morphological and semantic transparency in Hebrew agent noun formation 1

Introduction

This paper examines the formation of Hebrew agent nouns (ANs) in relation to the verbal system. The preference for certain nominal patterns is based on transparency between verbs and derived nouns. Specifically, morphological and semantic transparency triggers the selection of one pattern rather than another. Hebrew relies highly on non-concatenative morphology (Berman 1978; Bolozky 1978; Bat-El 1989), where words are formed in patterns, as shown for verb-derived ANs in (1). (1)

Verb nihel ‘managed’ ciyer ‘painted’ sixek ‘played’

AN meCaCeC CaCaC CaCCan

menahel ‘manager/manages’ cayar ‘painter’ saxkan ‘player’

All ANs in (1) are related to the CiCeC pattern verbs but are formed in different nominal patterns. menahel ‘manager’ is formed in the participle pattern meCaCeC which also has a verbal meaning (‘manages’). The other ANs are formed in the CaCaC and CaCCan patterns, which are only nominal. Each of the ANs in (1) could, in principle, have been formed in any of the three nominal patterns, yet each of them takes a different pattern. In addition, there are also cases of doublet formation where the same stem consonants are formed in two AN patterns with no difference in their meaning (see Thornton 2011, 2012 and references therein for general discussion of doublet formation). As demonstrated in (2), both ANs rapad and meraped ‘upholsterer’ are related to the verb riped ‘upholster’, and they are both heads of the AN compound ‘sofa-upholsterer’: (2) a. rikaznu laxem Ɂecot le-xiduš ve-ripud rahitim ve-gam kama dvarim še-xašuv ladaat Ɂal rapad-sapot (www1) ‘We gathered some advice for you about renovating and upholstering furniture and also a few things that are important to know about a sofaupholsterer.’

DOI 10.1515/9781501505430-010

230 | Lior Laks

b. mišehi makira meraped-sapot … Ɂani Ɂasbir – yeš le-ima šeli kursat-televizya še-Ɂalta la hamon kesef (www2) ‘Anybody knows a sofa-upholsterer … I’ll explain – my mother has a television armchair that cost her a lot of money.’ While pattern selection is to some extent arbitrary, I argue that it is to a great extent motivated by morphological and semantic transparency. This is manifested both in the selection of one pattern rather than another and in the formation of AN doublets (see Bolozky 1999, 2003). This study examines the criteria for selecting certain patterns and not others. It highlights the correlation between the verb’s argument structure and its derived nominals with respect to both form and meaning. This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides background on Hebrew word formation with specific reference to verbs and AN formation. This section examines the common patterns for ANs and the problem of selecting one pattern rather than another. In section 3, it is argued that the selection of some AN patterns as well as doublet formation can be predicted by relying on morphological and semantic (thematic) transparency between the derived AN and the corresponding verbs. I examine the morphological and semantic criteria that bring about the selection of certain patterns. The role of morphological transparency also provides support for a word-based approach for nonconcatenative formation. Semantic transparency also plays a role in pattern selection. ANs that are derived from verbs, as well as other derived nominals like instrument nouns, are assumed to inherit features of the argument structure of the related verb. I will show that the more transparent the semantic relations between the verb and the AN, the more predictable the pattern selection is. Specifically, I will show that ANs which are heads of compounds are morphologically more predictable because of the presence of another argument in the compound. This will also be compared with a study of instrument noun formation in Hebrew, where similar tendencies are revealed. Section 4 offers conclusions with respect to the predictability of AN formation and its implications for the understanding of the relations between the verbal and the nominal systems.

2

AN formation: Competing patterns

Word formation in Hebrew relies highly on non-concatenative morphology (Berman 1978, 1987; Bolozky 1978; Schwarzwald 1981, 2001; Ornan 1983; Gold-

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enberg 1985, among others). Hebrew verbs are formed exclusively via nonconcatenative morphology. The Hebrew verbal system consists of configurations called binyanim (singular binyan) literally ‘constructions, buildings’. The binyan indicates the prosodic structure of verbs, their vocalic patterns and their affixes (if any) (Bat-El 1989, 2011). Every new verb that enters the language must conform to one of the existing binyanim. The phonological shape of a verb (unlike that of a noun) is essential for determining the shape of other forms in the inflectional paradigm (Ornan 1983, 2003; Schwarzwald 1981, 2001; Berman 1978; Bolozky 1978; Bat-El 1989; Ravid 1990; Aronoff 1994). The five binyanim are listed in (3), illustrated by verbs in the morphologically simplest form of the past tense, 3rd person masculine singular. (3) Hebrew Binyanim1 Binyan Gloss CaCaC katav ‘write’ niCCaC niršam ‘register’ hiCCiC himšix ‘continue’ CiCeC limed ‘teach’ hitCaCeC hitlabeš ‘get dressed’ The binyanim differ from one another with respect to the types of verbs that they host (Rosén 1977; Berman 1978; Bolozky 1978; Schwarzwald 1981, 2001; Ravid 2004; Doron 2003; Arad 2005, among others). CiCeC and hiCCiC are used mostly for active verbs, most of which are transitive (e.g. xipes ‘look for’, hiklit ‘record’). hitCaCeC and niCCaC are typically selected for intransitive verbs and predicates that have undergone valence changing (e.g. hitraxec (hitCaCeC) ‘wash oneself’). CaCaC is used for both types of forms, since it is neutral with respect to transitivity (see Berman 1978). It can host both transitive verbs (e.g.

|| 1 The examples in this study are in their past form, which is the citation form, conventionally assumed to be the base of formation throughout the inflectional paradigm, as it is free of inflectional suffixes (see Ussishkin 1999 and Bat-El 2002, among others). However, the direction of derivation is irrelevant for the purposes of my analysis. The same analysis could hold under the assumption that either the present or future form is the basic form. In addition, the binyanim CuCaC and huCCaC are not mentioned because they have no independent existence, in contrast to other binyanim. They are used for the formation of the passive counterparts of CiCeC and hiCCiC respectively.

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raxac ‘wash’) and intransitive verbs (e.g. kafa ‘freeze’).2 Since this paper examines the formation of INs and its relation to the verbal system, I relate only to active verbs from which ANs can be derived, which are formed mostly in CiCeC, CaCaC and hiCCiC. Formation strategies of nouns in Hebrew are generally more varied. Nouns can be formed in patterns but are also formed by affixation and other word formation strategies. For example, nouns that denote location can be formed in the miCCaC pattern (e.g. mitbaxt ‘kitchen’) or by agglutination of the suffix -iya (e.g. nagar ‘carpenter’ – nagariya ‘carpentry shop’), as well as by other strategies.3 This study examines the templatic formation of ANs in relation to the verbal system. There are two main groups of patterns that are used for AN formation. The participle patterns CoCeC, meCaCeC, maCCiC and mitCaCeC are ambiguous as they also denote the present tense of verbs, as demonstrated in Table 1. The word šomer, for example, denotes both ‘a guard’ and the present form of the verb šamar ‘guard’. Tab. 1: AN formation in participle patterns

Verbal Pattern

Examples

AN / Present pattern

Examples

CaCaC CiCeC

šamar ‘guard’

CoCeC

šomer ‘guard / he guards’

nihel ‘manage’

meCaCeC

menahel ‘manager / he manages’

hiCCiC

hilxin ‘compose’

maCCiC

malxin ‘composer / he composes’

hitCaCeC

hitnadev ‘volunteer’

mitCaCeC

mitnadev ‘volunteer / he volunteers’

Participle patterns have a special status with regard to the lexical categories that they host (Berman 1978, 1988, 1994, in press; Bolozky 1978; Ravid 1990, 2006a; Schwarzwald 2001, 2002; Berman and Seroussi 2011, Seroussi 2011, among others). Bat-El (2008) shows that participle patterns also have an intermediate status with respect to morpho-phonology. The V~0 alternation in inflectional paradigms of words with CVCVC stems varies in position as well as in type of vowel depending on lexical category, yielding a distinction between || 2 These features of the binyanim represent tendencies rather than dichotomies in the division of labor between the binyanim. For example, there are also instances of active verbs in hitCaCeC (e.g. hitɁalel ‘abuse’). 3 Nouns, unlike verbs, can also be borrowed directly from other languages with no regard for templatic structure (see for example, Ravid 1992; Schwarzwald 1998 and references therein).

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nouns, adjectives and verbs. Participle patterns demonstrate polycategoriality, defined as a case of lexical items that share the same surface form, but function as different lexico-grammatical categories (see Berman, in press and references therein). They can also denote agent and instrument nouns, e.g. sorek ‘a scanner / he scans’, related to the verb sarak ‘scan’, and also adjectives, e.g. meratek ‘fascinating / he fascinates’, related to the verb ritek ‘fascinate’. There are also cases where words in the participle patterns denote only nouns or adjective and do not have a corresponding verb. For example, the noun šoter ‘policeman’ is formed in the same CoCeC pattern as šomer ‘guard’, but does not have a verbal counterpart *šatar. Faust (2011) shows that ANs are formed independently, i.e. without a corresponding verb, only in the CoCeC pattern. That is, other participle patterns do not host such independent nouns without a verbal alternate in the relevant binyan (Gadish 2016; Faust 2011). Other patterns that host ANs are not used as verbs and are not related to a specific binyan (hereafter “non-participle patterns”). The different nonparticiple patterns are presented in Table 2. It is important to note that this is not an exhaustive list but it represents the common patterns in which ANs are formed. Some of them, e.g. CaCCan are more typical for ANs than others, e.g. CaCaC, and none of them is exclusively used for AN formation (see Bolozky 1999, 2012; Schwarzwald 2002 and references therein). Tab. 2: AN formation in non-participle patterns

Pattern

Examples

CaCCaC

saxkan ‘player/actor’

CaCaC

katav ‘reporter’

CaCiC

pakid ‘clerk’

CaCoC

lakoax ‘customer’

ANs that are formed in non-participle patterns are not necessarily related to verbal counterparts (e.g. nagar ‘carpenter’). ANs that are formed in the patterns in Table 2 can be related to verbs. However, in contrast to ANs that are formed in participle patterns (Table 1), ANs in non-participle patterns can be related to different binyanim. ANs that are related to CiCeC verbs can be formed in the participle pattern (a) and either of the non-participle patterns (b, c) in Table 3.

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Tab. 3: CiCeC related AN formation

Verb

Participle pattern meCaCeC

a. rigel ‘spy’

meragel (N/V)

*raglan

*ragal

‘spy’

b. ciyer ‘paint’

*mecayer (N)

*cayran

cayar

‘painter’

*mesaxek (N)

saxkan

*saxak

‘player’

c.

sixek ‘play’

CaCCan pattern

CaCaC pattern

Similarly, when the related verb is in the CaCaC binyan, the related AN can be formed in either a participle pattern (a) or a non-participle one (b, c) in Table 4. Tab. 4: CaCaC related AN formation

Verb

Participle pattern CoCeC

a. laxam ‘fight’

loxem (N/V)

b. xarat ‘engrave’ *xoret (N) c.

rakad ‘dance’

*roked (N)

CaCCan pattern

CaCaC pattern

*laxman

*laxam

‘fighter’

*xartan

xarat

‘engraver’

*rakdan

rakad

‘dancer’

The selection of one pattern over another is to some extent arbitrary. It is unclear for example, why the saxkan ‘player’ (Table 3, c) is not formed in CaCaC (*saxak) or in meCaCeC (*mesaxek, which only means ‘plays’). However, examining the distribution of ANs reveals some strong tendencies. I argue that pattern selection is to a great extent predictable based on morphological and semantic relations between the derived AN and its verbal counterpart. Because AN formation in participle patterns is morphologically more transparent, new AN formation relies highly on these patterns, while other patterns gradually become less productive (Bolozky 1999).4 This also triggers morphological change where ANs take an additional form. I now turn to the criteria that play a role in pattern selection.

|| 4 Note that this tendency does not relate to language acquisition. Studies on the acquisition of Hebrew ANs show that children tend to coin them in non-participle patterns and specifically the CaCCan pattern (see Berman and Sagi 1981; Berman et al. 1982; Clark and Berman 1984, 1987; Berman and Ravid 2000; Ravid et al. 2002; Ravid and Bar-On 2005; Ravid 2006b). This study focuses only on AN formation among adults.

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3

Transparency in pattern selection

Transparency between the derived AN and the related verb plays a role in selecting one pattern and not another. While in some cases the selection of one pattern seems arbitrary, it is to a great extent based on both structural and semantic relations between the verbs and the derived AN.

3.1

Morphological transparency

Morphological transparency requires that the structural relations between the verb and the derived AN are as transparent as possible, namely that the transition between the two forms involves as minimal changes as possible. ANs whose formation is based on verbs in patterns other than CaCaC or CiCeC are systematically formed in the participle patterns (Faust and Hever 2010; Laks 2015a). For example, the AN of hilxin ‘composed’ is formed in maCCiC (malxin ‘composer’) and not in CaCaC (*laxan) or CaCCan (*laxnan). Why is this so? I claim that pattern selection is triggered by morphological transparency between the AN and the verb. The transition from the verb to the participle form is more transparent, as it requires fewer changes. The participle formation (4a) requires only substitution of the prefix hi- with ma-, while the stem remains intact. In contrast, formation in any of the other patterns would break the consonant cluster lx, in addition to other changes in the base, thereby making the AN structurally less related to the verb (4b, 4c).5 (4) a. hilxin  malxin b. hilxin  *laxan c. hilxin  *laxnan When the related verb is in CaCaC (5) or CiCeC (6), the transition to the nonparticiple patterns is simpler and requires fewer changes. If the AN is formed in CaCaC, it is identical to the verb in the case of CaCaC (5a) and requires only a change of the vocalic pattern into a-a if the verb is formed in CiCeC (6a).6 If the AN is formed in the CaCCan pattern, the transition into this pattern is structural|| 5 There are some cases where the participle pattern maCCiC takes the suffix -an to denote a property, but not an AN. Such cases will not be addressed in this study. 6 Historically, the AN pattern CaCaC was pronounced as CaCCa:C, but this distinction does not exist in Modern Hebrew.

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ly less transparent since it involves the addition of the suffix -an as well as deletion of the second stem vowel (5b, 6b). However, the transition into the CaCCan pattern is more complex in cases where the base verb is formed in hiCCiC (or hitCaCeC) and this would require even more changes to the base (4c). The transition from CiCeC and CaCaC verbs into the non-participle AN patterns is structurally more transparent and therefore there are more options for pattern selection. (5) a. xarat ‘engrave’  xarat ‘engrave’ b. rakad ‘dance’  rakdan ‘dancer’ (6) a. ciyer ‘paint’  cayar ‘painter’ b. sixek ‘play’  saxkan ‘player’ The current study adds to earlier studies by providing further evidence for a word-based approach to word formation (Aronoff 1976, 2007; Blevins 2006) and specifically for the theory of stem modification (Steriade 1988; McCarthy and Prince 1990; Bat-El 1994; Ussihkin 1999, 2005), which accounts for generalizations about morpho-phonological alternations by allowing for stem-internal adjustments rather than positing the extraction of a consonantal root (Ornan 1983; Bat-El 1986; McCarthy 1981; McCarthy and Prince 1986; Yip 1988; Hoberman 1992; Farwaneh 1990; Davis and Zawaydeh 2001; Idrissi and Kehayia 2004). Assuming that the ANs are derived from the corresponding verb, the transition from the verbal to the nominal form is morphologically simpler and more transparent, as it requires fewer changes to the base. If AN formation relied only on root extraction from the base verb, the extracted root could be placed in one of the AN patterns and pattern selection would be more random. Examine again the AN malxin ‘composer’ (4), which is assumed to be derived from the verb hilxin ‘compose’.7 Under a root-extraction approach, the root l-x-n would be extracted from the base hilxin and be equally placed in any of the three possible AN patterns: the participle pattern maCCiC (malxin), and the non-participle patterns CaCaC (*laxan) and CaCCan (*laxnan). There would be no reason to prefer the participle pattern over the other two patterns if the morphological mechanism examined only the consonantal root. However, since the participle || 7 The same claim holds with respect to root-based approaches, according to which roots are stored as an independent entity in the lexicon, and not necessarily extracted from a particular base. Such approaches would not explain why one pattern is favored over another.

Morphological and semantic transparency in Hebrew agent noun formation | 237

pattern is systematically selected when the base verb is in hiCCiC, due to the structural transparency discussed above, it follows that the morphological mechanism examines the word as a whole and not only the root.8 This provides further evidence for the claim that the morphological component in the grammar aims to preserve the structure of the base as much as possible within the constraints of word formation rules in the language. ANs that are derived from verbs in certain binyanim demonstrate a tendency to be formed in the participle patterns in order to achieve greater morphological transparency between the two forms. Reference only to the consonantal root obscures information about the possibility of forming an AN based on a verb and the motivation to select one pattern rather than another (Aronoff 1994, 2007; Bat-El 1994, 2002; Ussishkin 1999, 2005).

3.2

Thematic (semantic) transparency

This section examines the thematic (semantic) relations between ANs and their verbal counterparts. AN formation will also be compared to a study on instrument noun formation, where I show that the thematic relation between the derived nominal and the verb also plays a role in pattern selection. Semantic transparency in general has been shown to play an important role in morphology (see for example, Aronoff 1976; Spencer 1991; Anderson 1992; Baayen 1993; Zwitserlood 1994; Libben et al. 2003; Plag 2003; Giegerich 2006; Plag et al. 2008, among others). Thematic transparency is a type of semantic transparency that is based on the relations between the thematic roles that verbs assign, and other nominal (or adjectival) forms like ANs that are derived from them. Nominal forms that are derived from verbs are assumed to inherit properties of the verbs’ argument structure in different ways. The process that derives nominal forms is sensitive to the base verbs from which they are derived.9 ANs

|| 8 This paper does not address the question of the component of the grammar where the derivation of ANs, and words in general apply. Syntactic approaches (see for example, Halle and Marantz 1993; Marantz 1997; Doron 2003; Borer 2004; Arad 2005 among many others) view the lexicon as mere lists of roots, whose argument structure can be manipulated only in the syntax, by merging with functional heads. Such theories usually assume that the lexicon consists of roots and not words, but if they assumed that the lexicon consists of words, the proposed analysis could also intertwine with such approaches as well. 9 See for example, Smith (1972), Williams (1981), Booij (1986), Levin and Rappaport (1988), Randall (1988), Schlesinger (1989), Grimshaw (1990), Rappaport Hovav and Levin (1992), Bark-

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that are related to verbs, as well as other types of nominalizations, are typically related to the event structure of the verbs and denote their external argument (see Grimshaw 1990; Rappaport Hovav and Levin 1992; Kratzer 1996; Siloni 1997, 2001; Levin and Rappaport Hovav 2005; Alexiadou and Schäfer 2010, Alexiadou and Grimshaw 2008, among others).10 Rappaport Hovav and Levin (1992) support the claim that the external argument position has a special status in argument structure with respect to derived nominal forms, in comparison to the internal argument positions. The thematic relations between ANs and their verbal counterparts are thematically transparent, as the ANs are correlated with the thematic role of agent that such verbs can assign, and such ANs are interpreted as performing the action that the verb denotes. By selecting the participle pattern in AN formation, this thematic transparency also receives a morphological manifestation, as the derived AN is identical to the present form of the corresponding verb. This is the reason why new AN formation relies highly on the participle patterns, while the other patterns gradually become less productive (see Bolozky 1999, 2012; Gadish 2004). A similar tendency is observed in instrument noun formation, where there is a greater tendency to select the participle pattern as well (see also Laks 2015b). What about existing ANs in non-participle patterns? While most of them retain their form, they also demonstrate a tendency to shift into the participle patterns based on the degree of semantic-thematic transparency between them and the corresponding verbs. In cases of formation of the same stem consonants in more than one pattern, the participle form has the more general and transparent meaning. Examine for example, the ANs katav ‘reporter’, katvan ‘typist’ and kotev ‘writer (of an article)’, that share the stem consonants k-t-v and that are semantically related to the CaCaC verb katab ‘write’ (7). While the participle AN kotev has a very transparent meaning with respect to the corresponding verb, the other two ANs

|| er (1998), van Hout and Roeper (1998), Ackema and Neeleman (2004), Harely (2008), Schäfer (2008), Alexiadou and Shäfer (2010), Bowers (2011), Baker and Vinokurova (2009), Borer (2013) and references therein. 10 There are different views with respect to whether derived nominals are eventive or not and with regard to the realizations of arguments of such nouns or the lack thereof. This is not addressed in the current study. See also Hale and Keyser (1993), Siloni (1997a), Harley and Noyer (1998), Heyvaert (1998), Alexiadou (2001), Fu et al. (2001), Harley (2009), McIntyre (2014) and references therein for further discussion. See also Delancey (1984), Kamp and Roessdeuter (1993), Ryder (1999), Engelhardt (2000), Rainer (2013) for the discussion of types of ANs and their distribution.

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do not; both katav and katvan are not semantically transparent in relation to the action of writing that the verb katav represents. (7) a. katav ‘reporter’ b. katvan ‘typist’ c. kotev ‘writer (of an article)’ (cf. katav ‘write’) A similar distinction exists with respect to the ANs karyan and kore, related to the verb kara ‘read’ (8), and the ANs kanyan and kone which are related to the verb kana ‘buy’ (9). In both, when the AN has a more general meaning that denotes the action of the corresponding verb, the participle patterns are selected. In contrast, when the AN denotes a specific profession, whose meaning does not stem automatically from the verbal meaning, non-participle patterns are more likely to be selected (8a, 9a). (8) a. karyan ‘narrator (radio/television)’ b. kore ‘reader’ (9) a. kanyan ‘purchaser (professional)’ b. kone ‘buyer’ Moreover, less transparent and unpredictable meanings of ANs are formed only in non-participle patterns and the participle forms only have a verbal meaning (10). (10) a. yazam/*yozem b. talyan/*tole c. kablan/*mekabel

‘entrepreneur’ (cf. yazam ‘initiate’) ‘hangman’ (cf. tala ‘hang’) ‘contractor’ (cf. kibel ‘receive’)

In order to demonstrate the importance of semantic transparency in derived nominal formation, I now turn to a previous study on Hebrew instrument noun (IN) formation. Hebrew INs tend to undergo doublet formation where an IN takes an additional form, which is a participle pattern (Laks 2015b). This is demonstrated in Table 5 below. The IN maghec ‘iron’, for example, which is formed in the non-participle pattern maCCeC, alternates with the participle pattern meCaCeC, yielding megahec that denotes both the IN ‘iron’ and the present form of the verb gihec ‘iron’ (‘he irons’). The study shows a clear preference for the participle forms where the change is always from the non-participle patterns to the participle patterns and hardly ever the other way round.

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Tab. 5: Doublet formation of INs maghec

megahec

‘iron’

masnen

mesanen

‘filter’

magresa(t)-kerax

gores-kerax

‘ice-crusher’

maxlec-pkakim

xolec-pkakim

‘corkscrew’

Unlike INs, ANs rarely demonstrate morphological change. While new AN formation shows a strong tendency to favor the participle patterns (Bolozky 1999, 2003; Gadish 2014), existing ANs demonstrate hardly any morphological variation. The AN rakdan ‘dancer’, for example, does not change into the participle form roked, which has only the verbal meaning of ‘dances’. More such examples are presented in (11). (11) rapad ‘upholsterer’ rakdan ‘dancer’ kabcan ‘beggar’ xazay ‘weather forecaster’

 *meraped (cf. riped ‘upholster’)  *roked (cf. rakad ‘dance’)  *mekabec (cf. kibec ‘beg’)  *xoze (cf. xaza ‘forecast’)

However, ANs undergo doublet formation when they are parts of compounds. Compounding is a word formation strategy that usually involves two or more words or stems, each of which can function as an independent lexeme (see Booij 1992; Scalise 1992; Bauer 2001 among others). The elements that compose compounds are typically nouns (Clark and Berman 1984, 1987; Berman 2009). The formation of compounds and its locus of application in the grammar has received a great deal of attention in the literature and has been addressed from various theoretical perspectives (see for example Downing 1977; Anderson 1992; Aronoff 1994; Booij 1992, 2005; Spencer 2001; Shlonsky 2008; Lieber and Štekauer 2009; Scalise and Vogel 2010; Ralli 2010, 2013a and references therein). In addition, many studies have pointed out the thematic relations between the elements on deverbal compounds, i.e. compounds whose head is derived from a verb (e.g. pain killer). Theta-role relations inside such compounds are shown to be related to the properties of the argument structure of the related verb (see for example, Roeper and Sigel 1978; Booij 1986; Di Sciullo and Williams 1987; Zwanenberg 1990; Di Sciullo 1992; Ralli 1992; Grimash 1990; Pesetsky 1994; Vogel and Napoli 1995; Di Sciullo and Ralli 1999; Nespor and Ralli 1996; Ackema and Neeleman 2004; Leiber and Scalise 2006; Harley 2008; Lieber 2004; Ralli 2013b, among others). Hebrew compound formation has also received a great deal of attention with respect to its semantic, morphological and

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syntactic properties and the degree of their transparency (see Borer 1989, 1999, 2013; Ritter 1988, 1991; Hazout 1991; Clark and Berman 1987; Zwanenburg 1990; Siloni 1997; Ravid and Zilberbuch 2003; Ravid 2006a; Rothstein 2012, among others). There are agentive Hebrew compounds, in which the head is an AN derived from a verb, and the complement denotes the patient of the action that the AN represents. For example, the AN menake-xalonot ‘window cleaner’ (‘lit. cleans-windows’) consists of the head menake ‘cleaner’ which is the participle of the verb nika ‘clean’, and the complement xalonot ‘windows’, which is the object of cleaning. ANs that are heads of compounds are most likely to undergo variation in comparison to other ANs. Why is it so? I argue that similarly to the case of INs (Laks 2015b), the presence of both the agent itself and the patient in the same noun phrase makes the AN more thematically transparent in the sense that it corresponds to the thematic roles that the verbal counterpart assigns. Examine the CiCeC verb riped ‘upholster’, for example. This verb assigns a thematic role of agent and patient, and has a derived AN rapad ‘upholsterer’ which is formed in a non-participle pattern CaCaC. As shown in (11), this AN does not have a doublet in the participle pattern meCaCeC, as meraped only has the verbal meaning of ‘upholsters’. The same AN rapad is also part of the AN compound rapad-sapot ‘sofa-upholsterer’ (‘lit. upholsterer-sofas’). Such an AN is more thematically transparent than rapad ‘upholsterer’ by itself, as it consists of another NP that can be a participant in the upholstering event that the verb riped denotes. There is a greater thematic transparency between the verbs and its derived AN. As a result, there is a great chance of morphological change to take place, in order for the thematic transparency to be manifested also morphologically. Indeed, rapad is also formed in the participle pattern meCaCeC (meraped) and this form does not exist as an AN by itself, but only in the compound rapad-sapot ‘sofa-upholsterer’ that alternates with meraped-sapot. As shown in (2), repeated here as (12), the two AN compounds that denote ‘sofaupholsterer’ can be used interchangeably in similar semantic and syntactic contexts. (12) a. rikaznu laxem Ɂecot le-xiduš ve-ripud rahitim ve-gam kama dvarim še-xašuv ladaat Ɂal rapad-sapot ‘We gathered some advice for you about renovating and upholstering furniture and also a few things that it's important to know about a sofaupholsterer.’

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b. mišehi makira meraped-sapot … Ɂani Ɂasbir – yeš le-ima šeli kursattelevizya še-Ɂalta la hamon kesef ‘Anybody knows a sofa-upholsterer … I’ll explain – my mother has a television armchair that cost her a lot of money.’ Similarly, the AN sadran ‘steward, usher’ is formed in the CaCCan pattern and does not have a participle doublet as mesader ‘organizes, arranges’ even though it is semantically related to the CiCeC verb sider ‘organize, arrange’. In contrast, when it is the head of the compound sadran-sxora ‘stocker’ (‘lit. stockermerchandise’) (13a), it alternates with the participle form in mesader-sxora (13b), which has the same meaning. As shown in (13), both AN compounds can be found in wanted ads even in the same website. (13) a. laxacu kan le-misrot sadran-sxora nosafot be-šituf portal drušim (www3) ‘Click here for more stocker jobs in collaboration with the Drushim portal.’ b. laxacu kan le-misrot mesader-sxora nosafot be-šituf portal drušim (www4) ‘Click here for more stocker jobs in collaboration with the Drushim portal.’ This morphological change occurs almost exclusively in compound formation. I argue that the presence of both the agent itself and the patient in the same NP makes the AN more semantically transparent in the sense that it corresponds to the thematic roles that the related verb assigns. Many studies pointed out the thematic relations between elements of compounds whose head is verb-derived. Theta-role relations inside such compounds are shown to be related to the properties of the argument structure of the related verb (for Hebrew, see Rappaport-Hovav and Levin 1992; Ritter 1991; Clark and Berman 1987; Siloni 1997; Ravid 2006b; Ravid and Zilberbuch 2003; Ravid 2006; Berman 2009; Borer 2013, among others). Semantic transparency triggers a morphological change where the AN head takes additional form that is more related to the corresponding verb. As shown in Table 6, all the AN compounds have a morphological doublet which is formed in the participle pattern of the corresponding verbs. It is important to note that this doublet formation is not specific to a specific AN or verb pattern, but it occurs equally in all patterns that are part of AN compounds.

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Tab. 6: Morphological change of ANs in compounds

Non-participle pattern

Participle pattern

sadransxora

CaCCan mesadersxora

rašamɁamutot

CaCaC

rapadsafot

CaCaC

Corresponding verb

meCaCeC

‘stocker’ (lit. arranger-merchandise’)

sider

‘arrange’

rošemɁamutot

CoCeC

‘registrar associations’

rašam

‘register'

merapedsafot

meCaCeC

‘sofa-upholsterer’ (lit. riped upholsterer-sofas)

kabcannevadot

CaCCan mekabecnevadot

meCaCeC

‘beggar’

kibec

‘beg (for money)’

pakaxtaɁavura

CaCaC

‘traffic inspector’

pikeax

‘inspect’

xalfanksafim

CaCCan maxlifksafim

maCCiC

‘money changer’

hexlif

‘change’

banaybatim

CaCaC

CoCeC

‘house builder’

bana

‘build’

mefakeax- meCaCeC taɁavura

bonebatim

‘upholster’

This doublet formation is restricted to cases where the complement is an argument (14). (14) a. kaldan-bet-mišpat  *maklid-bet-mišpat ‘court typist’ b. rakdan-tango  *roked-tango ‘tango dancer’ Examine the AN compound kaldan-bet-mišpat ‘court typist’ (‘lit. typist-court’) (14a), whose head lakdan ‘typist’ is semantically related to the verb hiklid ‘type’. The NP bet-mišpat ‘court’ is not an argument of the verb hiklid but a place adjunct. It does not denote the patient of the action of typing, performed by the typist and it does not change into the participle form maklid, which only has the verbal meaning ‘types’. Since the relation between the head and the complement in the compound is not manifested in terms of theta role assignment, the relations between them are thematically less transparent and there is less motivation for a morphological change. It is not surprising that doublet formation does not take place in AN compounds in which the relation between the AN and the complement is not manifested in terms of agent and patient. Such cases of lack of doublet formation show that the semantic transparency between the

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verb and the derived AN is not based only on some general semantic relation between them, but on thematic relations, namely theta-role assignment.11 This suggests that the morphological component in the grammar is sensitive to thematic relations between arguments of predicates and that such relations receive morphological manifestation accordingly.

4

Conclusions

The study sheds light on the processes of nominalization and compounding by examining the criteria for pattern selection in AN formation, based on the morphological and semantic relations with the verbal counterparts. I showed that while pattern selection is to a great extent arbitrary, it is also performed via systematic guidelines. The morphological mechanism tends to select patterns whose formation is less intrusive to the base and requires fewer changes. This brings about the selection of the participle patterns in cases where the formation in other patterns is morphologically pricy and requires more changes of the base. From the semantic-thematic point of view, the participle patterns are also selected when there is greater transparency between the AN and the base verb. The more general the meaning of the AN is, the greater the chances for selecting a participle pattern which is identical to the present form of the related verb. This is even more dominant in ANs that are heads of compounds where the patient of the action is also a part of the AN. This makes the semanticthematic relation between the AN and the related verbs and its argument structure even more transparent. The change into the participle patterns aims at creating transparency between the verbs and the derived ANs. The study highlights the importance of morphological and semantic transparency in word formation and its implications for morphological competition. It enables to shed more light on the motivation for morphological changes both from morphological and semantic perspectives. The study also highlights the strong correlation between the verbal and the nominal system in terms of thetarole assignment and its morphological manifestation.

|| 11 Similar tendencies were also found in Hebrew IN formation (Laks 2015b).

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Online sources www1 = http://www.reader.co.il/article/98720/%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%93%D7%A8%D7%94%D7%99%D7%98%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%A0%D7 %99%D7%9D www2 = http://www.mitchatnim.co.il/forum/1707250 www3 = http://www.thesite.co.il/jobs/page/0/0/%D7%A1%D7%93%D7%A8%D7%9F_%D7% A1%D7%97%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%94 www4 = http://www.thesite.co.il/jobs/page/0/0/%D7%9E%D7%A1%D7%93%D7%A8_%D7% A1%D7%97%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%94

Chiara Melloni

Aspect-related properties in the nominal domain: The case of Italian psych nominals 1

Introduction and outline

In recent years, there has been an upsurge of theoretical studies devoted to the aspectual and thematic features of psych verbs and nominals based on data from various languages and approached from different theoretical perspectives (on psych verbs see among others, Belletti and Rizzi 1988; Pustejovsky 1988, 1991; van Voorst 1992; Pesetsky 1995; Filip 1996; Arad 1998, 1999, 2002; Landau 2009; Rothmayr 2009; Marín and McNally 2011; on psych nominals see Grimshaw 1990; Pesetsky 1995; Meinschäfer 2003 on French; Fábregas, Marín, and McNally 2012 on Spanish; Kawaletz and Plag 2015 on English; Alexiadou and Iordă chioaia 2014 on Greek and Romanian, among others). However, issues remain to be understood, and Italian, among other Romance languages, appears curiously understudied in the domain of psych nominalizations.1 Based on Italian data, this paper focuses on the aspect-related properties of nominalizations of psychological predicates that realize the Experiencer argument as the direct object (Object Experiencer, henceforth OE verbs). In particular, it deals with the possibility (or impossibility) of preserving the agentive/ eventive semantics, available to a subset of OE verbs, in the nominal domain. My first concern will thus be to ascertain the aspectual properties of psych nominals in Italian, with the purpose of evaluating whether the claim that psych nouns in the OE class are uniformly stative and lack causative force applies to this language too (see Lakoff 1970: 126, and Pesetsky 1995). To this end, I shall apply standard eventivity and stativity tests that identify the aspectual characterization of psych nominals. My arguments will add further support to the Aspect Preservation Hypothesis proposed by Fábregas and Marín (2012) and Fábregas, Marín and McNally (2012), who claim that psych nominalizations are || 1 See Varchetta (2012) for a recent analysis of Italian, nevertheless focused on psych verbs. || I gratefully acknowledge Bianca Basciano, Serena Dal Maso, Denis Delfitto, Lea Kawaletz, Ingo Plag, Anne Reboul, Maria Vender for inspiring comments on the material presented in this paper. Many thanks to the editors of this volume for their patience and encouragement, and to the reviewers for valuable comments.

DOI 10.1515/9781501505430-011

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stative, independently of the aspectual characterization of the base. Under this view, the nominalization per se is aspect preserving, in virtue of the fact that the nominal affix does not introduce aspectual operators, but its effect is to truncate the complex event structure of the base verb and to select the result state subevent. Furthermore, I shall investigate the agentive construal of psych verbs (see Grimshaw 1990; van Voorst 1995; Arad 1998 among others) and pinpoint the reasons for its unavailability in the nominal domain. For instance, although irritare ‘annoy’ can express an agentive reading, the corresponding nominal cannot make reference to it: (1)

a. Gianni ha irritato intenzionalmente Anna. (AGENTIVE) Gianni annoy.PST.3SG intentionally Anna ‘Gianni deliberately annoyed Anna.’ b. *L’ intenzionale irritazione di Anna (da parte di Gianni). the deliberate annoyance of Anna (from part of Gianni)

On the other hand, it will be shown that a restricted subset of nominalizations from psych verbs show a different pattern: beyond a stative reading, they preserve the eventive/agentive interpretation available to the base verb. In this case, accordingly, the nominals project full argument structure like standard nominalizations obtained from transitive action verbs. (2) a. Gianni ha umiliato intenzionalmente Gianni humiliate.PST.3SG intentionally ‘Gianni deliberately humiliated Anna.’ b. L’ intenzionale umilia-zione di Anna the deliberate humiliate-NMLZ of Anna ‘Gianni’s intentional humiliation of Anna.’

Anna. Anna

(AGENTIVE)

(da parte di Gianni). (from part of Gianni)

Through an analysis of the properties of the base predicates of this set of nominals, it is argued that verbs like umiliare ‘humiliate’ are semantically (and aspectually) different from other OE predicates: beyond a psychological interpretation, they lexically encode reference to the more concrete, actional process (under the control of an Agent) aimed at causing the result state. Nominalizations from OE verbs behave accordingly, i.e. either preserving the eventive/agentive value where this is lexically expressed by the base verb (e.g. umiliare), or sticking to the stative component in the base verb semantic

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structure when the agentive process, though eventually coercible in the syntactic context, is not lexically specified (e.g. irritare). The article is organized as follows. After a brief introduction to the syntactic classes of psych verbs in Italian (section 2.1), in section 2.2 I examine the event structure properties of OE predicates, focusing on the aspectual classification in Arad (1998). In section 3, I deal with nominalizations from OE verbs and, specifically, with their aspectual properties, which are isolated through a series of eventivity and stativity diagnostics in 3.2. The exceptional behavior of a subset of nominals which accept an (agentive) process meaning leads to a more accurate analysis of the agentive construal of the base verbs, which is developed in section 3.3. Section 3.4 concludes the analysis with an explanation for the polysemy of a subset of OE nominals, while section 4 contains some indications for future research.

2 2.1

Italian psych verbs Three syntactic classes

As proposed in Belletti and Rizzi’s (1988) seminal work, Italian psych verbs can be grouped in three classes, depending on the syntactic distribution and morphosyntactic encoding of the Experiencer argument. Adopting Pesetsky’s (1995) terminology, Subject Experiencer (SE) verbs are transitive verbs that realize the Experiencer argument as the subject, i.e. the temere ‘fear’ class in Belletti and Rizzi’s original proposal. The other classes have a non-Experiencer subject (thematically, a Causer) and different morphosyntactic properties. Specifically, OE verbs are transitive and realize the Experiencer like an accusative-marked direct object (i.e. the preoccupare class). Dative Experiencer (DE) verbs are intransitive and realize the Experiencer as an oblique (i.e. the piacere class): (3) a. Anna teme i temporali. Anna fear.PRS.3SG the.PL storm.PL ‘Anna fears storms.’ b. I temporali preoccupano i turisti. the.PL storm.PL worry.PRS.3PL the.PL tourist.PL ‘Storms worry the tourists.’ c. A Gianni piacciono i temporali. to Gianni like.PRS.3PL the.PL storm.PL ‘Gianni likes storms.’

SE

OE

DE

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A great deal of research has focused on OE verbs, especially because of some challenging syntactic peculiarities of this class. However, as argued by Arad (1998, 1999, 2002) and Landau (2009) among others, the syntactic anomalies of OE verbs are aspectually restricted; that is to say, they do not characterize all OE verbs but only appear under a non-agentive/stative interpretation. As a matter of fact, whereas SE and DE verbs are consistently stative predicates (see Grimshaw 1990; Pustejovsky 1991; Pesetsky 1995; Landau 2009), it is acknowledged that OE verbs are aspectually heterogeneous and, in general, there is no broad consensus on their aspectual status in the literature. In some studies, OE verbs are analyzed as telic predicates, specifically, as achievements according to van Voorst (1992), and as accomplishments in Tenny’s (1994) analysis. On the other hand, Pylkkänen (1997, 2000) on Finnish, and Arad (1998, 1999) on English and Romance, have argued that at least some OE verbs are stative predicates despite being causative, arguing that causation does not imply dynamicity (see Kratzer 2000 for analogous remarks on psych verbs, and Dowty 1979 for the concept of stative causation). More recently, focusing on the intransitive, se-marked version of Spanish OE verbs, Marín and MacNally (2011) claimed that these verbs are inchoative states lacking dynamic properties altogether. What most analyses seem to have in common is that OE verbs are causative and amenable to a complex event structure analysis, where a causing subevent triggers a result state (a psychological state, an emotion) in the Experiencer argument. In what follows, with no pretence of exhaustiveness, I will introduce the aspectual characterization of OE predicates basing on Arad (1998), and try to disentangle aspectually-related properties, i.e. dynamicity/stativity, causation and, especially, agency.2

2.2

OE verbs: Event Structure properties

It is widely accepted that while some OE verbs denote events, i.e. dynamic eventualities, others are non dynamic. This has been noted since Pustejovsky (1988), who argued that OE verbs are dynamic eventualities, i.e. ‘transitions’, since they describe a change of state induced by a process/activity. Arad (1998, 1999), based on Pylkkänen (1997), argues that OE verbs can be either eventive or stative. In particular, she points out that there are three possible interpretations of OE verbs arising from the combination of two dynamicity factors: whether the

|| 2 Along with Comrie’s (1976: 49) understanding of dynamicity, it is often assumed that this aspectual feature includes two dimensions: agent-control and/or change of state.

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psych verb takes as its subject an Agent or an involuntary Causer, and whether there is a change of state in the Experiencer.3 If a verb takes an (intentional) Agent, as shown by the agent-oriented modification in (4) (di proposito) and causes a change of state in the Experiencer, then the agentive reading can be triggered. (4) Gianni ha spaventato /irritato Anna di proposito per Gianni frighten.PST.3SG /annoy.PST.3SG Anna of purpose for far-la andar via. make-she.CL.ACC go.INF away ‘Gianni frightened/annoyed Anna on purpose to make her go away.’ However, when the non-Experiencer argument is an involuntary cause or stimulus triggering a change of state in the Experiencer, the verb expresses an eventive/causative reading. In these cases, the subject can be either inanimate or animate, since animacy per se does not imply agentivity: see example (5b). (5) a. Gianni ha spaventato /irritato (involontariamente) Anna. Gianni frighten.PST.3SG /annoy.PST.3SG (involuntarily) Anna ‘Gianni (involuntarily) frightened/annoyed Anna.’ b. L’ atteggiamento di Gianni ha spaventato /irritato Anna. the behavior of Gianni frighten.PST.3SG /annoy.PST.3SG Anna ‘Gianni’s behavior frightened/annoyed Anna.’ Finally, some OE verbs – though preserving a fundamentally causative, hence complex event structure – are necessarily and unambiguously stative, and in such case there is neither Agent nor change of state in the Experiencer. (6) Gianni preoccupa /disgusta Anna Gianni worry.PRS.3SG /disgust.PRS.3SG Anna *(intenzionalmente / di proposito). (deliberately / of purpose) ‘Gianni worries/disgusts Anna *(deliberately / on purpose).’

|| 3 Arad (1998) explains that such distinctions are not rigidly specified in the lexicon, since some verbs can appear in all three constructions while others, like preoccupare ‘worry’, are necessarily stative.

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On these grounds, it is possible to draw the following conclusions. Firstly, causation is orthogonal to the dynamic vs. stative characterization of a predicate and characterizes the whole OE class. Secondly, the dynamic character of OE verbs results from the dimension of change in the Experiencer’s state (from being non-frightened to frightened, for instance), rather than from agency. Thirdly, all the aspectual interpretations available imply a complex event structure analysis, where the second subevent corresponds to the (resulting) psychological state held by the Experiencer argument. A translation of this analysis in standard lexical semantic terms, such as Rappaport Hovav and Levin (1998), would lead us to posit the following event structures for OE verbs in the abovementioned construals (where the operators ACT and BECOME stand for the process and the transition/change components in the event structure template):4 (7) a. [[x ACT ]CAUSE [BECOME [y ]]] b. [xCAUSE [BECOME [y ]]] c. [xCAUSE [y ]]

Agentive Eventive/Causative Stative

It is worth noticing that the building blocks that constantly appear in the templates are the result state of the Experiencer (y) and the Causer operator with its argument (x). The verbal root, under this analysis, belongs to the ontological category “state” (see Pesetsky 1995) and gets integrated into the event structure template accordingly. Hence, OE verbs pair with “result”, rather than “manner” verbs (see Rappaport Hovav and Levin 1998 for the terminology and formalism deployed here). Before turning to nominalizations from psych verbs, let us consider the agentive interpretation in more detail. An intriguing issue concerns the interpretive conditions under which OE verbs get or do not get the agentive reading. First, it is worth noting that while all psych OE verbs can take non-agentive subjects, the agentive interpretation seems restricted to a subset of these. In particular, not all verbs that are amenable to an eventive/causative construal are possible with Agentive subjects (beyond statives, which predictably reject || 4 Event structure templates, in the present account, are not sensu stricto lexical, but contain those semantic building blocks that are syntactically relevant. On the basis of their ontological type and idiosyncratic semantics, the same root can be in principle associated with different event structure templates, like those in (7), in accordance with Arad’s view of aspect-related construals (see note 3). The view offered here is thus perfectly compatible with syntax-oriented approaches to lexical or inner aspect and argument/thematic structure, like Ramchand (2008), Travis (2010), etc.

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them too). Examples of verbs that resist the agentive construal might be found among eventive (8) and stative verbs (9).5 (8) a. *Gianni li ha indignati di proposito Gianni they.CL.ACC outrage.PST.3SG of purpose perché andassero via. because go.SBJV.IPF.3PL away b. *Agentive: sbigottire ‘dismay’, sconcertare ‘disconcert’, stizzire ‘irritate’, etc. (9) a. *Gianni li ha preoccupati di proposito Gianni they.CL.ACC worry.PST.3SG of purpose perché andassero via. because go.SBJV.IPF.3PL away b. *Agentive: affliggere ‘afflict’, deprimere ‘depress’, disgustare ‘disgust’, etc. Whether a verb occurs with an agentive reading seems to depend on idiosyncratic properties of the verb root, and in particular, on the possibility of being conceptualized as a more or less specific activity/process under the control of a volitional Agent and aimed at triggering the mental state of the Experiencer (see van Voorst 1995 for insightful remarks on this). Some OE predicates accept this interpretation to a lesser extent, because they name mental states that are particularly prone to a subjective perception and evaluation, and are hardly construable as prototypical actional processes/activities aimed at causing the relevant mental state (e.g. worry or inspire). Further, it should be noted that agency is orthogonal to the aspectual characterization of a predicate. This has been made especially clear by van Voorst (1992: 84), who – on the grounds of several robust aspect-sensitive tests – claims that “the agentivity of subjects […] of psychological verbs is aspectually irrelevant. The presence of an agentive subject does not turn the psychological construction into an activity.” In particular, about the interpretation of the psych verb frighten in Peter frightened the grizzly bear to chase it out of his backyard, van Voorst (1992: 84) observes that although the subject “can be active in

|| 5 Although the sentential context coerces the agentive interpretation of the predicate, the human subject cannot be interpreted as the intentional Agent of a process aimed at triggering the relevant mental state. Hence, the unacceptability or, to some speakers, low degree of acceptability of the sentences in (8) and (9) follows.

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the frightening of the bear, this activity is not part of the very event of frightening. As soon as the bear is frightened the event starts, and not earlier than that”. Therefore, if we compare OE verbs with lexical causatives of external causation (e.g. break or melt, allowing for an Agent subject – see Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1995) we observe a crucial difference: whilst the latter include reference to a (underspecified) process leading to a result state, psych predicates do not. Psych verbs depict states of the mind, emotions that are triggered by underspecified causes. The latter might be processes/activities under the control of intentional subjects, but properties of objects, events/facts, or others’ psych states too can be the trigger/stimulus of a psych situation (e.g. His sudden panic scared me a lot). This sets apart OE verbs from lexical causatives whose result state is typically and necessarily brought about by a dynamic process: e.g. something cannot be broken without a process of some sort causing it. As to the agentive construal, in particular, another crucial distinction lies in the feature of control: Agents can, volitionally and intentionally, “act upon” the Experiencer to trigger a certain psych reaction, but this resulting state ultimately and solely depends on the Experiencer’s mental disposition. Under this view, Agents in psych verb constructions – in contrast with lexical causatives of external causation – never are “direct causers” in the psychological situation, whose only actual participant is the Experiencer (see Sichel 2010 for relevant remarks on this fact, and for its consequences in the nominal domain).

3

Italian psych nominalizations

3.1

Background and research questions

Recent studies on psych nominals have thoroughly analyzed the aspectual properties of nominalizations. In particular, Fábregas and Marín (2012) and Fábregas, Marín and McNally (2012) – main references for the present study – accomplished an in-depth exploration of psych nouns in Spanish, which has laid the foundation for the present research on Italian. Their studies have brought evidence in favor of the Aspect Preservation Hypothesis, claiming that the nominalization of psych verbs does not alter the fundamental aspectual properties of the base verb and, in particular, that it “must always denote a part of the aspectual information contained in the Aktionsart of the base verb” (Fábregas and Marín 2012: 37). This hypothesis takes as its premise that the affix is a mere transpositional operator (see Beard 1995), i.e. a nominalizing head that does not introduce aspectual or other semantic operators, and that the aspectu-

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al properties of the nominal only depend on the building blocks composing the event structure of the base predicate. In order to derive the aspectual properties of psych nominals, Fábregas and Marín (2012) posit that nominalizing affixes have different attachment sites and, specifically, that they can select as their complement the whole complex event or an (embedded) portion of the event structure. Second, assuming that OE verbs imply a causative/complex event structure, they argue that the effect of nominalization with these verbs is to truncate the causative subevent, explaining the compulsory and mostly uniform stative denotation of their derived nominals. The first question that arises at this point is a central one and revolves around the issue of why psych nouns should lack the causative and inchoative components altogether: why, for instance, irritazione ‘annoyance’ cannot mean ‘causing to be annoyed’ or ‘becoming annoyed’ – on the assumption that CAUSE and BECOME are aspectual operators in the event structure template of these verbs, see (7). Although a detailed analysis of the event structure properties of these verbs exceeds the limited scope of the present paper, on the basis of the few considerations in section 2.2, it can be argued that the aspectual characterization of psych nominals does preserve the core aspectual semantics of OE verbs. That is to say, if psych verbs/roots denote a psychological state and do not contain explicit reference to the causing process/activity, whose subject plays no role in the psych situation of the Experiencer, then it might be argued that this fundamental aspectual characterization is preserved in the nominal domain. Less clear are the reasons for the lack of inchoative semantics in derived nominals. As to the possible lines of analysis, the reader is referred to van Voorst (1992) and Marín and McNally (2011), who both argue for the lack of a dimension of change (of state) in the event structure of psych verbs.6 While this core question does not fall within the scope of the present research, the other issue that I intend to address here concerns the nominalization of psych predicates under the agentive reading. As a matter of fact, it is far from clear what the effect of the nominalizing operator can be with psych verbs in the agentive construal, which seem to be more “standard” than their corresponding causatives in many (syntactic) respects (see Belletti and Rizzi 1988). Firstly, can nominals of this sort be formed at all? That is, can nominalizations be formed from psych predicates under an agentive construal? And, if this is the case, what are their aspectual || 6 See also Fábregas, Marín and McNally (2012) and especially Sichel (2010) for valuable insights on the restrictions that nominalization operators pose on the realization of complex event structures and indirect Causers.

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properties, i.e. would they express dynamic or non dynamic eventualities, and what about their thematic/argument structure? Previous accounts, such as Grimshaw (1990), report and analyze data concerning the agentive reading of some psych nominals: (10) John’s (public) embarrassment/humiliation of Mary

(only agentive)

(11) *The event’s embarrassment/humiliation of Mary (Grimshaw 1990: 119)

(causative)

As Grimshaw explains, humiliation is a standard complex event nominal, allowing the transitive construction (or the one with the by-phrase), but only under the agentive reading, as signaled by the impossibility of the same construction with a Causer argument (11). Kawaletz and Plag (2015) too report about several nouns in English with agentive/eventive meaning obtained from verbs in the OE class, attesting the availability of these nouns based on scrupulous corpus analysis. Similar cases are attested in non Indo-European languages, like Hebrew, when the nominal is derived from a verb containing explicit causative morphology which is preserved under nominalization (see Sichel 2010, who explains that nominals lacking causative morphology show a different pattern and do not allow for the agentive/eventive interpretation): (12) a. ha-hax’asa Sel rina al yedey ha-yeladim (only agentive) the-angering of rina by the-kids ‘the angering of Rina by the kids’ b. *ha-hax’asa Sel rina al yedey /biglal ha-xadaSot the-angering of rina by /because the-news (Sichel 2010: 171, example (22d), (22e)) On the other hand, it has been noticed that most psych nominals obtained from predicates that allow the agentive construal do not accept the syntactic realization of the Agent and, correspondingly, reject a dynamic interpretation. (13) a. Luis cuidadosamente aburrió a su hijo Luis carefully bored ACC his son para que se durmiera so that SE fell.asleep.SBJV ‘Luis carefully made his son bored so that he would fall asleep.’

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a’. *el aburrimiento de su hijo por Luis the boredom of his son by Luis b. La película aburrió a Juan. the movie bored ACC Juan b’. el aburrimiento de Juan con la película the boredom of Juan with the movie (Fábregas and Marín 2012: 45) As a matter of fact, the Spanish data easily translate into Italian, for which I offer the following example: (14) a. Il presentatore ha divertito (intenzionalmente) il pubblico the anchor-man amuse.PST.3SG (deliberately) the audience con battute esilaranti. with joke.PL hilarious.PL) ‘The anchor-man (deliberately) amused the audience with hilarious jokes.’ b. *L’ intenzionale diverti-mento de-l pubblico The deliberate amuse-NMLZ of-the audience (da parte de-l noto presentatore). (from part of-the famous anchor-man) Nevertheless, as we will see in section 3.2, event-denoting nominals derived from (agentive) psych predicates can be found too, though in limited number: (15) La deliberata umilia-zione di Gianni (da parte di Anna) the deliberate humiliate-NMLZ of Gianni (from part of Anna) ‘Anna’s intentional humiliation of Gianni’ (16) La consola-zione de-l bambino in lacrime the comfort-NMLZ of-the child in tear.PL (da parte di una madre affettuosa) (from part of a mother affectionate) ‘The consolation of the crying child (by a caring mother)’ In the following sections, I try to shed light on this issue and explain the reasons at the basis of this contrast. First, I apply some standard tests to identify the stativity/eventivity of psych nominalizations in Italian (section 3.2). Then, I focus on the psych predicates that allow event nominals with an agentive read-

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ing in order to see how to derive the contrast between (14) and (15)–(16) (see section 3.3). Before turning to the aspectual analysis of Italian nominals, however, a necessary premise concerns the class of data that fall in the scope of this research. From a morphological perspective, Italian nominals can be simple, underived nouns, or true deverbal nominalizations. As to the former, several psych nouns co-occur with a corradical verb, but are not verb-based: i.e. they lack overt transpositional affixes or verbal markers, which in Italian and Romance languages occur as thematic vowels (in Italian two thematic vowels appear in derivation, -a and -i):7 (17) angoscia ‘anguish’ / angosciare ‘(to) anguish’; spavento ‘fright’ / spaventare ‘(to) frighten’; stupore ‘wonder’/ stupire ‘(to) amaze’.8 However, since I intend to study the effect of nominalization on the verb event structure, simple nouns like these will be excluded because they do not contain a verb. The present analysis will deal with nominals containing an unambiguously verbal stem and a transpositional suffix (see Beard 1995 for this notion; Melloni 2007, 2011 on transpositional suffixes in Italian action nominals; Fábregas, Marín, and McNally 2012 on Spanish). Italian nominalizations from psych verbs are typically obtained with the suffixes -mento, -zione, and to a much lesser extent, -tura. Therefore, the morphological structure of the psych nouns at issue here follows one of the patterns in (18):9 (18) a. [root + thematic vowel] + suffix, e.g. agit-a-zione ‘excitement’ b. [latinate verbal stem] + suffix, e.g. sedu-zione ‘seduction’

|| 7 Due to the lack of thematic vowels and transparent derivational morphology, nominals formally corresponding to the feminine of (irregular) past-participle forms such as sorpres-a ‘surprise’ (from sorprend-e-re ‘(to) surprise’) or offesa ‘offense’ (from offend-e-re ‘(to) offend’) are considered here as morphologically “simple”. 8 There is no derived nominal obtained via nominalizing morphology, such as angoscia ‘anguish’ > angosciare ‘to anguish’ > *angosciamento. Derived forms like spaventamento ‘frighten/ frightening’ are archaic and no longer in use. 9 Further, psych nominals can be obtained from complex verbs derived from nominal or adjectival bases expressing a psychological state (typically with the suffix -mento), like in the triplets: orgoglio ‘pride’ (N) > inorgoglire ‘to make proud’ (V) > inorgoglimento (deverbal N), or sospetto ‘suspect’ (N) > insospettire ‘to make suspicious’ (V) > insospettimento (deverbal N). Deverbal nouns of this type do not fall in the scope of the present study.

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The whole dataset I analyzed comprises 83 nominals, whose occurrences and actual use in context have been checked in two Italian web corpora, ITWaC (Italian Web as Corpus; see Baroni and Kilgarriff 2006) and ItTenTen, interrogated using the Word Sketch Engine corpus query tool10 (see Kilgarriff et al. 2004). Below, a representative list of the verb/noun pairs under examination: (19) agitare ‘upset’ > agitazione ‘agitation’; attrarre ‘attract’ > attrazione ‘attraction’; consolare ‘comfort’ > consolazione ‘consolation’; divertire ‘amuse’ > divertimento ‘amusement’; eccitare ‘excite’ > eccitazione ‘excitation’; esasperare ‘exasperate’ > esasperazione ‘exasperation’; frustrare ‘frustrate’ > frustrazione ‘frustration’; indignare ‘indignate’ > indignazione ‘indignation’; irritare ‘annoy’ > irritazione ‘annoyance’; preoccupare ‘worry’ > preoccupazione ‘worry’; sbalordire ‘amaze’> sbalordimento ‘amazement’; sbigottire ‘dismay’ > sbigottimento ‘dismay’; scombussolare ‘unsettle’ > scombussolamento ‘unsettlement’; stordire ‘stun’ > stordimento ‘astonishment’; turbare ‘upset’ > turbamento ‘turmoil’; umiliare ‘humiliate’ > umiliazione ‘humiliation’. In the next section, I intend to present evidence in favor of the overall stative nature of psych nominals. Further, I will also shed light on a subset of nominals which can be event-denoting under the agentive reading and offer an explanation for their “exceptional” aspectual properties in section 3.3.

3.2

Aspectual properties of psych nominals

Several studies aimed at establishing the aspectual properties of nominals have proposed a number of aspect-sensitive diagnostics: some hold wide crosslinguistic validity; others are more language-specific. In what follows, I apply those that I consider more effective in Italian, starting with a number of eventivity diagnostics and concluding with stativity diagnostics (especially see Fábre-

|| 10 http://www.sketchengine.co.uk

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gas, Marín, and McNally 2012 for a thorough analysis of these and other aspectual tests applied to Spanish data). One of the most reliable dynamicity tests consists in the compatibility with predicates such as avvenire ‘occur’ and aver luogo ‘take place’, which locate the event along spatial or temporal dimensions (see Godard and Jayez 1994). While event nouns can be the subject of these predicates, state nouns normally cannot. To appreciate the contrast, we can compare a typical event noun, such as corteggiamento ‘courting’ derived from the process verb corteggiare ‘court’, with apprezzamento ‘appreciation’, i.e. a nominal derived from the stative (SE) verb apprezzare ‘appreciate’. (20) a. Il corteggia-mento di Anna (da parte di Gianni) the court-NMLZ of Anna (from part of Gianni) è avvenuto l’ anno scorso in Messico. take-place.PST.3SG the year last in Mexico ‘Gianni’s courting of Anna took place last year in Mexico.’ b. *L’ apprezza-mento di Anna per gli impressionisti the appreciate-NMLZ of Anna for the.PL impressionist.PL francesi è avvenuto l’ anno scorso a-l museo. French.PL occur.PST.3SG the year last at-the museum Typically, psych nominalizations behave like state nouns and cannot occur with these predicates. The ban applies to nominals derived from verbs like divertire ‘amuse’, which – as a verb – is amenable to the agentive construal, and like sbalordire ‘amaze’, which only admits non-intentional subjects. (21) a. *Il the b. *Lo the

diverti-mento amuse-NMLZ sbalordi-mento amaze-NMLZ

di of di of

Anna Anna Anna Anna

è avvenuto occur.PST.3SG è avvenuto occur.PST.3SG

ieri. yesterday ieri. yesterday

However, if we apply this test to nominals from other verbs that allow the agentive construal, we obtain contrasting results. As a minimal pair, consider again the nominal divertimento and compare it with the nominal umiliazione ‘humiliation’, from umiliare ‘humiliate’, in consideration of the fact that both divertire and umiliare allow the agentive construal. The unacceptable sentences in (22) show that divertimento can only refer to a state under both causative and agentive reading. Quite the reverse, (23a) is acceptable, yet in this case umiliazione refers to some process, initiated by and under the control of an Agent, as indi-

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cated by the fact that it is possible to express the verb external argument as an optional da parte di phrase (similar in function, though not identical, to the English by or to the French par). When umiliazione is accompanied by an argument expressing an involuntary Cause, or Stimulus, the eventive interpretation is lost, as we can appreciate in (23b), hence its unacceptability. (22) a. *Il diverti-mento de-i the amuse-NMLZ of-the.PL è avvenuto a-lla festa. occur.PST.3SG at-the party b. *Il diverti-mento de-i the amuse-NMLZ of-the.PL è avvenuto a-lla festa. occur.PST.3SG at-the party

bambini (da parte de-l clown) children.PL (from part of-the clown)

bambini child.PL

(per lo spettacolo) (for the show)

di Anna (da parte de-lle ex-compagne (23) a. L’ umilia-zione the humiliate-NMLZ of Anna (from part of-the.PL ex-mate.PL di classe) è avvenuta sotto gli occhi of class) occur.PST.3SG under the.PL eye.PL de-gli insegnanti. of-the.PL teacher.PL ‘The humiliation of Anna (by her former classmates) took place under the teachers’ eye.’ b. *L’ umilia-zione di Anna a causa de-l fatto accaduto the humiliate-NMLZ of Anna to cause of-the fact happen.PTCP.PST è avvenuta sotto gli occhi de-gli insegnanti. occur.PST.3SG under the.PL eye.PL of-the.PL teacher.PL Another dynamicity/eventivity test consists in checking whether it is possible for the nominal to occur as the complement of durante or nel corso di ‘during’ phrases, which gives acceptable results with eventive/dynamic nouns, whereas it is impossible with state-denoting nouns (see Fábregas, Marín, and McNally 2012): (24) a. Durante il corteggia-mento di Anna (da parte di Gianni), during the court-NMLZ of Anna (from part of Gianni), nessuno ha interferito. nobody interfere.PST.3SG ‘During Gianni’s courting of Anna, nobody has interfered.’

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b. *Durante l’apprezza-mento di Anna during the appreciate-NMLZ of Anna francesi, Gianni si interessava French.PL, Gianni REFL interest.PST.3SG

per gli impressionisti for the.PL impressionist.PL de-l manierismo barocco. of-the mannerism baroque

Again, psych nouns obtained from causative/non-agentive OE verbs pattern with state nouns since they are unacceptable as complements of durante/nel corso di ‘during / in the course of’. The sentences in (25) cannot mean that while Anna was having fun or was amazed, Gianni called his friends. (25) a. *Durante il diverti-mento di Anna, Gianni ha telefonato during the amuse-NMLZ of Anna, Gianni phone.PST.3SG a-i suoi amici. to-the.PL his.PL friend.PL b. *Durante lo sbalordi-mento di Anna, Gianni ha telefonato during the amaze-NMLZ of Anna, Gianni phone.PST.3SG a-i suoi amici. to-the.PL his.PL friend.PL Looking again at the minimal pair of divertimento and umiliazione, we observe the exceptional behavior of the latter under the agentive reading. In particular, divertimento is always impossible in durante complementation structures: it is unacceptable both under an agentive interpretation, independently unavailable to this nominal – see (26a) – and under its causative/non-agentive reading too: see (26b). Umiliazione, on the contrary, displays a double pattern. It behaves like divertimento and states in general, under the causative/non-agentive interpretation: see the unacceptability of (27b). However, umiliazione can be the complement of durante under the agentive interpretation and accordingly behaves as an event nominal in (27a). (26) a. *Ne-l cortometraggio in-the short-movie diverti-mento de-i amuse-NMLZ of-the.PL b. *Nel cortometraggio in-the short-movie diverti-mento de-i amuse-NMLZ of-the.PL

il samba è stato inserito durante il the samba insert.PASS.PST.3SG during the bambini da parte de-l clown. child.PL from part of-the clown il samba è stato inserito durante il the samba insert.PASS.PST.3SG during the bambini per i giochi di magia. child.PL for the.PL trick.PL of magic

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(27) a. Ne-l cortometraggio il samba è stato inserito durante l’ in-the short-movie the samba insert.PASS.PST.3SG during the umilia-zione de-l prigioniero da parte de-i militari. humiliate-NMLZ of-the prisoner from part of-the.PL soldier.PL ‘In the short movie, the samba has been inserted during the soldiers’ humiliation of the prisoner.’ b. *Ne-l cortometraggio il samba è stato inserito durante l’ in-the short-movie the samba insert.PASS.PST.3SG during the umilia-zione de-l prigioniero per il fatto avvenuto. humiliate-NMLZ of-the prisoner for the fact happen.PTCP.PST The third dynamicity test, adopted by Martin (2010) for French nominals, involves another aspect-sensitive complementation structure: i.e. the predicate assistere a ‘witness’ seems to select for nouns with an event/dynamic reading only (28a). Again, psych nouns are typically impossible as complement of assistere a (29).11 corteggia-mento di Anna (28) a. Abbiamo assistito a-l witness.PST.1PL to-the court-NMLZ of Anna (da parte di Gianni). (from part of Gianni) ‘We witnessed Gianni’s courting of Anna.’ b. *Abbiamo assistito a-ll’ apprezza-mento di Anna witness.PST.1PL to-the appreciate-NMLZ of Anna (per gli impressionisti francesi). (for the.PL impressionist.PL French.PL) (29) a. *Abbiamo assistito witness.PST.1PL b. *Abbiamo assistito witness.PST.1PL

a-l to-the a-llo to-the

diverti-mento di Anna. amuse-NMLZ of Anna sbalordi-mento di Anna. amaze-NMLZ of Anna

|| 11 It is worth noting that speakers accept these sentences under a coerced interpretation where the object of predication is not the psychological event, but its exterior manifestations: in the case of sbalordimento, for instance, such manifestations might be the perceptible changes in the expression on the Experiencer’s face (prototypically, the opening of the mouth and eyes).

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In this case too, the test indicates that psych nouns like divertimento, derived from a verb allowing the agentive construal, cannot take on the agentive and dynamic interpretation, as shown in (30), while those of the type of umiliazione can, yet with an agentive meaning only: see (31a) vs. (31b). (30) a. *Abbiamo assistito a-l diverti-mento witness.PST.1PL to-the amuse-NMLZ (da parte del clown). (from part of-the clown) b. *Abbiamo assistito a-l diverti-mento witness.PST.1PL to-the amuse-NMLZ (per il fatto avvenuto). (for the fact happen.PTCP.PST)

de-i bambini of-the child.PL

de-i bambini of-the.PL child.PL

umilia-zione di Anna (da parte (31) a. Abbiamo assistito a-ll’ witness.PST.1PL to-the humiliate-NMLZ of Anna (from part de-lle sue ex-compagne di classe). of-the.PL her.PL ex-mate.PL of class) ‘We witnessed/saw the humiliation of Anna (by her former classmates).’ b. *Abbiamo assistito a-ll’ umilia-zione di Anna witness.PST.1PL to-the humiliate-NMLZ of Anna (per il fatto avvenuto). (for the fact happen.PTCP.PST) Further, event nouns are compatible with adjectives modifying the temporal development of the process, whereas state nouns typically resist this modification. Accordingly, adjectives such as lento ‘slow’ (or rapido ‘fast’) could in principle modify event nouns, but should be incompatible with state nouns. The test is applied to nouns with an eventive base verb (32a), SE verb (32b), and from OE verbs (33).While (34) shows that a psych noun like divertimento cannot be eventive either in the causative or in the agentive reading, umiliazione shows the same pattern as event nouns in this test too, but only under the agentive reading in (35a). (32) a. Il lento corteggia-mento di Anna (da parte di Gianni). the slow court-NMLZ of Anna (from part of Gianni) ‘Gianni’s slow courting of Anna.’

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b. *Il lento apprezza-mento di Anna (per gli the slow appreciate-NMLZ of Anna (for the.PL impressionisti francesi). impressionist.PL French.PL) (33) a. *Il the b. *Il the

lento slow lento slow

diverti-mento di Anna. amuse-NMLZ of Anna sbalordi-mento di Anna. amaze-NMLZ of Anna

(34) a. *Il lento diverti-mento di Anna the slow amuse-NMLZ of Anna de-lle sue ex-compagne di of-the.PL her.PL ex-mate.PL of b. *Il lento diverti-mento di Anna the slow amuse-NMLZ of Anna

parte (da (from part classe). class) (per il fatto avvenuto). (for the fact happen.PTCP.PST)

di Anna (da parte (35) a. La lenta umilia-zione the slow humiliate-NMLZ of Anna (from part delle sue ex-compagne di classe). of-the.PL her.PL ex-mate.PL of class). ‘The slow humiliation of Anna (by her former class-mates).’ b. *La lenta umilia-zione di Anna (per il fatto avvenuto). the slow humiliate-NMLZ of Anna (for the fact happen.PTCP.PST) After taking into consideration some eventivity tests, I now apply some further diagnostics to identify the stativity of psych nouns (see Fábregas, Marín, and McNally 2012, and references therein). First, while event nouns naturally complement the expression (il) processo di ‘(the) process of’ (e.g. il processo del corteggiamento), state nouns are entirely compatible with the expression stato di ‘state of’. Further, psych nouns can be easily introduced by expressions like senso/sensazione di ‘sense, sensation’ or effetto di ‘effect of’. Psych nouns from SE verb, see apprezzamento in (36) and those from OE verbs, see divertimento/sbalordimento in (37), exhibit the same pattern: (36) stato /senso /effetto di apprezza-mento (di Anna) state /sense /effect of appreciate-NMLZ (of Anna) ‘(Anna’s) state/sense of appreciation’

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(37) a. stato /senso /effetto di diverti-mento (di Anna) state /sense /effect of amuse-NMLZ (of Anna) ‘(Anna’s) state/sense/effect of amusement’ b. stato /senso /effect di sbalordi-mento (di Anna) state /sense /effect of amaze-NMLZ (of Anna) ‘(Anna’s) state/sense/effect of amazement’ Notably, umiliazione, though compatible with an event reading, accepts this construction too, showing it has a stative reading beyond an eventive one: (38) stato /senso /effetto di umilia-zione state /sense /effect of humiliate-NMLZ ‘state/sense/effect of humiliation’ Moreover, predicates of mental/psychological perception such as provare ‘experience’ and sentire ‘feel’ select for psychological state nouns, or, more specifically, emotions and feelings, and can be modified by adjectives expressing the intensity or degree of the emotion (intense ‘intense’, forte ‘strong’, leggero ‘light’, debole ‘weak’, etc.). Again, umiliazione displays the same pattern as psych nouns in this respect. (39) provare un intenso diverti-mento /sbalordi-mento feel.INF a intense amuse-NMLZ /amaze-NMLZ ‘feel an intense amusement/amazement’ (40) provare un’ intensa umilia-zione feel.INF a intense humiliate-NMLZ ‘feel an intense humiliation’ On the basis of the eventivity and stativity diagnostics discussed here, we can draw the following conclusions. First, all psych nominals have a state denotation, which is further evidence that psych nouns are stative cross-linguistically. In light of the further claim that the nominalization does not introduce aspectual material, but deals with the event structure components in the base predicate (the main tenet of the Aspect Preservation Hypothesis; see Fábregas, Marín, and McNally 2012), this fact is also indirect evidence for the hypothesis that psych verbs all contain a state component in their event structure, which the nominalizing operator can select (see section 3.4 on this).

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Furthermore, several psych verbs that are uncontroversially compatible with an agentive reading (e.g. eccitare ‘excite’, divertire ‘amuse’, annoiare ‘bore’, etc.) are in fact unable to form agentive nominals with the corresponding event denotation. However, there seem to be exceptional cases: nominals like umiliazione, and those in (41), can be either stative or eventive nominals: (41) seduzione ‘seduction’, consolazione ‘consolation’, condizionamento ‘conditioning’, mortificazione ‘mortification’, distrazione ‘distraction’, etc. They display the same pattern as psych nominals when the external argument is a Causer/Stimulus. As we have seen, however, nouns like umiliazione pass all eventivity diagnostics and behave as standard event nouns too. The eventive meaning goes hand in hand with the agentive interpretation, as shown by the realization of the da parte di-phrase introducing the Agent. Therefore, nouns like umiliazione are polysemous since they can be either eventive/dynamic or stative/non-dynamic, in accordance with the polysemous interpretation of the base verb (agentive vs. causative).12 At least two questions naturally arise at this point: firstly, if the effect of nominalization with psych predicates is to truncate the causative subevent, why do agentive psych nouns exist at all? Hence, what is the source of this polysemy in the nominal domain, i.e. stative vs. agentive/eventive values? Secondly, why is such polysemy restricted to a subset of the OE verbs that allow an agentive reading?

3.3

A closer look at the agentive construal

In this section, I suggest that the reason for the event/dynamic properties of some psych nominals – like those listed in (41) – under the agentive reading lie in the aspectual features of the base verbs, which I claim are different from those of standard OE verbs.

|| 12 Other nominals that express a dynamic reading are terrorizzazione ‘terroriz-ation’ from terrorizzare ‘terrorize’ or traumatizzazione ‘shock’ from traumatizzare ‘(to) shock’. The base verbs are agentive/causative verbs, formed on nominal bases (trauma ‘shock’ and terrore ‘terror’) by means of a verbalizing affix, -izzare ‘-ize’. Notably, however, the corresponding psych nouns lack a stative reading altogether and only express a dynamic/agentive meaning: *provare terrorrizzazione ‘lit. to feel terroriz-ation’; or *stato di terrorizzazione ‘lit. state of terroriz-ation’. Psych verbs and nominals with explicit causative morphology deserve deeper investigation and are not part of the data set in the present study.

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A finer-grained analysis of the verbs that allow for the agentive construal can shed light on some interesting contrasts that, to the best of my knowledge, have been overlooked in previous accounts. Consider for instance the contrasts among the following sets of verbs: (42) preoccupare ‘worry’, indignare ‘make indignant’, ispirare ‘inspire’, turbare ‘upset’, etc. (43) a. irritare ‘annoy’, eccitare ‘excite’, divertire ‘amuse’, spaventare ‘frighten’, etc. b. umiliare ‘humiliate’, consolare ‘comfort’, sedurre ‘seduce’, mortificare ‘mortify’, etc. Verbs of the preoccupare class are not acceptable with Agent-oriented modification (e.g. intenzionalmente ‘deliberately’) or purpose clauses eliciting the agentive reading, while those of the irritare and umiliare type (a. and b.) usually accept it. (44) */??Gianni ha preoccupato Anna di proposito. Gianni worry.PST.3SG Anna of purpose Anna di proposito. (45) a. Gianni ha irritato Gianni annoy.PST.3SG Anna of purpose ‘Gianni annoyed Anna on purpose.’ b. Gianni ha umiliato Anna di proposito. Gianni humiliate.PST.3SG Anna of purpose ‘Gianni humiliated Anna on purpose.’ However, some strong interpretive contrasts suggest the need to distinguish among the verbs listed in (43a), i.e. the irritare class, and those in (43b), i.e. the umiliare class. In particular, consider the minimal pairs below as far as the interpretation of the human subject is concerned, in the absence of purpose clauses or agent-oriented modification which may force the agentive construal. (46) Gianni mi umilia /consola /seduce Gianni I.CL.ACC humiliate.PRS.3SG /comfort.PRS.3SG /seduce.PRS.3SG /mortifica. /mortify.PRS.3SG ‘Gianni humiliates/comforts/seduces/mortifies me.’

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(47) Gianni mi irrita /eccita /diverte Gianni I.CL.ACC annoy.PRS.3SG /excite.PRS.3SG /amuse.PRS.3SG /spaventa. /frighten.PRS.3SG ‘Gianni frightens/annoys/excites/amuses me.’ In (46), the more natural interpretation is the one in which Gianni voluntarily does something to trigger the Experiencer’s psych state; that is to say, an actional process of some sort is implied in these sentences and, crucially, it relies on the subject’s intentionality. In (47), instead, no process/dynamic interpretation is necessarily involved: the mere appearance of the subject, or its presence, or some inherent properties of the Stimulus/Causer may be the trigger/cause for the Experiencer’s state. The second contrast concerns the thematic role of the object argument. So far, I have assumed that psychological verbs imply the necessary mental involvement of the Experiencer. However, interesting differences arise when we compare the implication of the mental role of the DP object in durative (atelic) contexts, as indicated below by the durative frame adverbial per giorni ‘for days’: (48) Gianni ha umiliato (intenzionalmente) Anna per giorni, Gianni humiliate.PST.3SG (intentionally) Anna for day.PL, ma lei non se ne è accorta but she not REFL CL realize.PST.3SG / non si è sentita affatto umiliata. / not REFL feel.PST.3SG by-no-means humiliate.PTCP.PST ‘Gianni has (intentionally) humiliated Anna for days, but she did not realize that / she did not feel at all humiliated.’ (49) #Gianni ha irritato (intenzionalmente) Anna per giorni, Gianni annoy.PST.3SG (intentionally) Anna for day.PL, ma lei non se ne è accorta but she not REFL CL realize.PST.3SG / non si è sentita affatto irritata. / not REFL feel.PST.3SG by-no-means annoy.PTCP.PST ‘Gianni has (intentionally) annoyed Anna for days, but she did not realize that / she did not feel at all annoyed.’

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In fact, while (48) is acceptable under the reading that Anna has not actually experienced the mental state, (49) is contradictory and hence semantically incongruous. This contrast suggests that umiliare verbs, under their agentive reading, do not necessarily imply the attainment of the resulting mental state. Under this view, they are not true psychological verbs; on the contrary, the psychological effect is preserved under the agentive reading of the irritare class. In this context, the DP object of umiliare can be understood as a Patient – as the entity that is affected by the process – rather than an Experiencer, bearing a mental feature and necessarily being in the mental condition named by the verb (see Reinhart 2002 on the characterization of the Experiencer theta-role in terms of mental feature endowment). Notably, the contrast between the two classes is completely obliterated in (50) and (51), when the subject is an involuntary Causer instead of an Agent, and the psych state reading is triggered. (50) #Questo fatto imbarazzante ha umiliato Anna per giorni, This fact embarrassing humiliate.PST.3SG Anna for day.PL, ma lei non se ne è accorta but she not REFL CL realize.PST.3SG / non si è sentita affatto umiliata. / not REFL feel.PST.3SG by-no-means humiliate.PTCP.PST ‘This embarrassing fact has humiliated Anna for days, but she did not realize that / she did not feel humiliated at all.’ Anna per giorni, (51) #Questo fatto ha irritato This fact annoy.PST.3SG Anna for day.PL, ma lei non se ne è accorta but she not REFL CL realize.PST.3SG / non si è sentita affatto irritata. / not REFL feel.PST.3SG by-no-means annoy.PTCP.PST ‘This fact has annoyed Anna for days, but she did not realize that / she did not feel annoyed at all.’ Other interesting contrasts concern the intransitive forms of these OE verbs. While nearly all these predicates have corresponding intransitive forms marked with -si morphology, the interpretation of the intransitive construction varies across the two classes. As a matter of fact, OE verbs have a corresponding intransitive form that suppresses the Causer argument, and is morphologically

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marked by a clitic pronoun with non-thematic (i.e. non-reflexive or nonreciprocal) interpretation. The meaning of the construction is inchoative. (52) Gianni si irrita /eccita /diverte Gianni REFL annoy.PRS.3SG /excite.PRS.3SG /amuse.PRS.3SG /spaventa. (INCHOATIVE) /frighten.PRS.3SG ‘Gianni gets annoyed / gets excited / gets amused / gets frightened.’ A reflexive/reciprocal reading is accessible when context and agent-oriented modification concur to disambiguate the reading of the construction (as Belletti and Rizzi 1988 originally observed): see (53b). Since reflexivity is agentoriented, this pattern is expected. (53) a. Questi due si spaventano (spesso). (INCHOATIVE) ‘These two guys get (often) frightened.’ b. Questi due si spaventano intenzionalmente ogni volta che ne hanno l’occasione. (RECIPROCAL) ‘These two guys frighten each other intentionally every time they have the opportunity.’ (Belletti and Rizzi 1988: 298) On the other hand, with verbs in (43b), i.e. the umiliare type, the intransitive construction with -si naturally accepts a reflexive or reciprocal reading (hence it is associated with a thematic interpretation of the clitic), with the subject keeping its agentive interpretation.13 Anna si sono umiliati. (RECIPROCAL or REFLEXIVE) (54) a. Gianni e Gianni and Anna REFL humiliate.PASS.PST.3PL ‘Gianni and Anna humiliated each other/themselves.’ b. Gianni e Anna si sono sedotti Gianni and Anna REFL seduce.PASS.PST.3PL (reciprocamente). (RECIPROCAL) (reciprocally) ‘Gianni and Anna seduced each other.’ || 13 With verbs like sedursi ‘seduce (intr.)’ the reciprocal reading is compulsory; whereas for others, e.g. consolarsi ‘to comfort (intr.)’, reciprocal, reflexive and inchoative readings are all possible in the appropriate context.

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On these readings, different from the one of inchoative -si verbs, umiliarsi or sedursi take as their subject an Agent, i.e. an external argument. In (54), in fact, the subject is the Agent and, at the same time, it bears the role of Experiencer or, alternatively, we may argue that -si morphology bears the Experiencer thetarole (see, among others, Reinhart and Siloni 2005 for a syntactic account of reflexivization in Romance languages). Finally, one of the most interesting differences concerns the possibility of taking manner adverbial modification that has scope over the process, such as lentamente (see Marín and McNally 2011 and Rawlins 2013). While this adverb cannot combine with verbs of the irritare class, it can modify verbs in the umiliare class: (55) */??Gianni ha irritato /ha spaventato lentamente Anna. Gianni annoy.PST.3SG /frighten.PST.3SG slowly Anna (56) Gianni ha umiliato /ha sedotto lentamente Anna. Gianni humiliate.PST.3SG /seduce.PST.3SG slowly Anna ‘Gianni has slowly humiliated/seduced Anna.’ This contrast, although not so robust for all the verbs, can be understood as evidence of a process (and an actional, rather than psychological) component, which is lexically specified in the verbs of the umiliare type. We might thus posit that verbs such as these contain reference to the manner of bringing about the result state of the Experiencer, or, in other words, that they imply reference to a (more or less concrete) process aimed at triggering a psychological effect (though not determining it). All in all, I take these syntactic and interpretive facts to argue that umiliare verbs form a different class from other OE verbs, standing aside from both those that are only non-agentive (the preoccupare class), but also from those that may accept the agentive construal in the appropriate linguistic context (the irritare class). This leads us to a tripartite, rather than bipartite, classification of OE verbs as far as agentivity and dynamicity are concerned, which may be put as follows: 1. non-agentive verbs (e.g. preoccupare), which are only statives and never compatible with Agents; 2. “weakly or constructionally agentive” verbs (e.g. irritare), compatible with an agentive interpretation under specific contextual conditions; i.e. the agentive reading can be triggered in the linguistic context, but it is not part of their lexical meaning;

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3.

“strongly agentive” verbs (e.g. umiliare), which lexically specify the process component (aimed to trigger the corresponding psych state).

The interesting generalization that seems to arise about their nominalization pattern is that only those of the umiliare type are capable of forming eventdenoting nominals with agentive interpretation, beyond a state-denoting (psych) reading.

3.4

Event structure of umiliare verbs and their nominalizations

In this section, I elaborate a proposal to derive the contrasts in the event structure and argumental properties of the nominals derived from verbs of the irritare class and those of the umiliare class. The hypothesis I pursue concerning umiliare verbs, which I have defined as “strongly agentive”, is that they differ from those of the irritare class because they mainly refer to an actional process and lexically specify a process component in their lexical-aspectual semantics. More specifically, umiliare can be understood either as a causative psych state (57), like preoccupare, but also as a standard agentive verb with a lexically specified process component, i.e. the more or less concrete actions that the “humiliator” addresses towards the “humiliated” (Patient or Undergoer): see (58). (57) Questa prospettiva umilia /seduce this prospect humiliate.PRS.3SG /seduce.PRS.3SG /consola /mortifica Anna. /comfort.PRS.3SG /mortify.PRS.3SG Anna ‘This prospect humiliates/seduces/comforts/mortifies Anna.’

(CAUSATIVE)

(58) Gianni umilia /seduce /consola Gianni humiliate.PRS.3SG /seduce.PRS.3SG /comfort.PRS.3SG /mortifica Anna (intenzionalmente). (AGENTIVE) /mortify.PRS.3SG Anna (intentionally) ‘Gianni (intentionally) humiliates/seduces/comforts/mortifies Anna.’ This leads us to hypothesize that verbs of this type come with two different specifications: under one reading, they are causative verbs with a psychological interpretation only and they encode reference to the resulting mental state; under the other reading, they are process/activity verbs with an actional (non

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psychological) interpretation.14 In Rappaport Hovav and Levin’s terms, we might posit that these roots are ambiguously specified at the ontological level, since they may refer to the result state and to the manner of bringing it about (i.e. they would ambiguously belong to the manner and state ontological types). As to the corresponding nominalization, the nominalizing suffix either selects the activity/process template in (59a), corresponding to (58), where the root allows reference to the manner of the event,15 or the result state in the causative construction in (60a), corresponding to (57), where the root refers to the state of the Experiencer. The latter is the only nominalization pattern available to verbs like preoccupare (preoccupazione) or irritare (irritazione) because of the unambiguous specification of the root. (59) a. [[x ACT y] b. nominalizing affix  [[x ACT y] c. L’umiliazione di Anna (da parte di Gianni) (AGENTIVE/EVENT) ‘The humiliation of Anna (by Gianni) / Gianni’s humiliation of Anna.’ (60) a. [x CAUSE [BECOME [y ]]]16 b. nominalizing affix [x CAUSE [BECOME [y ]]] c. L’umiliazione di Anna (per questo fatto). (CAUSATIVE/STATE) ‘Anna’s humiliation (for this fact).’ In the former case, the event/dynamic interpretation of nouns such as umiliazione and seduzione derives from the fact that the nominalizing operator (-zione, see 59b) selects the event structure of a process/activity verb. The nominal pro|| 14 This analysis is close in spirit to Grimshaw (1990), who claims that the causative/agentive readings of these verbs represent a case of lexical ambiguity. 15 An alternative approach is to posit that the root lexicalizes both the manner and the state in a complex event structure template like (7a), contra the simple, mono-eventive analysis proposed in (59). However, the data in (48) argue against an accomplishment analysis of these verbs, and suggest a process analysis instead. 16 As correctly pointed out by an anonymous reviewer, the event structure template proposed here makes the implicit assumption that OE verbs are dynamic under their non-agentive reading too, since they contain the BECOME operator. Although I do not directly deal with this challenging topic here, I part company with Arad’s approach to causative/eventive verbs as truly implying a change of state, and favour instead the analysis of those like van Voorst (1992) or Marín and McNally (2011), who argue that OE verbs do not make reference to a change of state, but merely express the onset of a state. However, since a detailed aspectual analysis of OE verbs cannot be developed here, I provisionally assume the event structure approach in (60), containing the cause and change of state operators.

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jects full argument structure, licensing both verb subject (the only argument in the templatic structure) and verb object, i.e. an argument introduced by the root, yet not specified in the event structure template (see Rappaport Hovav and Levin 1998 on the argument structure of manner verbs). This thematic realization is not different from standard action nominals in Italian, which can project full argument structure. In the latter case, the state interpretation becomes compulsory under the hypothesis that the suffix cannot take the causative sub-event as its complement, but can only select the stative subevent (see observations in section 3.1). The realization of the argument structure follows accordingly. Specifically, this analysis predicts that the only argument of a psych noun is its Experiencer. No external argument expressing the Cause is expected in the argument structure of OE nominalizations, since this portion of the event structure is not selected by the nominalizing affix. Other participants expressing the involuntary Stimulus (or subject matter / target of emotion, see Pesetsky 1995) are optionally realized as obliques, due to their nature of optional complements in the stative subevent (the resulting – psychological – state). Under this analysis, it becomes clear that nominalizations from the majority of OE verbs can only be stative and consequently take only one argument, i.e. the Experiencer. However, those that are lexically polysemous, having an agentive/actional reading beyond a psych one (due to the ambiguous ontological type of their root, state and manner), can be either eventive or stative, the latter reading forced by the selectional restriction of the nominal affix over its base’s event structure.

4

Conclusion and further research

In this paper, we have contributed evidence in favor of the view that Italian nominals from OE verbs are consistently stative, in accordance with what has been noted in previous studies for other Indo-European languages. However, it has been shown that event nominals from a restricted set of verbs in this class are indeed possible. In particular, I have posited that event nominals can be formed in those cases where the base verb lexicalizes a process/activity subevent (under the control of an Agent), which true OE verbs lack instead. It should be noted that the existence of event nominals does not conflict with the claim that psych nominals are stative, since nouns like umiliazione, in their event reading, refer to actions/processes under the control of an Agent, rather than expressing sensu stricto psychological events.

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Many issues have been disregarded and left unexplained in the present account. For instance, this study has limited empirical coverage, being restricted to (a subset of) psych nominals in Italian. The data from other languages reported in the literature call into question the cross-linguistic validity of the analysis offered here. Specifically, what is the reason for the existence of agentive nominals in other languages whose Italian correspondents are impossible under the same interpretation? For example, why is an event interpretation available to the English amusement whereas its Italian correspondent divertimento is unambiguously stative? Is this variation the result of lexical idiosyncrasies, which can be trivially reconciled with the view offered here? Or do the contrasts depend on more systematic differences, as in the case of Hebrew in (12), where they seem to have to do with the presence of explicit causative morphology in the verb and in the derived nominal? Furthermore, it remains to be understood whether true psych nominals with event/dynamic interpretation exist at all. We have noted, in section 2.2, that a source of dynamicity in the verb event structure is the BECOME operator, yet most psych nouns in Italian fail to express inchoative semantics (see Alexiadou and Iordă chioaia 2014 on inchoative psych nominals in Greek and Romanian). Notably, however, some Italian verbs, especially the only-intransitive forms marked with -si morphology (e.g. innamorarsi ‘to fall in love’, arrabbiarsi ‘to get angry’, pentirsi ‘to repent’, etc.), have corresponding nominals that behave in most respects as event nouns with inchoative meaning: (61) L’ innamoramento /arrabbiatura /pentimento di Anna The falling in love /getting angry /repentance of Anna è avvenuto/a (…) occur.PST.3SG ‘Anna’s falling in love / getting angry / repentance took place (…)’ The study of these nominals, together with an in-depth analysis of the event structure properties of their bases, is left for future research.

References Alexiadou, Artemis and Gianina Iordă chioaia. 2014. Causative nominalizations: Implications for the structure of psych verbs. In Asaf Bachrach, Isabelle Roy and Linnaea Stockall (eds.), Structuring the argument, 119–137. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Arad, Maya. 1998. Psych-notes. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 10. 203–223. London: University College London.

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Arad, Maya. 1999. What counts as a class? The case of Psych Verbs. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 35. 1–23. Arad, Maya. 2002. Universal features and language particular morphemes. In Artemis Alexiadou (ed.), Theoretical approaches to universals, 5–39. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Baroni, Marco and Adam Kilgarriff. 2006. Large Linguistically-Processed Web Corpora for Multiple Languages. In Diana McCarthy and Shuly Wintner (eds.), EACL 2006, 11st Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the Conference, April 3-7, 2006, Trento, Italy, 87–90. The Association for Computer Linguistics. http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/E/E06/E06-2001.pdf Beard, Robert. 1995. Lexeme-morpheme base morphology: A general theory of inflection and word formation. Albany, NY: Suny Press. Belletti, Adrianna and Luigi Rizzi. 1988. Psych-verbs and Theta Theory. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 3. 291–352. Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect: An introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dowty, David. 1979. Word meaning and Montague Grammar. Reidel: Dordrecht. Fábregas, Antonio and Rafael Marín. 2012. The role of Aktionsart in deverbal nouns: State nominalizations across languages. Journal of Linguistics 48(01). 35–70. Fábregas, Antonio, Rafael Marín and Louise McNally. 2012. From psych verbs to nouns. In Violeta Demonte and Louise McNally (eds.), Telicity, change, and state: A cross-categorial view of event structure, 162–184. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Filip, Hana. 1996. Psychological predicates and the syntax-semantics interface. In Adele Goldberg (ed.), Conceptual structure, discourse and language, 131–147. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Godard, Danièle and Jacques Jayez. 1994. Types nominaux et anaphores: Le cas des objets et des événements. Cahiers Chronos 1. 41–58. Grimshaw, Jane. 1990. Argument structure. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Kawaletz, Lea and Ingo Plag. 2015. Predicting the semantics of English nominalizations: A frame-based analysis of -ment suffixation. In Laurie Bauer, Lívia Körtvélyessy, Pavol Štekauer (eds.), Semantics of complex words, 289–319. New York: Springer. Kilgarriff, Adam, Pavel Rychlý, Pavel Smrž and David Tugwell. 2004. The sketch engine. In Geoffrey Williams and Sandra Vessier (eds.), Proceedings of Euralex 2004, 105–115. Lorient: Université de Bretagne Sud. Kratzer, Angelika. 2000. Building statives. Berkeley Linguistic Society 26. 385–399. Lakoff, George. 1970. Irregularity in syntax. New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston. Landau, Idan. 2009. The locative syntax of experiencers. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Levin, Beth and Malka Rappaport Hovav. 1995. Unaccusativity. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Marín, Rafael and Louise McNally. 2011. Inchoativity, change of state, and telicity: Evidence from Spanish reflexive psychological verbs. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 29(2). 467–502. Martin, Fabienne. 2010. The semantics of eventive suffixes in French. In Monika Rathert and Artemis Alexiadou (eds.), The semantics of nominalizations across languages and frameworks, 109–141. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

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Meinschäfer, Judith. 2003. Nominalizations of French psychological verbs. In Josep Quer, Jan Schroten, Mauro Scorretti, Petra Sleeman and Els Verheugd (eds.), Selected papers from Going Romance, 231–246. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Melloni, Chiara. 2007. Polysemy in word formation: The case of deverbal nominals. Verona: University of Verona. Dissertation. Melloni, Chiara. 2011. Event and result nominals: A morpho-semantic approach. Bern: Peter Lang. Pesetsky, David. 1995. Zero syntax: Experiencers and cascades. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Pustejovsky, James. 1988. The geometry of events. In Carol Tenny (ed.), Studies in generative approaches to aspect, 19–39. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Pustejovsky, James. 1991. The syntax of event structure. Cognition 21. 47–81. Pylkkänen, Liina. 1997. Stage and individual level psych verbs in Finnish. Paper presented in the Workshop on events in syntax and semantics. LSA Summer Institute, Cornell University. Pylkkänen, Liina. 2000. On stativity and causation. In Carol Tenny and James Pustejovsky (eds.), Events as grammatical objects: The converging perspective of lexical semantics and syntax, 417–444. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Ramchand, Gillian C. 2008. Verb meaning and the lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rappaport Hovav, Malka and Beth Levin. 1998. Building verb meanings. In Miriam Butt and William Geuder (eds.), The projection of arguments: Lexical and compositional factors, 97–134. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Rawlins, Kyle. 2013. On adverbs of (space and) time. In Boban Arsenijević, Berit Gehrke and Rafael Marı́n (eds.), Studies in the composition and decomposition of event predicates, 153–193. Dordrecht: Springer. Reinhart, Tanya and Tal Siloni. 2005. The lexicon–syntax parameter: Reflexivization and other arity operations. Linguistic Inquiry 36. 389–436. Reinhart, Tanya. 2002. The theta system: An overview. Theoretical Linguistics 28. 229–290. Rothmayr, Antonia. 2009. The structure of stative verbs. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Sichel, Ivy. 2010. Event structure constraints in nominalization. In Artemis Alexiadou and Monika Rathert (eds.), The syntax of nominalizations across languages and frameworks, 151–190. Berlin & New York: Mouton. Tenny, Carol L. 1994. Aspectual roles and the syntax-semantics interface. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Travis, Lisa. 2010. Inner aspect: The articulation of VP. Dordrecht: Springer. Varchetta, Nicola. 2012. Rethinking Italian psychological verbs. Venice: University of Ca’ Foscari. Dissertation. van Voorst, Jan. 1992. The aspectual semantics of psychological verbs. Linguistics and Philosophy 15. 65–92. van Voorst, Jan. 1995. Le contrôle de l’espace psychologique. Langue française 105. 17–27.

Elena Soare

Generic, habitual and episodic events in Romanian nominalizations 1

Introduction

This paper deals with the distinction between habitual, generic and episodic events within Romanian supine “habit” nominals. According to Romanian traditional grammars, the Romanian supine may either be nominal, cf. (1a), a complete nominalization with a definite determiner, or verbal, cf. (1b), where the object is assigned Accusative case and the definite determiner is absent. However, Soare (2002) argues that in this case we are also dealing with a nominalization which is simply a bare nominal in a prepositional context, and takes a “weak” incorporated object. (1)

a. scris-ul written-the ‘the (habit of) writing’ b. M-am apucat de scris romane de dragoste. me-have taken of writing novels of love ‘I have started writing love novels.’ c. Am plecat la cules porumb. have gone at harvesting maize ‘I went to harvesting maize.’

In support for this analysis, it can be noted that (i) the preposition in (1b) is subcategorized by the main verb, and therefore changes with it, as indicated by (1c); (ii) prepositions by default select bare nominals in Romanian. (1b) has to be distinguished from (2), where the supine is verbal and introduced by a functional item which is not selected by the verb: (2) a. Am de scris un roman. have of written a novel ‘I have to write a novel.’ b. Acum e de cules porumbul. now is of harvested maize.the ‘Now it is the moment to harvest the maize.’

DOI 10.1515/9781501505430-012

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In this case, the definite object is legitimated in the context of a complex predication formed by a light verb and the verbal supine. Pushing Soare’s (2002) line of argument further, I will demonstrate that unlike the cases in (2), (1b) contains a bare nominal supine where the incorporation of a non-specific object contributes generic interpretation. Echoing Mittwoch (2005), bare supine nominals often have implicit objects (3) and denote generic habits, while with bare objects (1b), they denote a more specific habit. I argue that there is a close relation between the type of object involved and the overall interpretation of the nominal. (3) M-am apucat de scris, de fumat… me-have taken of writing, of smoking… ‘I have started writing, smoking.’ = I have got into the habit of writing, smoking… Moreover, bare supine nominals differ in meaning from the definite supine nominalizations in (4), which have a pluractional reading according to Iordăchioaia and Soare (2009, 2015). The former only have inner-aspectual specification, contributed by the degree of specificity in the object, while in the latter the object does not contribute to the overall interpretation, determined by an AspP head introducing pluractionality. (4) Scrisul romanelor de dragoste e o activitate interesantă. writing.the novels.GEN of love is an activity interesting ‘Writing love novels is an interesting activity.’ In sum, what is called supine in Romanian grammars does indeed split into verbal and nominal, but not the way it is traditionally claimed. The supine can be a verbal noun in the absence of the definite article, and incorporates a weak object. According to a scale of specificity (from null to a bare or indefinite nominal), this object contributes to the overall interpretation of the supine nominal and may introduce genericity.

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2 2.1

How many types of supine are there in Romanian? Revising the traditional classification

Traditional grammars distinguish two types of supine in Romanian, i.e. nominal (5) and verbal (6), according to (i) the presence vs. absence of the determiner; (ii) the absence vs. presence of a “preposition”; (iii) assignment of Genitive vs. Accusative (in verbal supines) to the complement. (5) Fumatul trabucurilor i-a ruinat sănătatea. smoke-the cigars.GEN him-has ruined health-the ‘Smoking cigars ruined his health.’ (6) S-a apucat de fumat trabucuri. se-has taken of smoking cigars.ACC ‘(S)he has started smoking cigars.’ Soare (2002) argues that this traditional classification has to be revised. The particle introducing the supposedly “verbal” supine is sometimes a lexical preposition (7a), subcategorized by the main verb and selecting a bare nominal supine (7b–c) – in parallel to other bare nouns. As (7b) shows, the bare form is grammatical while the definite is ungrammatical: the preposition selects a bare nominal supine, exactly as with other nominals in (7c). (7) a. M-am apucat de citit vs. de carte. me-have taken of reading vs. of book ‘I have started reading the book.’ b. *M-am apucat de alergatul / de alergat. me-have taken of running-the / of running ‘I have started running.’ c. *M-am apucat de cartea / de carte. me-have taken of book-the / of book ‘I have started the book.’ Some other times, the particle is a functional element, which is not selected by the main verb, and delimits a supine clausal domain (a CP), like in (8) and (9b). The contrast in (9) shows that the preposition is selected by the main verb, which is not the case in (8).

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(8) am de citit vs. *de carte have of reading vs. of book vs. de asta (9) a. s-a apucat de citit se-has taken of reading vs. of this ‘(s)he has started reading vs. this’ b. a terminat de citit vs. asta has finished of reading vs. this ‘(s)he has finished reading vs. this’ Another argument for an external distinction between the bare (prepositional) supine and the verbal supine headed by a functional element (a CP) comes from extraction facts. When the supine is a bare nominal headed by a preposition, it does not allow extraction (11); when it is a CP, it does (10): (10) a. E bine de condus pe invitați la gară is good of walking pe guests to station ‘It is good to walk the guests to the station.’ b. Pe cine e bine de condus la gară? pe who is good of walking to station ‘Whom is it good to walk to the station?’ (11) a. S-a lăsat de fumat trabucuri se-has left of smoking cigars b. *Ce s-a lăsat de fumat ? what se-has left of smoking Prepositional supines also appear freely in adjunct positions with various lexical prepositions: porumbul. (12) Sunt pregătit pentru cules am ready for harvesting maize-the ‘I am ready for harvesting the maize.’ Here is a list of verbs that select a prepositional construction: (13) a se apuca (de) ‘to start’, a se ține (de) ‘to keep’, a se lăsa (de) ‘to stop, quit’, a merge (la) ‘to go to’

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Verbs that select a functional de-supine construction are: (14) a avea ‘to have’, a fi ‘to be’, a termina ‘to finish’ In combination with such verbs listed in (14) above, the supine enters a restructuring construction through complex-predicate formation and amounts to a truncated clause with no subject position. The upper layers (e.g. the tense projection and the subject position) are contributed by the first verb, which restructures with the truncated supine clause, in turn responsible for lexical aspect and the introduction of the internal argument. The supine with a functional de is also present in Tough-constructions and reduced relatives, where I assume it is also a truncated clause.1 From an external-distributional point of view then, we must assume a tripartite classification of supine constructions: (i) definite supine nominal (15); (ii) “prepositional” bare supine nominal (16); (iii) verbal supine (17). (15) Fumatul trabucurilor i-a ruinat sănătatea. smoking.the cigars.GEN him-has ruined health-the ‘Smoking cigars ruined his health.’ (trabucuri). (16) S-a lăsat de fumat se-has left of smoking (cigars) ‘He has quit smoking (cigars).’ (17) Are de citit douăzeci de cărți. has of reading twenty of books ‘He has to read twenty books.’ The verbal supine in class 3 constructions allows clitics to be hosted by the first verb, which the bare nominal supine in class 2 does not accept: this is the reason for the ungrammaticality of (18b) below. This proves that the two constructions are fundamentally different, and that the supine in the verbal class 3 constructions is a truncated clause involving complex predicate formation with the first verb.

|| 1 I will not go into the details of the structure for the verbal supine here. For further details, see Soare (2002) and Soare (to appear). For Tough constructions and reduced relatives, see Giurgea and Soare (2010).

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(18) a. L-am terminat / avut de citit. it-have finished / had to read.SUP ‘I finished reading it / had to read it.’ b. *L-am apucat de citit. it-have started to read.SUP ‘I started to read it.’

2.2

Case properties in the “prepositional” supine

Soare (2002) argues that the “prepositional” supine also has peculiar properties when it comes to the licensing of the internal argument. More particularly, the object cannot be differentially marked by pe and (as a consequence) cannot be a personal pronoun. This indicates that the supine in (19a) is not able to assign structural case to the object, but when in the fully verbal construction it is (19b). (19) a. *S-a apucat de criticat pe Ion / pe el. se-has taken of criticizing pe Ion / pe him ‘(S)he has started criticizing Ion/him.’ b. Îl mai am de ascultat pe Nică. him still have of listening pe Nică ‘I still have to listen to Nică.’ The object is not normally separable from the supine, while in a fully verbal construction it is: (20) a. *S-a apucat de cules azi porumb. se-has taken of harvesting today maize intended: ‘(S)he has started harvesting maize today.’ b. Are de cules azi porumb. has of harvesting today maize ‘(S)he has to harvest maize today.’ In support of the view that the supine’s object in the prepositional construction is a “weak” incorporated object, Soare (2002) notes the fact that the most natural object of this kind of supine construction is a bare plural: (21) S-a apucat de cules mere. se-has taken of harvesting apples ‘He has started harvesting apples.’

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Cornilescu and Cosma (2014) argue that these restrictions are too strict, and that the supine is actually fully verbal in these constructions, assigning the structural accusative to its object, the preposition being analyzed as a complementizer contributing case-assigning properties to the supine, which is a more traditional view. This discussion is actually reminiscent of Siloni’s (1997) contra Borer (1993) discussion about the complement of Hebrew event nominals: Siloni (1997) argues that they bear inherent, not structural case; one of the arguments advanced in Siloni (1997) is the unavailability of pronominal complements in the relevant contexts. I assume the same is true for the bare supine construction. Nothing prevents the supine in these constructions from being a verbal noun which in this particular context (absence of a D) becomes compatible with an accusative complement. It is typically a context in which structural case is not available, as I think is visible from restrictions on pronominal objects and pe-marked objects. The reason why a structural case strategy is not available is the lack of functional positions to which the internal argument could move to be assigned case. I assume that the accusative case we see in bare supines is just a lexical case available in the VP. An alternative strategy is the insertion of a dummy de in front of a bare plural object, a fully nominal strategy: (22) Am plecat la cules de porumb. have gone at harvesting of maize ‘I am on my way to harvest maize.’ Another point of view is represented by Hill (2002), who takes the lexical preposition as a nominalizer. I will not discuss this option here; instead, I assume that the preposition does not do another job apart from heading a nominal, and in particular it does not contribute category. In support of this, we might note that there is a strict parallelism between the bare nominal supine in prepositional contexts and the bare nominals in prepositional contexts in terms of selection. For instance, locative prepositions select the bare form of the supine and of other nominals as well, while prepositions like cu ‘with’ are compatible with the full DP in both cases. So there is no categorial contribution of the preposition in these contexts. So far, I have provided arguments in favor of the existence of an in-between class of supine constructions, the bare nominal supine. On the basis of the interpretive properties and taking into account the contribution of the internal argument in each type of supine construction, I further argue in the following section that the bare supine nominal headed by a lexical preposition has partic-

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ular properties distinguishing it both from the definite supine nominal and from the verbal supine headed by a functional element.

2.3

Aspectual properties of the bare supine nominal and the definite supine nominal

The bare supine nominal is a verbal noun. It differs from the definite supine by (i) the absence of the determiner; (ii) its internal structure; (iii) its semantic properties. In the definite supine nominal, which has been the object of detailed scrutiny in Iordăchioaia and Soare (2009, 2011, 2015), the definite determiner meets an outer Aspect projection, resulting in a pluractional meaning. This is visible in (22) and (23) respectively by the fact that the supine involves distributivity effects with plurals and in the case of unbounded predicates like states it requires a bounding function, in order to further apply the pluractional operator. The semantic plurality of events introduced by the supine by the contribution of a pluractional operator located in an AspP projection induces ungrammaticality with a singular object in the case of one-time events like kill in (23): (23) ucisul *unui journalist /jurnaliștilor killing.the a.GEN journalist /journalists.GEN ‘killing a journalist/journalists’ Moreover, with stative predicates (which are unbounded) the supine is ungrammatical. However, when bounded by a bounding function “until”, it becomes grammatical and denotes a habit. These facts diagnose pluractionality. In support of this analysis, one can also note that the supine always shifts the aspectual value of the verbal basis into a plurality of events. For more details, see Iordăchioaia and Soare (2009, 2011, 2015). (24) *statul lui Ion la Maria (până dimineața târziu) staying-the of Ion at Mary until morning late ‘John’s staying at Mary’s until late in the morning’ Unlike the definite supine nominal, the bare supine nominal does not force the pluractional reading, which, when present, is contributed by the main verb. So (25a) has an episodic one-event reading, while (25b) has a habitual reading, showing that the aspectual value is determined by the first verb (inchoative

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with a se apuca ‘to begin’2 and habitual with a se ține ‘to keep …-ing’) and not by the supine. apucat de mâncat carnea. (25) a. Abia s-a hardly se-has taken of eating meet.the ‘He hardly started to eat the meat.’ b. Se ține de vânat rațe. se keeps of hunting ducks ‘He keeps hunting ducks.’ I thus conclude that unlike the definite supine nominal, the bare supine nominal only presents inner-aspectual specifications. It is not clear that the bare supine nominal presents an AspP layer; the fact that the presence of adverbs and prepositional aspectual adjuncts is questionable seems to indicate that such a projection is absent in the bare prepositional supine. In (26b), the PP în cinci minute ‘in five minutes’ cannot be interpreted as modifying the supine but only the main verb. As an indication, we can note that it is only possible to question the main verb and not the supine, as indicated in (26c): (26) a. ??s-a apucat de mâncat imediat carnea REFL-has started of eating immediately meat-the b. ??s-a apucat de mâncat carnea în cinci minute REFL-has started of eating meat-the in five minutes c. Când s-a apucat de mâncat? vs. #Când a mâncat? when REFL-has started of eating vs. when has eaten ‘When did he start to eat?’ vs. ‘When did he eat?’ In turn, as we will shortly see, there is a direct contribution of the internal argument to the semantic value of the overall construction in the bare supine, and this contribution has to do with the lexical aspectual value of the supine in terms of telicity, impacting the type of habit which is denoted by the bare supine. More particularly, the specificity of the object influences the overall interpretation of the bare supine in terms of the type of event involved, i.e. from

|| 2 As we will shortly see, the supine under a se apuca ‘to begin’ may denote habits, when it incorporates a generic object. However, this is not the result of a grammatical property of the supine itself, but is lexically built into the VP. In (25a), the presence of the adverbial abia ‘hardly’ and the specific definite object ensures an episodic interpretation with a se apuca.

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habitual to episodic. This introduces a further difference between the bare supine and the verbal supine, where the contribution of the object is not transparent.

3 3.1

Aspect and the contribution of the object Missing and bare objects in clauses

Mittwoch (2005) analyses cases of missing objects with action verbs which undergo transitive/intransitive alternation like the ones in (27). (27) a. read, study, revise (what has been learnt), rehearse, practice b. sing, dance, play (music), act c. write, compose (music), paint (a picture), draw, etch, sew, knit, crochet, weave, spin, cook, bake d. type, print, photocopy, dictate, record e. eat, drink, chew, smoke f. sow, plough, harvest, weed, hunt g. wash, iron, mend, darn, clean, sweep, dust, hoover, paint (apply paint to), embroider, tidy up She observes that these verbs pattern with atelic VPs with bare objects [-delimited quantity], whereas with quantized objects they pattern with telic VPs. According to Mittwoch (2005), habitual sentences more easily allow missing objects since they generalize over an unlimited number of situations, and the object is understood as a bare plural. The situation encountered in the bare supine is very close to what arises in habitual sentences when the object is a bare plural. Moreover, there is a correspondence between the lexical verbs appearing in habitual sentences listed in (27) and the ones that show up in the supine constructions – typically verbs that allow “missing” objects. In the following, I will argue that the overall interpretation of the supine construction in terms of habits is contributed directly by the more or less specific interpretation of the direct object involved, where the missing objects are the default less specific case.

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3.2

The bare supine and the contribution of the object

A property of the prepositional bare supine nominal is that it may combine with either definite, indefinite or bare objects, or appear without an overt object: cartea / o carte / această carte. (28) a. S-a apucat de citit se-has taken of reading book-the / a book / this book ‘(S)he has started reading the book / a book / this book.’ b. S-a apucat de citit cărți. se-has taken of reading books ‘(S)he has started reading books.’ c. S-a apucat de citit. se-has taken of reading ‘(S)he has started reading.’ Moreover, there is a clear relation between the specificity of the object (from null to definite) and the overall interpretation of the supine nominal, which thus may denote an episodic event with highly specific objects (e.g. proper names), and different types of habits (more or less generic) according to the degree of specificity in the object. This indeed mimics the situation that we find in clauses, as suggested in (29). Mittwoch (2005) observes that missing objects are much commoner in habitual sentences than in episodic ones. Here, I argue that the scale of specificity in the object reflects a scale of genericity in the bare supine nominal. With non-specific objects, the supine bare nominal denotes generic habits, for instance with null objects or bare plurals. With specific objects like in (29a), the supine denotes an episodic event or a specific habit, here the habit of reading a certain book. As a result of the combination with missing objects and bare plurals, we get a generic interpretation of the habitual nominal. The specificity induced by the object is clearly transparent in the overall denotation of the bare supine nominal. (29) a. Citește Război și pace. reads War and peace

> S-a apucat de citit se-has taken of reading Război și pace. War and peace ‘(S)he reads War and peace.’ ‘(S)he started reading War and peace.’ b. Citește cartea. > S-a apucat de citit cartea. reads book.the se-has taken of reading book-the ‘(S)he reads the book.’ ‘(S)he has started reading the book.’

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c. Citește o carte. reads a book ‘(S)he reads a book.’ d. Citește cărți. reads books ‘(S)he reads books.’ e. Citește. reads ‘(S)he reads.’

> S-a apucat de citit o carte. se-has taken of reading a book ‘(S)he has started reading a book.’ > S-a apucat de citit cărți. se-has taken of reading books ‘(S)he has started reading books.’ > S-a apucat de citit se-has taken of reading ‘(S)he has started reading.’

A similar statement has been made by Roy and Soare (2012, 2014) for deverbal -eur nominals in French. In their work, it is shown that animate -eur nominals are sensitive to the specificity of the object in the structure, and take episodic meanings when the object is specific, and dispositional meanings when the object is non-specific. This is illustrated by the difference in meaning between le conducteur du train de 17h ‘the driver of the 5pm train’ vs. un conducteur de train ‘a train driver’. It is interesting to mention that -eur nominals have verbal properties up to a certain point, but that according to most studies they do not project an outer Aspect layer: they only have an inner aspectual level, which is also what this paper suggests for the bare supine nominals. Turning to the definite supine, as a result of the pluractional reading brought in by an AspP projection in the nominal, there is no contribution to the object’s specificity. With a specific object, as well as with a bare plural, we still obtain a pluractional reading. (30) a. Cititul acestei cărți îi dă dureri de cap. reading-the this.GEN book him/her gives headache ‘The reading of this books gives him/her a headache.’ b. Cititul cărților îi dă dureri de cap. reading books-the.GEN him/her gives pain of head ‘The reading of books gives him/her a headache.’ Here, the overall interpretation is determined by the pluractional operator hosted by Asp in the structure of the nominal, in interaction with the definite determiner (cf. Iordăchioaia and Soare 2015). The contribution of the object is thus overwritten by the outer Asp level, which conveys the pluractional interpretation. It is also true that the object can easily be dropped in these pluractional nominals, as observed by Mittwoch (2005) – so even the default less specific

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object (the empty one) is compatible with a pluractional reading, and as such has no contribution to the overall interpretation. (31) Cititul îi dă dureri de cap. reading him/her gives pain of head ‘The reading gives him/her a headache.’ In the case of the verbal supine, e.g. in deontic periphrases, we don’t find habitual meanings: the supine construction is always interpreted episodically, including with non-quantized objects and even null objects: (32) a. Are de citit cartea /cărți /cărțile. has of read book-the /books /books-the ‘(S)he has to read the book/books/the books.’ b. Are de citit. has of reading ‘He has to read.’ (does not mean he must have the habit of reading) I assume that in the case of the bare supine, the habitual meaning allowed by the main verb correlates with non-specificity in the object. The maximum degree of non-specificity is represented by bare plurals and implicit objects interpreted as bare plurals. In the case of the definite supine, we get a pluractional meaning which is built into the structure of the nominal, and thus the contribution of the object is not straightforward. Thus, in the bare supine the properties of the object appear to contribute directly to the overall interpretation, while in the definite supine nominal and in the verbal supine this contribution is blurred by higher clausal layers. Mittwoch (2005) also notes that nominalizations denoting habits more easily accept omission of the object. This is confirmed in our case by the correlation between the type of supine construction and the type of habit denoted. Finally, Mittwoch speculates about the basic status of the habitual meaning in nominalizations. In the view I argued for in this paper, this meaning can be contributed at distinct levels in the structure: at the VP-level by the object (genericity through non-specificity) or at a functional level by grammatical aspect introducing a habitual (pluractional) meaning. Thus, we can distinguish, in the structure of habitual nominals, a lexical habituality and a grammatical habituality.

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4

Conclusion

This paper argued for a separate class inside the Romanian supine, namely the bare supine nominal, on the basis of its distribution and its aspectual properties. Furthermore, it demonstrated the straightforward contribution of the type of the object (from specific to non-specific) to the overall interpretation of the bare supine nominal. The most “non-specific” interpretation of an object is by default the case where the object is empty, and likely to be incorporated in the structure of the bare nominal supine. In this case, a generic interpretation of the bare supine arises and the nominal denotes a generic habit. The class of the bare supine nominals is indeed characterized by the transparent contribution of the genericity in the direct object, which distinguishes it both from the definite supine with a pluractional interpretation, and from the verbal supine which only conveys episodic interpretation, and where the contribution of the object is not visible to the overall interpretation. These differences in meaning are the result of the internal structure of the supine, which can be situated on a scale of complexity. The definite supine nominal is a pluractional nominal with a grammatical aspect projection; the bare supine nominal is a bare verbal noun which semantically incorporates its object and may denote more or less generic habits; and the verbal supine is a mere truncated clause with a reduced structure, undergoing complex predicate formation with a main verb, under which it gets an episodic interpretation.

References Borer, Hagit. 1993. Parallel Morphology. Ms, University of Massachusetts. Cornilescu, Alexandra and Cosma Ruxandra. 2014. On the functional structure of the Romanian supine. In Cosma Ruxandra, Stefan Engelberg, Susan Schlotthauer, Speranta L. Stanescu and Gisela Zifonun (eds.), Komplexe Argumentstrukturen. Kontrastive Untersuchungen zum Deutschen, Rumänischen und Englischen (Konvergenz und Divergenz 3), 283–335. Berlin, München & Boston: de Gruyter. Hill, Virginia. 2002. The gray area of supine clauses. Linguistics 40. 495–517. Giurgea, Ion and Elena Soare. 2010. Predication and the nature of non-finite relatives in Romance. In Anne-Marie DiSciullo and Virginia Hill (eds.), Edges, heads, and projections. Interface properties, 191–214. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Iordăchioaia, Gianina and Elena Soare. 2009. Structural patterns for plural blocking in Romance nominalizations. In Enoch Aboh, Elisabeth Van der Linden, Josep Quer and Petra Sleeman (eds.), Romance languages and linguistic theory. Selected papers from “Going Romance” 2007, 145–160. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

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Iordăchioaia, Gianina and Elena Soare. 2011. A further insight into the syntax-semantics of pluractionality, Proceedings of SALT, 95–114. http://elanguage.net/journals/index.php/ salt/article/view/21.95 (accessed: January 10th 2016) Iordăchioaia, Gianina and Elena Soare. 2015. Pluractionality with lexically cumulative verbs: The supine nominalization in Romanian. Natural Language Semantics 23(4). 307–352. Mittwoch, Anita. 2005. Unspecified arguments in episodic and habitual sentences. In Nomi Erteshik-Shir and Tova Rappoport (eds.), The syntax of aspect. Deriving aspectual and thematic information, 237–255. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Roy, Isabelle and Elena Soare. 2012. L’enquêteur, le surveillant et le détenu: les noms déverbaux de participants aux événements, lectures événementielles et structure argumentale. In Rafael Marin and Florence Villoing (eds.), Lexique 20: Nouveaux aspects sur les Nominalisations, 207–231. Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion. Roy, Isabelle and Elena Soare. 2014. On the internal eventive properties of -er nominals. Lingua 141. 139–156. Siloni, Tal. 1997. Noun phrases and nominalizations. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Soare, Elena. 2002. Le supin roumain et la théorie des catégories mixtes. Paris: Université de Paris 7. Dissertation. Soare, Elena. To appear. Non-categorical categories. Aspect, voice, pred and the category of participles. Université de Paris 8. Actes du Colloque sur la Prédication Atypique, Université de Caen.

Lucia M. Tovena

Some constraints on the arguments of an event noun with special aspectual properties 1

Introduction

Arguments, as syntactic realization of participants, have played a considerable role in the literature on aspect and in the debate about nominalizations. As for event nouns, deverbal nominalizations have been analyzed as “mixed category” cases that inherit their argument structure from the base (Grimshaw 1990), or get them configurationally through functional heads on top of the main verbal projection (Alexiadou et al. 2007). As for aspect, within a compositional view of inner aspect, the notion of telicity has been expressed by referring to the finitude of some arguments (Verkuyl 1972, 1992), by exploiting their mereological structures (Krifka 1987, 1998), and by referring to the culmination, defined in terms of a well-defined event terminus and an outcome of a new state (Dowty 1979).1 Deverbal nominalizations ending in -ata in Italian, V-ata2 nominals henceforth, are interesting from both perspectives. As nominalizations, they qualify as simple event nouns in Grimshaw’s (1990) terms, because arguments are not obligatorily present. However, they are event nouns used with light verbs in Italian, and these constructions create an environment where at least one argument is overtly realized, often the external one. At the same time, the nominalization undergoes aspectual constraints, because (i) there are restrictions on the predicates on which it is formed, as it is a form that semantically denotes a set of contingently delimited events, and (ii) the expression of the potential participants in these events is subject to aspectual conditions, mainly concerning the internal argument.

|| 1 Partial financial support by the DelimitEvent project, funded by the Fédération Typologie et Universaux Linguistiques FR-2559 CNRS, is gratefully acknowledged. 2 V-ata are event nouns built with roots that can also form verbal predicates. We adopt this terminology for ease of reference without necessarily implying that the roots are verbalized prior to nominalization.

DOI 10.1515/9781501505430-013

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This paper investigates some constraints on the expression of the arguments of V-ata nominals, and the boundedness of the events they denote. We begin in section 2 by describing some basic properties of Italian V-ata nominals, and we suggest how to modify the entry of the suffix in order to include the meaning component that induces the event delimiting effect. Next, section 3 is devoted to questions concerning the expression of potential syntactic internal arguments of the verbal root, and to linking issues in light verb constructions. Finally, we look at two potential case studies of argument structure modification in section 4. Section 5 concludes the paper.

2 2.1

Aspectual properties of V-ata nominals An event noun

A number of Romance languages have nomina vicis forms, i.e. event nouns whose use is restricted to referring to circumscribed occurrences of events. In Italian, this function is realized by event nouns formed with the suffix -ata, a suffix that contributes a type of delimitation that can be described as aspectual boundedness (see Gaeta 2000, 2002; Acquaviva 2005; Tovena and Donazzan 2015).3 These event nouns resist generic readings. These deverbal nominalizations admit independent use, e.g. in argument position (1), and their own arguments are not obligatorily expressed. For instance, the verb guardare ‘look’ is transitive, but the nominalization guardata can occur with no overt argument: see the contrast in (2). As a consequence, they would correspond to simple nominalizations in Grimshaw’s (1990) analysis. (1)

a. La mangiata lo ha messo di buon umore. ‘The eating put him in a good mood.’ b. La mescolata ha sciolto i grumi. ‘The stirring fragmented the lumps.’

(2) a. Daniele guardava *(la televisione). ‘Daniel was watching TV.’

|| 3 Similar forms ending in -ada are found in other Romance languages; see Aliquot-Suengas and Macchi (2003), Scher (2004), Vieira (2009), Bordelois (1993) among others.

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b. E’ bastata una guardata (all’articolo per capirne il valore). ‘It took just a look (at the paper to understand what it was worth).’ According to Grimshaw, only complex nominalizations have an event structure associated with them, and such a structure is relevant for having arguments. One test indicating the presence of an event structure is the possibility of aspectual modification. The unacceptability of (3a) and (3b) shows that such a modification is not possible for V-ata nominals. Only a nominal complement introduced by di ‘of’ is allowed, cf. (3c). (3) a. *una nuotata in un’ora ‘a swim in an hour’ b. *una nuotata per un’ora ‘a swim for an hour’ c. una nuotata di un’ora ‘one hour swimming’ Event structure is activated in the presence of event-related modification such as the aspecual one, and the realization of the arguments of the verbal base becomes obligatory. From the facts that the arguments are not required and aspectual modifiers are not compatible, it can be concluded that V-ata nominals are not complex nominalizations. The question is not settled, though, because V-ata nominals do not look like plain simple nominalizations either. Nominalizations of this type undergo limited loss of typical verbal characteristics and limited adoption of nominal features. V-ata nominals are sensitive to the argument structure of the verb built on the same root, and appear to condition the expression of their arguments, whether they are overtly realized or not: this is the case for both external and internal arguments. As is known, the external argument of a nominalization is suppressed under the nominalization operation. This is what it means to say that to nominalize a verb is to suppress the subject of predication. At the same time, V-ata nominals are event nouns used in light verb constructions, whose function, or at least part of it, is to recreate an environment where the nominalization can contribute to the predication (Jespersen 1954), and often to make possible the overt realization of the external argument. Two properties of light verb constructions, shared with -ata nominals, help to clarify the affinity between them. First, like -ata nominals, a light verb construction with an event noun as complement describes a singular circumscribed event. Second, the event noun that is the complement of light verbs cannot contribute a result

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reading. Similarly, -ata nominals denote events, not their resultant state. The suppressed argument of V-ata nominals is often co-identified with the external argument of the complex predicate in light verb constructions. For example, with light verb fare heading the complex predicate, V-ata nominals present some specific constraints on the realization of the external argument illustrated by the contrast (4) vs. (5). (4) a. Daniele è caduto. ‘Daniele fell down.’ b. Daniele ha fatto una caduta. ‘Daniele had a fall.’ (5) a. Il libro è caduto ‘The book fell.’ b. #Il libro ha fatto una caduta. ‘The book had a fall.’ The sentences in (4)–(5) display the Italian unaccusative verb cadere ‘fall’. They differ in (i) the type of construction – a simple predicate in the (a) sentences and a complex predicate with V-ata nominals and light verb fare ‘do’ in the (b) sentences, and (ii) the entity referred to by the noun phrase in subject position – an animate subject in (4) and an inanimate subject in (5). The difference in animacy does not affect the status of the sentences with simple predicates, which are all acceptable. On the contrary, inanimacy induces unacceptability in sentences with a nominalization under a light verb. The hypothesis explored by Tovena and Donazzan (2015) and Donazzan and Tovena (2016) is that there is a semantic trace of the external argument inside the nominalization that characterizes the realization of the external argument so that it has agentive dispositional properties, i.e. properties that have the status of a force with respect to the class of events described by the verbal root. As will be discussed shortly, the realization of the internal argument is also conditioned in V-ata nominalizations. The internal argument is the one that generally potentially has aspectual import. Arguments discharging theme roles can give a special contribution to the structure of the event, in particular for accomplishments. There is a well known connection between telicity of the predicate and quantization of incremental themes (Dowty 1991; Krifka 1989; Tenny 1994). The dependence between quantitative information in nominals and (a)telicity in events, has been formally characterized by Verkuyl (1972), Krifka (1992, 1998), and subsequent work. A specificity of V-ata nominalizations

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is that it is restricted to roots for verbs that yield dynamic atelic predicates, cf. (6). Confirming evidence is provided by the marginality of nominalizations of achievement (7a) and state (7b) predicates (Tovena 2014). (6) a. La nuotata in mare mi ha messo di buon umore. ‘The swimming in the sea cheered me up.’ b. Gianni da una lavata all’insalata ‘Gianni is giving a wash to the salad.’ (7) a. *la raggiunta di una cima ‘the reaching of a summit’ b. *la conosciuta di francese ‘the knowing of French’ The -ata suffix nominalizes atelic predicates that are durative (Tovena 2014). Achievement predicates can be nominalized only if they can be coerced into processive readings. This is the case for entrata ‘entering’, see (8). (8) L’entrata del treno in stazione è stata interrotta bruscamente. ‘The train was suddenly stopped while entering the station.’ V-ata nominalizations of coerced achievements do not denote situations corresponding to resultant states. This can be understood as one of the effects of perfective aspect, see below. Perfective aspect enforces focusing on the event and eliminates the resultant state from the reference. Another effect is that in general V-ata nominals do not have a result reading. What may look like a result often is a manifestation of the event, possibly with metonymic transfer, as with fermata ‘stop’.

2.2

Background assumptions on the -ata suffix

The Italian nominals ending in -ata we are concerned with are formed on roots that can produce verbal predicates (6). The suffix is particularly productive for nouns of events, rather than result nouns, as pointed out above. This specialization is not the commonest situation. Many Indo-European languages have a single paradigmatic class of derivational affixes for the expression of event and non-event nominals. For example, Italian costruzione may refer to the process of building and to the object that results from it.

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Feminine singular forms of the (Latin) past/perfect participles possibly are at the origin of the word-formation pattern, but the diachronic process of re/grammaticalization is not entirely understood. The abandonment of the past verbal inflectional status was paired with emerging aspectual restrictions (Tovena 2014). The -ata ending is a nominal derivational suffix, in synchrony. Support for this change in the morphological status of the suffix comes from the restrictions on the aspectual characteristics of the roots the nominalizing suffix can combine with, restrictions that are not found with the inflexional suffix. The nominalizing suffix helps to form event nouns with an active semantic constraint on the external argument that support the nomen vicis use, i.e. a dynamic eventive only and referential only reading of the nominal. According to the semantics in (9) proposed by Tovena and Donazzan (2015), the derivational suffix takes as input a Root, contributes a Davidsonian argument and the property of delimitedness of the event, and associates it with an individual via the role of initiator. (9) [[-at(a)]] = λRootλe[Root(e) & INITIATOR(e)=x & DELIMIT(e)] The definition in (9) captures the relevance of a “semantically active” (Cornilescu 2001) or syntactically interpretable (Lundquist 2011) external argument often evoked in the discussion of eventive participles across languages. The suffix merges with a root and contributes Voice and perfective aspectual information standardly associated with the past participle as an inflectional suffix. This claim is going to be qualified below. On the argumental side, we can remark that INITIATOR ensures a form of agent dependency. The event is associated with an initiator by a function that takes the event variable as its argument and returns an individual that is assigned as a value to variable x. This variable x is not bound by a lambda operator, because the nominalization does not have a syntactically realized external subject. But it can get a value in context. The function INITIATOR works as a semantically active constraint. Whenever the Davidsonian variable gets instantiated, the event is associated with a particular initiator. This undefeasible and specific association between event and initiator right from the beginning is at the base of the nomen vicis reading. The requirement of a specific role for the unexpressed external argument in (9) is shown by the restriction on the potential events that are denoted by the nominalization. We pointed out that -ata cannot nominalize stative predicates, cf. (7b) above. The form is not rescued by being inserted in a light verb construction, as illustrated in (10).

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(10) *Mario ha fatto una conosciuta di francese. ‘Mario had a know-ata of French.’ Moreover, roots of (non gradual) change of state predicates that describe events, such as ammalarsi ‘get sick’, are also unsuitable for this form of nominalization: see (11). (11) *Mario ha fatto un’ammalata. ‘Mario had a sickness bout.’ Finally, out are predicates of breaking, collapsing, and sinking that typically allow anticausative constructions. (12) *Mario ha fatto un’annegata. ‘Mario did a drowning.’ (13) *Il vaso ha fatto una spaccata. ‘The vase did a breaking.’ On the aspectual side, DELIMIT in (9) is meant to ensure boundedness. Delimitedness is a grammatical aspect. The event gets a boundary that is a stopping point and not a culmination.

2.3

Proposal for the delimiting function

This subsection works out the DELIMIT function in (9). As stated above, our background assumption is that the -ata ending is a nominal derivational suffix in synchrony. Whether the -ata ending originates in past participle morphology or not, it is better to keep the present days derivation distinct from inflectional suffixation, contra Ippolito (1999),4 because past participle formation in Italian is not sensitive to aspectual classes in the way -ata nominals are (Tovena 2014). In becoming a nominalizing suffix, this ending has specialized and nowadays contributes the operation that actualizes the discretization of the domain of a potential event predicate.

|| 4 Forms such as uscita ‘going out’ that bear the mark of a conjugation other than the first, and presa ‘taking’ that bear the mark of irregular inflection, do not contradict our claim, because they are no longer productive forms.

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Grammatical aspect specifies the relation between topic time and event time, and in the specific case of perfective aspect, its semantic contribution is usually taken to be the existential closure of the event and the creation of a predicate of intervals (14). (14) λPλt∃e[P(e) & τ(e)⊆t] P in (14) is the predicate of events, t is the temporal variable that is instantiated by contextual information, and τ is the temporal trace function that maps events to their run times (Krifka 1998). The application of grammatical aspect to a predicate of events yields a predicate of intervals, and then tense specifies the relation of topic time to utterance time. However, there is no tense inside a nominalization. By definition, the variable t in (14) would not be instantiated in a nominalization, and the boundedness resulting from meeting the relation ⊆ with such a t does not obtain. The semantic content of perfectivity contributed by the suffix -ata adapted to the context of a nominalization when it became derivational. We propose that it is reshaped into a parametrized measure function. The variable of the event is not existentially closed, and perfectivization does not yield a predicate of intervals. The suffix expresses a perfectivity condition that is dependent on temporal information in a more abstract way, by comparing the temporal trace of the event with a minimal instantiation of that type of event. The suffix combines with a verbal root and works like an event predicate modifier that measures the event using contextual information, as proposed in (15). In other words, it is a modifier of event predicates that measures a P event by applying a contextually determined function μ to the temporal trace of the event. We assume a measure function μ, which is a variable over measure functions for time periods such as hours or minutes. The perfective content is captured by applying such a contextually determined function μ to the temporal trace of the event, i.e. τ(e), and assigning its value to a variable d. The measure of d is required to be greater than or equal to the minimal duration of events of type P. (15) λPλe[P(e) & INITIATOR(e)=x & μ(τ(e))=d & d≧Min(μ(τ(e)))] Being like a measure function, the suffix is sortally restricted to apply to roots of processive predicates, which are homogeneous. But unlike standard durative adverbials, e.g. for-phrases, it is not used to specify a particular duration value. As we have seen, the predicate of events P instantiated by the root is restricted

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to denoting in a homogeneous domain. A homogeneous dynamic predicate (activity) can be divided down to minimal intervals (Dowty 1979) and preserve its nature. The duration of the minimal interval is in most cases underspecified and depends on the particular predicate, but via Min(μ (τ(e)), the minimal duration of an event of type P gets related to the actionality restrictions in the input and to restrictions related to world knowledge. Notice that the events referred to via -ata nominals do not have to be short and can vary in duration. This fact is captured by specifying that the value of d is grater than or equal to the relevant minimal duration. Delimiting an event is a temporal issue, independent from the internal structure of the event. The presence of an initiator in the entry of the suffix licenses the implicit measuring as the “arbitrary perfection” of the event without outer aspect projection. Such a perfective morphology does not take contextually provided information on a topic time as a restrictor. The event is not mapped to a specific temporal interval. The end result is that the events denoted by nominalizations ending in -ata are delimited, not telic. The measure introduced by the suffix delimits the event in the absence of a topic time. In this way, Gaeta’s (2000) intuition that the suffix contributes external aspect is made sense of and captured within a nominal projection. Next, whatever aspectual operation is executed inside the nominalization, it is closed off by the boundary of the phase represented by the construction of a word. Therefore, the subsequent merger under a light verb means that the aspectual properties of the nominalization become part of the inner aspect contribution to the complex predicate.

3

About the “internal argument” of the root

In this section, we look at the realization of what could be termed the internal argument of the root. The scare quotes in the title are just intended to signal that the discussion does not rest on the assumption that roots are associated with argument structures in the lexicon. The internal argument may be part of an argumental structure or of a conceptual structure.5

|| 5 There is a well-known problem in defining an argument and telling it apart from mere adjuncts. It goes beyond the scope of this paper and will not be tackled.

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3.1

Atelicity issues

The view that V-ata nominals are nominalizations of dynamic atelic predicates (Gaeta 2000; Tovena 2014) has been recently challenged. Folli and Harley (2013) use data on V-ata nominals built from change of state predicates (16) and from accomplishments (17) to argue against aspectual restrictions on the verbal predicate. (16) a. salire ‘climb/rise’, salita ‘climb/rising’ b. allungare ‘lengthen’, allungata ‘lengthening’ (17) lavare la camicia ‘wash the shirt’, lavata alla camicia ‘washing of the shirt’ The aspectual impact of specific noun phrases introducing participants to the events is well established (Verkuyl 1972). In West European languages, themes can compositionally give a special contribution to the construction of the structure of the event (Krifka 1989, 1992; Dowty 1991; Tenny 1994). As Folli and Harley (2013) acknowledge, the roots of transitive verbs that easily form V-ata nominals tend to be object-drop verbs, e.g. mangiata ‘eating’. This is consistent with the hypothesis of an aspectual condition on the verbal root, which these authors reject. In their opinion, the condition hypothesis is invalidated by the possibility of having delimiting object arguments such as in accomplishments. However, they do not acknowledge the aspectual impact of the properties of the specific noun phrases introducing participants to the events. For example, the V-ata nominal in (18) does not illustrate an accomplishment-based interpretation, although the object of mangiare can in principle be an incremental theme. The theme role in (18) is discharged by a nominal that cannot measure out the event, not even in a vague manner. (18) una mangiata di funghi / *di molti funghi / *di tre funghi ‘an eating of mushrooms / of many mushrooms / of three mushrooms’ On the contrary, the restriction to indefinite nominal complements as internal argument that Folli and Harley have to stipulate for cases like (19), can be understood precisely in terms of suppressing sources of delimitation of the events. One can make sense of this operation by assuming that the formation of V-ata nominals is subject to aspectual constraints. Dynamic atelic predicates are homogeneous. Assuming a homogeneity constraint enables us to make sense of the restrictions on themes of accomplishments in terms of suppression of sources of event delimitation. The fact that the ban on definite nominal

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complements as internal arguments is not enforced “blindly”, cf. (19a) and (20), also follows. Sentence (20) is interesting also with regard to what can be termed an anti-holistic effect, that will be presented in section 3.2 when the possibility for the nominalization lavata ‘wash’ to co-occur with either light verbs fare ‘do’ or dare ‘give’ is discussed. (19) a. *fare una lavata delle camicie ‘do a washing of the shirts’ b. fare una lavata di camicie ‘do a washing of shirts’ (20) dare una lavata alle tazze ‘wash the cups a bit’ The case of degree achievements is similar. The mereological structure of the theme is not related by a homomorphism to the structure of the event of cleaning in (21). Contra Folli and Harley, there are definite objects that do not measure out the event. It does not matter whether pulire ‘clean’ is a change of state predicate, as they claim. Degree achievements (Dowty 1979) are known to have atelic uses (Kearns 2007); therefore, they do not count a priori as exceptions to the constraint of atelicity on the nominalized predicate. (21) dare una pulita alla stanza ‘clean the room a bit’ Predicates of achievement can be ruled in or out under analogous conditions, i.e. V-ata nominals can be formed if the verb gives access to a preparatory phase that is processual and can become the depicted event via coercion: see entrata ‘entering’ in (23a) vs. #esplosa ‘explosion’ in (22). This is a condition that can be characterized by referring to the opposition between achievements of the type culmination vs. happening proposed by Bach (1981). Furthermore, coercion is subject to the constraint of animacy on possible external arguments, as in the contrast (23a) vs. (23b). (22) #L’esplosa ha bloccato il traffico. ‘The explode-ata stopped the traffic.’ (23) a. Daniele ha fatto un’entrata (trionfale). ‘Daniele made a (triumphal) entering.’

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b. #Il fiume ha fatto un’entrata (trionfale) nel mare. ‘The river made a (triumphal) enter-ata into the sea.’ In sum, aspectual constraints are imposed by the suffix that combines with roots describing atelic durative events or coercible that way, and cannot be violated in the aspectual composition of the participants.

3.2

The expression of the “internal argument” and the selection of the light verb

It has been assumed in the linguistics literature that light verbs lack a thematic argument structure. Proposals vary as to the way light verb constructions associate with an argument structure, be it syntactic or conceptual. Association can be assumed to take place in syntax or in the lexicon. Grimshaw and Mester (1988) have conceived it as a syntactic process of complex predicate formation by argument transfer. Following this line of thought, Samek-Lodovici (2003) has proposed the descriptive generalization in (24) about V-ata nominalizations that enter light verb constructions, where the arity of the nominalized verb is related to the selection of the light verb. (24) a. V-ata nominals built on intransitive verbal roots occur in constructions with light-v fare ‘do’, see (25) b. V-ata nominals built on transitive verbal roots occur in constructions with light-v dare ‘give’, see (26) (25) Luisa ha fatto una camminata ‘Louise had a walk.’ (26) Luisa ha dato una mescolata al minestrone. ‘Louise gave a stir to the soup.’ Formally, Samek-Lodovici (2003) exploits a mechanism of transfer and suppression of indices to relate the selection of the light verb shown in (24) with the arity of the lexical verb. To form a complex predicate, a verb is first turned into a light verb by erasing the indices of its arguments. Then, the lexical verb gets the thematic indices of its arguments transferred to the arguments of the light verb. V-ata nominals select the light verb that best matches their adicity. Alternatively, following the dictates of a configurational approach to argument structure, Folli and Harley (2013) have assumed that syntax provides

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event structure on top of the main verbal projection. Specific restrictions are mapped onto functional heads, such as v, which are endowed with semantic content and encode the potential for argument realization (see Ramchand 1997; Harley and Noyer 2000). In the case at hand, Folly and Harley use two mechanisms for composing the arguments and reproducing the generalization in (24). Internal arguments are integrated in the structure by an Applicative projection. The spell-out of the light verb as dare (and fare), corresponding to a structure with (or as the case may be without) the Applicative head, is motivated by the need to realize different argumental properties. Note, however, that neither the nominalization nor the root have argument structure in Folli and Harley’s analysis. As for external arguments, they claim that the complex predicates formed with both fare and dare are agentive, and “both these light verbs select an external argument of their own” (Folli and Harley 2013: 102). The nominalization is the complement of this little v projection directly, or indirectly via an ApplicativeP. However, if the nominalization is integrated in the syntactic representation via the applicative phrase, no aspectual effect should be expected. The constraint against patients measuring out events is not predicted. Folli and Harley posit a constraint against definiteness as part of the diagnostic of light verb dare with creation verbs. The subject of the small clause would involve a presupposition of existence, incompatible with a nonexistent item. This line of reasoning does not cover contrasts such as (27), where the base verb mangiare ‘eat’ is transitive and is not a verb of creation, while the light verb is fare, and yet the internal argument cannot be definite. Note that the internal argument can, but need not, be dropped. (27) a. Luisa ha fatto una mangiata di fragole. ‘Louise had a treat of strawberries.’ b. *Luisa ha fatto una mangiata delle fragole. ‘Louise had a treat of the strawberries.’ If the internal argument is not dropped, the predicted light verb is dare, the one that occurs in a structure with an Applicative head. The same type of prediction is made by Samek-Lodovici’s analysis. This prediction does not fit the facts, since the light verb must be fare in all cases. Compare (27a), (28a) and (28b). (28) a. Luisa ha fatto una mangiata. ‘Louise had a treat.’ b. *Luisa ha dato una mangiata alle fragole. ‘Louise had a treat of the strawberries.’

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In either analysis, that some nominalized transitive verbs can co-occurr with two light verbs is a possibility not expected nor envisaged. The selection of light verbs depends on the adicity of the lexical predicate, according to SamekLodovici (2003) as well as to Folli and Harley (2013), modulo the required rephrasing in configurational terms. Accordingly, lavata would combine with light verb dare and not with light verb fare, because lavare is transitive and is not object-drop. If the selection of light verbs is a reflection of the presence of an applicative projection, as proposed by Folli and Harley (2013), then, again, the expected light verb is dare, because there is an argument that has to be integrated in the structure. However, lavata can be used with both dare and fare, see (29). (29) a. Ho fatto una lavata di capi bianchi e si vede un buon effetto sbiancante. (www) ‘I made a wash of whites and one can see a good whitening effect.’ b. Ho dato una lavata ai capi bianchi / al terrazzo. ‘I gave a wash to the whites / to the terrace.’ The sentences differ in their interpretation. In (29a), di capi bianchi discharges a theme role of the nominalization. It is not specific, and apparently not referential either, but just under the existential closure of the event variable. In (29b), ai capi bianchi discharges the theme role of the complex predicate and is specific, and the same holds for al terrazzo. The effect recorded in (29b) is that of a restriction to a partitive reading like in alternations such as kick the ball/kick at the ball in English: see (Kiparsky 1998) among many others. The restriction is not enforced on the simple predicate (30), but definite/quantized objects inside the PP in (29b) do not contribute telicity anymore. The theme of the complex event structure in (29b) does not measure out the event. Either not all of its parts are affected or it is affected to a degree below the standard, and the expression acquires a connotation and is used when describing an approximate action. (30) Ho lavato i capi bianchi / il terrazzo. ‘I washed the whites / the terrace.’ The selection of the two light verbs by the same nominalization – illustrated by data like in (29) – cannot be easily related to the arity of the nominalized verbal root. The descriptive generalization in (24) needs restating. It seems more a matter of delimiting and identifying the event. We will come back to this issue after considering a third light verb.

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3.3

Linking the role of the “internal argument” and the light verb

The two constructions with light verbs fare ‘do’ and dare ‘give’ mentioned above introduce an event initiator. There is a third light verb that can be used with V-ata nominals, namely prendere ‘take’. Consider the nominalization sgridata ‘scolding’, which is formed on the root of the transitive verb sgridare ‘scold’, and enters the light verb construction with dare, as in (31a). The second light verb construction it can enter involves the light verb prendere, as in (31b), in which case the situation described can be the same as in (31a), but it is depicted from the point of view of the patient. In (31b), the recipient of the scolding is the referent of the nominal in subject position of the light verb construction. (31) a. Daniele ha dato una sgridata a Mario. ‘Daniel gave a scolding to Mario.’ b. Mario ha preso una sgridata. ‘Mario got a scolding.’ The reorganization of the thematic roles linking, with the (proto-)patient in subject position, is presumably a reason why Folli and Harley (2013) call prendere the ‘unaccusative dare’. In their view, such a reorganization cannot be accounted for via index-transference and is a piece of evidence against the analysis proposed by Samek-Lodovici (2003). However, a straightforward unaccusative analysis of prendere also raises a fair number of questions for their proposal. First, auxiliary selection is a broadly accepted diagnostic of unaccusativity. In Italian, unaccusative verbs take auxiliary essere ‘be’, cf. (32), or take it in the unaccusative reading when ambivalent (33). In contrast, the auxiliary of the light verb prendere is avere in (31b). (32) Daniele è arrivato. ‘Daniel arrived.’ (33) a. Luisa è volata in Francia. ‘Louise flew to France.’ b. Luisa ha volato in Francia ‘Louise flew in France.’

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Second, passivization is not possible for unaccusative verbs. Compare (32) and (34). Recall that passivized transitive verbs use the auxiliary essere in Italian: see (35). (34) *È stato arrivato da Daniele. (35) La mela è stata mangiata da Luisa. ‘The apple was eaten by Louise.’ In contrast, the sentence in (31b) can be passivized, as shown in (36). Furthermore, passivization is marked by the auxiliary essere, as expected. (36) Una sgridata è stata presa da Mario. ‘Mario got scolded.’ Third, unaccusatives do not have agents, but selecting prendere does not block the possibility of expressing the agent via a da-PP, the counterpart of an English by-phrase: see (37). Note, however, that the issue of the expression of the agent is delicate, as the English rendering via a periphrastic verb construction requires from rather than by, which points towards a transfer of possession interpretation. (37) Mario ha preso una sgridata da Daniele. ‘Mario got a scolding from Daniele.’ The prepositional phrase da parte di ‘on behalf of’ is used for introducing agents in nominalizations (38), but it cannot be used for introducing an agent in (37): see (39). Indeed, if accepted in (39), such a prepositional phrase is understood as introducing the entity that instigated the action and may not be involved in the physical realization of the act, an interpretation available in active sentences, as noted by Salvi (1988). The unavailability of the intended interpretation in (39) suggests that the event structure is necessarily expressed by the light verb construction as a whole and not just by the nominalization, a point that requires further study. (38) La distruzione di Baghdad da parte degli americani ‘the Americans’ destruction of Baghdad’

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(39) #Mario ha preso una sgridata da parte di Daniele. ‘Mario was scolded and Daniel is behind it.’ Finally, the light verb prendere is subject to an animacy condition like what Donazzan and Tovena (2016) pointed out for the external argument of the light verb fare with unaccusative nominalizations (see (4)–(5) above) a condition not met by full-verb prendere – see the contrast in (40) – and whose validity is unexpected in a configurational analysis. (40) a. *La camicia ha preso una lavata. ‘The shirt took a wash-ata.’ b. La scatola ha preso un colpo sull’angolo superiore sinistro. (www) ‘The box took a shot in the upper left corner.’ Summing up, calling prendere the “unaccusative dare” is either incorrect or at least an oversimplification of the situation. Although Samek-Lodovici (2003) does not consider the case of the light verb prendere, let us consider how a proposal in the spirit of his transfer-based analysis could go.6 First, it is assumed that light prendere is a three argument verb. Let us say PRENDERE (a1, a2, a3). Next, the argument a1 is suppressed in the light verb construction, and a2 becomes the most prominent argument. In a2 is placed the event-referring argument of the nominalization, and a3 is the theme argument of the nominalization. The suppressed argument of the nominalization can be expressed via a by-phrase. The suppression of the first argument of the light verb should be justified, but for the moment it must be stipulated. In support of this option, it can be observed that the characterization of prendere as ditransitive is in agreement with a characterization of it as a predicate of transfer of possession. A piece of evidence in support of a ditransitive light prendere comes from the observation that the form in (36) cannot be seen as the passive of transitive prendere plus the nominalization. It is really the passive of the light verb. Otherwise it should be possible to express the agent of the nominalization in some way. The agent of the scolding cannot be expressed, cf. (41). Passivization suppresses the external argument of the light construction, which is Mario in (37), and such an argument can be expressed by a by-phrase, as shown in (36).

|| 6 Thanks to Samek-Lodovici for discussing this option with me.

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(41) *Una sgridata è stata presa da Mario da Daniele. ‘A scold-ata was taken by Mario by Daniele.’ In short, neither line of analysis is free from problems. In the light of the points made about atelicity, the generalization in (24) can be revised by taking into account the construction of the aspect of the clause.

3.4

Combining structural and aspectual information

We assume that the light verb fare – like the light verb dare – allows the possibility of expressing/realizing the initiator of the event and foregrounding it independently from the arity of the base verb. Our hypothesis is that the light verb fare does not discriminate V-ata nominalizations formed with roots of transitive verbs (42b) from those formed with intransitive verb roots (42a). In any case, if the nominalized verb has an internal argument, this is no longer expressed by a full argument, i.e. it is not an argument of the complex predicate. On the other hand, the light verb dare can integrate the theme in the event structure of the complex predicate, provided its interpretation is not exclusively as an incremental theme. (42) a. Daniele ha fatto una nuotata. ‘Daniele had a swim.’ b. Daniele ha fatto una lavata di camicie. ‘Daniele made a washing of shirts / washed some shirts.’ The variation in the choice of light verb in Italian presented in generalization (24) looks like the counterpart of the structural ambiguity that light verb constructions have for long been assumed to display (Jackendoff 1974). Evidence comes from a host of facts. The nominal in this position with light verb fare cannot be referential, as if it were semantically incorporated (43), and cannot be definite in stand alone occurrences. Cf. (44), noted by Folli and Harley (2013), who have to posit an ad hoc indefiniteness constraint for it. Indeed, this argument cannot be definite when the nominalization is the argument of a predicate (45).7

|| 7 Example (45) may be contrasted with (i), where the nominalization has a different suffix and its internal argument can be definite.

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(43) *Daniele ha fatto una lavata delle / di queste camicie. ‘Daniele made a washing of the/these shirts.’ (44) *Che lavata delle camicie! ‘What a washing of shirts!’ (45) *La lavata delle camicie è stata faticosa. ‘The wash-ata of the shirts was a lot of effort.’ The argument moves with the nominalization when the light verb is passivized, as in (46). (46) a. Una lavata di camicie è stata fatta da Daniele. ‘A washing of shirts was done by Daniel.’ b. *Una lavata è stata fatta di camicie da Daniele. c. *Una lavata è stata fatta da Daniele di camicie. The test of extraction in Italian shows that wh-movement is possible with dare but not with fare. Compare (47) and (48), in particular the (c) sentences. The (a) sentences are the basic cases. In the (b) sentences, the nominalizations that are complements of dare and fare are extracted together with the internal conceptual argument of the root, and the sentences are acceptable. The extraction of the nominalizations alone in the (c) sentences is acceptable only with dare. When the extraction is acceptable, it is not an instance of extraction from a DP, but rather the PP is an argument of the light verb (47c), and this is the case with dare. When it is unacceptable, the PP is an argument of the event noun (48c). (47) a. Luisa ha dato una lavata al pavimento. ‘Louise gave a wash to the floor.’ b. La lavata al pavimento che Luisa ha dato ‘Louise’s washing of the floor’ c. La lavata che Luisa ha dato al pavimento ‘The washing Louise gave to the floor’

|| (i) Il lavaggio delle camicie è stato faticoso. ‘Washing the shirts was tiring.’

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(48) a. Luisa ha fatto una mangiata di funghi. ‘Louise had a treat of mushrooms.’ b. La mangiata di funghi che Luisa ha fatto ‘The treat of mushrooms Louise had’ c. *La mangiata che Luisa ha fatto di funghi In sum, the descriptive generalization in (24) has to be restated in terms of neutralizing the aspectual impact of an argument of the nominalized verb. In any case, the theme cannot contribute to delimiting the event. Both the -ata nominals built on intransitive verbal roots and those built on transitive verbal roots can occur in constructions with the light verb fare, but the internal arguments of the root, if any, either is left unexpressed, or is expressed as a restriction on the event noun. With the light verb dare, the theme is realized by a PP and the construction resists a holistic reading, unless overtly expressed by a modifier such as bella ‘good’ in (49). (49) Luisa ha dato una bella lavata al pavimento. ‘Louise washed the floor thoroughly.’ Not all transitive verb roots yield nominalizations that can co-occur with both light verbs. Apparently, only if the verb admits a reading where the theme is not an incremental one, such as in the case of lavare ‘wash’, can the nominalization co-occur with dare. Neither Samek-Lodovici nor Folli and Harley say why transitive mangiare does not combine with light dare. Compare acceptable (27a) with unacceptable (28b). Verbs of creation or destruction have incremental themes. Even if the quantity is not defined, such a theme cannot stop being incremental. It cannot be part of the event structure associated with the complex predicate. Our second hypothesis is that the pair in (50) with ditransitive light verbs dare and prendere and -ata nominalizations of transitive verbs, illustrates voice distinctions. The two verbs have successful transfer (without countertransfer) of possession event type. They differ insofar as initiator and possessor are disjoint in the pattern of dare, whereas they coincide in the pattern of prendere. Example (50a) is to be analyzed as a middle form that freely alternates with (51), where the clitic pronoun overtly marks the fact that the semantic role of patient/ theme is discharged in subject position, becoming also a sort of initiator (not a full proto-agent) of the affecting event. The term middle is understood as where the verbal action “is performed with special reference to the subject” (Fagan

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1992), like in the case of the inflectional category of the verb in some IndoEuropean languages such as Greek. (50) a. Luisa ha preso una sgridata. ‘Louise got a scolding.’ b. Luisa dato una sgridata a Daniele. ‘Louise gave Daniel a scolding.’ (51) Luisa si è presa una sgridata. ‘Louise got scolded.’ Overt middle marking is not possible with dare when there is an affected patient (52); otherwise the clitic pronoun is interpreted as a plain reflexive (53). (52) *Daniele si è dato una lavata di camicie (53) Daniele si è dato una sgridata. ‘Daniel scolded himself.’ Non argumental reflexives are possible with fare, and sentence (54) conveys the information that the speaker – and possibly the subject – views Daniele as an affected initiator of the event, with the connotation that he had to “endure” the event. On the contrary, (42b) is more neutral in this respect. (54) Daniele si è fatto una lavata di camicie. ‘Daniel had to do a washing of shirts.’ Summing up, light verbs fare, dare and prendere all make it possible to express the initiator of the event described by the complex predicate. They differ in which other participant they allow to be expressed, and which thematic role associated with the conceptual argument structure of the nominalization they can discharge.

4

Two case studies

In general, complex deverbal nominalizations have event structures identical to those of their verbal forms, modulo the suppression of the external argument. As seen above, although V-ata nominals are simple nominalizations, the

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content of the suffix -ata imposes conditions that partially modify the argument structure of the nominalized verb, in particular by blocking the expression of incremental themes. The suffix is restricted to co-occur with roots of processive predicates, which are homogeneous, or coercible into one of them. In this section, we discuss two cases where the modification may look broader: one which is a sort of valency reduction that might be ascribed to enforcing the homogeneity requirement, and another which might be a case of argument structure (re)organization ascribed to a requirement of a controller for the instruction of perfectivity. All in all, neither case provides undisputable evidence that the conceptual argument structure of the nominalization is modified.

4.1

The case of ammazzata ‘extremely heavy task’

In a way, the aspectual schema associated with a nominalization by the suffix -ata is that of yielding a predicate of bounded event nouns from an atelic verb. The properties of the verb may be modified in the case of accomplishments that are detelicized by dropping the incremental theme or by restricting them to partitive readings. They can be modified in the case of achievements, by coercion into referring to the processive phase. Telicity is also suppressed in the case of ammazzare ‘kill’. This verb is an achievement with a resultant state that is much more easily accessible than the preparatory phase. The coercion into an atelic predicate appears to have multiple effects on the interpretation of the nominalization ammazzata ‘killing’. The predicate is shifted to a figurative interpretation only. Furthermore, this nominalization does not tolerate the expression of an overt object although the base verb is transitive. See (55). (55) a. Ho fatto un’ammazzata per finire a tempo. (www) ‘I almost killed myself to meet the deadline.’ b. *Ho fatto un’ammazzata di quaglie per preparare il pasticcio reale. ‘I slaughtered quails to prepare the royal pie.’ It is worth noting that in general, the use of this nominalization with light verbs is severely limited. A google search (9 October 2013) returned 10 hits for fatto un’ammazzata. However, the search returned 46,500 hits for mi sono ammazzato per ‘I killed myself for’, and example (56) shows that the verb is not telic in this use, because per introduces a time complement, not a goal as usual.

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An alternative hypothesis is therefore to say that ammazzata is not a nominalization of the transitive verb, but of a middle form. (56) Mi sono ammazzato per due ore e mi sono giurato di nn rifarlo più. (www) ‘I killed myself for two hours and I swore to myself: never again.’ On the other hand, a google search (9 October 2013) returned 39,300 hits for stata un’ammazzata. Leaving aside the precise numbers, these results highlight a clear preference for using ammazzata in an equative/predicative construction (57). (57) a. È stata un’ammazzata ma ne è valsa la pena!! (www) ‘It kinda killed me, but it was worth it!!’ b. RomaParigiRoma in 24 ore è un’ammazzata. (www) ‘Rome-Paris-Rome in 24h is a killing journey.’ Agent and patient are unexpressed in (57), but constrained by the equative interpretation. Two events are equated and they share a participant. However, the nominal is not in a construction that allows the overt expression of participants.

4.2

The case of ospitata ‘paid guest star appearance’

The early ’90s neologism ospitata ‘paid guest star appearance in a public event’ is another puzzling case. The verb ospitare ‘host’ is transitive, but ospitata cooccurs with the light verb fare. As the translation of (58) makes clear, the patient of the situation described by the verbal root is co-identified with the subject of the light verb construction. (58) Daniele ha fatto un’ospitata al festival. ‘Daniel made a guest appearance to the festival.’ Note, however, that this nominalization does not combine with the light verb prendere, which would perform the same type of argument switch, in a way. The case of x fa un’ospitata ‘x is the paid guest star’, seems to contradict SamekLodovici (2003), according to whom a lower index cannot be transferred if higher ones are not. The core theme is interpreted as controlling the duration of the event and is realized as subject of the construction in (59).

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(59) Una diva non fa solo l’ospitata di 5 minuti (www) ‘A diva doesn’t do just a five minute guest appearance’ The core Agent cannot be realized, (60), as expected when the light verb is fare. It gets suppressed or realized as locative, see (61) where Max is the host. (60) *Daniele ha fatto un’ospitata da parte di Max. ‘Daniel made a guest appearance by Max.’ (61) Daniele ha fatto un’ospitata da Max. ‘Daniel made a guest appearance in Max’s show.’ Alternatively, we must assume a nominal base and hypothesize that ospitata is an N-ata nominal. The noun ospite is ambiguous between the readings ‘host’ and ‘guest’, and the second option would be the relevant one.

5

Concluding remarks

Deverbal nominalizations ending in -ata do not require overt realization of the arguments, and yet appear to impose constraints on them. The suppressed external argument of the nominalization must be an initiator of the event described by the light verb construction (Tovena and Donazzan 2015) even when the nominalized predicate is unaccusative and the light verb is fare and dare. The condition of having an initiator holds also in a light verb construction with prendere, as the test of the modification by all by itself (Keyser and Roeper 1984) points out. The phrase all by itself is ruled out in (62a), which was termed a middle sentence, although it is acceptable in unaccusative sentences such as (62b). A condition of animacy for the subject holds too, although it appears to be linked with the patient of the nominalization. (62) a. #Luisa ha preso una sgridata da sè / tutta da sola. ‘Louise got a scolding all by herself.’ b. La porta si è chiusa da sè / tutta da sola. ‘The door closed all by itself.’ The specificity of these nominals is to describe particularized delimited occurrences of events. The study of this function helps one to put into a coherent perspective puzzling facts concerning the internal argument of the

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nominalized predicate. Nominalizations ending in -ata denote bounded event predicates and the aspectual impact of an argument of the nominalized verb that could delimit the event is necessarily neutralized. With the light verb fare, the internal arguments of the root, if any, either is left unexpressed, or is expressed as a restriction on the event noun. When the light verb is dare, the theme is realized by a PP and the construction resists a holistic reading. This option is not open to nominalizations that only have incremental themes. When the light verb is prendere, the theme of the nominalization is also the initiator of the event described by the complex predicate. Finally, the existence of true cases of changes in the argument structure as a costly, albeit rare, rescue strategy has been questioned. Two potential examples were discussed and shown to offer inconclusive evidence: ammazzata appears to shun light verb constructions, and ospitata is more likely a denominal form.

References Acquaviva, Paolo. 2005. I significati delle nominalizzazioni in -ATA e i loro correlati morfologici. In Maria Grossmann and Anna M. Thornton (eds.), 37 congresso della Società di linguistica italiana: La formazione delle parole, 7–29. Roma: Bulzoni. Alexiadou, Artemis, Liliane Haegeman and Melita Stavrou. 2007. Noun phrase in the generative perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Aliquot-Suengas, Sophie and Yves Macchi. 2003. Du même et de l’autre. Analyse contrastive de trois formes historiquement apparentées: les formes suffixales françaises -ade/-ée et la forme suffixale espagnole -ada. In Christian Lagarde (ed.), La linguistique hispanique dans tous ses états. Actes du Xe colloque de linguistique hispanique, Perpignan 14, 15 et 16 mars 2002, 141–156. Perpignan: CRILAUP. Bach, Emmon. 1981. On time, tense and aspect: An essay in English metaphysics. In Peter Cole (ed.), Radical Pragmatics, 63–81. New York: Academic Press. Bordelois, Ivonne. 1993. Afijación y estructura temática: -Da en español. In Soledad Varela (ed.), La formación de palabras, 162–179. Madrid: Cátedra. Cornilescu, Alexandra. 2001. Romanian nominalizations: Case and aspectual structure. Journal of Linguistics 36 (3). 467–501. Donazzan, Marta and Lucia M. Tovena. 2016. Dispositions and event nouns: Decomposing the agentivity constraint in a light verb construction. In Fabienne Martin, Marcel Pitteroff and Tillmann Pross (Eds.), Morphological, syntactic and semantic aspects of dispositions, 65– 84. Stuttgart: University of Stuttgart. Dowty, David R. 1979. Word meaning and Montague grammar. Dordrecht: Reidel. Dowty, David R. 1991. Thematic proto-roles and argument selection. Language 67. 547–619. Fagan, Sarah M. 1992. The syntax and semantics of middle constructions: A study with special reference to German. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Folli, Raffaella and Heidi Harley. 2013. The syntax of argument structure: Evidence from Italian complex predicates. Journal of Linguistics 49(1). 93–125. Gaeta, Livio. 2000. On the interaction between morphology and semantics: The Italian suffix -ata. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 47(1-4). 205–229. Gaeta, Livio. 2002. Quando i verbi compaiono come nomi. Un saggio di morfologia naturale. Milano: Franco Angeli. Grimshaw, Jane. 1990. Argument structure. Cambridge, MA: Massachussets Institute of Technology Press. Grimshaw, Jane and Armin Mester. 1988. Light verbs and θ-marking. Linguistic Inquiry 19(2). 205–232. Harley, Heidi and Rolf Noyer. 2000. Formal versus encyclopedic properties of vocabulary: Evidence from nominalizations. In Bert Peeters (ed.), The Lexicon-Encyclopedia interface, 349–374. Amsterdam: Elsevier Press. Ippolito, Michela M. 1999. On the past participle morphology in Italian. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 33. 111–137. Jackendoff, Ray. 1974. A deep structure projection rule. Linguistic Inquiry 5(4). 481–505. Jespersen, Otto. 1954. A modern English grammar. New York: Barnes and Noble. Kearns, Kate. 2007. Telic senses of deadjectival verbs. Lingua 117. 26–66. Keyser, Samuel J. and Ted Roeper. 1984. On the middle and ergative constructions in English. Linguistic Inquiry 15(3). 381–416. Kiparsky, Paul. 1998. Partitive case and aspect. In Miriam Butt and Wilhelm Geuder (eds.), The projection of arguments, 265–307. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Krifka, Manfred. 1987. Nominal reference and temporal constitution: Towards a semantics of quantity. In Jeroen Groenendijk, Martin Stokhof and Frank Veltman (eds.), Proceedings of the Sixth Amsterdam Colloquium, 153–173. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam. Krifka, Manfred. 1989. Nominal reference, temporal constitution and quantification in event semantics. In Renate Bartsch, Johan van Benthem and Peter van Emde Boas (eds.), Semantics and contextual expression, 75–115. Dordrecht: Foris Publications. Krifka, Manfred. 1992. Thematic relations as links between nominal reference and temporalconstitution. In Ivan A. Sag and Anna Szabolcsi (eds.), Lexical matters, 29–53. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Krifka, Manfred. 1998. The origins of telicity. In Susan Rothstein (ed.), Events and grammar, 197–235. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Lundquist, Björn. 2011. Restrictions on reflexive and anti-causative readings in nominalizations and participles. In Tania Strahan (ed.), Nordlyd 37: Relating to Reflexives, 167–210. Tromso: University of Tromso. Ramchand, Gillan C. 1997. Aspect and predication. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Salvi, Guido. 1988. La frase semplice. In Lorenzo Renzi (ed.), Grande grammatica italiana di consultazione, Volume 1, 29–113. Bologna: il Mulino. Samek-Lodovici, Vieri. 2003. The internal structure of arguments and its role in complex predicate formation. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21(4). 835–881. Scher, Ana P. 2004. As construções com o verbo leve dar e nominalizações em -ada no Portugués do Brasil [The constructions with light verb dar and the nominalizations in -ada in Brazilian Portuguese]. Campinas: University Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem. Dissertation. Tenny, Carol. 1994. Aspectual roles and the syntax-semantics interface. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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Tovena, Lucia M. 2014. Aspect and -ata event nouns in Italian. Paper presented at ConSole XXII, Lisbon 7-8 January. Tovena, Lucia M. and Marta Donazzan. 2015. Event structure in nominalizations: More on the nomen vicis interpretation. Paper presented at ‘6th Workshop on nominalizations JeNom6’,Verona June 30-July 1. Verkuyl, Henk J. 1972. On the compositional nature of the aspect. Dordrecht: Reidel. Verkuyl, Henk J. 1992. A theory of aspectuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vieira, Ilda M. T. 2009. As nominalizações deverbais em -da no português europeu [Deverbal nominalizations in -ada in European Portuguese]. Porto: Centro de Linguística da Universidade do Porto. MA thesis.

Editors Maria Bloch-Trojnar, Assistant Professor, PhD, Dr.Litt., Chair of the Department of Celtic Studies, the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. Her major research interests include morphology and its interfaces with other grammatical components, in particular deverbal nominalizations, the inflection-derivation distinction, lexicology, and English, Celtic and Slavic languages. She is the author of Polyfunctionality in morphology – A study of verbal nouns in Modern Irish (2006, Wydawnictwo KUL) and The mechanics of transposition: A study of action nominalisations in English, Irish and Polish (2013, Wydawnictwo KUL). She is also the editor of Perspectives on Celtic languages (2009, Wydawnictwo KUL) and co-editor of Modules and interfaces (2012, Wydawnictwo KUL), Concepts and structures – Studies in semantics and morphology (2015, Wydawnictwo KUL) and New trails and beaten paths in Celtic studies (2016, Wydawnictwo KUL). She has had articles published in various journals including Éigse: A Journal of Irish Studies, Journal of Celtic Linguistics, Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics, and Linguistics Beyond and Within. She is also the author of articles in various miscellanies (published by Edinburgh University Press, Springer, Peter Lang, Honoré Champion and others). Anna Malicka-Kleparska, Associate Professor, PhD, Dr.Litt., Chair of the Contrastive EnglishPolish Studies Department, the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. Her major interests include morphosyntax, morphology and their interfaces with other grammatical components, diachronic studies, English, and Slavic (including Old Church Slavonic). She is the author of The conditional lexicon in derivational morphology: A study of double motivation (1985, Redakcja Wydawnictw KUL), Rules and lexicalisations: Selected English nominals (1988, Redakcja Wydawnictw KUL) and Middles in English and Polish (2017, Wydawnictwo KUL). She has co-edited Language encounters (2009, Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL), Ambiguity: Multifaceted structures in syntax, morphology and phonology (2013, Wydawnictwo KUL), and Concepts and structures – Studies in semantics and morphology (2015, Wydawnictwo KUL). Her research papers in the area of morphology and morphosyntax, and verbal valency in particular, have appeared in Studies in Polish Linguistics, Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics, and Linguistics Beyond and Within and have been published by, amongst others, John Benjamins Publishing Co. and Peter Lang.

List of contributors Odelia Ahdout, Doctoral Researcher at Humboldt University of Berlin, MA in Linguistics, BA in Psychology and Linguistics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her major research interests are the interface between morphology, syntax and lexical semantics, focusing on the behaviour of verbal and nominal forms in Hebrew. Her MA thesis discusses the class of psychological nominalizations in Hebrew, and the role of Semitic verbal templates in determining the properties of the corresponding deverbal nominalizations. Artemis Alexiadou, Professor Dr.Dr.h.c., Professor of English Linguistics, Humboldt University of Berlin, and Vice-Director of the Leibniz Centre General Linguistics (ZAS). Her research interests include syntactic theory and the interfaces of syntax with morphology and interpretation. She is the author of Functional structure in nominals (2001, John Benjamins), and Multiple determiners and the structure of DPs (2014, John Benjamins), and the co-author of Noun Phrase in the generative perspective (2007, Mouton de Gruyter), and External arguments in transitivity alternations (2015, Oxford University Press). She has published in various journals including Linguistic Inquiry, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, and Journal of Linguistics, as well as in peer-reviewed edited volumes and conference proceedings. Maria Bloch-Trojnar, Assistant Professor, PhD, Dr.Litt., Chair of the Department of Celtic Studies, the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. Her major research interests include morphology and its interfaces with other grammatical components, in particular deverbal nominalizations, the inflection-derivation distinction, lexicology, and English, Celtic and Slavic languages. She is the author of Polyfunctionality in morphology – A study of verbal nouns in Modern Irish (2006, Wydawnictwo KUL) and The mechanics of transposition: A study of action nominalisations in English, Irish and Polish (2013, Wydawnictwo KUL). She is also the editor of Perspectives on Celtic languages (2009, Wydawnictwo KUL) and co-editor of Modules and interfaces (2012, Wydawnictwo KUL), Concepts and structures – Studies in semantics and morphology (2015, Wydawnictwo KUL) and New trails and beaten paths in Celtic studies (2016, Wydawnictwo KUL). She has had articles published in various journals including Éigse: A Journal of Irish Studies, Journal of Celtic Linguistics, Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics, and Linguistics Beyond and Within. She is also the author of articles in various miscellanies (published by Edinburgh University Press, Springer, Peter Lang, Honoré Champion and others). Ana Maria Brito, PhD in Linguistics in 1988, full Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto, Portugal; responsible for the MA in Linguistics and the PhD programs in Language Sciences since 2007 in her institution. She is the director of Linguística. Revista de Estudos Linguísticos da Universidade do Porto. Her main areas of research are the syntaxsemantics and syntax-morphology interfaces and variation in syntax; her main topics of study, distributed in more than 70 papers and chapters of books, are the syntax of the DP, possessives, wh- interrogatives, relative clauses, comparatives, consecutives, deverbal nominalizations, the nominal infinitive, and dative constructions. She is one of the authors of Gramática da Língua Portuguesa (2003, Caminho) and of Gramática do Português (2013, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian); she co-authored (with Ruth Lopes) the chapter on the DP in The Hand-

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book of Portuguese Linguistics (2016, Wiley-Blackwell). She has recently become interested in the morphosyntax of sign languages and Portuguese Sign Language, LGP, in particular. Bożena Cetnarowska, Assistant Professor, PhD, Dr.Litt., Chair of the Department of Contrastive Studies, University of Silesia in Katowice (Poland). Her research interests include morphosyntax, morphology and lexicology in English and in Slavic languages, as well as contrastive English-Polish studies. Her publications focus on the syntax of noun phrases, deverbal nominalizations, relational and possessive adjectives, participles, the inflection-derivation border, the syntax-phonology interface, conversion, compounds and phrasal lexemes. She is the author of The syntax, semantics and derivation of bare nominalisations in English (1993, Wydawnictwo UŚ) and Passive nominals in English and Polish: An optimality-theoretic analysis (2005, Wydawnictwo UŚ). She is the co-editor of Syntax in Cognitive Grammar (2011, WSL), Image, imagery, imagination in contemporary English studies (2013, Wydawnictwo AJD) and Various dimensions of contrastive studies (2016, Wydawnictwo UŚ). She has written over seventy papers (some in collaboration with other linguists), which have appeared in journals such as Yearbook of Morphology, Zeitschrift für Slavistik, Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics, Lingua Posnaniensis, Linguistica Silesiana, and Studies in Polish Linguistics or were published in various miscellanies (published by, among others, Mouton de Gruyter, John Benjamins, Cascadilla Press, and Peter Lang). Antonio Fábregas is full Professor of Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Tromsø – Norway’s Arctic University. His research concentrates on the morphosyntactic structure of words and phrases, and particularly on how the syntactic principles and operations that build phrases and sentences are also used to construct complex words. He has also worked on aspectual structure, argument structure, directionals and negation. He is the author of three monographs, the editor of several published works – thematic issues and handbooks – and has published many articles in journals such as The Linguistic Review, Linguistic Analysis, Revue Romance, Linguistics and Probus. Since 2012 he has been chief editor of Borealis: An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics, and since 2016 he has been associate editor of the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Morphology. Lars Hellan, Professor of Linguistics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) since 1987. His interests include formal syntax and semantics, applied to his native language, Norwegian, but also to African languages. His PhD work relates to his paper in the present volume. He has lately been involved in work on valency from a typological perspective. He is the author of Integrated theory of Noun Phrases (PhD diss, 1981, UTrondheim/UMass), Toward an integrated theory of comparatives (1981, Gunther Narr), Anaphora in Norwegian and the theory of grammar (1988, Foris), and Identifying verb constructions cross-linguistically (2010, U Ghana, with M. E. Dakubu) and is co-editor of Valency in European languages (2017, John Benjamins). In addition to descriptive/theoretical work he is also engaged in resource creation, as a coordinator or joint coordinator of the following projects: Central Features of Scandinavian Syntax, The Trondheim Linguistic Lexicon (TROLL), Computational Lexicography, Typology, and Adult Literacy (with U Ghana), NorSource (a large scale computational resource grammar of Norwegian), Norwegian Grammar Sparrer and MultiVal.

List of contributors | 333

Gioia Insacco was awarded a PhD in synchronic, diachronic and applied linguistics by Roma Tre University for a thesis on argument realizations and semantic shifts in a series of nominalizations – characterized by the suffixes -zione, -ata, and -mento – selected from the La Repubblica corpus. Her major research interests include lexicology and its interfaces with syntax and semantics. She is the author and co-author of two articles which will appear in Studi e Saggi Linguistici and Annales Universitatis Paedagogicae Cracoviensis. Lior Laks, PhD, Senior Lecturer in the department of English Literature and Linguistics, Bar-Ilan University. His main research field is morphology and its interfaces with other components of grammar, phonology, the lexicon and syntax. He examines word formation processes relating to different types of criteria that play a role in the selection of morphological forms, word formation productivity, doublet formation and the absence of possible words that conceptually could be formed. His research also focuses on diglossia in Arabic and the grammatical differences between Modern Standard Arabic and Colloquial Arabic (Jordanian and Palestinian) – an issue of the greatest importance in the system of education and in teaching Arabic. He has published papers in various journals, such as Morphology, Word Structure, Lingua and Journal of Arabic Linguistics. Rafael Marín, (PhD in Linguistics, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2001) is Linguistics Researcher at the laboratory STL (UMR 8163), CNRS/Université de Lille 3. His work focuses on lexical aspect and related phenomena. He has mainly worked on non-verbal predication (adjectives and participles, copular constructions), psychological predicates, and derivational morphology (nominalizations, deverbal adjectives). He is the editor of several volumes and has published many articles in journals such as Natural Language and Linguistics Theory, Journal of Linguistics, The Linguistic Review, Lingua and Linguistics. Since 2016, he has been the Director of the Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation. Chiara Melloni, Assistant Professor, PhD, University of Verona. Her research interests cover the domains of morphosyntax and lexical-semantics, and are specifically focused on the formal and interpretive properties of the morphologically complex lexicon. She has mainly explored word formation phenomena such as deverbal nominalizations, parasynthesis, root compounding and full reduplication, approaching them from a theoretical and comparative perspective (besides Romance, Germanic and Slavic, she has worked on Mandarin Chinese and Bantu languages). Other research subjects, mostly concerning the lexicon/syntax interface, include cognate object constructions and the modelling of polysemy in Generative Lexicon theory. She has recently developed psycholinguistic interests focusing on the role of metalinguistic skills and morphological awareness in typical and atypical language acquisition. She is the author of Event and result nominals: A morpho-semantic approach (2011, Peter Lang), and the co-editor of Words don’t come easy, a monographic issue of Lingue e Linguaggio (2009). She has published articles in several journals, including Italian Journal of Linguistics, Journal of Cognitive Science, Journal of Linguistics, Lingue e Linguaggio and Studies in Language. She has written book chapters and articles in miscellanies published by De Gruyter, John Benjamins and Peter Lang.

334 | List of contributors

Elena Soare, Assistant Professor in Sciences du Langage at Université de Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint Denis, France. She completed her PhD at Université de Paris 7 with a study on the Romanian supine. Her major interests include the morphosyntax of Romance languages, non-finite domains, nominalizations, participles, infinitives, supines and gerunds. She completed her habilitation thesis with a study of non-finite domains across languages. She is an editor of Nominalizations, a special issue of Recherches Linguistiques de Vincennes (2010). She has published articles in various journals (Journal of Linguistics, Natural Language Semantics, Lingua, Le Français Moderne, and MITWPL) and volumes (John Benjamins, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, CSLI Publications). She is also an editor of the collection Sciences du Langage at Presses Universitaires de Vincennes. Lucia M. Tovena, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Paris VII, France, specialises in formal semantics. Her areas of research include negation, forms of individuation in the nominal and verbal domain, and pluractionality. In particular, she has worked on epistemic determiners, polarity-sensitive and free-choice items, negation and negative concord, scalarity, distributivity, aspect, event-internal pluractionality and evaluative morphology, event nouns, event delimitation and the notion of nomen vicis. She is the author of The fine structure of polarity sensitivity (1998, Garland Publishing). She leads the ELICO project, which has produced the ELICO Corpus of annotated occurrences of French determiners (http://elico.linguist. univ-paris-diderot.fr/index.php), as well as a number of publications on determiners, including the edited volume French determiners in and across time (2011, College Publications). She has had articles published in various journals, such as Linguistics and Philosophy and Journal of Semantics, and in proceedings including the Amsterdam Colloquium, SALT and Sinn und Bedeutung.

Index

Adjectives – group 19, 131–53 – relational 20, 131–35, 138, 141, 142, 204, 206, 214, 225 – thematic 20, 133–39, 152 Adjunct 14, 15, 51, 125, 133, 134, 142, 149, 243, 288, 293, 309 Adverbial 6, 9, 16, 57, 62, 64, 92, 115, 117, 125, 136, 275, 293, 308 Agent Exclusivity 17, 34, 36, 38, 41, 45, 50 Argument – agent 16, 17, 22–24, 32–35, 37, 38, 42, 46, 51, 72, 110, 143, 183, 184, 195, 202, 203, 206–14, 218–25, 257, 259, 260, 262, 278, 316, 317, 323, 324 – experiencer 11, 31, 253, 255, 256, 258 – external 10–17, 23, 32–34, 38, 44–48, 51, 57, 58, 61, 62, 64, 87, 90, 142, 143, 145, 146, 149, 238, 267, 273, 278, 281, 303, 304, 306, 311, 313, 317, 321, 324 – internal 3, 8, 15, 18, 23, 48, 53–79, 111– 15, 117, 123, 136, 138, 140, 145, 147, 149, 150, 152, 153, 238, 289–91, 293, 301–4, 309–13, 315, 318, 320, 324, 325 – non-experiencer 17, 33, 37–41, 257 – structure 5, 10–23, 33, 39, 41–46, 48– 50, 55, 56, 75, 83, 109–11, 113, 115, 116, 123, 127, 136, 137, 149, 182, 184, 186–89, 191, 192, 194–97, 201, 202, 209, 220, 224, 225, 230, 237, 240, 242, 244, 254, 262, 281, 301–3, 309, 312, 313, 321, 322, 325 Aspect 1–9, 11, 15 – imperfective 2, 91, 151 – perfective 2, 9, 305, 308 – preservation 1, 15 Aspect Preservation Hypothesis 15, 24, 157, 253, 260, 272 Aspectual primitives 20, 157, 158, 174, 176, 177

Atelic/atelicity 2, 6, 9, 13, 19, 25, 65, 84, 86, 91, 99, 111, 117, 123, 125, 127, 170, 177, 275, 294, 305, 310–12, 318, 322

BECOME (operator) 4, 121, 258, 261, 280, 282 Bounded/boundedness 2, 8, 18, 19, 20, 84, 88, 89, 91, 92, 104, 117, 118, 123, 125, 127, 141, 157, 170, 174, 177, 292, 302, 307, 308, 322, 325

Case – adnominal genitive 142, 143 – dative 10 – genitive 14, 18, 63, 70, 71, 75–78, 87, 127, 138, 142, 287 – structural 290, 291 Causation 256, 258, 260 CAUSE (operator) 4, 121, 258, 261, 280 Compounding 1, 15, 54, 58, 72, 73, 240, 244 Compounds 16, 18, 23, 53–79, 229, 230, 240–44 – analytic 18 – deverbal (DC) 53–79, 240 – synthetic 5, 15–18, 51, 63, 70, 79

Davidsonian state 165, 173, 176 Derivation 17, 19, 21, 48, 50, 68, 70, 100, 114, 116, 123, 127, 182–85, 187, 194– 97, 231, 237, 264, 307 Distributed Morphology 3, 83, 110, 124, 125, 127, 141, 183, 195

Event – complex 133, 147, 189, 254, 256–58, 261, 280, 314

336 | Index

– episodic 24, 168, 285, 295 – habitual 24, 285 Event structure 2–4, 10, 12, 13, 33, 39, 44, 45, 51, 55, 57, 109, 112, 117, 119, 121, 122, 127, 136, 137, 201, 238, 254–58, 261, 264, 272, 279–82, 303, 313, 314, 316, 318, 320, 321

Generic object 293 Gerund 5, 13, 14, 85, 86, 137, 138 Grammatical function 33, 186 Greek 1, 16–18, 41, 43, 45, 46, 49, 50, 53– 79, 132, 137, 253, 282, 321

Hebrew 1, 16, 23, 31–51, 229–44, 262, 282, 291

– deverbal 4, 9, 11, 15–20, 24, 53, 57, 83, 101, 109–27, 157, 264, 301, 302, 321, 324 – dispositional 55, 59, 75, 78, 165, 167, 173, 175 – event-denoting 133, 263, 265, 279 – gender 71, 85, 124, 181, 182, 184, 185, 193, 197 – habitual 24, 64, 93, 161, 165, 168, 175, 285, 295, 297 – -ing 13, 21, 22, 51, 65, 66, 86, 197 – instrument 230, 233, 237–39 – mass 7, 19, 59, 84, 85, 90, 92, 98, 125, 152, 157, 170, 177 – plural marking 18, 94, 100, 104, 152, 153 – psych(ological) 17, 24, 31–51, 253–82 – referential 20, 56, 83, 101, 136 – result (RN) 5, 11–13, 17, 31–33, 38, 44, 45, 48, 56, 58, 61, 83, 133, 134, 136, 137, 139, 143, 170, 177, 201, 305

Italian 1, 23, 24, 76, 84, 201, 253–82, 301–25

Lexicon 3, 4, 103, 104, 182, 183, 197, 236, 237, 257, 309, 312

Middle – dispositional 10 – form 17, 39–43, 46, 48, 50, 320, 323 – voice 48

Nomen vicis 306 (Non-)dynamicity 165, 174, 177, 256, 266, 267, 278, 282 (Non-)specific object 24, 286, 295, 296 Norwegian 1, 21, 135, 181–98 Nouns/nominals/nominalizations – agent (AN) 23, 72, 229, 230, 232–44 – argument supporting (ASN) 5, 16–20, 24, 53–79, 83–104 – bare nominals (BN) 14, 21, 22, 24, 181– 98, 285–91, 295, 298 – complex event (CEN) 11–13, 20, 56–58, 63, 73, 83, 133, 136–42, 153, 262

Participle – past 19, 66, 109, 123–125, 127, 207, 264, 306, 307 – present 66, 159 Phrase – AspP 13, 24, 62, 74, 102, 123, 125, 127, 286, 292, 293, 296 – VoiceP 13, 17, 61–65, 74, 78, 126 Pluractionality 24, 286, 292 Polish 1, 7, 10, 16, 18–20, 72, 83–104, 131–53 Portuguese 1, 84 – Brazilian 119, 120, 124 – European 19, 109–27 Possessive 58 – adjective 142–45, 153, 203, 206, 215, 225 – pronoun 143–45, 152

Romanian 1, 5, 17, 24, 41, 43, 45, 46, 49, 50, 85, 131, 253, 282, 285–98

Semantic features 2, 109, 121

Index | 337

Semitic 1, 33, 35, 196 Situation type 4–6, 11, 19, 92, 99, 100, 104, 189–93, 196 Spanish 1, 19–21, 86, 92, 110–14, 116, 119, 123, 124, 127, 131, 134, 139, 157–77, 253, 256, 260, 263, 264, 266 Stativity 24, 37, 164, 173, 253, 255, 256, 263, 265, 271, 272 Subevent 24, 98, 112, 121, 122, 254, 256, 258, 261, 273, 281 Substantiva (de-)verbalia 147, 149 Suffix – -ata 22, 24, 25, 124, 201, 215, 301–25 – -da 19, 109–27 – -ing 13, 66, 181, 184, 194 – -mento 22, 109, 119–22, 201, 215, 264 – -ncia 20, 21, 157–77 – -nie/-cie 18, 83–104, 148, 149, 153 – transpositional 264 – -ung 86, 157, 158 – -zione 22, 201, 215, 264, 280 Supine 5, 85, 285–98

Telic/telicity 2–4, 6–9, 13, 18–20, 55, 84, 86, 91–93, 97, 100, 102, 104, 111, 117, 118, 123, 125, 127, 141, 175, 256, 293, 294, 301, 304, 314, 322 Template 17, 33, 35, 258, 261, 280, 281 – nominal 35, 36, 49 – verbal 35–51 Thematic relations 23, 237, 238, 240, 242, 244 Thematic role 8, 22, 33, 133, 188, 237, 238, 241, 242, 275, 315, 321

Transparency – morphological 23, 229, 230, 235–37, 244 – semantic 23, 229, 230, 237–44 Transposition 4, 15 Type inheritance 21, 182–85, 192, 195, 196 Typed Feature Structures 182

Unbounded/unboundedness 19, 84, 91, 93, 117, 123, 125, 127, 170, 177, 292

Valency 1, 3, 5, 10, 11, 15, 18–22, 47, 184– 86, 322 Verbs – light 9, 19, 24, 118–20, 124, 125, 198, 286, 301–25 – Object-Experiencer (OE) 17, 23, 33–51, 253–82 – psych 17, 23, 31, 34, 37–39, 41, 47, 112, 142, 253–73 – Subject-Experiencer (SE) 17, 39–41, 45– 50, 255, 256, 270, 271 – Target/Subject Matter (T/SM) 17, 37–39 – unaccusative 7, 22, 47, 110, 114, 127, 202, 213, 225, 304, 315, 316, 324 – unergative 22, 114–16, 127, 202, 218, 225

Word formation 4, 23, 61, 230, 236, 237, 244