Taking a Closer Look at Romance VN Compounds
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Reineke Bok-Bennema
Abstract
Romance compounds of the type essuie-glace (“windshield wiper”) have been analyzed in the past as nominalizations of VPs (DiSciullo&Williams,1987, Lieber,1992 a.o.). We take this analysis as our point of departure. Given the actual insights into the architecture of VP it is natural to wonder whether the nominalization involves the whole VP, i.e. vP, or only its internal shell (VP). We present a number of arguments in favor of the former option. We also show that the vP hypothesis allows for a fine-grained analysis that does justice to the complete semantics of the compounds. Within this analysis the element responsible for the nominalization fulfils a role very similar to the complementizer of relatives in the Vergnaud/Kayne approach to the latter. One further issue we address concerns the relation between Romance VN-compounds and English forms such as screensaver. At the end of our paper we evaluate the insights the proposed analysis offers into the relationship between morphology and syntax.
Abstract
Romance compounds of the type essuie-glace (“windshield wiper”) have been analyzed in the past as nominalizations of VPs (DiSciullo&Williams,1987, Lieber,1992 a.o.). We take this analysis as our point of departure. Given the actual insights into the architecture of VP it is natural to wonder whether the nominalization involves the whole VP, i.e. vP, or only its internal shell (VP). We present a number of arguments in favor of the former option. We also show that the vP hypothesis allows for a fine-grained analysis that does justice to the complete semantics of the compounds. Within this analysis the element responsible for the nominalization fulfils a role very similar to the complementizer of relatives in the Vergnaud/Kayne approach to the latter. One further issue we address concerns the relation between Romance VN-compounds and English forms such as screensaver. At the end of our paper we evaluate the insights the proposed analysis offers into the relationship between morphology and syntax.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Introduction ix
- A Polarity-Sensitive Disjunction 1
- Taking a Closer Look at Romance VN Compounds 13
- Beyond Descriptivism 27
- Do Subjects Have a Place in Spanish? 51
- On the Conceptual Role of Number 67
- The Diachronic Development of a French Indefinite Pronoun 83
- A Syntactic Analysis of Italian Deverbal-Nouns 97
- V-N Compounds In Italian 113
- A Reinterpretation of Quirky Subjects and Related Phenomena in Spanish 127
- Cognitive Constraints on Assertion Scope 143
- Avant que - or Avant de -Clauses 155
- Null Directional Prepositions in Romanian and Spanish 169
- A Unified Account for the Additive and the Scalar Uses of Italian Neppure 187
- Default Morphology in Second Language Spanish 201
- Early Object Omission in Child French and English 213
- Agreement Paradigms Across Moods and Tenses 229
- Italian Volerci 247
- Restructuring of Reverse Psychological Predicate 263
- Subject Index 279
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Introduction ix
- A Polarity-Sensitive Disjunction 1
- Taking a Closer Look at Romance VN Compounds 13
- Beyond Descriptivism 27
- Do Subjects Have a Place in Spanish? 51
- On the Conceptual Role of Number 67
- The Diachronic Development of a French Indefinite Pronoun 83
- A Syntactic Analysis of Italian Deverbal-Nouns 97
- V-N Compounds In Italian 113
- A Reinterpretation of Quirky Subjects and Related Phenomena in Spanish 127
- Cognitive Constraints on Assertion Scope 143
- Avant que - or Avant de -Clauses 155
- Null Directional Prepositions in Romanian and Spanish 169
- A Unified Account for the Additive and the Scalar Uses of Italian Neppure 187
- Default Morphology in Second Language Spanish 201
- Early Object Omission in Child French and English 213
- Agreement Paradigms Across Moods and Tenses 229
- Italian Volerci 247
- Restructuring of Reverse Psychological Predicate 263
- Subject Index 279
