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Simple event nominalizations

Roots and their interpretation

Abstract

In one popular view, expressed most fully in Borer 2005, word meanings are nothing but unstructured, polysemous ‘blobs’ of content, with no formal properties. It is the syntactic context that shapes their meaning, and only this functional scaffolding delivers the kinds of meanings that the compositional semantics trades in. I call this the ‘Blob Theory’ of root meanings. I am going to argue against the Blob Theory by investigating an overlooked class of nominalizations that show properties unexpected under most classifications (Grimshaw 1990, and following): they exhibit some properties of event nominals (they can be modified by frequent/constant, cf. Borer 2003, Alexiadou 2009) but they nonetheless do not have argument structure. I provide an account of these nominalizations as eventive root nominalizations. I then examine the behaviour of these nominalizations with respect to clausal arguments. I argue that their ability to combine with clausal complements shows that roots have a structured semantics that interacts, as unexpected by Blob Theory, with the compositional semantics.

Abstract

In one popular view, expressed most fully in Borer 2005, word meanings are nothing but unstructured, polysemous ‘blobs’ of content, with no formal properties. It is the syntactic context that shapes their meaning, and only this functional scaffolding delivers the kinds of meanings that the compositional semantics trades in. I call this the ‘Blob Theory’ of root meanings. I am going to argue against the Blob Theory by investigating an overlooked class of nominalizations that show properties unexpected under most classifications (Grimshaw 1990, and following): they exhibit some properties of event nominals (they can be modified by frequent/constant, cf. Borer 2003, Alexiadou 2009) but they nonetheless do not have argument structure. I provide an account of these nominalizations as eventive root nominalizations. I then examine the behaviour of these nominalizations with respect to clausal arguments. I argue that their ability to combine with clausal complements shows that roots have a structured semantics that interacts, as unexpected by Blob Theory, with the compositional semantics.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Cross-linguistic investigations of nominalization patterns vii
  4. Part 1. Verbal structure inside nominalizations
  5. Nominalizations in Ojibwe 3
  6. Nominalizing Inner Aspect 25
  7. Nominalization instead of modification 51
  8. Part 2. The referent of nominalization
  9. Assigning reference in clausal nominalizations 85
  10. Simple event nominalizations 119
  11. Malagasy fact- and claim-type nominals 145
  12. Part The nature of the nominalizer
  13. Derivation by gender in Lithuanian 169
  14. Patterns of nominalization in Blackfoot 189
  15. Index 215
Cross-linguistic Investigations of Nominalization Patterns
This chapter is in the book Cross-linguistic Investigations of Nominalization Patterns
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.210.05mou

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Cross-linguistic investigations of nominalization patterns vii
  4. Part 1. Verbal structure inside nominalizations
  5. Nominalizations in Ojibwe 3
  6. Nominalizing Inner Aspect 25
  7. Nominalization instead of modification 51
  8. Part 2. The referent of nominalization
  9. Assigning reference in clausal nominalizations 85
  10. Simple event nominalizations 119
  11. Malagasy fact- and claim-type nominals 145
  12. Part The nature of the nominalizer
  13. Derivation by gender in Lithuanian 169
  14. Patterns of nominalization in Blackfoot 189
  15. Index 215
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