Home A syntactic analysis of <no + event deverbal nominalization> in Spanish
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

A syntactic analysis of <no + event deverbal nominalization> in Spanish

  • Laura Ros García EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: April 17, 2024
Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Abstract

This paper addresses how the negative particle no interacts with Spanish deverbal nominalizations that denote an event. Firstly, it is pointed out that, when preceded by negation, these nominalizations only give rise to the inhibited eventuality reading, contrary to what happens with verbs, which give rise to both the inhibited eventuality reading and the negated eventuality reading. Secondly, it is shown that, when these nominalizations co-occur with no, their lexical aspect is modified, as they share properties with events, but with states as well. Thirdly, a proposal of analysis for <no + event deverbal nominalization> is presented. We claim that both the interpretation and lexical aspect of this construction follow from the interaction of negation with the syntactic configuration of the nominalization and, specifically, with the projection responsible for the triggering of the eventuality.


Corresponding author: Laura Ros García, Facultad de Filología, Departamento de Lengua Española y Teoría de la Literatura, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain, E-mail:

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers, as well as Raquel González Rodríguez, for their valuable comments and precise observations, which have helped to improve this work. This research has been funded by a Formación de Profesorado Universitario grant (FPU19/04310) from the Spanish Ministry of Innovation and Science and the Spanish Ministry of Universities.

References

Abbot, Barbara. 2010. Reference (Oxford surveys in semantics and pragmatics). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Abney, Steven Paul. 1987. The English noun phrase in this sentential aspect. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Abusch, Dorit. 1994. The scope of indefinites. Natural Language Semantics 2. 83–135. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01250400.Search in Google Scholar

Alexiadou, Artemis. 2001. Functional structure in nominals: Nominalization and ergativity (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 42). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/la.42Search in Google Scholar

Ariel, Mira. 1988. Referring and accessibility. Journal of Linguistics 24. 65–87. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226700011567.Search in Google Scholar

Ariel, Mira. 1990. Accessing noun-phrase antecedents (Croom Helm Linguistics Series). London & New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Arkadiev, Peter. 2015. Negative events: Evidence from Lithuanian. In Peter Arkadiev, Ivan Kapitonov, Yury Lander, Ekaterina Rakhilina & Sergei Tatevosov (eds.), Donum semanticum: Opera linguistica et logica in honorem Barbarae Partee a discimulis amicisque Rossicis oblata, 7–20. Moscow: LRC Publishing.Search in Google Scholar

Arkadiev, Peter. 2016. Long-distance genitive of negation in Lithuanian. In Axel Holvoet & Nicole Nau (eds.), Argument realization in Baltic (Valency, Argument Realization and Grammatical Relations in Baltic 3), 36–82. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/vargreb.3.01arkSearch in Google Scholar

Asher, Nicholas. 1993. Reference to abstract objects in discourse (Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy 50). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publisher.10.1007/978-94-011-1715-9Search in Google Scholar

Asher, Nicholas. 2000. Events, facts, propositions, and evolutive anaphora. In James Higginbotham, Fabio Pianesi & Achille C. Varzi (eds.), Speaking of events, 123–150. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780195128079.003.0006Search in Google Scholar

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.Search in Google Scholar

Baker, Carl Lee. 1966. Definiteness and indefiniteness in English. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois MA thesis.Search in Google Scholar

Bašić, Monika. 2010. On the morphological make-up of nominalizations in Serbian. In Artemis Alexiadou & Monika Rathert (eds.), The syntax of nominalizations across languages and frameworks (Interface Explorations 23), 39–66. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110245875.39Search in Google Scholar

Bennett, Michael & Barbara H. Partee. 1972. Toward the logic of tense and aspect in English. In Barbara H. Partee (comp.). 2004. Compositionality in formal semantics. Selected papers by Barbara H. Partee, 59–109. Londres: Wiley Blackwell.10.1002/9780470751305.ch4Search in Google Scholar

Bertinetto, Pier Marco. 1986. Tempo, aspetto e azione nel verbo italiano. Il sistema dell’indicativo. Florence: Accademia della Crusca.Search in Google Scholar

Birner, Betty J. & Gregory Ward. 1998. Information status and noncanonical word order (Studies in Language Companion Series 40). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/slcs.40Search in Google Scholar

Borer, Hagit. 2005a. Structuring sense. Volume I: In name only. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199263905.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Borer, Hagit. 2005b. Structuring sense. Volume II: The normal course of events. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199263929.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Borer, Hagit. 2013. Structuring sense. Volume III: Taking form. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199263936.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Champollion, Lucas. 2015. The interaction of compositional semantics and event semantics. Linguistics & Philosophy 38. 31–66. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-014-9162-8.Search in Google Scholar

Chierchia, Gennaro. 2001. A puzzle about indefinites. In Carlo Cecchetto, Gennaro Chierchia & Maria Teresa Guasti (eds.), Semantic interfaces: Reference, anaphora and aspect, 51–89. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Search in Google Scholar

Coll-Florit, Marta, Irene Castellón Masalles & Salvador Climent Roca. 2008. Sobre la natura dels estats: Una revisió basada en corpus. Sintagma: Revista de Linguistica 20. 21–36.Search in Google Scholar

Cooper, Robin. 1998. Austinian propositions, Davidsonian events and perception complements. In Jonathan Ginzburg, Zurab Khasidashvili, Carl Vogel, Jean-Jaques Levy & Enric Vallduví (eds.), The Tbilisi symposium on language, logic and computation: Selected papers, 19–34. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Search in Google Scholar

De Swart, Henriëtte. 1993. Adverbs of quantification: A generalized quantified approach. New York: Garland Press.Search in Google Scholar

De Swart, Henriëtte. 1996. Meaning and use of not…until…. Journal of Semantics 13(3). 221–263. https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/13.3.221.Search in Google Scholar

De Swart, Henriëtte & Arie Molendijk. 1999. Negation and the temporal structure of narrative discourse. Journal of Semantics 16(1). 1–42. https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/16.1.1.Search in Google Scholar

De Miguel, Elena. 1999. El aspecto léxico. In Ignacio Bosque & Violeta Demonte (dirs.), Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, vol. 2, 2977–3060. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.Search in Google Scholar

Diesing, Molly. 1992. Indefinites. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar

Dowty, David. R. 1979. Word meaning and Montague grammar: The semantics of verbs and times in generative semantics and in Montague’s PTQ. Dordrecht: Reidel.10.1007/978-94-009-9473-7Search in Google Scholar

Enç, Mürvet. 1991. The semantics of specificity. Linguistic Inquiry 22. 1–55.Search in Google Scholar

Fábregas, Antonio. 2016. Las nominalizaciones. Madrid: Visor Libros.Search in Google Scholar

Fábregas, Antonio & Rafael Marín. 2012. The role of Aktionsart in deverbal nouns: State nominalizations across languages. Journal of Linguistics 48(1). 35–70. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022226711000351.Search in Google Scholar

Fábregas, Antonio, Rafael Marín & Louise McNally. 2012. From psych verbs to nouns. In Violeta Demonte & Louise McNally (eds.), Telicity, change and state: A cross-categorial views of event structure, 162–184. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199693498.003.0007Search in Google Scholar

Fábregas, Antonio & Raquel González Rodríguez. 2020. On inhibited eventualities. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 38(3). 729–773. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-019-09461-y.Search in Google Scholar

Farkas, Donka. 1981. Quantifier scope and syntactic islands. In Roberta A. Hendrik, Carrie S. Masek & Mary Francis Miller (eds.), Papers from the Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society 17, 59–66. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.Search in Google Scholar

Felser, Claudia. 1999. Verbal complement clauses: A minimalist study of direct perception constructions (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 25). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/la.25Search in Google Scholar

Fodor, Janet Dean. 1970. The linguistic description of opaque contexts. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Fodor, Janet Dean & Ivan A. Sag. 1982. Referential and quantificational indefinites. Linguistics & Philosophy 5. 355–398. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00351459.Search in Google Scholar

Fradin, Bernard. 2011. Remarks on state denoting nominalizations. Recherches Linguistiques de Vincennes 40. 73–99. https://doi.org/10.4000/rlv.1946.Search in Google Scholar

Godard, Danièle & Jacques Jayez. 1994. Types nominaux et anaphores: Le cas des objets et des événements. Cahiers Chronos 1. 41–58.10.1163/9789004490802_005Search in Google Scholar

Gundel, Jeanette K., Nancy Hedberg & Ron Zacharski. 1993. Cognitive status and the forms of referring expressions in discourse. Language 69. 274–307. https://doi.org/10.2307/416535.Search in Google Scholar

Hale, Kenneth & Samuel Jay Keyser. 1993. On argument structure and the lexical expression of syntactic relations. In Kenneth Hale & Samuel Jay Keyser (eds.), The view from building 20: Essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger, 53–109. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar

Harley, Heidi & Rolf Noyer. 1998. Licensing in the non-lexicalist lexicon: Nominalizations, vocabulary items and the encyclopedia. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 32. 119–137.Search in Google Scholar

Heim, Irene. 1982. The semantics of definite and indefinite NPs. Cambridge, MA: University of Massachusetts at Amherst Dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Higginbotham, James. 1983. The logic of perceptual reports: An extensional alternative to situation semantics. Journal of Philosophy 80(2). 100–127. https://doi.org/10.2307/2026237.Search in Google Scholar

Higginbotham, James. 1994. The semantics and syntax of event reference. Course notes ESSLLI 94. Copenhagen Business School, 8–19 August.Search in Google Scholar

Higginbotham, James. 2000. On events in linguistic semantics. In James Higginbotham, Fabio Pianesi & Achille C. Varzi (eds.), Speaking of events, 49–79. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780195128079.003.0002Search in Google Scholar

Hinzen, Wolfram & Michelle Seehan. 2015. The philosophy of universal grammar. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar

Hoepelman, Jaap & Christian Rohrer. 1980. On the mass-count distinction and the French imparfait and passé simple. In Christian Rohrer (ed.), Time, tense and quantifiers: Proceedings of the Stuttgart Conference on the Logic of Tense and Quantification (Linguistische Arbeiten 83), 85–112. Berlin & New York: Max Niemeyer Verlag.10.1515/9783111346069.85Search in Google Scholar

Horn, Laurence R. 1989. A natural history of negation. Stanford (CA): CSLI Publications.Search in Google Scholar

Ionin, Tania. 2006. This is definitely specific: Specificity and definiteness in article systems. Natural Language Semantics 14. 175–234. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-005-5255-9.Search in Google Scholar

Jaque, Matías. 2014. La expresión de la estatividad en español: Niveles de representación y grados de dinamicidad. Madrid: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Kamp, Hans & Uwe Reyle. 1993. From discourse to logic: Introduction to modeltheoretic semantics of natural language. Dordrecht: Kluwer.10.1007/978-94-017-1616-1Search in Google Scholar

Karttunen, Lauri. 1968. What do referential indeces refer to? Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.Search in Google Scholar

Karttunen, Lauri. 1969. Discourse referents. In Research Group for Quantitative Linguistics (ed.), Proceedings of the 1969 Conference on Computational Linguistics COLING 1969: Preprint 70, 1–38. Sweden: Sang-Säby.10.3115/990403.990487Search in Google Scholar

Klein, Wolfang. 1994. Time in language. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Kratzer, Angelika. 2002. Facts: Particulars or information units? Linguistics & Philosophy 25. 655–670. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020807615085.10.1023/A:1020807615085Search in Google Scholar

Krifka, Manfred. 1989. Nominal reference, temporal constitution and quantification in event semantics. In Renate Bartsch, Johan van Benthem & Peter van Emde Boas (eds.), Semantics and contextual expressions, 75–115. Dordrecht: Kluwer.10.1515/9783110877335-005Search in Google Scholar

Laka, Itziar. 1990. Negation in syntax. On the nature of functional categories and projections. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Lakoff, George. 1965. Irregularity in syntax. New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, Inc.Search in Google Scholar

Leonetti, Manuel. 1999. El artículo. In Violeta Demonte & Ignacio Bosque (dirs.), Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, vol. 1, 101–138. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.Search in Google Scholar

Leonetti, Manuel. 2004. Specificity and object marking: The case of Spanish ‘a’. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 3. 75–114. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/catjl.106.Search in Google Scholar

Levin, Beth & Malka Rappaport Hovav. 1995. Unaccusativity: At the syntax-lexical semantics interface. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar

Löbner, Sebastian. 1985. Definites. Journal of Semantics 4. 279–326. https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/4.4.279.Search in Google Scholar

Maienborn, Claudia. 2001. On the position and interpretation of locative modifiers. Natural Language Semantics 9(2). 191–240. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1012405607146.10.1023/A:1012405607146Search in Google Scholar

Maienborn, Claudia. 2003. Die logische form von kopula-sätzen (Studia Grammatica 56). Berlin: Akademie Verlag.10.1524/9783050082271Search in Google Scholar

Maienborn, Claudia. 2005. On the limits of the Davidsonian approach: The case of copula sentences. Theoretical Linguistics 31(3). 275–316. https://doi.org/10.1515/thli.2005.31.3.275.Search in Google Scholar

Marín, Rafael. 2011. Casi todos los predicados psicológicos son estativos. In Ángeles Carrasco Gutiérrez (ed.), Sobre estados y estatividad, 26–44. München: Lincom Europa.Search in Google Scholar

Marín, Rafael. 2022. Los mejores diagnósticos sobre estados reunidos. Borealis: An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics 11(3). 229–246. https://doi.org/10.7557/1.11.3.6774.Search in Google Scholar

Marín, Rafael & Louise McNally. 2011. Inchoativity, change of state and telicity: Evidence from Spanish reflexive psychological verbs. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 29. 467–502. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-011-9127-3.Search in Google Scholar

Marín, Rafael & Florence Villoing. 2012. Nominalisations: Noveaux aspects. In Rafael Marín & Florence Villoing (eds.), Nominalisations: Noveaux aspects (Lexique 20), 7–19. Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses du Septentrion.Search in Google Scholar

Meinschäfer, Judith. 2003. Nominalizations of French psychological verbs. In Josep Quer, Jan Schroten, Mauro Scoretti, Petra Sleeman & Els Verheugd-Daatzelaar (eds.), Romance languages and linguistic theory 2001: Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’, Amsterdam, 6−8 December 2001 (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 245), 231–246. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.245.14meiSearch in Google Scholar

Meinschäfer, Judith. 2005. Deverbal nouns in Spanish. Lingue e Linguaggio 4. 215–218.Search in Google Scholar

Mendikoetxea, Amaya. 1999. Construcciones inacusativas y pasivas. In Ignacio Bosque & Violeta Demonte (dirs.), Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, vol. 2, 1575–1630. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.Search in Google Scholar

Mittwoch, Anita. 1977. Negative sentences with until. In Woodford A. Beach, Samuel E. Fox & Shulamith Philosoph (eds.), Papers from the Thirteenth Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society, 410–417. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Search in Google Scholar

Mourelatos, Alexander P. D. 1978. Events, processes and states. Linguistics & Philosophy 2. 415–434. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00149015.Search in Google Scholar

Parsons, Terence. 1990. Events in the semantics of English: A study in subatomic semantics. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar

Pesetsky, David. 1987. Wh-in situ. Movement of unselective binding. In Eric J. Reuland & Alice G. B. Ter Meulen (eds.), The representation of (in)definiteness, 98–129. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar

Picallo, M. Carme. 1991. Nominals and nominalizations in Catalan. Probus 3(3). 279–316. https://doi.org/10.1515/prbs.1991.3.3.279.Search in Google Scholar

Przepiórkowski, Adam. 1999. On negative eventualities, negative concord and negative yes/no questions. In Tanya Matthews & Devon Strolovitc (eds.), Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 9, 237–254. Ithaca, NY: CLC Publications.10.3765/salt.v9i0.2828Search in Google Scholar

RAE-ASALE 2009=Real Academia Española & Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española. 2009. Nueva gramática de la lengua española. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.Search in Google Scholar

Ramchand, Gillian Catriona. 2008. Verb meaning and the lexicon: A first phase syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511486319Search in Google Scholar

Ramchand, Gillian Catriona. 2018. Situations and syntactic structures: Rethinking auxiliaries and order in English. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/9780262037754.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Ramchand, Gillian Catriona & Peter Svenonius. 2014. Deriving the functional hierarchy. Language Sciences 46. 152–174. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2014.06.013.Search in Google Scholar

Reinhart, Tanya. 1997. Quantifier scope: How labour is divided between QR and choice functions. Linguistics & Philosophy 20. 335–397. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005349801431.10.1023/A:1005349801431Search in Google Scholar

Russell, Bertrand. 1905. On denoting. Mind 14. 479–493. https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/XIV.4.479.Search in Google Scholar

Ruys, Eddy. 1992. The scope of indefinites. Utrecht: Utrecht University Dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Sánchez López, Cristina. 1999. La negación. In Ignacio Bosque & Violeta Demonte (dirs.), Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, vol. 2, 2561–2634. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.Search in Google Scholar

Sleeman, Petra & Ana Maria Brito. 2010a. Nominalization, event, aspect and argument structure: A syntactic approach. In Maia Duguine, Susana Huidobro & Nerea Madariaga (eds.), Argument structure from a crosslinguistic perspective (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 158), 113–129. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/la.158.07sleSearch in Google Scholar

Sleeman, Petra & Ana Maria Brito. 2010b. Aspect and argument structure of deverbal nominalizations. In Artemis Alexiadou & Monika Rathert (eds.), The syntax of nominalizations across languages and frameworks (Interface Explorations 23), 199–218. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110245875.199Search in Google Scholar

Stockwell, Robert P., Schachter Paul & Barbara H. Partee. 1973. The major syntactic structures of English. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston Inc.Search in Google Scholar

Taylor, Barry. 1977. Tense and continuity. Linguistics & Philosophy 1(2). 199–220. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00351103.Search in Google Scholar

Van Hout, Angeliek & Tomas Roeper. 1998. Events and aspectual structure in derivational morphology. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 32. 175–220. .Search in Google Scholar

Verkuyl, Henk J. 1993. A theory of aspectuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511597848Search in Google Scholar

Von Heusinger, Klaus. 2002. Cross-linguistic implementation of specificity. In Kataryzna M. Jaszczott & Ken Turner (eds.), Meaning through language contrast (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 100), vol. 2, 405–421. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/pbns.100.24heuSearch in Google Scholar

Von Heusinger, Klaus. 2011. Specificity. In Klaus von Heusinger, Claudia Maienborn & Paul Portner (eds.), Semantics: An international handbook of natural language meaning (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft/Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science 33/2), vol. 2, 1025–1058. Berlin & Boston: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110255072.1025Search in Google Scholar

Weiser, Stéphanie. 2008. The negation of action sentences. Are there negative events? In Sylvia Blaho, Camelia Constantinescu & Erik Schoorlemmer (eds.), Proceedings of ConSOLE XV, 357–364. Leiden: Leiden University Centre for Linguistics.Search in Google Scholar

Wiltschko, Martina. 2014. The universal structure of categories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139833899Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2024-04-17
Published in Print: 2024-06-25

© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Downloaded on 3.10.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/tlr-2024-2010/html
Scroll to top button