Table Of ContentCross-linguistic Investigations of Nominalization Patterns
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Volume 210
Cross-linguistic Investigations of Nominalization Patterns
Edited by Ileana Paul
Cross-linguistic Investigations
of Nominalization Patterns
Edited by
Ileana Paul
University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario
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Table of contents
Cross-linguistic investigations of nominalization patterns vii
Ileana Paul
part 1. Verbal structure inside nominalizations
Nominalizations in Ojibwe 3
Eric Mathieu
Nominalizing Inner Aspect: Evidence from Blackfoot 25
Elizabeth Ritter
Nominalization instead of modification 51
Andrea Wilhelm
part 2. The referent of nominalization
Assigning reference in clausal nominalizations 85
Heather Bliss
Simple event nominalizations: Roots and their interpretation 119
Keir Moulton
Malagasy fact- and claim-type nominals: An exploration 145
Lisa deMena Travis, Jeannot Fils Ranaivoson &
Jean Lewis Botouhely
part 3. The nature of the nominalizer
Derivation by gender in Lithuanian 169
Solveiga Armoskaite
Patterns of nominalization in Blackfoot 189
Martina Wiltschko
Index 215
Cross-linguistic investigations
of nominalization patterns
Ileana Paul
University of Western Ontario
1. Introduction
The goal of this volume is to investigate nominalizations from a cross-linguistic
perspective. One of the reasons nominalizations have so intrigued linguists is that
they call into question the nature of lexical categories. What is a noun? What is
a verb? Are these categories universal? Nominalizations are problematic because
they appear to be mixed in nature: part noun, part something else. Deverbal nomi-
nalizations in particular represent a long-standing puzzle to linguists. How is a
noun, such as destruction in (1b), related to the verb destroy as in (1a)?
(1) a. The enemy destroyed the city.
b. the enemy’s destruction of the city
In both examples, the enemy is understood as the agent of the act of destroying,
and the city is understood as the patient. This semantic parallel suggests that there
is a close connection between a deverbal nominalization and its related verb. There
has been much research on nominalization since Lees (1960) proposed that nomi-
nalizations such as (1b) are derived from a sentential source such as (1a) via a
series of transformations. Since then, researchers have proposed different ways to
capture the semantic relationship between a verb and its nominalization. There are
many overviews of the literature on nominalizations; for two recent summaries
and references I refer the reader to Alexiadou (2010) and Kornfilt and Whitman
(2011). For in-depth investigations of nominalization, see Alexiadou, Haegeman
and Stavrou (2007), Alexiadou and Rathert (2010a, b), Lingua Vol. 121, among
others. Koptjevskaja-Tamm (1993) provides a typological survey.
One of the debates in this literature is whether or not there is a syntactic rela-
tionship between a nominalization and its related verb. In other words, does a
nominalization contain a verb or verb phrase or even a full clause? Or does the
shift from verb to noun take place in some other component of the grammar, for
example within the lexicon? All of the papers in this volume assume that nominal-
izations are syntactic in nature.
viii Ileana Paul
2. Core issues about nominalizations
There are three main issues in the study of nominalizations that are central to the
papers in this volume. The first has to do with determining how much verbal mate-
rial is inside the nominalization. The second looks more closely at how i nternal
structure relates to the meaning of the nominalization. And the third investigates
the nature of the nominalizer itself.
2.1 How much structure?
One key theme that emerges in the literature on deverbal nominalizations is the
nature of the verbal projection that is nominalized. That is, how much verbal
structure is inside a nominalization? How can we tell? As mentioned above, Lees
(1960) argues that the source for nominalization is the sentence. This approach
accounts for the points of resemblance noted for the examples in (1). Starting
with C homsky (1970), however, it has also been noted, that nominalizations do
not behave exactly like verbs. For example, derived nominals have the internal
structure of noun phrases, not verb phrases. Thus, while in (2a) the verb criticize
licenses the VP modifier before he read it, the derived nominal criticism in (2b)
does not.
(2) a. John criticized the book before he read it.
b. *John’s criticism of the book before he read it
Therefore many researchers, beginning with Chomsky (1970), have suggested that
(certain) nominalizations occur at the level of the lexical item. In particular, for
Chomsky, roots are unmarked for category and surface as a noun or verb depend-
ing on where they appear in the syntactic structure. This approach has been
revitalized recently in the Distributed Morphology literature and specifically for
nominalizations by Marantz (1997).
Much of the discussion on this topic draws on data from the realization of
arguments in nominalizations. The presence of arguments is taken as evidence in
favour of syntactic structure. Abney (1987), for example, argues for three different
kinds of nominalization by -ing in English. He claims that -ing can attach either
directly to the verb (John’s singing of the Marseillaise), or to the VP (John’s singing
the Marseillaise) or to IP (John singing the Marseillaise). The different structural
attachment heights indicate how much verbal structure is present. For example,
in the first case, there is simply a verb, with no accusative case. Hence the internal
argument is realized with of. Many other analyses of nominalizations have fol-
lowed this line of reasoning (see for example Borsley & Kornfilt 2000) and all of
the papers in this volume adopt variants of this approach. Crucially, data from
Cross-linguistic investigations of nominalization patterns i
nominalizations can then provide evidence for or against particular theories of
phrase structure. For example, based on examples such as nominalization, Harley
(2009) argues that the head that introduces the external argument must be distinct
from the “verbalizing” head, v.
The papers by Mathieu, Ritter, and Wilhelm directly address the issue of argu-
ment realization in nominalizations and the implications for syntactic structure.
Mathieu presents data from Ojibwe that show that even simple nouns (equivalent
to hammer and drum) have complex morphosyntactic structure, but they lack the
corresponding argument structure of true verbal projections. Thus the absence
of argument structure is not necessarily a sign of the absence of syntactic struc-
ture, contrary to what is commonly assumed. Ritter, on the other hand, focuses on
abstract nominalizations in Blackfoot and shows that despite the appearance of
tense, aspect, and mood, these nominalizations occur low in the verbal structure.
Nominalization takes place at Inner Aspect and therefore vP, Outer Aspect and IP
are all missing. The absence of these projections explains the absence of DP argu-
ments and adjuncts. Ritter explains the presence of TAM markers by arguing that
they are not in Infl (Infl in Blackfoot has participant-based content) and that they
are not functional heads (unlike all other functional markers, TAM markers are
prefixes). Wilhelm’s paper considers nominalizations in the context of nominal
modification in Dënesųłiné. She argues that because nouns in this language are of
type 〈e〉, a nominal modifier such as an adjective must be the predicate of a clausal
nominalization in which the modified noun is an argument, comparable to an
internally-headed relative clause. These nominalizations therefore contain the full
range of extended verbal projections, including at least IP. Like Mathieu’s paper,
Wilhelm’s contribution shows that appearances can be deceiving: what looks like a
simple word is in fact something more syntactically complex.
2.2 Different kinds of event nominals
A second and related theme is how the nominalization is interpreted and how its
interpretation determines the licensing of complements. Grimshaw (1990) was the
first to directly address this topic in the literature. She shows that derived nomi-
nals can be divided into three sub-classes: complex event nominals (the instructor’s
examination of the student), simple event nominal (the instructor’s examination),
and result nominals (the instructor’s exam). The first class licenses argument
structure, while the second two do not. There are generally two approaches to
this problem. The lexical approach claims that only the first class allows argument
structure to be inherited from a verb to the corresponding noun. According to
Grimshaw, argument structure inheritance is limited to nouns that have an event
argument. The syntactic approach, on the other hand, claims that the presence
