Number/aspect interactions in the syntax of nominalizations: A Distributed approach

Abstract

In this paper we focus on the ability of ARGUMENT SUPPORTING NOMINALIZATIONS (ASNs) to realize morphological plural. We think that this aspect of their behavior is instrumental in our understanding of their properties and their syntax within one language and across languages. Our factual investigation deals with Romanian, English, German and Spanish, as well as Polish and Bulgarian ASNs. We show that the interplay between the aspectual properties -either inner or outer aspect -and the nominal/verbal characteristics, as justifying the internal structure of ASNs, allows us to characterize the ability of ASNs to accept plural marking across languages. We further argue for a flexible syntactic theory that enables us to capture the mixed properties of ASNs. We provide evidence for two parameters of variation. The first parameter is whether ASNs involve a nominalizer or not. If a nominalizer is not included, ASNs lack nominal internal properties. If a nominalizer is included, the second parameter comes into play and allows for language variation with respect to the height of attachment of the nominalizer. Specifically, a nominalizer can attach to (and thus nominalize) distinct layers of syntactic structure (VP vs. AspectP).[1] We thank the editors and two anonymous JL referees for stimulating comments and suggestions. We also thank Barbara Citko for suggesting the investigation of Slavic languages, and to

Statives and nominalization1

“…If statives are non-quantities, this is expected. They behave similar to nominalizations derived from atelic/activity verbs, which also do not pluralize: Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia & Soare (2010) argued that the reason why these nominalizations do not pluralize is their inner aspect inherited from the verb. The quantity pattern realizes plural, the non-quantity one does not, thus conirming previous observations in the literature, according to which bounded entities/eventualities can be pluralized, while unbounded ones cannot (see also Borer 2005).…”

Argument structure and functional projections in Old Hungarian verbal gerunds

“…Alexiadou (2005); Alexiadou et al (2010a;2011) argue that English verbal gerunds (aka Poss-ing gerunds, e.g., John's reading the book) have very little nominal structure: only a DP projection is present, hosting the possessive marked subject. It is well known that the same type of nominalization (e.g., verbal gerund, nominal gerund, nominal infinitive, etc.)…”

“…It is a matter of some debate in the literature how much verbal structure Poss-ing gerunds have. Moulton (2004) argues that only a vP is projected, while Alexiadou et al (2010a) suggest that the Aspect layer is also present. As for Old Hungarian -t gerunds, Tóth (2011b) assumes that they project all the way up to TP.…”

“…The amount of nominal functional projections is also subject to variation: some gerunds contain nP, ClassP, NumP as well as DP, while in others the extended vP is embedded directly under a D head without lower nominal projections being present in the structure (Alexiadou et al 2010b). Alexiadou et al (2010a;2011) The aim of this paper is to investigate the amount of verbal and nominal functional structure present in Old Hungarian -t gerunds, and to examine how the subject of these gerunds is case-licensed. The majority of the data in the paper come from the Old Hungarian codices (late 14th to early 16th century), while the rest come from personal letters written in the early 16th century.…”

A further insight into the syntax-semantics of pluractionality

“…This claim is made from the perspective of a nominal-verbal parallelism a la Abney (1987) between AspectP and NumberP (see Alexiadou, Iordӑchioaia & Soare 2010 for details and other deverbal nominalizations that inherit AspectP from the original verb). They propose the structure in (7) for the nominal supine, where AspectP hosts the PO whose contribution is unboundedness/plurality.…”