Nominalizations

Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134928446
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistic Semantics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Based on extensive and diverse material from 70 languages, and covering a range of previously undiscussed problems, this book provides a thorough analysis of how nominalization types interact with other structural features. It focuses on action nominal constructions, and in particular, the comparison of their syntactic structure with that of finite clauses and of other noun phrases, a problem which has claimed much attention in current syntactic theories. Supported by rich empirical material and clearly illustrated with examples from all the sample languages, the book provides a detailed and consistent basis for constructing a typology of derived constructions and for presenting cross-linguistic comparisons.

Part 1

Theoretical Background

1 Preliminaries: The Aim of this Book

1.1. Goals of the Study

This book is mainly concerned with a single type of nominalizations, action nominal constructions. Its aim is to make a cross-linguistic comparison between the internal syntax of action nominal constructions (ANCs) and that of two other types of constructions: the corresponding finite clauses and ordinary noun phrases. The main question raised by such a comparison can be formulated as follows: what are the means of signalling the relations between an action nominal and its dependents (subject and objects) as compared to the relationships in corresponding finite clauses and in ordinary noun phrases? Taking one easy example, what is the internal syntax of the construction the enemy’s destruction of the city as related both to the finite clause The enemy destroyed the city and to the NP the enemy’s map of the city?

In the linguistics of the last three decades, it is possible to discern two different approaches to the internal syntax of nominalizations, or, more specifically, of action nominal constructions. The first approach concentrates on how to derive nominalizations in transformational grammar. In early work (Chomsky 1957, Lees 1960), nominalizations were analysed as results of transformations. Chomsky (1970) argues against the transformationalist hypothesis for the derivation of action nominal constructions in English, and proposes the lexicalist hypothesis, according to which action nominals constitute separate items in the lexicon. Chomsky’s argumentation is based on the regular similarities in the syntax of action nominals and of non-derived nouns, as well as on the idiosyncratic differences in the morphology, syntax and semantics of action nominals and the corresponding verbs. The derivation of action nominal constructions in other languages has also been the object of attention for several syntactic theories. To cite a few examples, action nominal constructions in German (Esau 1973), Modern Israeli Hebrew (Berman 1976, 1978) and Modern Mongolian (Binnick 1979) have been described from the point of view of the Standard Theory, those in Dutch (Hoekstra 1986) and Quechua (Lefebvre and Muysken 1988) have been treated within the theory of Government and Binding, while those in Georgian (Harris 1981) have been analysed within Relational Grammar.

The second approach (Comrie 1976, Comrie and Thompson 1985) discusses the internal syntax of ANCs from the cross-linguistic and typological points of view. Using data from several languages, Comrie (1976) shows that there is no simple dichotomy between sentence-like and noun phrase-like action nominal constructions across languages, because such constructions vary greatly with respect to the ‘extent to which their internal structure corresponds to that of a nonderived noun phrase, rather than to the internal structure of a sentence with a finite verb’ (1976: 200). This claim puts the transformationalist– lexicalist controversy in a different light. Since action nominal constructions in different languages differ as to their degree of nouniness, this variety ‘precludes us from using internal structure even as a heuristic test in universal grammar for distinguishing noun-headed noun phrases from verb-headed constructions’ (ibid.: 178).

The present book follows the second of the two approaches mentioned above. Like Comrie and Thompson, I focus on the internal syntax of action nominal constructions across languages. However, the present study is not restricted to just a few languages, but is based on the material of seventy languages representing the majority of the world’s linguistic genetic stocks and linguistic areas. The first, most concrete goal of the study is to construct a syntactic typology of action nominal constructions, trying to answer at least the following questions:

What are the means of signalling the relations between action nominals and their arguments as compared to the situation in finite clauses?

If they are not the same, what other types of relations do they normally signal?

How close are action nominal constructions to ordinary noun phrases from the point of view of their syntax?

What happens to the opposition between the different arguments of finite verbs when the latter become nominalized, that is, what oppositions between the arguments tend to be retained or neglected in action nominal constructions?

Having answered these questions, the following step is to explain the patterns that emerge. An explanation aims at answering the two questions:

1. ‘Why the typology contains just these attested types’ (Stassen 1985: 6), and
2. Whether the choice of a particular nominalization pattern or of particular nominalization patterns in a particular language is accidental. If it is not, what are the determining factors?

The rest of this chapter will be devoted to clarifying what is meant by action nominal constructions and by their internal syntax.

1.2. Stating the Problem

1.2.1. Action Nominal Constructions (ANCs), A Definition

Following Comrie (1976: 178), I define action nominals (ANs) as

‘nouns derived from verbs (verbal nouns) with the general meaning of an action or process’,

capable of declining or taking prepositions or postpositions in the same way as non-derived nouns,

and showing ‘reasonable’ productivity.

Action nominal constructions (ANCs), then, are nominalizations with ANs as their head (Comrie 1976: 178). As such, they constitute a type of lexical nominalization (on the distinction between lexical and clausal nominalizations, see section 2.4.). The following sentences offer examples of ANCs which refer to a proposition (1.1), a fact (1.2), an event (1.3) and a manner of doing something (1.4). These are opposed to example 1.5, in which the verbal noun criticism is used in a concrete way, to refer to the result of the corresponding action.

(1.1) The collapse of the Germans is unlikely.

(Vendler 1967: 132)

(1.2) John’s singing the Marseillaise caused the riot.

(ibid.: 135)

(1.3) I heard the singing of the Marseillaise.

(ibid.: 138)

(1.4) John’s playing of Ravel is wonderful.

(1.5) His criticism of the book is to be found on page 15.

(Chomsky 1970: 194).

All the conditions in the definition of action nominals given above present certain problems. Here I will only touch upon two of them. More will be said in sections 1.4 and 1.5 and in chapter 2.

Firstly, it can be difficult to ascertain whether action nominals in a language have the same possibilities to decline or take adpositions as non-derived nouns, since such information is not always to be found in available grammatical descriptions for many languages. For languages with morphological cases, the fact that some nouns do not follow the common case pattern seems to be most frequently registered. In Turkish, for example, infinitives with the suffix -mAG do not combine with possessive and genitive suffixes, although they may take any of the other nominal suffixes. With respect to languages without morphological cases, relevant information can be absent from descriptions. Comrie (1976) excludes the infinitive in French from the set of action nominals because it ‘may have a different preposition from a noun phrase, as in je commence le travail – “I start work”, but je commence à travailler – “I begin to work”’. Such details are quite unlikely to appear in grammars of more ‘exotic’ languages.

Secondly, there are no obvious criteria for whether or not certain action nominals show ‘reasonable’ productivity. Even the exact categorial status of action nominals can vary greatly in different languages. In some of them, action nominals are treated morphologically as regular verb forms, in others they constitute a group of derived nouns with a number of idiosyncratic features. More about this issue will be said in chapter 2.

1.2.2. Nouns, Verbs and Action Nominals

As should be clear from the definition in 1.2.1., action nominals in certain respects occupy an intermediate position between typical verbs and typical nouns. Thus, typical nouns include names for things, persons, places, while typical verbs denote actions and processes. Or, seen from the discourse point of view, as launched by Hopper and Thompson (1984), nouns prototypically introduce participants and ‘props’ and deploy them, while verbs ‘assert the occurrence of an event of the discourse’ (Hopper and Thompson, 1984: 708). Action nominals, like discovery, shooting, etc., clearly refer to events, like verbs do, although not by asserting the occurrence of the events of the discourse, but by giving them a name. In other words, they combine semantic and discourse features of both verbs and nouns. In their morphology they also combine verbal and nominal features and different languages treat them as being closer to one or other of these word classes.¹

The main hypothesis of this book is that the ‘intermediate nature’ of action nominals is reflected in their syntactic behaviour. More specifically, we may expect that the internal syntax of ANCs across languages will be more or less like that of finite clauses and/or that of NPs. Among the problems which are covered by the notion ‘internal syntax of ANCs’, I will mainly restrict myself to that of the means of signalling the relations between an action nominal and its dependents (subject and objects).

1.2.3. Means of Signalling Syntactic Relations

Before illustrating the problem, let us consider the different means of signalling syntactic relations in a phrase and in a clause (which I will abbreviate as ‘syntactic means’). The syntactic relations which are relevant for the present study include those between a finite verb and its arguments (in a finite clause), those between an action nominal and its arguments (in an action nominal construction), and those between a head-noun and its NP-dependents (in a noun phrase). Following Nichols (1986), I will use here the distinction between two types of marking built on the opposition between the head and the dependent of a construction. According to Nichols, ‘the head is the word which governs, or is subcategorized for – or otherwise determines the occurrence of – the other word. It determines the category of its phrase’ (Nichols 1986: 57). The question of what is the head in a clause is not uncontroversial, but for the purpose of the present study it is sufficient to consider predicates (or finite verbs) to be such heads.

Syntactic relations can be signalled in the following three main ways:

1. by head-marking, which means that the head of a construction is marked in such a way as to identify its relation to its dependents, for example, agreement between the verb and some of its arguments in a clause, possessive affixes or the Semitic Construct State (‘status constructus’) in a noun phrase;
2. by dependent-marking, which means that the dependents in a construction are marked in such a way as to identify their syntactic relations to the head of the construction, for example, different cases or adpositions for the subject and objects in a clause, a special genitive case or a special adposition for the possessor in a noun phrase;
3. by word order, for example, a more or less fixed word ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Part 1: Theoretical background
• Part 2: The data
• Part 3: Discussion
• Summary
• Appendix A: Alphabetical language index
• Appendix B: ANC types with examples
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Author index
• Language index
• Subject index