Date: 17-Apr-2011
From: Kilu von Prince <princezas.gwz-berlin.de>
Subject: The Semantics of Nominalizations across Languages and Frameworks
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AUTHOR: Artemis AlexiadouTITLE: The Semantics of Nominalizations across Languages and FrameworksSERIES TITLE: Interface Explorations [IE] 23PUBLISHER: De Gruyter MoutonYEAR: 2010
Kilu von Prince, ZAS Berlin and HU Berlin
SUMMARY
This volume is a collection of papers presented at the workshop ''Nominalizationsacross Languages'', in Stuttgart, Germany in December 2007, as follow:
1. Monika Rathert and Artemis Alexiadou: Introduction.
The two editors of the volume give a short overview of the major researchquestions concerning the semantics of nominalizations as well as a short summaryof the individual papers.
2. Chris Barker: Nominals don't provide criteria of identity.
In his contribution to the volume, Chris Barker claims that ''Nominals don'tprovide criteria of identity''. The opposite position has been held byresearchers like Geach (1962) and Baker (2003), who claim that criteria ofidentity are part of the lexical meaning of nouns.
Barker first dismisses cases which involve pairs of count nouns and mass nounssuch as ''river'' and ''water''; he argues the apparent differences in identityassignment can in fact be accounted for by a proper definition of the mappingrelation between the count noun and the corresponding mass noun.
More challenging examples, Barker argues, involve cases where identification isbased on a per-event interpretation rather than a per-individual interpretationas in the following pair:
(1) Easyjet served 10 million passengers last year.(2) Easyjet served 10 million people last year.
Barker observes that deverbal nouns with agentive ''-er'' or ''-ee'' form aproductive class of nouns with a per-event interpretation as the defaultreading. This is because the referents of such nouns are defined by theirengagement in a given activity; thus, the same individual may be counted morethan once if they engage in the activity more than once.
Barker then endeavours to show that even for these cases, lexically givencriteria of identity are neither necessary nor plausible. Instead, he argues,whether a noun receives a per-event interpretation or a per-individualinterpretation depends on lexical criteria of application as well as pragmaticconditions.
3. Regine Brandtner and Klaus von Heusinger: Nominalization in context --conflicting readings and predicate transfer.
Brandtner and von Heusinger address deverbal nouns derived with ''-ung'' in Germanwhich can have a variety of sortal readings such as events, results or objects,depending on the context. To discuss how these different readings are determinedcompositionally, they start out with the following observation: modifiers andpredicates of the same noun can have conflicting selectional restrictions forthe sortal reading of the noun. Thus, in the following clause, the adjectivetriggers an event reading (EV), while the verb requires a result reading (RE).The noun apparently fulfils both requirements at the same time:
(1) Die [wiederholten]EV Messungen [belegen]RE, dass keine Besserung eingetretenist.''The [repeated]EV measurements [show]RE that there has not been an improvement.''
The authors show that previous assumptions about how the sortal reading isdetermined fail to account for such cases. Instead, the authors suggest thatthe noun in fact receives only one reading, which is fixed by the firstexpression that comes with selectional restrictions -- which would be theadjective in the case of (1). Then, they argue, the second expression withselectional restrictions undergoes a predicate transfer as defined by Nunberg(1995). This approach was developed to account for clauses like ''I am parked outback'', where the meaning of the predicate [parked out back] is transferred to[the owner of a car that is parked out back], according to Nunberg.
4. Liesbet Heyvaert: A cognitive-functional perspective on deverbalnominalization in English. Descriptive findings and theoretical ramifications.
The contribution by Liesbet Heyvaert advocates the advantages of acognitive-functional approach to nominalizations over other treatments,especially over generative syntactic approaches. After outlining the principlesof her take on language, the author turns to case studies of ''-er'' and ''-ing''nominalizations.
For ''-er'' nominalizations, Heyvaert gives a brief summary of her work inHeyvaert (2003). She reviews the treatments of ''-er'' nominalizations by, amongothers, Rappaport Hovav and Levin (1992) and concludes that they do not dealwith, and cannot account for, cases profiling non-subject arguments such as''stroller''. Based on a corpus study of non-agentive ''-er'' nominalizations,Heyvaert concludes that lexicalized ''-er'' nominalizations, including ''stroller'',''broiler'', ''teacher'', ''drinker'' and ''toaster'' systematically draw on a modalmeaning, which could be given the following form: according to the properties ofx it is possible that P(x). By contrast, ad hoc nominalizations as in ''thecity's destroyer'' typically refer to the agent of a particular event.
The section about ''-ing'' nominalization also sums up some of Heyvaert's earlierwork. She discusses two issues: first, the problem of how to distinguish betweenfactive action nominalizations as in (1) and gerundives as in (2):
(1) They say [Saddam's targeting of Israel] did not achieve its objective(2) My husband speaks very well, but his job involves [my answering the phone onhis behalf quite a bit of the time]
The second issue concerns the question of why certain items such as adjectivesand demonstratives are no longer available for gerundive nominalizations.
5. Tibor Lackzó: A new account of possessors and event nominals in Hungarian.
Tibor Lackzó addresses the syntax and semantics of Hungarian possessiveconstructions and introduces his approach within a Lexical Functional framework.He identifies two problems with classical approaches within a GB framework. Thefirst problem is with the semantic representation commonly assumed for thepossessive construction, as given in (1):
(1) λxλy[N(x) & R(x,y)], where N is the predicate denoted by the head noun and Ris the (possessive) relation between the head noun and its possessor. E.g. in''John's hat'', N would be λx[hat(x)] and R would be λx. owns(John)(x).
Lackzó claims that the possessive relation is subordinate to the predicatedenoted by the head noun and that a semantic representation should representthis subordinate relation.
The second problem the author seeks to amend concerns relational and deverbalnouns. In the influential account by Szabolcsi (1994), the possessive suffix toa noun always assigns a theta role to the possessor. As a consequence thepossessor of a deverbal noun as in (2) is assigned two theta roles, one by theverbal root, and one by the possessive suffix to the deverbal noun.
(2)as ö megérkez-és-ethe he.NOM arrive-DEV-Poss.3SG'his arrival'
Lackzó suggests instead that the possessive suffix always forces a noun to be atwo-place predicate. Relational and deverbal nouns then assign one of theirlexical roles to the possessor noun.
Finally, Lackzó discusses some of the empirical challenges to his approach.
6. Fabienne Martin: The semantics of eventive suffixes in French.
Fabienne Martin starts her treatment of the French nominalizing suffixes ''-age'',''-ment'' and ''-ion'' by showing that French speakers do apply them productivelyand systematically, even though many of the nouns they occur with have beeninherited or loaned from Latin.
The author restricts her study to eventive readings of the deverbal nouns underconsideration and establishes a test for diagnosing eventive readings. She thendiscusses a number of hypotheses about how the distribution of the differentsuffixes is determined. Arguing that no single factor can account for all thedifferent cases, she proposes a multi-feature analysis.
Martin contrasts the suffixes in pairs, starting off with the contrast between''-age'' and ''-ment'', and identifies several features to account for thedifferences in each of the three pairs. As a result, Martin comes up with a listof five semantic features for which the three suffixes appear to have differingvalues. These features then are suggested to determine the distribution of thesuffixes in productive use.
7. Chiara Melloni: Action nominals inside: lexical-semantic issues.
The paper by Chiara Melloni deals with deverbal action nominals and the varietyof interpretations they can receive. Action nominals have been divided intoargument-structure (AS) nominals and referential nominals, depending on whetherthey preserve the argument structure of their verbal stem or not. Thismorpho-syntactic distinction corresponds to the semantic classification ofaction nominals into 'event nouns' and 'result nouns'.
However, Melloni argues, the term 'result noun' is not descriptively adequatefor a variety of non-AS, non-event nouns such as 'connection', 'distraction' or'administration': Instead, these nouns rather refer to the means, the source orthe group of agents of the respective event.
The hypotheses Melloni puts forward is that such differences in readings can atleast in part be systematically derived from the lexical meanings of the verbsinvolved. For her investigation, Melloni focuses on nouns derived by the Italiansuffixes ''-mento'', ''-zione'' and ''-tura''. Claiming that these suffixes aresemantically interchangeable, she goes on to identify those lexical features ofverb meanings which are responsible for the different readings available for thederived nouns.
Starting out with actual result nouns such as 'construction', 'translation' and'puncture', Melloni suggests that those readings are related to the presence ofa positive [Loc] feature in the lexical entry of the verb. This feature isassumed to indicate that spatial configuration plays a role in the meaning ofverbs like 'stay' or 'remain'.
Secondly, if a referential nominal refers to a participant of the event, thatparticipant has to be non-sentient. Finally, a binary aspectual feature[dynamic], which is part of the verb meaning, will determine whether areferential nominal will refer to the whole of the event [+dynamic] or itstarget state [-dynamic].
8. Antje Roßdeutscher and Hans Kamp: Constraints on the formation andinterpretation of -ung-nouns.
German deverbal nouns with the suffix ''-ung'' are the topic of Roßdeutscher's andKamp's contribution to the volume. The authors try to identify the main factorsthat determine whether a verb can serve as a productive base for an ''-ung''nominalization or not.
The first major factor they identify is the distinction between verbs withbi-eventive projections vs. verbs with mono-eventive projections. For example,the verb 'to clean' implies both an agent doing something to an object and theobject getting clean as a result of that. By contrast, 'to wipe' only specifiesthe activity of the agent. ''-Ung''-nouns can only be derived from bi-eventiveverbs. The authors then endeavour to derive this constraint from two moregeneral constraints about structural requirements of ''-ung'': they suggest that''-ung'' must be inserted immediately above a minimal vP node and that it requiresas input a structure containing a condition of the form 'e CAUSE s'.
Elaborating on the consequences of these two hypotheses, the authors alsoconsider verbs which allow for the prefix ''be-'' and verbs derived from nominalroots.
Finally, the authors turn to the variety, and often ambiguity, of theinterpretations available for ''-ung'' nominals. Classifying them into fourcategories, they relate the meanings of the nouns to the semantics of the verbalbases. One major factor accounting for the readings available for the noun,according to the authors, is the distinction between 'property' and 'sortalroots': The former are related to roots describing properties of a noun as in'to weaken -- weak', whereas the latter refer to actions which contribute to, ormodify the existence of an entity such as 'to collect'.
9. Melanie Uth: The rivalry of French -ment and -age from a diachronic perspective.
In the final paper of the volume, Melanie Uth addresses again the two Frenchnominalizing morphemes ''-ment'' and ''-age''. Basing her investigation ondiachronic data, she proposes an alternative to Martin's account in the same volume.
Retracing the development of the two suffixes, Uth concludes that a singlesemantic difference has determined their contrasting historic roles and is stillresponsible for the differences in their productive use. She suggests that'''-age' nominals focus on the property of subject referents to take part in theevent designated by the base verb''.
By contrast, ''-ment'' is suggested to be diachronically related to the Latinmorpheme ''-to'' which was used in the formation of past passive participles andnominalizations referring to the result of an event. Correspondingly, Uthclaims, today's use of ''-ment'' can be characterized as nominalizing ''theproperty of Theme arguments to participate in the state resulting from the baseevent.''
In her final section, Uth discusses the semantic differences between ''-age''nominals and ''-ment'' nominals in modern French, including those observed byMartin in the same volume. She argues that in general, these differences can beaccounted for by the diachronically established difference mentioned above.
EVALUATION
The collection offers a range of perspectives on the semantics ofnominalizations and does so, as the title promises, 'across languages andframeworks'. As such it certainly makes for an inspiring resource for anyoneworking on related issues.
Having said that, I would like to point out several shortcomings, some of whichare rather widespread for this type of publication, while some others are morespecific to this particular volume or individual contributions therein.
First of all, the authors as well as the editors could have made some effort tosomehow relate their different approaches to each other. Except for MelanieUth's paper, obvious connections between the papers are not commented on at all.
In particular, the observations and problems dealt with by Martin, Melloni,Roßdeutscher and Kamp, and, to a lesser extent, Brandtner and von Heusinger,appear to have significant overlaps, but are approached from very differentdirections and with very different assumptions. While on the one hand, thisvariety of approaches to similar problems is interesting in itself, it wouldhave been of great service to the reader if the authors and/or editors had madethe effort to comment on their differences.
Another point of critique concerns the papers by Barker and by Brandtner and vonHeusinger: While they introduce some intriguing observations and arguments, itdoes not seem entirely clear to the reviewer to what extent their treatments arespecific to nominalizations in contrast to simple nouns such as 'passenger' inthe case of Barker or 'newspaper' in the case of Brandtner and von Heusinger. Ashort elaboration on that would have been welcome.
The individual papers are frank about the fact that they are to a large partsketchy or at least preliminary. The reader will not find definite answers togeneral questions, but rather a number of interesting observations relevant tovery specific discussions.
REFERENCES
Baker, Mark. 2003. Lexical Categories: Verbs, Nouns, and Adjectives. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
Geach, Peter. 1962. Reference and Generality: An Examination of Some Medievaland Modern Theories. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Heyvaert, Liesbet. 2003. Deverbal -er suffixation as the equivalent of theclausal Subject-Finite unit. WORD 54(1): 39-68.
Nunberg, Geoffrey. 1995. Transfers of Meaning. Journal of Semantics 12(2): 109-132.
Rappaport Hovav, Malka and Beth Levin. 1992. -ER nominals: implications for thetheory of argument structure. In Syntax and Semantics. Vol. 26: Syntax and theLexicon, T. Stowell and E. Wehrli (eds.), 127-153. New York: Academic Press.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Kilu von Prince is currently working on the documentation of the Oceanic language Daakaka (Vanuatu) for her PhD. The primary subject of her linguistic passion is the range of variation between languages, which she prefers to approach from a formal semantic perspective.
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