Nominalization

OXFORD STUDIES IN THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS

General Editors
David Adger and Hagit Borer, Queen Mary University of London
Advisory Editors
Stephen Anderson, Yale University; Daniel Büring, University of Vienna; Nomi Erteschik-Shir,
Ben-Gurion University; Donka Farkas, University of California, Santa Cruz; Angelika Kratzer,
University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Andrew Nevins, University College London; Christopher
Potts, Stanford University; Barry Schein, University of Southern California; Peter Svenonius,
University of Tromsø; Moira Yip, University College London

 
62 The Morphosyntax of Transitions
A Case Study in Latin and Other Languages
by Víctor Acedo-Matellán
63 Modality Across Syntactic Categories
edited by Ana Arregui, María Luisa Rivero, and Andrés Salanova
64 The Verbal Domain
edited by Roberta D’Alessandro, Irene Franco, and Ángel J. Gallego
65 Concealed Questions
by Ilaria Frana
66 Parts of a Whole
Distributivity as a Bridge between Aspect and Measurement
by Lucas Champollion
67 Semantics and Morphosyntactic Variation
Qualities and the Grammar of Property Concepts
by Itamar Francez and Andrew Koontz-Garboden
68 The Structure of Words at the Interfaces
edited by Heather Newell, Máire Noonan, Glyne Piggott, and Lisa deMena Travis
69 Pragmatic Aspects of Scalar Modifiers
The Semantics-Pragmatics Interface
by Osamu Sawada
70 Encoding Events
Functional Structure and Variation
by Xuhui Hu
71 Gender and Noun Classification
edited by Éric Mathieu, Myriam Dali, and Gita Zareikar
72 The Grammar of Expressivity
by Daniel Gutzmann
73 The Grammar of Copulas Across Language
edited by María J. Arche, Antonio Fábregas, and Rafael Marín
74 The Roots of Verbal Meaning
by John Beavers and Andrew Koontz-Garboden
75 Contrast and Representations in Syntax
edited by Bronwyn M. Bjorkman and Daniel Currie Hall
76 Nominalization
50 Years on from Chomsky’s Remarks
edited by Artemis Alexiadou and Hagit Borer

For a complete list of titles published and in preparation for the series, see pp. 450–2.
 Nominalization
50 Years on from Chomsky’s Remarks

Edited by
A R T E MI S A L E X I A D O U
AND
H A G I T BO R E R

1
 3
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 General Preface

The theoretical focus of this series is on the interfaces between subcomponents

of the human grammatical system and the closely related area of the interfaces
between the different subdisciplines of linguistics. The notion of ‘interface’ has
become central in grammatical theory (for instance, in Chomsky’s Minimalist
Program) and in linguistic practice: Work on the interfaces between syntax
and semantics, syntax and morphology, phonology and phonetics, etc., has led
to a deeper understanding of particular linguistic phenomena and of the
architecture of the linguistic component of the mind/brain.
The series covers interfaces between core components of grammar, including
syntax/morphology, syntax/semantics, syntax/phonology, syntax/pragmatics,
morphology/phonology, phonology/phonetics, phonetics/speech processing,
semantics/pragmatics, and intonation/discourse structure, as well as issues in
the way that the systems of grammar involving these interface areas are acquired
and deployed in use (including language acquisition, language dysfunction, and
language processing). It demonstrates, we hope, that proper understandings of
particular linguistic phenomena, languages, language groups, or inter-language
variations all require reference to interfaces.
The series is open to work by linguists of all theoretical persuasions and
schools of thought. A main requirement is that authors should write so as to be
understood by colleagues in related subfields of linguistics and by scholars in
cognate disciplines.
Nominalization, the process whereby new complex nouns are created in a
language, was a central area of investigation in generative grammar even before
Chomsky published his seminal Remarks on Nominalization. The succeeding
decades have explored in further depth the issues that Chomsky identified:
how notions of synonymy are to be encoded in syntactic theory; productivity
and exceptions to proposed rules; the architecture of the grammar, and how
different kinds of information are stored. Analysis of these issues has deepened
our insights into how morphology, syntax, and semantics interact and has led to
major revisions to the lexical and phrase structure components in generative
syntactic theory over the years. The current volume is a state-of-the-art collec-
tion of chapters, showing both how broadly the cross-linguistic investigation of
viii  

nominalizations has developed and how far theoretical understanding has

deepened. Though Chomsky, in his brief remarks here, indicates he is still in
favor of a lexicalist view of non productive nominalization, the chapters them-
selves mostly argue that nominalizations are fundamentally generative, though
exactly how to express their structural complexity is still clearly a question of
vigorous theoretical debate.

David Adger
Hagit Borer
 List of Abbreviations

√ Root
π passive
1 first person
1 first person singular agreement
2 second person
2 second person singular agreement
3 third person
3 third person singular agreement
12 first person, second person, third person, first person inclusive
 ‘Set A’(ergative/possessive)
A agent-like argument of transitive verb
AASN adjectival argument structure nominals
 ablative case
 absolutive
 accusative
 active Voice
 additive (particle)
 adjective
 adjectivalizer
ADJZ adjectivizing affix
 adnominal
 adverb
/ Agent Focus
 Agent
 agreement
 anterior
ANTIP antipassive
AP adjectival phrase
AS argument structure
ASN Argument Structure Nominal
Asp aspect
AspP aspect phrase
ASPQ telicity (quantity) aspect
ATK -ation and kin (latinated NOM suffixes)
 ‘Set B’(Absolutive)
BA big-type adjectives
 lexical category
x   

 causative
CAUS.ACT hif ’il template (hiXYiZ)
 case domain
 Complex Event Nominal
CI conceptual-intentional level
 connegative (stem)
 Corpus of Contemporary American English
 comitative
 completive
 copula
COS change of state
CP complement clause
 converb
 dative
, Decl,  declarative
 definite
 demonstrative
 determiner
DFG German Research Foundation
DIR direction
 dispositional
 derived intransitive suffix
DM Distributed Morphology
DN deverbal nominals (also derived nominals)
DOM differential object marking
DS different-subject construal
ECE Existential Closure Exceptional
CM Case Marking
 emphatic
EO Experiencer Object
 epenthesis
 epenthetic
 episodic
EPP the extended projection principle
 ergative
ES Experiencer Subject
Ev event
EVG English verbal gerund
 evidential (past)
EvP event phrase
exam examination
ExP Extended Projection
ExP[X] Extended Projection of X
    xi

EP[V] Extended Projection of V

,  feminine
FA frequency adjectives
Fin finiteness
FL faculty of language
FN factive nominalization
Fn[X] (n an integer) a functional node in the Extended Projection of X
 focus
 frequentative
 future tense
 genitive
GloWb Corpus of Global Web-based English
 gender
GNI German nominal infinitives
GS grammatical subject
GVI German verbal infinities
IDEO ideophone
 illative case
 inclusive
 inessive case
 infinitive
 inflection
 instrumental
 interrogative particle
. piél template (XiY̯eZ)
. hitpaél template (hitXaY̯eZ)
 intransitive
 imperfective
IRR irrealis
ITER iterative
,  intransitive
LASN Long Argument Structure Nominals (including prenominal
subject)
LAT lative
 locative
. locative nominalizer
 malefactive
 masculine
 middle Voice
 nonfinite or nominal form of lexical verb
NACT nonactive
 negative
 neuter
xii   

 nonfuture tense

NG noun gerund
NI nominal infinitive
 nominal suffix
NMZ,  nominalizing affix
 nominative
NOW News on the Web
NP noun phrase
 nonpast tense
NPI negative polarity item
NVP nonverbal predicate
NZLR nominalizer
. object nominalizer
OBL oblique
OED Oxford English Dictionary
P patient-like argument of transitive verb
p, pl, ,  plural
. past perfect
P5 position 5 clitic
 passive
PASS designated passive template
 perfective
 possessive
 Principles and Parameters
 participle
 predicate
 present tense
PRO-arb PRO with arbitrary (generic) interpretation
 progressive
 prospective aspect
 present
PRT particle
 , PST,  Phrase Structure Grammar past
PTCP.FUT future participle
 punctual
RC relative clause
 reduplication
 reflexive
 relativizer
REMP remote past
 reportative
RN Result Nominals, Referential Nominals, result nouns
RoN Remarks on Nominalization
    xiii

RootP Root Phrase

S sole argument of intransitive verb
S(E)A silent external argument, silent argument
s, sg, ,  singular
. subject nominalizer
S.REL subject relativizer
SASN Short Argument Structure Nominals (no logical subject)
SC small clause
Sdev, Sy substantiva deverbalia
SEN Simple Event Nominals
SFP sentence final particle
sfx suffix
SM sensory motor level
. qal/pa’al template (XaYaZ)
. nif ’al template (niXYaZ)
SOAs states-of-affairs
SPAT spatial location
SRPV Spanish reflexive psychological verb
SS same-subject construal
 status suffix
 stative
stc static
subj subject
sup supine
Sv substantiva verbalia
TAM tense, aspect, or mood
TG TH, THEME Transformations Grammar Theme
 topic
 transitive
UTAH Universal Theta Assignment Hypothesis
 finite verbal form
VAI verb animate intransitive
/ verbalizer
VTA verb transitive animate
WF Word Formation
XSM Exo-skeletal model
ZD zero derivation
ZN zero-derived nominals (conversion)
 Notes on Contributors

Peter Ackema is Professor of Morphosyntax at the University of Edinburgh. He is a

graduate of Utrecht University, where he obtained his PhD in 1995. He specializes in
research on the interface between morphology and syntax, on which he has published
a wide variety of articles and three books (Issues in Morphosyntax, Benjamins, 1999,
Beyond Morphology, OUP, 2004, and Features of Person, MIT Press, 2018, the latter
two co-authored with Ad Neeleman).
Odelia Ahdout is a doctoral researcher at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Her
topics of interests include the interface between morpho-syntax, lexical semantics, and
pragmatics. Her upcoming doctoral dissertation presents an extensive survey of
deverbal nouns in Hebrew, focusing on the relevance of verbal (templatic)
morphology to the behavior of nominal derivatives. Her dissertation focuses on the
interaction of Voice marking and nominalization, and seeks to provide an account of
systematic gaps found between active and nonactive Voice marking in the domain of
nominalization.
Artemis Alexiadou is Professor of English Linguistics at the Humboldt University in
Berlin and Vice Director of Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics (ZAS) in Berlin. She
obtained her PhD in 1994 from the University of Potsdam. Her research is concerned
with the syntax and morphology of noun phrases and argument alternations, on which
she has published several articles and books (e.g. Functional Structure in Nominals,
Benjamins 2001, External Arguments in Transitivity Alternations, OUP, 2015,
co-authored with Elena Anagnostopoulou and Florian Schäfer).
Hagit Borer is a Professor of Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London. Her
research involves the division of labor between the lexicon and syntax, and touches on
morphosyntax as well as the syntax-semantics interface. She is the author of a three-
book series on these topics, titled ‘Structuring Sense’: In Name Only (OUP, 2005),
focusing on nominal structure; The Normal Course of Events (OUP, 2005), focusing on
event structure, and Taking Form (OUP, 2013) focusing on morphosyntax and word
formation.
Noam Chomsky is Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona. He is
an Institute Professor (emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where
he was Professor of Linguistics from 1955. He has made numerous groundbreaking
contributions which radically transformed the field of modern linguistics, including
his 1970 paper Remarks on Nominalization.
xvi   

Jessica Coon is Associate Professor of Linguistics at McGill University and Canada

Research Chair in Syntax and Indigenous Languages. She completed her PhD at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010, with a dissertation focusing on split
ergativity. Much of her work is centered on the syntax and morphology of Mayan
languages, especially Ch’ol and Chuj, and she has published on topics relating to
ergativity, agreement, verb-initial word order, A’-extraction, and nominalization. Her
2013 OUP book, Aspects of Split Ergativity, examines split ergativity in Ch’ol and cross-
linguistically.
Éva Dékány is a post-doctoral researcher at the Research Institute for Linguistics,
Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She received her PhD in Theoretical Linguistics
from the University of Tromsø in 2012 and has published on the structure of
nominal and adpositional phrases as well as the history of Hungarian. She is
currently working on finite and nonfinite subordination in various Finno-Ugric
languages.
Ekaterina Georgieva is a post-doctoral researcher at the Research Institute for
Linguistics in Budapest. She received her PhD in Linguistics from the University of
Szeged in 2019. Her research focuses on the morphosyntax of Udmurt, and more
specifically, on nonfinite subordination.
Heidi Harley is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona. She works on
syntax, morphology, and argument structure, as well as the grammar of the Uto-
Aztecan language Hiaki.
Gianina Iordăchioaia is a researcher at the Institute of English Linguistics, University
of Stuttgart. She graduated from the University of Bucharest and obtained her PhD
from the University of Tübingen in 2009. Her most recent research concerns the
interface between morphology, syntax, and (lexical) semantics with a focus on word
formation. She is currently the principal investigator of the DFG-funded project ‘Zero-
derived nouns and deverbal nominalization: an empirically-oriented perspective’.
Itamar Kastner is Lecturer in the Cognitive Science of Language at the University of
Edinburgh, which he joined after a post-doctoral position at the Humboldt-Universität
zu Berlin and graduate studies at New York University. His research concerns various
aspects related to morphology, including morphosyntax, morphophonology, lexical
semantics, and lexical processing.
Keir Moulton is Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of Toronto. He is a
graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he obtained his PhD in
2009. His research centers on the interaction between syntax and semantics on topics
such as embedding, binding, quantification, and relativization, with publications on
these topics in journals such as Linguistic Inquiry and Language. He conducts
experiments on these and other topics as the director of the Toronto Experimental
Syntax-Semantics lab.
    xvii

Ad Neeleman is Professor of Linguistics at University College London. He obtained

his PhD at Utrecht University in 1994. His research focuses on syntax and its
interfaces, in particular morphology and information structure. Following his
doctoral dissertation on complex predicates, he published some seventy research
papers and co-authored three monographs: Flexible Syntax (Kluwer, 1999, with Fred
Weerman), Beyond Morphology (OUP, 2004, with Peter Ackema) and Features of
Person (MIT Press, 2018, with Peter Ackema).
Tom Roeper is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
He works primarily on language acquisition, derivational morphology, syntax-
semantics, and on applied issues in language disorders and second language
acquisition. He currently specializes in the study of how recursion is acquired in
many languages, with various collaborators working on coordinated experimentation.
He has written a book for parents and teachers called The Prism of Grammar (MIT
Press, 2009), and co-edited Recursion: Complexity in Cognition (Springer, 2014), and
Recursion Across Domains (Cambridge University Press, 2018). He is co-editor of
the series ‘Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics’, a former editor of Language
Acquisition, and Director of the Language Acquisition Research Center at the
University of Massachusetts.
Isabelle Roy is a Professor of Linguistics at Université de Nantes. She has previously
held a position at Université Paris VIII, as an Associate Professor, and at CASTL-
University of Tromsø. She graduated from the University of Southern California in
2006. Her main research interests are in linguistic theory, with a focus on the syntax-
semantics interface, in the areas of events, predication, copular constructions,
adjectives, categories and categorization, and in linguistic ontology. She is the author
of Nonverbal Predication:Copular Sentences at the Syntax-Semantics Interface (OUP,
2013).
Justin Royer is a PhD student in linguistics at McGill University. His research has
mainly focused on the syntax and semantics of nominals and the determiner phrase,
on free relatives, and on the syntax-prosody interface. He works primarily on Mayan
languages, and he has conducted original fieldwork on Chuj, an underdocumented
language spoken in Guatemala and Mexico.
Bożena Rozwadowska has been a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Wrocław
since 1999. She studied at the University of Technology in Wrocław, at the University
of Wrocław and at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She obtained her PhD
in 1988 and her post-doctoral degree in 1998 for the Habilitationsschrift Towards a
Unified Theory of Nominalizations; External and Internal Eventualities. In 2019 she
received the title of Full Professor approved by the President of Poland. Her research
focuses on the syntax-semantics interface, in particular within the area of
psychological predicates.
Andrés Pablo Salanova has studied the language of the Mẽbêngôkre since 1996; in
addition, he has been involved in descriptive projects on other languages of lowland
xviii   

South America, and has carried out theoretical research in morphosyntax and in the
semantics of aspect, evidentiality, and mirativity. He obtained his MA in Campinas
(Brazil) in 2001, and his PhD at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2007, and he
currently teaches linguistics at the University of Ottawa.
Elena Soare is an Associate Professor at the University of Paris 8 where she teaches
formal syntax and comparative linguistics. She is a graduate of the University of
Bucharest and of the University of Paris 7, where she completed her PhD in 2002.
She is currently working on nominalizations and the structure of nonfinite clauses
across languages. She is the author of numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals and
one of the editors of the ‘Sciences du Langage’ collection at Presses Universitaires de
Vincennes. She has participated in, and conducted research programs on Argument
Structure, Stative Predicates, and Nominalizations. Since 2014, she has been one of the
leaders of a project on multilingualism entitled ‘Langues and Grammaires en Ile-de-
France’.
Adam Tallman is a post-doctoral researcher at the Laboratoire Dynamique du
Langage of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (Université Lumière Lyon
II). He obtained his PhD at the University of Texas at Austin and his dissertation was a
Grammar of Chácobo, a southern Pano language of the northern Bolivian Amazon.
His research focuses on the description and documentation of the languages of the
Americas, linguistic typology, and quantative methods. His recent research focuses on
constituency structure and the morphology-syntax distinction. His papers appear in
journals such as Amerindia, Empirical Studies in Language, Studies in Language,
Language and Linguistics Compass, among others.
Jim Wood is Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Yale University and associate editor
of the Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics. His primary research interests lie
in syntax and its interfaces with morphology and semantics. He is the author of
Icelandic Morphosyntax and Argument Structure (Springer, 2015), and his research
has been published in Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, Linguistic Inquiry,
Syntax, Glossa, Linguistic Variation, American Speech, and elsewhere. Since 2012, he
has been a leading member of the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project, investigating
micro-syntactic variation in North American English, and was a co-principal
investigator on the National Science Foundation grant funding its work.
 1
Introduction
Artemis Alexiadou and Hagit Borer

1.1 The Remarks challenge

In 1967 (published 1970), in a move that was as controversial as it was

influential, Chomsky proposed that certain aspects of morphological related-
ness, e.g. those that hold between destroy and destruction, and erstwhile
presumed to be within the jurisdiction of the syntax, are to be moved to the
lexicon, a nongenerative component of the grammar, where their properties
were to be treated on a par with other listed properties such as subcategoriza-
tion, selectional restrictions, category specification, and phonological proper-
ties, already proposed to reside in the lexicon in Chomsky (1965). The primary
rationale for the move to the lexicon was twofold. First, it was heuristic.
Syntactically deriving deverbal nominals (DN), and complex words in general,
proved detrimental to attempts to formally constrain the syntax along more
universal lines, a disadvantage that was, in fact, to lead to the formal collapse of
syntactic models which rejected the Remarks move. Moving word-internal
structure to the lexicon, on the other hand, allowed the development of a more
constrained syntax, capable of dealing better with syntactic challenges of the
time (and see Chomsky, Chapter 2, for some relevant comments).
The second rationale for moving complex word-internal properties to the
lexicon was formal. Chomsky (1970) puts forth a series of arguments designed
to show that the formation of words, however achieved, is not a generative
device, but rather, must avail itself of lexically listed information. The lexicon,
thus extended, was specifically targeted as the locus not only of idiosyncratic
information associated with individual words, but also as the locus of rela-
tionship between pairs of related words, by assumption potentially arbitrary
and unpredictable.
Reasoning on the basis of a detailed comparison between complex nominals
arguably with a verbal source, and gerunds (and assuming both are derived
from a sentential structures), Chomsky constructs a typology of syntactic vs.

Artemis Alexiadou and Hagit Borer, Introduction In: Nominalization: 50 Years on from Chomsky’s Remarks. Edited by:
Artemis Alexiadou and Hagit Borer, Oxford University Press (2020). © Artemis Alexiadou and Hagit Borer.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198865544.003.0001
2     

lexical operations. Specifically, he points out that while gerunds are entirely
regular and predictably share just about all the properties of the verbs embed-
ded within them, that is not the case for DNs, where morphological, interpret-
ational, and syntactic idiosyncrasies are common, and where the systematic
inheritance of verbal properties cannot be taken for granted. Relevant examples
of idiosyncrasy include, e.g., the item-specific choice of nominalizer (form-
ation, but govern-ance or proof ). Others relate to the emergence of unpredict-
able meaning (proofs, transmission), and finally, derived nominals (but not
gerunds) can occur without what are otherwise obligatory arguments for the
verb, including both subject and object, e.g. the destruction was complete.
Importantly, no such effects emerge with gerunds such as destroying *(the
bridge), or transmitting (≠car gear). The appropriate integration of DNs into
syntactic structures, Chomsky reasoned, thus must avail itself of unpredictable
listed information, thereby necessitating their removal from the syntax and
their listing, thereby resulting in a formal enrichment of the lexicon.¹
Chomsky (1970) does note, however, that alongside potential idiosyncra-
sies, DNs are frequently systematically related to their verbal correlates, to wit,
destroy and destruction, defer and deferral, and so on, both in terms of the
emerging meaning, and in terms of the (optional) availability and interpret-
ation of complements. To capture these regularities, he introduces X’ theory,
within which a pair such as destroy/destruction is perceived as a single
category-less lexical entry with a fixed subcategorization frame. This entry,
in turn, is inserted under an X⁰, be it N⁰ or V⁰ and thus acquires its categorial
status. Finally, it is the categorial context of the insertion that determines the
phonologically appropriate form for the entry. When under N⁰, it would be
pronounced deferral or destruction, but when under V⁰, it would be pro-
nounced defer or destroy.² For both, and in accordance with the provisions
of the X’-scheme, a listed (direct) complement would be realized in a sister-
hood relationship with X⁰, in a parallel fashion for the nominal and the verbal
instantiations. The Remarks on Nominalization (RoN) representation of des-
troy vs. destruction can thus be represented as in (1) (irrelevant details

¹ An intermediate status, for Chomsky (1970) is that of mixed nominalizations, i.e. cases such as the
growing of the tomato, which are morpho-phonologically regular, but where arguments may nonethe-
less be missing (the growing phase ended), and where idiosyncratic meaning does occasionally emerge
(e.g. reading in the sense of ‘interpretation’; see Borer, 2013, for discussion).
² For a strict Bare Phrase Structure approach, note, this execution is impossible as a head projects its
categorial properties, if any, and is not inserted under a preconstructed categorial node.
  3

omitted), where  is an entry associated with meaning and with

subcategorization, but not a syntactic category:

(1) N’ V’

N [of NP] V NP

DESTROY destruction DESTROY destroy

Crucially, whatever operation relates destroy, as the verbal instantiation of

the relevant entry, and destruction, its nominal instantiation, it is not syntactic
and is not represented syntactically. In fact, within that approach, it is not clear
that the relationship is derivational in nature, as opposed to constituting a
salient statistical correlation, an approach explicitly put forth by Jackendoff
(1975).
A number of crucial properties of (1) are worth highlighting. First, note that
the complement of the noun here is optional, but that of the verb is obligatory.
Chomsky (1970) assumes, explicitly, that this is a structural difference between
nouns and verbs, which spans both the object and the subject, the latter
optional for nouns and obligatory for verbs as well. In fact, the correlation
between the optionality of complements in DNs and the optionality of com-
plements in non-DN nominals serves for Chomsky as an additional argument
for the lexical rather than (syntactically-)derived nature of DNs. To wit, if DNs
have a verb embedded under them, indeed, a sentence, one expects the
obligatoriness of both complement and subject, typical of verbs/sentences
and clearly attested in gerunds. That such obligatoriness is not found in
DNs therefore serves as an argument that fundamentally, they are inserted
into an exclusively nominal slot, and are not syntactically composed of a verb
plus some nominal affix.³
A second important observation concerning the structure in (1) is that
syntactically, destroy, a verbal head, and destruction, a nominal noun, are
equally complex—both are terminals. That one of them is morphologically
complex and includes within it a stem that is largely identical to the verbal
realization is most certainly not a syntactic fact and, in fact, for Chomsky

³ Additional arguments in favor of the view that DNs are not verb-derived come from the absence of
Tough movement, Raising, and ECM for DNs; these operations are possible with gerunds suggesting
that these have a verb embedded under them. Recently, however, Lieber (2016) and Bruening (2018)
presented evidence suggesting that DNs do behave similarly to gerunds in this respect, after all.
4     

(1970), it is not clear that it reflects any systematic derivational relationship

altogether.
Finally, note that albeit not explicitly acknowledged, the entry for 
must contain some phonological information. Were that not the case, the
phonological overlap between destruction and destroy and similar pairs
would become an inexplicable and repeated coincidence.
The case for the idiosyncrasy of complex words, and hence their listed
nature, was considerably enhanced with Halle (1973)’s Prolegomena for Word
Formation. Halle highlighted the phonologically unpredictable nature of mor-
phological operations, primarily within the domain of inflection. Observing,
among other phenomena, lexically specified stem alternations under affixation,
incomplete paradigms, impoverishment, the occasionally idiosyncratic interpret-
ation of some inflectional morphemes (e.g. Russian instrumental case), and the
unpredictable fusion of distinct inflectional markers, Halle argues that the erratic
nature of the phonological output of word formation clearly necessitates the
consultation of listed information, and hence supports the case for the transfer of
WF away from the more phonologically well-behaved parts of the grammar, i.e.
syntax. Halle does, however, propose a semiformal WF component, albeit
independent from the syntax, and structured so as to allow its output to consult
idiosyncratically listed information.
Ironically, in the direct aftermath of RoN and Prolegomena for Word
Formation, and with the notable exception of Jackendoff (1975), a burgeoning
community of scholars eschewed, collectively, the notion that WF is nonge-
nerative, applying considerable talent to the attempt to systematize and for-
malize accounts of word structure and word formation. The systems that
emerged were largely not only generative, but also suspiciously syntax-like.
Especially beginning with Aronoff ’s (1976) influential distinction between
analytic and productive morphology, we see the introduction of rewrite rules
and phrase structure (cf. Selkirk, 1982); of heads for words (cf. Williams, 1981);
and of subcategorization and constituent structure for affixes (cf. Lieber, 1980).
In fact, the formal devices used in constructing complex words became grad-
ually so syntax-like, that a special condition had to be introduced for the sole
purpose of preventing the syntax from interacting with word-internal struc-
ture, and formulated, specifically, as the Lexical Integrity Hypothesis (Lapointe,
1980) or the Atomicity Thesis (DiSciullo & Williams, 1987).
Alongside the attempt to build a hierarchical structure for words, we also
see a systematic attempt to introduce some order into the chaos by separating
those affixes in which a high degree of regularity—morphological, syntactic,
and phonological—is observed, from those affixes where such regularity is less
  5

frequent (cf. Siegel, 1974; Allen, 1978; Pesetsky, 1979; and most influentially,
Kiparsky, 1982a, within the general framework of the Level Ordering
Hypothesis).
Suppose we attempt an admittedly coarse summary of the consensus among
lexicalist scholars working on word formation in the mid-1980s, focusing
specifically on approaches to derivational morphology and on the syntactic
implications of such approaches. By that time, and integrating many of the
generative or semigenerative devices briefly outlined above, the formation of
complex words takes place in a component distinct from the syntax, call it WF
(Word Formation). Word in such models is a technical term reserved for
formal objects which are the output of WF (including trivial outputs). The
primitives of WF are affixes and bases (alternatively, ‘stems’ or ‘roots’). In that
system affixes such as -ation, -al, or re- are functors (to appropriate the term
from DiSciullo & Williams, 1987), insofar as their attachment to some stem
results in the emergence of some well-defined formal properties. Bases, on the
other hand, are by and large inert from a WF perspective. They are assumed to
be pairs of sound and some lexical semantics, and they have a category, but
they do not define any grammatical operations, as such. WF manipulates
affixes and bases (or, possibly, affixes trigger WF manipulations of various
sorts), giving rise to Words (themselves potentially recycled into the WF
component as a base for further affixation), and where Word, now, is assumed
to consist of a sound—lexico-semantics pairing and always with a syntactic
category and a syntactic insertion frame, the latter possibly derived from its
lexical semantics. Crucially, then, such models, although they do assume that,
e.g., destruction is derived from destroy, continue to assume that the morpho-
logical complexity of destruction is syntactically obscured, and that syntactic-
ally, the representation should fundamentally remain as in (1).⁴

1.2 Nominalization and θ-theory

Lexicalism, as put forth in RoN (as well as Chomsky, 1965), brought with it a
renewed focus on argument structure, and the emergence of frameworks

⁴ The picture is, of course, greatly simplified. Morpheme-based accounts of word formation may
differ greatly as concerning the degree of abstractness of affixes, the extent to which they spell out the
output of rules, or are themselves the names of rules, and, of course, concerning the type of rules which
manipulate morphemes and their possible target, ranging over category, subcategorization, argument
array, and so on. From the perspective of these introductory comments, what is important is the
assumption, we believe inherent in all lexicalist approaches, that the output of the word formation
component is atomic in the relevant sense of the text.
6     

which directly focused on it, such as Relational Grammar (Johnson & Postal,
1980; Perlmutter, 1980, i.a.) and Lexical Functional Grammar (Bresnan, 1982a,b;
Bresnan & Kaplan, 1982; Bresnan & Kanerva, 1989, i.a.). The research results
of Relational Grammar, in particular, were integrated into the Government
and Binding model in the form of θ-theory, which crucially viewed each lexical
entry as the locus for item-specific information on argument selection, both
in terms of their roles (agent, patient, etc.) and in terms of their syntactic
instantiation (subject/object, or, following Williams, 1981, external argument
and internal argument). While contemporaneous developments sought to
derive such lexical specification from more lexical semantic consideration,
the information, nonetheless, was crucially tied up with the properties
of individual lexical items, be they syntactic (C-selection) or semantic
(S-selection).
From that perspective, nominalizations once again became the target of
intense study, seeking to investigate the extent to which θ-roles, or more
generally event-related argumental roles, do indeed match each other in the
verbal and the nominal instantiations of structures such as those in (1). At one
end of the research continuum were models which advocated a strict paral-
lelism, or inheritance, of argumental roles from verbs to nouns (e.g. Hoekstra,
1986; Giorgi & Longobardi, 1991). At the other end of this research continuum
were models in which there was no inheritance at all, and nominal argumen-
tation emerged independently from verbal one (Grimshaw, 1990). Occupying
an intermediate space, finally, were a family of models which allowed inher-
itance in some cases (e.g. -able or -ing cases, as discussed in Roeper, 1987), but
which highlighted the absence of such inheritance in others (e.g. bare nom-
inals, or Zero Nominals, as discussed in Roeper, 1987, cf. (2)), or partial
inheritance in others (see Randall, 1988, for a review). For such models, the
challenge was to gain an understanding of how partial role mapping is
negotiated between nominal and verbal argumentation. Such partial mapping
is attested, e.g. in the loss of the subject in nominalization, as in (3); the
impossibility of double objects and adjuncts in -er nominals, as in (4) (as
discussed in Randall, 1982); or in DNs (already discussed in RoN), as in (5);
restrictions on the emergence of nominalizations for psychological predicates,
as in (6) and (7) (Anderson, 1984; Pesetsky, 1995), and others:

(2) a. the sink (*of the ship)

b. the crumble (*of the cookie) (Roeper, 1987)

(3) The destruction of the city

  7

(4) a. a writer (of books) (*with a pen) (Randall, 1982)

b. *a giver of the children of gifts
c. a giver of gifts (to the children)

(5) a. the giving of gifts to children

b. *the giving of children of gifts

(6) a. John enjoyed the movie. (Based on Anderson, 1984)

b. The movie was enjoyed by John.
c. John’s enjoyment of the movie
d. *the movie’s enjoyment by John
(and compare with ‘the city’s destruction by the barbarians’)

(7) a. Kim annoyed the cat (deliberately) (Pesetsky, 1995)

b. Kim’s (deliberate) annoyance of the cats
c. The film annoyed Kim
d. *the film’s annoyance of Kim

These patterns inspired lexicalist ‘thematic’ approaches to nominalization

represented among others by Amritavalli (1980), Hoekstra (1986), Rappaport
(1983), and Rozwadowska (1988). The basic claim in these approaches is
that the formal realization of arguments is dependent on the thematic
grids, which are themselves categorially independent. In other words, it is
not the syntactic structure which is shared by noun and the verb, but the
thematic grid alone, which, in turn, may be subject to mapping operations
which are categorially unique. Importantly, such accounts fundamentally
allow not only verbs (or adjectives), but also nouns to be at the core of
eventive argumental arrays. In turn, if the emergence of eventive argu-
mental arrays is dependent on the presence of an event argument, as is
frequently assumed (see, in particular, Higginbotham, 1985; Kratzer; 1995;
Grimshaw, 1990), this entails that event arguments are not unique to the
verbal/adjectival domain.
The question of the relationship between the emergence of event-related
argumental arrays and the category of the head (specifically V/A or N), has
continued to play a central role in syntactic approaches to nominalization.
At one end of the spectrum here are approaches which force a verbal (or
adjectival) projection in conjunction with any eventive argumental array
(Borer, 1999, 2003, Chapter 6; Roy, 2010; Roy & Soare, 2013, 2014,
Chapter 13; Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia, & Soare, 2010; Iordăchioaia, Chapter 10;
8     

Alexiadou, Chapter 5). At the other end of the spectrum are approaches which
consider the emergence of arguments to be independent of the categorial nature
of the (lexical) head, either because arguments are associated with functional
structure which is not uniquely verbal (or adjectival), e.g. as in Alexiadou (2001),
or, alternatively, because arguments are properties of a-categorial roots, which
could then be embedded under verbal or nominal structure, very much on a par
with (1) (Marantz, 1997; Harley, 2009b, Chapter 9).

1.3 Going syntax: early distributive morphological

approaches

Within an approach that seeks to reintegrate word formation into the syntax,
and which has, at its core, a-categorial roots, Marantz (1997) observes, cor-
rectly, that there is little to block the structures in (1) as syntactic representa-
tions. In a departure from RoN, however, and seeking to accommodate the
truly a-categorial nature of roots, the a-categorial entry for e.g. , now
relabeled √, is not inserted under N⁰ or V⁰, as in RoN, but rather,
under some functional structure (D, T) which effectively nominalizes or
verbalizes it, as in (8):

(8) a. F[V] b. F[V]

F √root = verb F √root = noun

As in RoN, the emergence of e.g. destroy vs. destruction, or form vs.

formation is a phonological realization effect associated with the categorial
position of the root. In other words, in (8), as in RoN, destroy and destruction
are equally (non)complex, categorially, and there is no direct sense in which
destruction or formation are derived, specifically, from the verbs destroy or
form, respectively. In an attempt to capture the morphological complexity of
some of these structures, Marantz (1999) replaces the structure in (8) with the
structures in (9):

(9) a. ν b. n

ν √destroy n √destroy
Ο̸ν -tionn
  9

n and v are categorial nodes, and in the structures in (9) what corresponds
to traditional N or V are not terminals, but rather, the combination of the
a-categorial root with a functionally categorial head. Both, e.g. destroy the verb
and destruction the noun, then, emerge from (9) as complex. We note,
however, that while destructionn in (9b) is complex, thereby reflecting syntac-
tically its morphological complexity, it is neither more nor less complex than
destroyv. More importantly, it remains the case that in (9), as well as similar
structures in e.g. Harley (2009b, Chapter 9), there is no sense in which
destructionn is related to destroyv. Both, to be sure, are derived from the
same root, but the deverbal nature of destruction remains unrepresented.
The structures in (8) and (9), harking back as they do to RoN, raise the
question of the position of complements. For Marantz (1997, 1999, et seq.)
and for Harley (2009b, Chapter 9, i.a.) and very much in line with RoN,
complements are properties of roots, and are therefore associated with either
(emergent) nouns, or (emergent) verbs, in an identical fashion. A different
approach is taken in van Hout & Roeper (1998), Alexiadou (2001, 2009), and
Borer (1999, 2003), among others, where arguments are severed from the
terminal (be it a root or a verb), and are rather associated with functional
structure (typically aspectual). Seeking to represent the commonality between
all these accounts, in a diagram such as (10), internal arguments (so-called)
are associated with F1, while external arguments are associated with F2. The
root, potentially a-categorial in these accounts, is an inert syntactic terminal,
devoid of syntactic properties:

(10) F1

ex. Arg
F1 F2

int. Arg
F2
… √root

(10), as it stands, is neutral on two related questions. One is the categorial

nature of the root (N? V? a-categorial?). The second is the representation of
morphological complexity, with at the very least the possibilities in (11) for,
e.g. formation:
10     

(11) a. [F2 . . . [√ √ ]...]

formation
b. [F2 . . . [N/n N/n [√ √]] . . . ]
ation form
c. [F2 . . . [N/n N/n [V/v √]]]
ation form
d. [F2 . . . [N/n N/n [V/v V/v [√ √]]]]
ation ∅v form

(11a) is a variant of (8b), and to the best of our knowledge is not presently
endorsed by research on nominals. All other structures, however, have been
proposed, and some continue to be endorsed. A variant of (11b) is endorsed,
e.g. in Alexiadou (2001) (but not in later work), and is commonly assumed for
DN with or without arguments (see, in Chapter 10, Iordăchioaia, as well as
Coon & Royer (Chapter 7), and Roy & Soare (Chapter 13)). (11c) is specifically
proposed in Borer (2013, Chapter 6, i.a.), and consists of the claim that –ation
is a functor which effectively ‘verbalizes’ its complementation domain (much
like e.g. T would), i.e. form here is effectively verbalized without a separate
categorial head, thereby forcing all DN to include a V constituent. Finally,
some version of (11d), with a syntactically a-categorial root, is routinely
endorsed for argumental DN (including Alexiadou, Chapter 5, Iordăchioaia,
Chapter 10), as well as in Marantz (1999) specifically for Chomsky’s ‘mixed
nominalizations’.

1.4 The typology of derived nominals: Grimshaw (1990)

At the core of the attempt to correlate the behavior of verbs and the nouns
potentially derived from them, is the conundrum in (12), epitomized by the
presence of the arguments in (12a), vs. their absence in (12b):

(12) a. the enemy’s destruction of the city (started at dawn)

b. the destruction (was complete)

In RoN it is already recognized that in addition to the distribution of

arguments, a polysemy of sorts holds for the forms in (12), insofar as the
argumental form references an event, while the nonargumental one tends to
have a result reading, but such polysemy was, if anything, considered as
further evidence for the listed nature of DN, given the absence of any such
  11

polysemous effects in the verbal domain. While a myriad of studies of the

argumental array of nominals emerged in the 70s and 80s, including some that
incorporated syntactic mapping (notably Roeper & Siegel, 1978; Hoekstra, 1986;
Roeper, 1987), most of these studies (e.g. Williams, 1981; Safir, 1987; Ouhalla,
1991; Picallo, 1991; Giorgi & Longobardi, 1991, i.a., and as noted above, Marantz,
1997, 1999; Harley 2009b, Chapter 9), continue to presuppose that e.g. destruc-
tion represents a single (polysemous) entry (however derived), and with optional
arguments (however represented), thereby giving rise to (12a), alongside (12b).
Early exceptions to this generalization are Anderson (1984), Higginbotham
(1983), and Dowty (1989), for whom the optionality of arguments suggests
that nouns crucially differ from verbs in that they lack arguments and, as a
consequence, that nouns definitionally lack argument structure altogether (and
see Section 1.2 for present day approaches endorsing the same claim).
A significant challenge to the polysemous approach was mounted by
Grimshaw (1990), what has come to be one of the most influential work on
DNs to date.⁵ Grimshaw proposes that DNs are not polysemous, but rather
structurally ambiguous, with event nominals taking, as their external argu-
ment, an event argument (Ev), and with Result Nominals taking, as their
external argument, an argumental index (R, following Williams, 1981 and
Higginbotham, 1985). Importantly, in this picture R-nominals, even in the
presence of optional arguments, are not eventive and do not have an event
structure. In turn, the Ev argument is what correlates with the emergence of
what Grimshaw calls Complex Event Nominals (CEN; at times called
Argument Structure Nominals (ASN)) and which render complements obliga-
tory. The tests in (13) distinguish between these distinct nominal types:

(13) R-nominals (RNs) CENs (ASNs)

a. No obligatory arguments
b. No necessary event reading
c. No agent-oriented modifiers
d. Subjects are possessives
e. by-phrases are nonargu-
ments; in Spanish, selects de
f. No event control (implicit
argument control)
g. No aspectual modifiers
Obligatory arguments (where relevant)
Event reading
Agent-oriented modifiers
Subjects are arguments
by-phrases are arguments; in Spanish,
selects por (where licit in verbal contexts)
Event control (implicit argument
control)
Aspectual modifiers such as for three
hours; in three hours

⁵ Some aspects of the Grimshaw typology are already in place in Ruwet (1972). See also Lebeaux,
(1986); Roeper, (1987); Zubizarreta, (1987).
12     

h. Modifiers like constant and Modifiers like frequent may occur

frequent only with plural
i. Postnominal genitives
possible
j. Pluralize, allow one, a, that
determiners
k. May be predicates
without plural
Postnominal genitives impossible
Do not pluralize, do not allow one, a,
that determiners
May not be predicates

Some of these diagnostics are exemplified for CENs in (14) and for RNs in
(15):

(14) a. The instructor’s (intentional) examination of the student (c)

b. The frequent collection of mushrooms (by students) (e,h)
c. The monitoring of wild flowers to document their disappearance (f )
d. The destruction of Rome in a day (g)

(15) a. The instructor’s examination/exam (a,d)

b. John’s collections (a,h)
c. The frequent destruction*(s) took their/*its toll (h)
d. That exam of Mary’s (i)
e. This kind of destruction (?? of cities) (k)

Alongside the typology in (13), Grimshaw proposes a typology of nominal

suffixes, such that they correlate directly with the selection between Ev and R:

(16) a. -ing-NOM: Ev only

b. ∅-NOM (zero nominals, ZN): R only
c. ation and kin (ATK -ation, -ence/ance, -ment, -al, etc.): Ev, R

Finally, Grimshaw observes that RNs, so named, in fact span over both
nominals which indeed denote a result, e.g. as in (12b), and nominals which
denote an event, although CEN characteristics are missing, as in (17). She
labels the latter Simple Event Nominals:

(17) a. The exam/class started at 5pm and lasted 5 hours

b. the (*frequent) exam/class (*in/for three hours) (*by graduate students)

Importantly for Grimshaw, event properties are not inherited from the verb,
but rather are associated with the nominal suffix, and some considerable effort
  13

is actually spent to ensure that the verbal argument is severed from that of the
related nouns. While some commonality is attributable to lexical semantics, no
inheritance of any sort is assumed as such. The severance of the argument
structure from the verb, in turn, leads to one of the major problems with
Grimshaw’s system (acknowledged in a footnote). Specifically, the fact that
CEN/ASNs are systematically derived from verbs goes unaccounted for, and
the absence of CEN properties for nouns denoting events but not of deverbal
source (e.g. Simple Event Nominals such as class or trip) remains unexplained.⁶
The typology set up in Grimshaw (1990) has turned out to inform almost all
studies of derived nominals that have proceeded to emerge subsequent to it. It
has been shown, rather compellingly, to apply to a vast number of languages,
including, but not limited to Romance (Italian, French, Spanish), Germanic
(Dutch, German), Greek, Slavic (Russian, Polish), Semitic (Hebrew, Arabic),
Chinese, Altaic (Japanese, Korean), and Hungarian, among others, and is
extended in the present volume to a number of understudied languages,
including Mayan (Ch’ol and Chuj), and Amazonian languages (Mẽbêngôkre,
Ch’acobo) (see, in particular, Rozwadowska, 2006, for a review). While some
studies do deny the fundamental validity of the distinction (Marantz, 1997;
Harley, 2009b), many others take it as their starting point. This notwithstand-
ing, challenges continue to be mounted to some aspects of the Grimshaw
model, and debates concerning the validity of some of her claims remain
extremely current. To exemplify, the correlation between affixal types and the
emergence of RN or CEN has come under a major challenge on two fronts.
That -ing nominalizations (‘mixed nominalizations’) must be CEN is directly
challenged in Borer (2013), highlighting, in particular, the absence of argu-
ments for the forms in (18a), and their licit occurrence in predicate contexts, as
well as the potential emergence of noncompositional meaning, as in (18b):

(18) a. this kind of parenting, bullying, touching, etc.

b. this reading of historical events is sure to lead to major
misunderstandings

A major challenge to the claimed correlation between zero-affixed nominals

(ZN) and RNs has been mounted by Alexiadou & Grimshaw (2008) as well as
Iordăchioaia (2019a,b, Chapter 10), pointing to cases such as (19):⁷

⁶ See Newmeyer (2009) and Harley (2009b) for some counterexamples. See Borer (2013) for a
detailed rebuttal.
⁷ The presence of some counterexamples is pointed out already in Grimshaw (1990). See Borer
(2003) and Newmeyer (2009) for aspects of the debate.
14     

(19) a. the (frequent) crash of the economy

b. the (ongoing) rewrite of the city’s land-use code

Of the tests in (13), the claims in (13c, h, j), in particular, have been challenged.
For (13c), the challenge involves the availability of agentive modifiers with
expressions which are clearly not DNs (deliberate strategy, deliberate fire).
Similarly, for (13h), through the existence of expressions such as frequent/
constant pain, frequent/constant joy, frequent/constant sorrow, frequent fire,
which are not DNs, and some which do not clearly correspond to a simple
event either (frequent guest). Nor is it the case that the distribution of CEN/
ASN can be successfully characterized through the distribution of determiners,
or the availability of pluralization (as claimed in (13j)). Rather, and as noted
originally in Mourelatos (1978), atelic CEN/ASN are mass nouns, thereby
blocking pluralization or indefinite determiners and numerals, in English.
Telic nominalizations, on the other hand, are count, thereby allowing both
pluralization and indefinite determiners and numerals (see Borer, 2005b, for
discussion):

(20) a. three late arrivals of the train (adapted from Mourelatos, 1978)
b. a deliberate capsizing of the boat by Mary

(21) a. *three deliberate pushings of the carts (by Mary)

b. *a painting of the nativity (for hours) (by Jones)

Finally, as emerges in particular from Alexiadou & Doron (2012) as well as

Doron (2014), the distribution of by-phrases is considerably more complex
than it might appear, and raises the distinct possibility that by-phrases in
nominals do not, in actuality, correspond to their nominal instantiations (but
cf. Bruening, 2013).

1.5 Affixation height

Several approaches to the internal structure of nominalizations pursued the

view that a nominal affix can apply to different levels of projection of a verbal
structure creating different types of derived nominals. For instance, an affix
may combine directly with a root as shown in (8) and see also Embick (2010),
but it can also attach to a verbal stem or a verbal projection including the
internal argument and maybe also the external argument and even higher
  15

projections such as Aspect. Hoekstra (1986) and Roeper (1987) are two
examples of earlier accounts which appeal to affixation height. More recent
such proposals include Borer (1993, 1999, 2003, i.a. for RN vs. ASN), van Hout
& Roeper (1998), Alexiadou (2001, 2009, 2017a,c, Chapter 5), Alexiadou,
Iordăchioaia, & Soare (2010), Sichel (2010), Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia, &
Schäfer (2011), among others. The common idea shared by all these authors
is that the higher the affix attaches the more verbal layers they include and thus
the more verbal properties the respective nominalizations exhibit. In other
words, the gradient verbal behavior nominalization show within a language
and across languages is due to the size of verbal structure they embed.
Within this line of thinking, it was initially proposed that since RNs lack
arguments and other verbal properties, they must involve direct affixation to
the verbal stem, see e.g. Borer (1999, 2003), or involve root affixation, see e.g.
Alexiadou (2001). By contrast, CENs/ASNs necessarily include verbal layers
which are responsible for the licensing of arguments and other verbal prop-
erties. The claim that RNs lack verbal layers has been revisited in Alexiadou
(2009) and Harley (2009b), who both argue that at least Simple Event
Nominals (SENs) must include a verbal layer, responsible for introducing
event implications.

1.6 Some of the significant questions under consideration

The original agenda set up by RoN, as augmented by supplemental work on

argument structure, on the typology of derived nominals, and on the role of
morphological complexity, continue to inform the agenda for the study of
derived nominals, now expanded to include a number of previously unstudied
languages. Of these questions, the following seem to us to emerge as most
prominent, in the context of the present volume:

I Morphology and syntax

A. How is morphological complexity to be represented in the syntax, and
specifically, what is the syntactic representation of roots, categorizers,
and functional nodes relative to such morphological complexity?
B. Do nominal affixes correlate with different types of nominalizations,
and if so, how?
C. On a related note, can height of affixation emerge as a crucial factor in
distinguishing RN from CEN/ASN?
16     

II The typology of DN
A. Is the ambiguity set up by Grimshaw fundamentally correct? In other
words, is there important insight to be gained from assuming that
fundamentally, RN and CEN/ASN are structurally distinct?
B. Is the distinction between RN and CEN/ASN syntactic? And if so,
how is it to be represented?
C. Assuming a syntactic realization for the RN and CEN/ASN distinc-
tion, how is argument structure to be modeled within CEN/ASN?
Specifically, are arguments associated with roots, identically, across
the N/V divide? Alternatively, are they associated with dedicated
functional structure, and if so, is that functional structure specifically
verbal (i.e. belonging to the verbal extended projection), nominal, or
both?
D. And on a related note, but more generally, do nouns have event
structure?
E. As in (IB), but within a distinct domain, can the height of affixation
emerge as a crucial factor in distinguishing different CEN/ASNs from
each other?
F. And even more concretely, what are nominalizations, cross-
linguistically? Is there a uniform core to their structure that can be
syntactically described?
III Restrictions
A. Can we shed light on those domains which continue to exhibit
different behavior within the verbal and the nominal domain,
including some of the tests originally in Chomsky (1970) (the
absence of tough movement and raising to subject in derived nom-
inals), or those identified originally by Anderson (1984) and
Pesetsky (1995), highlighting restrictions on psych nominalizations
which are absent in the verbal domain?
B. And more generally, how can we model the emergence of noncom-
positional meaning, or Content, within syntactic approaches to the
formation of words?

1.7 The chapters in this volume

In Chapter 2 Noam Chomsky reviews the historical background surrounding

the emergence of RoN, the restrictive view of the syntax which it
promoted, and, in that context, the need to separate syntactically
  17

predictable constructions, such as gerunds from less predictable formations,

and specifically derived nominals, as described in Lees’ (1960) seminal study.
It is also in that context that Chomsky reviews the emergence of the
X’-scheme, offering, in particular, a contemporary perspective on its merits
and drawbacks.
Taking a page from the RoN agenda which seeks to attribute fundamentally
identical syntax to nouns and verbs, Peter Ackema & Ad Neeleman, in their
contribution ‘Unifying nominal and verbal inflection: Agreement and feature
realization’ (Chapter 3), pursue the parallel syntax of nominal and verbal
projections by considering agreement phenomena. Some apparent agreement
phenomena within the NP behave differently in some respects from verbal
agreement, an observation that has led to a view that sees it as a distinct
phenomenon, labeled concord. The authors defend two claims. First, concord
is not itself an instance of agreement. Rather, following Norris (2014), it
consists of the spellout of features of an XP on terminals contained in that
XP. These features can be present on XP because they are inherited from one
or more heads contained in XP. These heads may have these features because
they partake in agreement, or because they are inherent to the head. Second,
neither agreement nor concord is unique to the category of the phrase in
which it is found. Following the agenda set in Remarks, the authors argue that
both agreement and concord occur in nominal as well as verbal domains. They
show that various instances of apparently unusual agreement in TP, such as
agreement in which adverbs are targets, are better analyzed as cases of
concord, and conclude that the general syntax of agreement and concord
does not need to refer to nominal or verbal status.
Tackling directly the structure of nominalizations, Odelia Ahdout & Itamar
Kastner, in their contribution ‘Bases, transformations, and competition in
Hebrew niXYaZ’ (Chapter 4), examine a set of interactions between syntax,
morphological marking and nominalization in Modern Hebrew, where one
kind of morphological marking is associated with a number of distinct
morpho-syntactic patterns. They report a difference between two main groups
of niXYaZ verbs—syntactically active/unergative (have an external argument
realized in the syntax) and syntactically nonactive: unaccusative (lack an
external argument altogether) and passive (where an agent is implicit). The
authors then offer a distinct syntactic representation for each group, and show,
on the basis of 415 verbs, that despite sharing morphological marking, the two
groups correspond to distinct nominalization patterns: Verbs of the nonactive
group—mostly passives—fail to produce a nominalization, while active-
unergative verbs nominalize rather freely. Although the difference in structure
18     

of niXYaZ active vs. nonactive verbs may potentially account for the gaps in
nominalization, they propose that the incongruence of passives with a nom-
inalized form is not syntactic, but rather stems from pragmatic effects to do
with the markedness of niXYaZ when contrasted with the alternant morpho-
logically active form XaYaZ. The markedness of the niXYaZ forms, according
to Ahdout & Kastner, translates to a dispreference of speakers toward using
this form, opting instead for the nonmarked form, XaYaZ. Crucially, and
unlike passive verbs, the same option is not available for active/unergative
verbs in niXYaZ as they do not substantiate a transitivity alternation with a
XaYaZ form. As such, no competition with XaYaZ exists, and nominalization
is enabled. Thus, the chapter identifies the involvement of both grammatical
factors and extragrammatical factors in the process of nominalization.
In ‘D vs. n nominalizations within and across languages’ (Chapter 5)
Artemis Alexiadou, based on cross-linguistic and inner language variation,
discusses two types of nominalizations: D-based vs. n-based. Building on
Hiraiwa (2005) and Wiltschko (2014), Alexiadou assumes that there is a
common skeleton for the nominal and verbal domain. This allows then the
formation of mixed categories and the inclusion of layers of the same semantic
basis, which can be interchanged. The chapter shows that not all nominaliza-
tions are equally verbal, although they have a verbal core. Importantly, how-
ever, nominalizations are not derived transformationally from clauses. Rather,
both verbal and nominal clauses are assembled in the syntax, share functional
layers, and thus show similar properties. Finally, Alexiadou discusses denom-
inal verbalization and proposes that it is not possible in languages such as
English as licensing of case on nominal internal arguments blocks it.
In her contribution ‘Nominalizing verbal passives: PROs and cons’
(Chapter 6), Hagit Borer argues that nominalization, and by extension many
other morphological processes, must be syntactic. Borer focuses on so-called
Short Argument Structure Nominals (SASNs), i.e. ASNs which are missing an
overt logical (external) subject, and which do not obligatorily take a by-phrase.
Borer provides evidence that SASNs embed a passive structure, with the latter
showing most of the syntactic properties of clausal verbal passive, including
the promotion of the internal argument. Nominalization is thus an operation
which can combine a passivized verbal extended projection with a higher
nominal head. Long ASNs, in turn, are nominalizations which bring together
a nominalizer with an active Verbal Extended Projection, ExP[V], complete
with all its arguments, including the external. ASNs (deverbal/de-adjectival),
according to Borer, therefore must contain a verbal/adjectival ExP, and the
argument array in ASNs is that which is associated with the embedded ExP[V]
  19

and ExP[A] respectively, and not with the noun. This in turn means that the
operation Nominalization, which brings together a verbal/adjectival stem with
a nominalizing affix, must be allowed to apply to the output of syntactic
operations which involve complex syntactic phrases, including passive and
movement.
In ‘Nominalization and selection in two Mayan languages’ (Chapter 7)
Jessica Coon & Justin Royer investigate nominalization in languages from
two subbranches of the Mayan family: Ch’ol and Chuj. At the heart of this
work is the tension between semantic requirements of certain roots, and the
syntactic structure available to license arguments in different types and sizes of
constructions. The fact that roots in Mayan belong to well-defined and
diagnosable root classes, combined with the rich inventory of derivational
morphology, sheds light on the division of labor between roots and functional
heads in governing the appearance of nominal arguments. The authors show
that roots belonging to transitive and (unaccusative) intransitive classes in
Ch’ol and Chuj always require semantic saturation of an argument slot, but
that this is accomplished by different means in the Mayan equivalents of the
types of nominalizations examined in Chomsky (1970). They attribute this
difference to the variation in the realization of the internal argument to the site
of nominalization—specifically, to the presence or absence of functional heads
available internal to the nominalization to syntactically license arguments.
In Chapter 8, ‘Three ways of unifying participles and nominalizations: The
case of Udmur’, Éva Dékány & Ekaterina Georgieva discuss the fact that the
same morpheme appears in both DNs and participial relative clauses with
relative systematicity in different language families. This makes it unlikely that
we are dealing with unconnected cases of accidental homophony in the
lexicon. Instead, a principled syntactic account is called for. The authors aim
to lay out the hypothesis space for an explanatory account of the cross-
linguistic participle-nominalizer polysemy, and to discuss which of the
hypotheses is best suited to capture the Udmurt facts in particular. They
present three different ways in which the polysemy can be given a unified
syntactic account, such that the same lexical entry underlies the shared suffix
of relatives and DNs. They then proceed to the empirical focus of the chapter,
detailing the morpho-syntactic properties of Udmurt relatives and DNs with -m.
They argue against treating -m as a nominalizing head and develop an account of
-m as a head in the extended verbal projection.
In Chapter 9, ‘Relative nominals and event nominals in Hiaki’, Heidi Harley
discusses an interesting formal overlap between nominalizations which create
20     

relative clause-like structures and nominalizations which create event

nominals in Hiaki (Yaqui). The nominalizer which usually derives a subject
relative nominal, when applied to an argumentless predicate such as a weather
verb or an impersonal passive, also derives an event nominal. Harley argues
that this is because the event argument is the ‘subject’ of an argumentless
predicate, the only accessible argument for the nominalizer to reify. In the
process of proposing a uniform semantics for the relative nominalizers and the
event nominalizer, a detailed analysis of both is provided. The nominalizers are
argued to select an Aspect Phrase (AspP) complement. In entity-referring
relative nominals, null operator movement is involved; in the event-referring
event nominals, no operator is needed or possible. The syntax and morphology
of the relative nominalizers is worked out in detail, with particular attention to
the genitive-marked subjects of object, oblique, and locative relative nominals.
In ‘Categorization and nominalization in zero nominals’ (Chapter 10)
Gianina Iordăchioaia discusses a type of nominalization generally neglected
in the generative literature after Chomsky (1970), namely ZNs. While overtly
suffixed nominals are taken to systematically nominalize verbal constructions
with argument structure, ZNs are considered to represent quite lexicalized
uses corresponding to Grimshaw’s (1990) result or SENs. In current syntactic
models of word formation like DM or XSM, the implication is that ZNs are
simple categorizations of roots as nouns in specific syntactic contexts and
cannot instantiate real nominalizations of verbal structure. One important
argument that Borer (2013) brings in support of this hypothesis is the alleged
inability of ZNs to realize verbal argument structure. Iordăchioaia shows that,
depending on the ontological type of the root that the base verb is built on,
ZNs may in fact realize argument structure and receive compositional dever-
bal readings of the kind that nominalizations with overt suffixes resent.
Building on Beavers & Koontz-Garboden’s (2020) distinction between prop-
erty concept and result roots, she argues that ZNs corresponding to verbs built
on the two types of root exhibit a contrast in their potential to realize
argument structure. She then compares ZNs derived from change of state
verbs (which are built on result roots) with ZNs derived from psych verbs
(which are built on property concept roots) and shows by means of corpus
data that the former often instantiate inchoative or causative change of state
readings with which they realize argument structure. By contrast, the apparent
semantic arguments of psych ZNs are not structural as they involve idiosyn-
cratic prepositional realizations, similarly to underived psych nouns.
Keir Moulton’s ‘Remarks on propositional nominalization’ (Chapter 11)
investigates nominalization at the highest reaches of the extended verbal
  21

projection, finite CPs. While CPs can express propositions, Moulton puts
forward the novel claim that only nominalization of CPs by a semantically
contentful N can deliver reference to propositional objects. This conclusion is
in contrast to the propositional nominalization operations proposed in
Chierchia, (1984); Potts, (2002); and Takahashi, (2010). Evidence comes
from a correlation between two types of D+CP constructions in Spanish
(Picallo, 2002; Serrano, 2014, 2015) and the kind of propositions they can
describe. Moulton then shows that a similar pattern arises in the case of
exophoric propositional proforms, a novel observation. Putting the two case
studies together, the following picture emerges: Natural language does not
permit reference to proposition-like objects directly by adding a D to a CP, but
only via some content-bearing entity (e.g. Moltmann’s, 2013’, attitudinal
objects). In the case of propositional nominalizations, this entity must come
in the form a lexical N; in the case of propositional discourse anaphora, this
must come in the form of a discourse referent that bears propositional content,
such as an assertion event (Hacquard, 2006).
In ‘Where are thematic roles? Building the micro-syntax of implicit argu-
ments in nominalizations’ (Chapter 12) Tom Roeper attempts to account for
implicit arguments in a fashion that is closely linked to that utilized for the
projection of verbs. Roeper argues for clitic-like projections that accompany
the verb, particularly evident in nominalizations: These separate the lexical
Argument-theta projections of the verb from the conditions on Maximal
Projections which enter into syntactic operations, while the larger pattern of
subject, object, and control behavior remains consistent across the syntax and
the lexicon. Roeper argues that bare nominalizations (e.g. a look, a glance, a
comment) all carry argument structure capable of motivating syntactic bind-
ing. Moreover, the argumental interpretation of the possessive in nominaliza-
tions shows predictable sensitivity to passive morphemes (-ed, -able) buried
inside nominalizations. They allow only an object interpretation of nominal-
ized possessives precisely as they do for subjects in verbal structures. The
theory of Theta-role projection must allow projection of an Agent to Subject in
little v, Subject in TP, and Subject in Possessives, and if acquisition is efficient,
it should all follow automatically from UG. Roeper then argues that imper-
sonal passives that appear in a subset of languages call for both special syntax
and a special vision of possible integration into discourse structure.
In their contribution ‘Agent and other function nominals in a neo-
constructionist approach to nominalizations’ (Chapter 13) Isabelle Roy &
Elena Soare revisit the question of whether the analysis in terms of complex
verbal/aspectual structure that is well supported for DNs denoting events
22     

(ASNs, gerunds) is also motivated for nouns denoting Agents, or, more
generally, participants and entities performing a role or a function (including
instruments) (function nominals). They ask to what extent function nominals
form a homogeneous class and what the morpho-syntactic properties are of
this class or classes. Furthermore, are Agent and other function nominals
simplex or complex forms? And are they, or at least some of them, syntactic-
ally derived from a full verbal structure? Building in part on previous work in
Roy & Soare (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015), they defend a form of the heterogeneity
hypothesis, according to which some function nominals are derived from
verbs, while others are not. Function nominals belong to different classes
depending on whether they are morphologically complex or simplex, whether
they are derived from a true verbal structure, and depending on the type of
suffix they involve. Considering data from French and Romanian, they argue
for two distinct patterns of nominalization, namely an eventive pattern and a
noneventive pattern. Eventive nominals are necessarily complex and involve a
verbal structure. Noneventive nominals may be morphologically simplex or
complex, but they do not derive from a verbal structure. These two patterns
are distributed differently across French, Romanian, and English.
In ‘Polish psych nominals revisited’ (Chapter 14) Bożena Rozwadowska
provides supports for the n-based approach to nominalizations (developed
in numerous papers by Alexiadou & Borer, among others) by providing the
evidence from a variety of Polish psych nominals for varying sizes of the verbal
structure embedded in them. So far, it has been widely recognized in cross-
linguistic literature that psych nominals denote states (see Grimshaw, 1990;
Pesetsky, 1995; Alexiadou 2011a; Fábregas & Marín, 2012; Melloni, 2017;
Iordăchioaia, 2019a; i.a.). Rozwadowska argues that in addition to stative
psych nominals, which themselves have a verbal layer embedded in them,
Polish systematically has eventive reflexive psych nominalizations with a rich
verbal structure that describe inceptive events, i.e. boundary events which
denote the beginning of a state. To show that, she focuses on nominals derived
from alternating Experiencer Object / Experiencer Subject reflexive verbs.
Additionally, Rozwadowska argues that eventive inceptive psych nominals
derived from Experiencer Object verbs, with a rich verbal structure embedded
in them, are not causative. Thus, this chapter constitutes a contribution to the
debate on the presence/absence of the component of causation in Experiencer
Object verbs and their nominalizations.
In Chapter 15, ‘Nominalizations, case domains, and restructuring in two
Amazonian languages’, Andrés Pablo Salanova & Adam Tallman examine
the synchronic state of two constructions whose diachronic origin in
  23

constructions that embed nominalizations is clear. Though nominal

morphology in the lower clause and subordinating elements, such as adposi-
tions, are the most obvious signs of their structure, the primary motivation in
the literature for proposing embedding of nominalized clauses has been to
explain unusual alignment patterns: In languages that are normally ergative,
these constructions are associated with a double nominative (or double
unmarked) alignment. This is the case in the two constructions examined,
and so their discussion is built around the alignment observed in them. The
data come from Mẽbêngôkre, a Northern Jê language spoken in central Brazil,
and of similar facts in Chácobo, a Panoan language spoken in northern
Bolivia, where, however, the status of the relevant construction as a nominal-
ization is less clear, categorially speaking. The authors propose an analysis of
these constructions that capitalizes on the presence of two case domains in
these languages.
This volume closes with Jim Wood’s ‘Prepositional prefixing and allosemy
in nominalizations’ (Chapter 16), which discusses how Icelandic prepositional
prefixing supports three main points. First, Wood shows that prepositions
play a dual role in constructing verb meaning—while they may have meaning
of their own, they may also condition a special meaning for verbal roots.
Second, the patterns of prefixation in Icelandic support the claim that DNs,
even in the CEN reading, can be built by combining heads together directly,
without any phrasal material below the nP level. This is in contrast to what
Wood calls the ‘Phrasal Layering’ analysis, where what is nominalized is a full
verb phrase, perhaps with a VoiceP or other extended vP layers. Third, Wood
shows that adjunction and complementation define distinct domains for the
conditioning of idiosyncratic meaning, and both are available for the syntactic
assembly of words and phrases.

Acknowledgments

This volume would not have been possible without the dedication and the diligence of our
contributors, who met tight deadlines patiently and efficiently, and with a great cooperative
spirit. Thanks, as well, to Jane Grimshaw for extremely useful early suggestions, to Andrew
McIntyre for helping out with the reviewing process, to Onur Özsoy for assisting with the
index compilation, and to Liz Backes, Dan Bondarenko, and Onur Özsoy for helping out
with the references. The DFG grant AL 554/8-1 (Alexiadou) is hereby acknowledged.
 2
Remarks on Nominalization
Background and motivation
Noam Chomsky

It is, naturally, gratifying to see that the issues raised in Remarks on

Nominalization (RoN) are alive and well: the subject of lively debate, also
both developed further and challenged in very interesting directions, as illus-
trated in the fine chapters collected here. My own (rather conservative) feeling,
for what it is worth, is as expressed by J. F. Newmeyer (2005) in a valuable
paper that extends some of the ideas in RoN while also correcting flaws:
Generally ‘on the right track’.
I won’t try to elaborate that position here, but will instead discuss the
background and motivation for RoN and some of the developments that
followed from its conclusions in important ways that were not anticipated or
appreciated at the time.
The background assumptions, as the paper indicates, are spelled out more
carefully in work of the immediately preceding years, mainly Chomsky (1965).
As in rational inquiry generally, the primary concern is explanation and
understanding: for linguistic theory, what was called ‘explanatory adequacy’.¹
The goal is to construct a theory—Universal Grammar (UG) in conventional
terminology—that specifies the possible languages and provides an evaluation
procedure that selects the correct language (L), given primary linguistic data.
More generally, the approach presupposes what was later called ‘the biolinguis-
tics framework’ (BL; Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini’s term), taking a person’s
language to be a biological trait of the person, a state of the general faculty of
language FL—the topic of UG—much as the person’s visual system is a state of
the general visual faculty.²

¹ A crucial goal, but a way station to deeper queries, in particular, why should UG have these
properties and not others, a major concern of what later became the Minimalist Program.
² Though this may—and I think should—seem to be virtual truism, it departed from prevailing
conceptions, still widely held. See Chomsky (2013) for a sample of prominent examples.

Noam Chomsky, Remarks on Nominalization: Background and motivation In: Nominalization: 50 Years on from Chomsky’s
Remarks. Edited by: Artemis Alexiadou and Hagit Borer, Oxford University Press (2020). © Noam Chomsky.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198865544.003.0002
26  

There is strong evidence that FL is a true species property, common to

humans apart from in severe pathology and without close analogue in other
organisms.
Adopting BL, explanatory adequacy requires the further condition that the
procedure for selecting a language from the search space be feasible. It must
provide a realistic abstract account of language acquisition on the basis of the
data available, in particular accounting for the huge gap between the data and
what the child knows. It was recognized from the early days of work on
generative grammar that this problem of Poverty of Stimulus is enormous,
and later investigations of what is known by a very young child along with
statistical study of the sparsity of data available have revealed that the problem
is far more severe even than what was assumed at the time of RoN.³
Achieving explanatory adequacy, then, requires sharp restriction of the
search space and highly constrained search procedures. The latter problem
was not seriously addressed until development of the Principles and
Parameters (PP) approach, which actually had its roots in RoN, though it
was not understood at the time. The search procedure is still under intense
investigation, with many valuable contributions.⁴ The only idea at the time of
RoN was systematic search, which actually yields an answer though it is
radically unfeasible. The main concern in RoN, therefore, was restriction of
the search space.
It should be noted that the other familiar levels of adequacy (observational,
descriptive) are intertwined with explanatory adequacy in the process of
discovery by the linguist, and have priority in acquisition (in which case UG,
yielding explanatory adequacy by definition, is given, with maturational stages;
see Lenneberg, 1967). As is familiar, even the simplest observations—say a
field worker’s preliminary efforts at phonetic transcription—presuppose a
tentative explanatory theory, and elicitation techniques are basically critical
experiments, heavily theory-dependent. For the linguist, choice of theory
(i.e. choice of grammar and, more deeply, UG) is of course dependent on data
and description, and conversely for decisions about relevance of observation and
accuracy of description. Features of research generally, not specific to language.
Returning to restriction of the search space, at the time of RoN there were
two cases to examine: Phrase Structure Grammar (PSG) and transformations
(TG). PSG was far too rich to be seriously considered as a candidate for UG,
facts recognized in the earliest work. There is, for example, nothing in PSG
to block a vast array of such rules as NP→V PP. Furthermore the notations

³ Yang et al. (2017). ⁴ Roberts (2020).

    27

(NP, VP, etc.) are a superfluous complication, implicitly incorporating prop-

erties of the rule system that should be spelled out explicitly. RoN therefore
suggests dispensing with PSG entirely in favor of X-bar theory, sharply
restricting the search space; the superfluous vocabulary was reduced twenty
years later in Bare Phrase Structure, based on ideas of Peggy Speas and Naoki
Fukui. Separating projection from composition led in turn to inquiry into
labeling algorithms, productively underway.
Eliminating PSG in favor of X-bar theory had several important conse-
quences. One is a mismatch between the structures that appear at the interface
levels: at the sensory motor level (SM), the language generates phonetic form
(PF) (or something similar) with linear order; at the conceptual-intentional
level (CI), it generates pure structures with no linear order. There is by now
extensive evidence confirming the conclusion that linear order and other SM
arrangements are not strictly speaking part of language but rather properties
of an amalgam of two distinct systems: language proper and SM systems that
long preceded the emergence of language in evolutionary history and have no
special relation to it. The significance of the conclusion that linear order does
not enter into syntax or CI (formal semantics, logical syntax), which is
substantial, was only recognized years later, even after the influential work
of Tanya Reinhart (1979) on c-command that lent further support to it.
Adopting X-bar theory, it follows that each language must choose a value for
what was called the ‘head parameter’: head-first or head-final. This conse-
quence of X-bar theory and other research through the ’70s led to a new
approach to achieving explanatory adequacy, the PP framework, distinguishing
(i) fixed principles that determine the array of possible languages—the search
space—and (ii) a finite set of parameters that have to be set in acquiring a
language. This approach is a sharp departure from the tradition, including early
generative grammar. It eliminates rule systems apart from TG. Through the
same post-RoN years, TG was radically simplified in ways I will not review here,
reaching finally the conclusion that the ubiquitous property of displacement in
natural language, the basic concern of TG, is provided by the simplest compu-
tational operation, and in fact is its simplest case. Along with radical simplifi-
cation of the search procedure (see Yang et al., 2017), the PP framework thus
offered the first real hope for achieving feasible explanatory adequacy.
To realize this hope it is necessary to establish the status of parameters and
to ensure that the search procedure through the set of parameters is feasible.
The ‘head parameter’ is a good starting point. More precisely, there is no
head parameter, hence no question about how it evolved or how it is
captured in UG and stored in the brain. There is simply a mismatch between
28  

two systems: language proper and the SM system of externalization. In language

acquisition, it is necessary to resolve the mismatch, but it is not technically a
parametric choice. Much more far-reaching conclusions are reached in Ian
Roberts’s important work on parameters (see Yang et al., 2017), which not
only sharply restricts the search procedure but concludes finally that parameters
are ‘emergent’, not given in UG as assumed in the PP framework.
Another consequence of X-bar theory is that all constructions are endocen-
tric. This however is incorrect. Exocentric constructions abound. In practice,
these were forced into the endocentric framework by various artifices and
stipulations, problems not addressed until Chomsky (2013), leading to new
explorations into labeling algorithms and a systematic solution to the problem
of when Move (Internal Merge) may, must, or does not apply.
Returning to RoN, with PSG eliminated, the problem of restriction of the
search space reduced to the resort to TG-related devices that were then being
used promiscuously, well beyond the formulations of TG that existed. That
was notoriously the case in generative semantics, but also in more restricted
approaches. For examining these issues, an obvious choice of materials was
Robert Lees’s (1960) careful and comprehensive study of English nominaliza-
tion, the object of inquiry in RoN.
One category of nominalizations, gerunds, raises no problems: The rules
are simple and productive, with no relevant anomalies. But application of
TG-style devices to other types of nominalization was highly problematic. The
rules were complex, varied, unmotivated, often idiosyncratic in form and
interpretation. Accordingly the mechanisms involved yielded an expansive
search space, undermining the quest for feasible explanatory theory.
The problem was significantly reduced by separating the lexicon from the
generative rules and resorting to the featural analysis of syntactic categories
(Chomsky, 1965) to establish a class of derived nominals, not formed trans-
formationally from underlying sentences but listed lexically, embedded within
a broader class of nominal structures. Idiosyncrasies remained, as is typical of
the lexicon (Bloomfield’s ‘list of exceptions’), but were sharply reduced, with
many of their properties derived from more general lexical properties. There
has since been extensive investigation of lexical properties in many domains,
often reviving traditional insights within the generative framework.
That was the basic strategy of RoN, generally ‘on the right track’ in my
opinion. Parts have been incorporated into subsequent inquiry into UG, with
substantial consequences, not then recognized or understood. Parts have been
developed in diverse ways, and are also strongly contested. From a personal
perspective after fifty years, a welcome outcome.
 3
Unifying nominal and verbal inflection
Agreement and feature realization
Peter Ackema and Ad Neeleman

3.1 Introduction

Remarks on Nominalization argues that the parallel syntax of nominal and

verbal projections originates in abstract principles that generalize over the two
domains. This line of analysis gave rise to the development of X-bar theory
(Jackendoff, 1977) and the theory of extended projection (Grimshaw, 1991). In
this chapter we will pursue this theme, but instead of focusing on the internal
structure of NP and VP, we will consider agreement phenomena. This is of
interest, because it is arguably the case that there are two distinct processes,
one which appears to be common in the VP and one which appears to be
common in the NP. We refer to the two processes as agreement and
concord, respectively. (For a discussion of terminology, see Corbett, 2006:
5–7; for an overview of the typology of and approaches to concord, see
Norris, 2017.)
Agreement is one of the most studied phenomena in Minimalism and its
predecessors. While theories differ in details, it is not controversial that
agreement is a syntactic dependency, and as such subject to syntactic condi-
tions on such dependencies. It is a relation between two elements that is
established under c-command. One of the elements (the controler, or in the
terminology of Chomsky, 2000, the Goal) carries features that are interpret-
able, while the other (the target, or in Chomsky’s terminology the Probe)
carries features that are uninterpretable. Agreement between the verb and an
argument is common in TPs.
Many instances of what looks like agreement within DP are difficult to
analyze in the same way as verb-argument agreement. Consider (1), which

Peter Ackema and Ad Neeleman, Unifying nominal and verbal inflection: Agreement and feature realization In: Nominalization:
50 Years on from Chomsky’s Remarks. Edited by: Artemis Alexiadou and Hagit Borer, Oxford University Press (2020).
© Peter Ackema and Ad Neeleman. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198865544.003.0003
30     

shows that the form of attributive adjectives in German reflects various

nominal features, in particular case, gender, and number.

(1) mein klein-er Hund

my small-.. dog()
‘my small dog’

The features reflected in the adjective originate in multiple positions in the

DP. Gender is a lexically determined property of the noun, number is located
higher, and case is a property of the entire DP, possibly encoded through a
Case Phrase (Lamontagne & Travis, 1987). This implies that concord cannot
be modeled as a one-to-one relationship between c-commanding nodes (see
Norris, 2014). If it is to be modeled in terms of c-command, it must be a
many-to-one relationship in the sense that a single element collects features
from multiple controlers and realizes these in a single ending. If it is to be
modeled as a one-to-one relationship, c-command cannot be maintained,
because the only node that plausibly contains all the features reflected in the
adjective is the top node of the DP, assuming features in an extended
projection percolate. However, the DP dominates, rather than c-commands,
the AP.
In this chapter, we defend two claims. First, concord is not an instance of
agreement. Rather, following Norris (2014), we assume that it consists of the
spell-out of features of an XP on terminals contained in that XP (see also rule
5 in Pesetsky, 2013: 8). These features can be present on XP because they are
inherited from one or more heads contained in XP. These heads in turn may
have these features because they partake in agreement, or because they are
inherent to the head. Second, neither agreement nor concord is unique to the
category of the phrase in which it is found (see also Norris, 2014: 240–3).
Following the agenda set in Remarks, we argue that both agreement and
concord occur in nominal as well as verbal domains. For agreement, this is
not a controversial assumption. We therefore primarily consider concord.
We first show, on the basis of examples from the nominal domain, how
concord works, and how it is restricted. We then show that various instances
of apparently unusual agreement in TP, such as agreement in which adverbs
are targets, are better analyzed as straightforward cases of concord. No
conditions on concord specific to TP are required for this. Hence, the general
syntax of agreement and concord does not need to refer to nominal or verbal
status.
      31

3.2 Concord in the nominal extended projection

3.2.1 How concord works

Unquestionably, there are instances of agreement within DPs. It is common,

for example, for a possessor to agree with the head of the DP (the possessum)
(see, for example, Corbett, 2006: 47). There are other instances where the form
of one element in the DP depends on the features of another, but where an
agreement analysis seems less plausible. A straightforward example is pro-
vided by Bantu. Modifiers in Bantu DPs are marked for the noun class of the
head noun, as in the following Swahili example (Welmers, 1973: 171, cited
from Corbett, 2006: 87):

(2) ki-kapu ki-bubwa ki-moja ki-li-anguka

7-basket 7-large 7-one 7--fall
‘one large basket fell.’

The head noun carries an overt class marker, here for class 7. The appearance of
the same class marker on the verb is plausibly the result of agreement. The
appearance of class markers on the adjective and the numeral could in principle
also be accounted for through agreement (see Carstens, 2000, for a proposal).
However, an alternative account could be based on the assumption that the class
feature of the noun is inherited by DP and spelled out on all modifiers within it.
Typically, features located on a maximal projection cannot be spelled out on
that maximal projection itself. With few exceptions, affixes require morpho-
logical hosts that are words rather than phrases. We postulate that categories
within a maximal projection can be recruited as hosts for features of that
maximal projection. In this, we essentially follow the analysis of concord in
Norris (2014), although some of the analytical details below are different.
The general idea is stated in (3a). The additional rule in (3b) is necessary
because some hosts are themselves maximal projections.

(3) a. γ is a potential host for the spell-out of the features on an extended

projection XP if γ is dominated by XP and there is no extended
projection YP such that XP dominates YP and YP dominates γ.
b. If γ is a host for spell-out of features on a dominating category and γ is
an extended maximal projection, then spell-out is on the lexical head
of γ.
32     

We use the term ‘potential host’ in (3a), because not all elements dominated by
XP may be able to morphologically combine with an affix that realizes a
particular feature of XP.
Concord as in (3) could indeed explain the appearance of class markers
on Bantu modifiers. The class feature of the noun is inherited by its
(extended) maximal projection, the DP. (Inheritance of features by domin-
ating nodes within an extended projection is a basic mechanism of syntax,
also used to express headedness at least since Remarks.) In accordance with
(3a), potential hosts for the realization of this feature are demonstratives,
numerals, and attributive APs. Bantu languages are morphologically rich in
that all these potential hosts are actual hosts. Therefore, class markers are
found on demonstratives and numerals.¹ Given (3b), a class marker should
also be attached to the head of AP, though not to any other elements within
AP. This seems a fair description of the Bantu data (see Mpofu, 2009: 120,
for an example showing the lack of a class marker on adverbials within
AP). If there is more than one AP, a class marker shows up on all
adjectives. This indicates that concord is subject to a maximalization prin-
ciple according to which every suitable host must realize relevant features of
the dominating category. (Maximal realization is a general property of
inflection: Schütze, 1997; Ackema & Neeleman, 2018.) Thus, concord results
in the class feature of the noun being reflected on terminals contained
within the DP, as in (4).

(4) NP [7]

NP Num

N [7] AP

An argument in favor of a concord analysis rather than an agreement

analysis for the Bantu data can be based on an observation by Carstens
(2000: 334). She notes that prepositions carry class markers reflecting the

¹ We assume here that, like demonstratives, numerals have no internal structure. However, if they
head a NumP modifier or specifier within DP, we would still expect a class marker to be attached to the
head of this NumP.
      33

class of the head noun of the DP within which the PP is contained, rather than
the class of the preposition’s complement noun:

(5) a. *ki-ti w-a m-toto

7-chair 1-of 1-child
b. ki-ti ch-a m-toto
7-chair 7-of 1-child
‘the child’s chair’

Given (3a), PP is another potential host for the class features present on the
dominating DP, and therefore, as per (3b), these features can be spelled out on
the head of PP. As the preposition’s complement DP does not dominate PP,
the features of this DP cannot be realized on P.
Having introduced the basic workings of concord, let us consider some
more intricate cases of this phenomenon within DP.

3.2.2 Concord in the Dutch DP

Attributive adjectives in Dutch show one of two inflectional forms: They either
carry an -e (schwa) ending, or remain bare. Which form appears depends on
features present in the DP, in particular gender, number, and definiteness: -e
appears unless the DP is neuter, singular, and indefinite (Kester, 1996: 94ff ).
The form of the definite determiner, too, is sensitive to these features. It is
realized as de, unless the DP is neuter and singular, in which case it is het.
We assume that φ-features are privative, so what is seen as the negative
value in a binary feature system is really the absence of the feature altogether.
In particular, singular is the absence of number, neuter is the absence of
gender, and indefinite is the absence of definiteness (see Ackema &
Neeleman, 2018, on number and gender; and Lyons, 1999, on definiteness).
If so, the morphology of attributive adjectives in Dutch can be described with
a simple generalization: If and only if the DP contains any feature from the set
{Definite, Gender, Plural}, the adjective carries a schwa-ending; if not, the
adjective remains uninflected. Similarly, the definite determiner de is used
when either of the features in the set {Gender, Plural} is present; otherwise, het
is used. (Nonneuter Dutch R-expressions do not divide into masculine and
feminine subsets; hence, all nonneuters are said to have common gender.)
These generalizations pose a theoretical problem. In effect, they express
disjunctions in the feature specification of particular morphemes. However,
34     

disjunction in feature specification is arguably undesirable, because it leads to

a situation in which no contentful theory about patterns in syncretism can be
developed (Blevins, 1995; Ackema, 2002). A theory of the morphology of
Dutch prenominal determiners and adjectives in which this morphology
results from concord rather than agreement can avoid this problem, as we
will now argue.
Let us define a notion of a ‘marked domain’ for a category:

(6) XP is a marked domain for a category γ if γ is a potential host for the

features on XP and XP has one or more features absent in γ.

This definition expresses that spell-out can be sensitive to whether or not

the host has a feature of the same type as the feature on XP that it acts as a
host for.
We can now capture the Dutch data with the following spell-out rules. First,
the form of the definite determiner can be computed with the following two
rules:²

(7) a. D $ /het/
b. D $ /de/ iff DP is a marked domain for D

Definiteness is inherent in the definite determiner. Therefore, whether or not

DP is a marked domain for D does not depend on the presence of definiteness
on DP, but only on the presence of gender () and/or number (), these
not being features of the determiner (see (3) and (6)). Consequently, the
determiner is realized as de if the DP is nonneuter, plural, or both:

(8) – 
– het de
 de de

Let’s now turn to attributive adjectives. Whether these carry -e depends on

whether the DP is a marked domain for AP. Given that AP does not have
definiteness, gender, or number features, the DP is a marked domain unless it

² For reasons of space, we cannot discuss the structural position and spell-out rules for indefinite
determiners here.
      35

lacks any of these features and is therefore indefinite neuter singular. The
following spell-out rule expresses this:³

(9) /X/ ! /X/+/e/ if X is contained in NP and DP is a marked domain for XP

The following table gives the distribution of the attributive schwa, and shows
that it is indeed present except when the DP is neuter, singular, and indefinite
( stands for definite,  for plural and  for gender.)

(10) – 
–  – 
– een groot paard grote paarden het grote paard de grote paarden
a big horse big horses the big horse the big horses
 een grote koe grote koeien de grote koe de grote koeien
a big cow big cows the big cow the big cows

The concord relations within the Dutch DP are depicted in (11) for a definite
singular DP with a common gender noun.

(11)
DP [def gnd]

D [def] NP

AP N

In short, a concord analysis of the morphology of Dutch determiners and

attributive adjectives is straightforward once we accept the notion of marked
domain. We think it also solves the problem that the data pose with respect to
the desired ban on a disjunctive specification of morphemes. The definition of
marked domain in effect describes a disjunction, as it mentions a surplus of
one or more features (from a set relevant to a potential host). However,

³ Note that this rule does not specifically mention adjectives. Indeed, any attributive modifier is
inflected with -e in the context mentioned in the rule. Infinitives in attributive position are a case in point:
(i) de te gan-e weg
the to go- way
‘the road to be traveled’
However, the determiner does not get the inflectional schwa, as clearly shown by its absence on
neuter het; this is why the rule in (9) mentions NP as its domain.
36     

marked domains are contained in the context of the spell-out rules in (7) and
(9), rather than in their input. As long as disjunctions are contained in the
context of spell-out rules, the problems pointed out in Blevins (1995) and
Ackema (2002) do not present themselves.⁴
There is a proviso to this solution. In principle, a spell-out rule that contains
a disjunction in its input can easily be reformulated as a spell-out rule that
contains the disjunction in its context: (12a) and (12b) appear to be equivalent.
Both rules express that both the feature combination F₁ + F₂ and the feature
combination F₁ + F₃ are realized as /aaa/.

(12) a. [F1 F2] ∨ [F1 F3] $ /aaa/

b. [F1] $ /aaa/ / [__F2] ∨ [__F3]

In order to avoid this confound, we must assume that, for a spell-out rule to
apply, no features present in the element to be spelled out may appear in the
context of the rule (instead of in its input). This is precisely the difference
between a concord analysis and an agreement analysis of the Dutch data. In
the concord analysis, what are spelled out are just D and A. The rules that
insert the forms are sensitive to the presence of features in the context (the
dominating DP). In an agreement analysis, however, the adjective acquires all
relevant features through feature sharing or copying. As a consequence, that
analysis requires a spell-out rule for the Dutch adjectival agreement that has a
disjunctive input.
One possible way out of this problem for the agreement analysis is through
the use of elsewhere forms. The disjunctive feature specification required for -e
could be avoided by designating this morpheme as an elsewhere form. This
would work if the null form were a more specific form. Such a set up is
incompatible with the above assumptions about features, as the adjectival zero
ending expresses the absence of features and therefore cannot possibly be
more specific than any other form. However, if one assumes binary, rather
than privative, features, it is possible to formulate a spell-out rule for the null
form that is formally more specific than the rule that introduces -e:

(13) a. [-, -, -] $ ∅

b. elsewhere: /e/

⁴ There are other cases where it is desirable for a spell-out rule to contain a variable over features in
its context (Halle & Marantz, 1993: 151; Ackema & Neeleman, 2018: 267–8).
      37

The rule in (13b) functions as an elsewhere rule because its input is less
specified than the input of (13a). However, what is supposed to function as
the most highly specified form in the elsewhere-based competition has only
negative feature values. This analysis therefore comes at the cost of divorcing
elsewhere argumentation from markedness, as there is strong evidence that
the positive values of these features are the marked values. Hence, what is
formally the most highly specified form is, in fact, the least marked form by
standard measures of markedness.

3.2.3 Concord in the German DP

We now turn to a more complex case of concord in the nominal domain,

namely inflection on prenominal elements in the German DP. German has an
intricate system of concord. For a start, it is necessary to distinguish ‘strong’
and ‘weak’ inflection. Weak inflection is comparable to the inflection we
described for Dutch: It only marks whether the dominating category counts
as a marked domain for AP and/or N. Strong inflection expresses the com-
bined feature content of DP, the relevant features being gender, number, and
case. German has three genders, namely neuter, masculine, and feminine,
which we analyze as absence of gender features,  and -, respect-
ively. (Nothing hinges on the marked status of feminine as compared to
masculine. It is motivated by the fact that masculine behaves as a default in
certain contexts.) As for case, we assume that the absence of features corres-
ponds to nominative (Falk, 1991; Neeleman & Weerman, 1999). For the other
cases, it suffices to assume that they have some featural content, which we
designate with traditional labels, leaving open the possibility that the feature
structure is more fine-grained (Caha, 2013). We now show how the data can
be accounted for with an analysis in terms of concord.
In most cases, the two types of inflection interact. We start by discussing the
distribution of strong inflection, as the distribution of weak inflection depends
on this. German has a set of spell-out rules for strong inflection, given in (14).

(14) a. [ -] $ /r/ e. [-] $ /i/ i. [] $ /m/

b. [ -] $ /r/ f. [ ] $ /n/ j. [] $ /s/
c. [ ] $ /n/ g. [ ] $ /r/ k. [] $ /i/
d. [ ] $ /m/ h. [] $ /r/ l. ∅ $ /s/
38     

In contrast to Dutch, German attributive adjectives show a schwa-ending

regardless of the features in DP. This schwa could be incorporated in the
inflectional endings in (14), but it may be more insightful to regard it as the
overt realization of an operator that turns adjectives into attributive expres-
sions (the Join operator of Partee, 1986; see also Truswell, 2004). Finally, D is
realized as /dV/, with some variation in the realization of the vowel that we
cannot discuss here.
To capture the distribution of strong inflection, two domains must be
distinguished, namely DP and NP. There is a preference for spelling out strong
inflection on one or more hosts in the higher domain, the DP. This leads to
realization on D, and/or on N as the head of NP (note that NP is part of the DP
domain) (see (16)–(18), (20), and (23a) below). If neither D nor N permits
morphological realization of strong inflection, then realization within the
lower domain, the NP, is attempted. This will lead to spell-out on A (as the
head of AP) (see (21) and (23b)). If morphological realization of strong
inflection is still not possible, in particular because there is no AP, no suffix
is inserted.
The spell-out rule for weak inflection is as in (15), where X is a variable over
morphological hosts.

(15) /X/ ! /X/+/n/ if X is contained in NP and DP is a marked domain for XP

This rule is similar to the rule for attributive inflection in Dutch (see (9)).
However, there is a difference between the two languages regarding the
features that define a marked domain. In German, these are limited to case
and number, whereas in Dutch definiteness, number, and gender are relevant
(Dutch lacks case).
The distribution of weak inflection follows two generalizations: (i) whenever
strong inflection is realized in the DP domain (so on D and/or N), weak
inflection appears in the NP domain (see for instance (16)–(18), (20), and
(23a)); (ii) whenever strong inflection is realized in the NP domain, weak
inflection does not normally appear (see (21) and (23b)). We can make sense
of these generalizations if the rules for both weak and strong inflection are
obligatory where applicable, but on morphological hosts that permit only one
affix, strong inflection overrules weak inflection. There is one specific set of
hosts that permit multiple affixation and show both weak and strong
inflection.
      39

These generalizations depend on whether or not particular heads are

possible hosts for strong inflection. This is an arbitrary morphological prop-
erty of the relevant heads. The definite determiner can carry strong inflection.
The indefinite determiner ein and possessors containing this form (mein ‘my’,
dein ‘your’, sein ‘his’) can carry strong inflection except in the masculine
nominative singular and the neuter nominative and accusative singular.⁵
Neither the definite nor the ‘ein’-forms will show weak inflection, as they
occur exclusively in the higher (DP) domain. Adjectives can carry strong and
weak inflection, but not both together. Nouns, finally, divide into several
classes. Regular nouns carry strong inflection when genitive masculine/neuter
or dative plural, but in no other circumstances. Weak nouns carry weak but
usually not strong inflection. Finally, a subset of weak nouns carry both weak
and strong inflection in those contexts where regular nouns show the latter.
We now discuss a number of representative examples, starting with definite
DPs. Consider (16).

(16) de-m nett-e-n Mann

the-.. kind-- man

The relevant features on DP are  and . As expected, the definite
determiner carries the strong ending -m (see (14d)). The noun Mann belongs
to the large class that does not carry inflection in this context. Since strong
inflection is realized in the higher domain (DP), weak inflection is realized in
the lower domain, so ultimately on A. The DP is a marked domain for AP,
because it has a Case feature  (which the AP lacks). Hence, weak inflection
is realized as -n (see (15)).
A similar case, but with a nominative DP, is given in (17). Again the
determiner carries the strong ending, here -r (see (14h)). In this context,
however, DP is not a marked domain for AP, as it does not have a Case
feature (nominative corresponds to absence of Case). Therefore, (15) does not
apply, so no weak -n ending appears on A.

(17) de-r nett-e Mann

the-.. kind- man

⁵ Forms like einer ‘a-..’ do surface in contexts where a null noun is present after the
indefinite, as in Nur einer hat mich verstanden ‘Only one (person) has understood me’. The null noun
contains the morphological slot that hosts strong inflection, which subsequently attaches phonologic-
ally to ein (Murphy, 2018).
40     

Consider next a context in which the noun Mann carries strong inflection, for
example in the genitive singular. Here, both D and N show a strong ending
(-s, see (14j)), while weak inflection is realized on A. The latter is realized as -n
given that the presence of a Case feature yields DP a marked domain for AP.

(18) de-s nett-e-n Mann-es

the-.. kind-- man-..

For concreteness’ sake, we give the structure of this example in (19).

(19) DP [gen gnd]

strong
D NP weak

AP N

Consider next examples introduced by ein-forms. Where the ein-form can

carry strong inflection, the patterns are identical to the ones with the definite
determiner. One such example is given in (20).

(20) ein-es nett-e-n Mann-es

a-.. kind-- man-..

However, in contrast to definite determiners, there are contexts in which the

ein-form cannot carry strong inflection. If the noun cannot do so either, strong
inflection can only be realized in the lower domain, hence on any As present.
One example of this is given in (21).

(21) mein klein-e-r Hund

my small--.. dog

(22) DP [nom gnd]

D strong NP

AP N
A
      41

If more than one AP is present, all As carry strong inflection (mein hübscher
kleiner Hund ‘my pretty little dog’). If no prenominal modifier is present,
strong inflection remains unrealized (mein Hund).
Consider next cases without any article. As strong inflection cannot be
realized on D, what happens depends on whether or not it can be realized
on N. If it can, it is realized in the higher domain (recall that NP is part of this),
and therefore the adjective in the lower domain will carry weak inflection, as
per (15). If N cannot carry strong inflection, it will be realized in the lower
domain, so on A. This is illustrated by (23a,b).

(23) a. heiss-e-n Kaffee-s

hot-- coffee-..
b. heiss-e-m Kaffee
hot--.. coffee

Thus far, we have only considered examples with nouns from the large class
that cannot carry weak inflection. In (24), the noun belongs to the more limited
class that can carry weak (but not strong) inflection. The result is that both
A and N will carry weak inflection where D can host strong inflection:

(24) de-m nett-e-n Student-en

the-.. kind-- student-

If D cannot carry strong inflection, this is realized on A instead, so we get

strong inflection on A and weak inflection on N with this class of noun:

(25) ein nett-e-r Student-en

a kind--.. student-

Finally, we turn to the small group of nouns that can carry strong and weak
inflection simultaneously. This is relevant because N has a special status in the
system. NP is contained in DP, and hence is a target for concord in the higher
domain (realized on N). At the same time, N is contained in NP, the lower
domain, and is therefore a potential host for weak inflection. Hence, if DP is a
marked domain for NP, so that (15) applies, we see both a strong and a weak
ending on nouns of the relevant class:

(26) de-s froh-e-n Herz-en-s

the-.. joyous-- heart--..
42     

This suffices to illustrate the workings of concord in the German DP. A full
account of the entire paradigm would require just one additional type of rule,
namely feature impoverishment. This is necessary to account for a handful of
systematic syncretisms. In particular, the accusative Case feature is deleted
(thereby rendering the accusative identical to the nominative) in the feminine
and neuter singulars, and in the plural. Additionally, in the plural all gender
features are deleted.
Various agreement analyses of the German data have been proposed (see,
for instance, Leu, 2008; and Schoorlemmer, 2009). These face specific diffi-
culties (Roehrs, 2015), but more generally it appears to us that the data fit
better in a concord analysis. This is partly because both weak inflection and
strong inflection can ‘spread’ across multiple elements. Strong inflection can
be simultaneously found on determiners and nouns (for example in the
masculine genitive singular), as well as on (in principle limitless) sequences
of adjectives. Weak inflection also appears on sequences of adjectives, and
can also appear simultaneously on adjectives and certain nouns. This indi-
cates that we are dealing with a phenomenon that involves the realization of
the features of a node on morphological hosts dominated by that node,
rather than with a one-to-one relation between a target and a controler,
subject to c-command. A second difficulty for agreement accounts lies in the
‘dislocation’ of strong agreement, that is, the phenomenon that strong
agreement appears on lower elements (adjectives) exactly when there is no
suitable higher host. This kind of dislocation cannot be explained syntactic-
ally if concord in the higher domain (DP) and concord in the lower domain
(NP) are independent agreement relations, as proposed, for example, by
Baker (2008). Therefore, it would require a type of spell-out mechanism in
addition to the core agreement relations themselves, a mechanism that will
have to incorporate many of the assumptions underlying the concord ana-
lysis above.

3.3 Concord in the verbal domain

3.3.1 Introduction

We have argued that there are reasons to consider some apparent agreement
phenomena in the nominal domain as resulting from the spell-out of features
present in XP on nodes dominated by that XP. If nominal and verbal syntax
are really parallel, we would expect similar phenomena in the TP. In this
      43

section we will argue that this does indeed occur. It provides a simple account
of some apparently exotic agreement patterns in the verbal domain.
The proposal that this kind of spell-out exists in the verbal domain is not an
innovation as such. Round (2013) proposes an analysis of so-called case
stacking in Kayardild that in essence invokes a mechanism exactly like this.
What is called case stacking involves the morphological realization of multiple
tense, aspect, and mood (TAM) markers on DPs in the language. Such features
are, of course, not intrinsic to DPs, but are features of verbal projections.
Round shows that the Kayardild clause contains several verbal domains, each
associated with a particular subset of the TAM features. The features are
morphologically realized on constituents contained in the relevant domains,
just as in the concord mechanism we have used above. Remarkable about the
Kayardild data is that DPs have slots for multiple affixes, with the effect that a
low DP will reflect the features of all domains it is contained in, thus giving rise
to the ‘stacking’ effect. The order of morphological markers corresponds
transparently to the size of the domains: features associated with a smaller
domain appear closer to the nominal base than features associated with a
larger domain.
Our proposal is simply an extension of this type of analysis to φ-features in
some contexts, following a suggestion in Norris (2014: 242–3). φ-features can,
of course, be licensed on a verbal head under agreement. If we assume that
extended projections share features with their head, we may expect φ-features
to be present on TP. This implies that, if there are suitable morphological hosts
within the TP, concord will give rise to the realization of φ-features on
constituents not themselves involved in the agreement relation (such as
adjuncts and arguments other than the controler). We will now discuss
examples of this.

3.3.2 Single domain concord: Archi

In Archi, absolutive arguments agree with verbs and/or auxiliaries for gender
and number (Bond et al., 2016). This instantiates an ordinary agreement
relation, with a typical controler (a nominative/absolutive DP) and a typical
target (a verbal head). However, other elements can reflect the features of the
controler as well. For instance, VP-level adverbs can do this, as illustrated by
(27a–b) ((27a) is from Kibrik et al., 1977, via Polinsky, 2016: 207; (27b) is from
Chumakina & Bond, 2016: 70–1). In these examples, an adverb appears to
44     

agree for gender (indicated by Roman numerals) with the absolutive

argument.⁶

(27) a. pro balah dit:a<b>u b-erχin.

trouble(III).. soon<III.> III.-forget.
‘One forgets trouble quickly.’
b. tu-w-mi is mišin allij<t’>u
that-I.-. IV..1. car(IV).. for.free<IV.>
mua-<r>-ši i.
repair-<IV.>-. IV..be.
‘He is repairing my car for free.’

Our account is that the adverb does not actually agree with the absolutive
argument. Rather, the absolutive agrees with the verb, which licenses the
presence of gender features in the extended projection of the verb. In turn,
these features partake in concord. Hence, a constituent within the relevant
verbal domain reflects the features of the absolutive argument if it has a
morphological slot for them. (The latter property is idiosyncratic; indeed,
the adverbs showing ‘agreement’ are a lexically restricted subset of the class
of adverbs in Archi.)
In short, an example like (27a) receives the following analysis (where
agreement is marked through coindexation):

(28) . . . [iii]

DP1 [iii] ...

AdvP V1 [iii]

Adv

In (27), the apparently agreeing constituents are adverbs, but various other
elements in the verb’s projection show the same behavior, including postposi-
tions (as in (29)) and even pronominal co-arguments of the absolutive controler
(as in (30)).

⁶ The reviewers of this chapter ask whether the agreeing elements in question could be DP-internal
adjectives (on a par with cases like the occasional sailor in English). This is not likely to be a possible
analysis, as the relevant adjuncts need not occur adjacent to the absolutive DP, see (29).
      45

(29) φ-features of controler realized on a PP:

goroχči b-aqʕa haʕtɘr-če-qʕa-k
rolling.stone(III)[.] III.-come. river(IV)-.--
e<b>q’en
<III.>up.to
‘The rolling stone went up to the river.’ (Bond & Chumakina, 2016: 73)

(30) φ-features of controler realized on a co-argument

a. b-ez dogi kɬ’an-ši b-i
III-1. donkey(III)[] like- III-is
‘I like the donkey.’
b. w-ez dija kɬ’an-ši w-i
I-1. father(I)[] like- I-is
‘I like father.’
(Kibrik, 1972: 124, Corbett, 1991: 114–15, and Kibrik, 1994: 349
cited from Corbett, 2006: 67)

The examples in (30) indicate that the domain of concord in Archi must
include the subject position, and is therefore larger than VP. It is unclear
whether it is, in fact, the entire clause or perhaps a domain slightly smaller
than that. Polinsky (2016: 208) contends that TP-level adverbs do not partake
in agreement, giving the example in (31) in evidence. However, the strength of
this argument is hard to assess, in view of the fact that, according to
Chumakina & Bond (2016: 111), only thirteen adverbs out of over 300 in
the language show concord to begin with.

(31) *Talaħliš-ijr’u/ejt’u χʕel eχdi-t’aw

fortunately-II./IV. rain.IV.. IV..to.rain.-.
da-qʕa.
II.-come.
‘Fortunately, I (woman speaking) came back before it rained.’

If our analysis is correct, a remarkable type of concord should be possible. The

absolutive argument that is the controler in the agreement relation with the
verb, and therefore the ultimate source of the features on VP/TP, is positioned
within the VP, and thus within the domain of concord. This means that if it
has a morphological slot for φ-features, it could show a form that reflects its
own features as a consequence of concord. This apparent agreement of an
argument with itself has indeed been observed for Archi by Kibrik (1977), as
46     

discussed in Corbett (2006: 68). The argument is somewhat complicated. As a

starting point, consider the data in (30) again, which show that a co-argument
of the absolutive can express the latter’s φ-features. In (30), this co-argument is
a dative subject pronoun. There is one pronoun that has a slot for concord
when it appears in the ergative, namely the first person inclusive:

(32) nena<b>u χwalli a<b>u

1..<III> bread(III)[] made<III>
‘We (inclusive) made bread.’

In (32), the absolutive argument that acts as controler for the agreement
relation with the verb is an R-expression, but of course this controler can be
a pronoun as well. If in a transitive construction the absolutive pronoun is a
first or second person plural, the apparently agreeing ergative first person
plural inclusive pronoun has the form nent’u. Consider now what happens in
an intransitive clause in which the first person plural inclusive pronoun itself
appears in the absolutive. Here, it also shows up in the form nent’u, as in (33).
For all the other first and second person pronouns (except the first person
singular), the absolutive and ergative forms are the same. Given that in the
ergative nent’u is the form of the first person inclusive pronoun that reflects
the features of a first or second person plural pronominal controler, this means
that in (33), with the pronoun in the absolutive, the same must be true. So
here, too, the form of the pronoun reflects the features of a first or second
person pronominal controler. The controler is the argument in the
absolutive—which is nent’u itself (which is, of course, indeed the type of
controler that triggers the observed form; as noted, this form occurs when
the controler is first or second person). Hence, we must conclude that the
absolutive pronoun shows concord for its own features.

(33) č’éba χará-ši baqI’á nént’u

let’s back- return. 1...1
‘Let’s go back.’

On our account, the absolutive agrees with just the verb, as usual. The relevant
φ-features are inherited by VP. Through concord, they are spelled out on
morphologically suitable elements dominated by VP; in (33) the absolutive is
such an element.
A somewhat related set of data that can also be construed as agreement of
an argument with itself involves the Archi emphatic marker =ejt’u. This
      47

element attaches to the focus of a sentence and has a morphological slot that
expresses the features of the absolutive argument, as illustrated in (34) (from
Bond & Chumakina, 2016: 74).

(34) Gubčit:i kɬ’an=ij<b>u b-ez.

basket(III)[.] want=<III.> III.-1.
‘I only  a basket’ (I don’t  it)

If the absolutive argument itself is in focus, the emphatic marker attaches to

this argument and expresses its features (see (35), from Bond & Chumakin a,
2016: 74). In other words, an emphatic absolutive argument contains a slot for
phi-features in which its own features are expressed.

(35) Gubčit:i=j<b>u kɬ’an b-ez.

basket(III)[.]=<III.> wantIII.-1. III.-1.
‘I want only a .’ (I don’t want anything else.)

If the Archi data are to be dealt with through agreement, then the notion of
agreement will have to be stretched. The standard view is that agreement
instantiates a syntactic dependency between a probing head and one or more
phrasal goals. Like other syntactic dependencies, it is established under
c-command. If treated as agreement, the Archi data require that the relation-
ship be established between phrases (namely an absolutive DP and adverbials
or other DPs). Moreover, c-command cannot be a conditioning factor if
absolutive pronouns can indeed reflect their own features.
Alternatively, one could adopt the line of analysis in Polinsky (2016) and
Polinsky et al. (2017). On this analysis, the absolutive agrees with a local ν
head. In turn, there is a series of higher ν heads in the clause, which all agree
with the features of the next ν head lower down. The features of agreeing co-
arguments and adjuncts are not valued directly by the absolutive, but instead
by a local ν head. While couched in terms of agreement, this theory extends
the standard view in permitting heads with unvalued features (Probes) to agree
with other such heads. It is, in essence, an implementation of the notion of
feature percolation in terms of agreement.
The analysis faces a number of empirical problems. To begin with, we
have seen that Archi has a pronoun that appears to agree with itself (see
(33)). Polinsky et al. argue, following the standard view in Minimalism, that
agreement is a search for missing information. In the Archi case, the missing
information is a class feature: Agreeing pronouns initially lack such a feature,
48     

but are required to have it by the end of the derivation. It goes without
saying that the absolutive pronoun that acts as controler, and hence as the
source of this feature, cannot simultaneously be the pronoun that lacks this
feature.
Second, while the analysis shares properties with the concord analysis
suggested here, it is difficult to extend it to the Dutch and German nominal
concord data discussed in Section 3.2. Take the Dutch case, which would
require that gender and number features travel upward to D and A via some
form of agreement with local n heads, while at the same time the Def feature
must travel downward from D to A. This seems to require that the same
agreement relation transmits information both upwards and downwards,
which is unusual.
Finally, below we will discuss examples from Gujarati in which the
features morphologically realized on the head of a lower domain are not
those realized on elements that agree with this head (see (38)). This requires
that features from a controler in the higher domain are somehow copied
onto the lower head, while having to be ignored in the agreement relations
in the lower domain itself. Polinsky et al.’s analysis has no mechanism by
which this can be achieved.
In contrast, our analysis posits only a perfectly conventional agreement
relation between the verb and the absolutive DP. This is complemented by an
extension of the process of concord, as described for the nominal domain in
Section 3.2, to φ-features in the verbal domain. Such an extension is to be
expected if nominal and verbal syntax are cut from the same cloth.
Rudnev (to appear) gives three arguments for treating very similar data in
Avar in terms of agreement rather than concord. Rudnev adopts the view that
concord is a process by which features of a (nominal) head are realized on
elements contained in its maximal projection.
His first argument is based on this assumption: As the agreeing adjuncts,
PPs, and arguments in languages like Archi and Avar are not part of the
absolutive DP whose features they reflect, an analysis in terms of concord
within DP is indeed ruled out. However, this leaves unaffected our hypothesis
that we are dealing with concord in TP/VP, fed by agreement between V and
the absolutive DP.
The fact that the analysis relies on an agreement relation between V and the
absolutive DP also answers Rudnev’s second argument against a concord
analysis. This is that the phenomenon is case-sensitive: The features of abso-
lutive DPs are reflected on other elements, but not those of ergative DPs, for
example. Admittedly, such case sensitivity is typical of agreement relations
      49

(Bobaljik, 2008), but that is not a problem, since concord involves the features
on TP/VP that are licensed there through an agreement relation between a DP
and the verb. It is this agreement relation that is sensitive to case.
Rudnev’s third argument is that the morphological realization of features
under what he considers concord (so within DP) differs from the morpho-
logical realization of the same features in TP/VP. Thus, the morphological
realization of plural on an attributive adjective is -l, where as the realization of
plural on an adverb and on the verb is -r. But such morphological contrasts
can be dealt with by the spell-out system and do not depend on the way in
which different terminals come to reflect those features. All that is required is
that features can be realized differently in different contexts, something
familiar from other types of allomorphy (for example,  is realized as -s on
some Dutch nouns but is systematically realized as -n on verbs).

3.3.3 Multiple domains of concord: Archi and Gujarati

The Archi data discussed in Section 3.3.2 involve a single domain for concord.
However, when we considered concord in the DP (in Section 3.2), we saw that
sometimes it is necessary to distinguish two separate concord domains. We
expect this to be true for some cases of concord in the verbal domain as well, if
the parallel is to go through. Indeed, in Archi there are constructions that are
instances of this. These are constructions with a periphrastic verb form in
which there are two absolutive arguments. Bond & Chumakina (2016) discuss
which elements reflect the features of which argument in such structures. We
cannot go into details here, but the general rule is that there is a smaller
domain containing the main verb and the lower absolutive argument and a
larger domain containing the auxiliary and the higher absolutive argument.
Verbal agreement in each domain is with the local absolutive argument: The
main verb agrees with the lower absolutive and the auxiliary with the higher
absolutive. Concord follows the expected pattern: In each domain, it is for the
features of the local verbal head. Thus, a high adverb indirectly reflects the
features of the higher absolutive, while a low adverb indirectly reflects the
features of the lower absolutive. Consider the examples in (36), which both
contain the adverb ‘early’. If this adverb reflects the features of the object, it
must have a low interpretation (inside the lower domain), and if it reflects
the features of the subject, it must have a high interpretation (inside the
higher domain).
50     

(36) a. Pat’i dit:a<b>u qʕwib

Pati(II)[.] early<III.> potato(III)[.]
b-o<r>kɬin-ši d-i
III.-<>dig.- II.-be.
‘Pati is digging the potatoes out early.’ (It is too early for the potatoes
to be ready.)
b. Pat’i dit:a<r>u qʕwib
Pati(II)[.] early<II.> potato(III)[.]
b-o<r>kɬin-ši d-i
III.-<>dig.- II.-be.
‘Pati is digging the potatoes out early.’ (Pati got up early.)

A similar pattern can be observed in Gujarati, albeit with a morphological

twist. As described in Woolford (2006), verbal agreement in Gujarati is
controled by nominative/absolutive DPs, or, in the absence of a such a DP
in the relevant domain, by ‘objects with certain features such as specificity
[that] are marked with what looks like the dative Case’ (Woolford: 311).
As in Archi, a subset of adverbs have a morphological slot for φ-features. If
there is only one possible controler of the verbal agreement, then, unsurpris-
ingly, the adverbs will show the same features as the agreeing verb, on our
analysis as a result of concord. Thus, in (37) (from Hook & Joshi, 1994) both
the main verb and the auxiliary agree with the object ‘this job’ (as the subject is
ergative and hence not accessible for agreement), while the temporal adverb
reflects the relevant features through concord.

(37) chokr-aa-e kyaar-n-i e nokri lidh-i

boy-- when--. this job(. ) taken-.
hat-i
was-.
‘The boy had taken this job a long time (before).’

However, there are sentences that contain two possible controlers, in particu-
lar a nonergative subject and an object that is either absolutive/nominative or
carries the dative associated with specificity. We will show that what happens
in such cases can be explained if the clause in Gujarati is divided into two
distinct concord domains (much as in Archi). That two domains must be
distinguished to account for the Gujarati data is not, as such, an innovation of
our account; within a Minimalist Probe-Goal model for agreement, Grosz &
      51

Patel-Grosz (2014) argue in some detail that in Kutchi Gujarati there are two
distinct probes in the clause, one in a high domain (TP) and one in a low
domain (vP or perhaps AspectP). (The data in Kutchi Gujarati contrast in
some details with those of Standard Gujarati discussed here; see Grosz & Patel-
Grosz for discussion.)
At first sight, it may not be obvious that it is necessary to distinguish two
agreement/concord domains in the Gujarati clause. In (37), both the higher
verb (the auxiliary) and the lower one show the same agreement just because
there is only one possible controler. But even in clauses that have two potential
controlers the lower verb shows the same phi-features as the higher one, with
the highest accessible DP (the nonergative subject) acting as the apparent
controler. We contend, however, that the morphology on the lower verb is not
the result of agreement with the subject, but rather of concord. After all, the
lower domain (VP/vP) is contained within the higher domain (TP), so that its
head is a potential host for realization of the features that TP acquires after
agreement between T and subject. The lower verb does, in fact, agree with the
DP in the lower domain, but this agreement has no morphological reflex on
the verb itself. The verb has only one morphological slot for φ-features, and
this is used for concord in Gujarati. Nevertheless, we can see that the lower
verb must enter into a local agreement relation with the object, as this relation
also feeds concord, but in the VP. Thus, low adverbs that can act as morpho-
logical host for φ-features reflect the features of the lower controler rather than
the higher one. The result is a structure in which the lower verb reflects a
different set of features than the adverbs in its domain (examples from Hook &
Joshi, 1994):

(38) a. e aa gito saar-AA gaay

he() these songs(. ) well-. sing(3)
che
be(3)
‘He sings these songs well.’
b. hU chokri-ne vahel-i jagaaD-t-o
I() girl- early-. waken-ing-.
hat-o
was-.
‘I used to waken the girl early.’

We give a representation of example (38b) in (39).

52     

(39) AuxP [gnd]

DP1 [gnd] ...

VP [gnd-fem] Aux1 [gnd]

DP2 [gnd-fem] ...

AdvP V2 [gnd-fem]

Adv

Note that in (38) the adverbs show concord for the features of VP. If there are
high adverbs that can act as morphological host for φ-features, we would
expect these to reflect the features of the higher controler. This is indeed what
happens. Hook & Joshi (1994) provide the example in (40), which contains the
same adverb paach twice, once with an interpretation compatible with high
scope and once with an interpretation compatible with low scope.

(40) te paach-o copaDio paach-i laav-vaa

he again-. books(. ) back-. bring-
maNDy-o
began-.
‘He began again to bring the books back.’

The lower verb in (40) is an infinitive, which does not have a morphological
slot for φ-features. Nevertheless, it must agree with the object: Given that the
low adverb must acquire its morphological features under concord, the fea-
tures must be present on VP.
In conclusion, concord works the same way in all extended projections,
whether verbal or nominal.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Artemis Alexiadou, Hagit Borer, Jessica Coon, and Justin Royer for
useful comments that improved both the contents and presentation of the chapter. We
thank Klaus Abels for intitial discussion of the German data. Early versions of the proposal
were presented in the Current Issues in Morphology course at the University of Edinburgh
(2016, 2018).
 4
Bases, transformations, and competition
in Hebrew niXYaZ
Odelia Ahdout and Itamar Kastner

4.1 Introduction

In this chapter we examine a set of interactions between syntax, morphological

marking, and nominalization in Modern Hebrew, where one kind of morpho-
logical marking is associated with a number of distinct morpho-syntactic
patterns. The phenomenon to be investigated looks as follows. In (1a), an
unergative verb appears in the template niXYaZ, one of the seven verbal
templates of Hebrew. This verb can be nominalized as in (1b). In (2a) we
see that an unaccusative verb instantiating a different ‘root’ can appear in the
same template, raising the question of what exactly this morphology is en-
coding. This verb can also be nominalized (2b), but another unaccusative verb
in this template cannot (3). Finally, passive construals are also possible in this
template (4a) but they cannot be nominalized (4b).

(1) a. ha-asir nimlat me-ha-kele be-mejumanut

the-prisoner escaped from-the-prison in-skill
‘The prisoner skilfully escaped from the prison.’
b. himaltut ha-asir me-ha-kele be-mejumanut
the.escaping (of ) the-prisoner. from-the-prison in-skill
hajta ʦfuja me-roʃ
was..3 predicted from-head
‘The prisoner’s skilful escape from prison was predictable.’

(2) a. nexlaʃ l-i keev ha-roʃ me-atsmo

weakened to-me ache (of ) the-head. by-itself
‘My headache weakened of its own accord.’

Odelia Ahdout and Itamar Kastner, Bases, transformations, and competition in Hebrew niXYaZ In: Nominalization: 50 Years on
from Chomsky’s Remarks. Edited by: Artemis Alexiadou and Hagit Borer, Oxford University Press (2020).
© Odelia Ahdout and Itamar Kastner. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198865544.003.0004
54     

b. hexalʃut keev ha-roʃ ʃeli

the.getting.weaker (of ) ache. (of ) the-head. mine
hajta mevorexet
was..3 blessed..3
‘The weakening of my headache was a blessed thing.’

(3) a. nifkex-u l-i ha-enaim me-aʦman

opened-3 to-me the-eyes by-themselves
‘My eyes opened of their own accord.’
b. #hipakxut
(int. ‘getting opened’).

(4) a. ha-simla nitfer-a al-jedej savta ʃeli

the-dress was.sewn-.3 by grandmother mine
‘The dress was sewn by my grandmother.’
b. #hitafrut
(int. ‘being sewn (by)’).

Our aim is to explain what exactly niXYaZ is tracking, and when nominaliza-
tions of this verbal form are possible. The chapter is structured as follows: In
Section 4.2 we present the basic properties of the subject matter at hand:
Complex Event Nominals (CENs). In Section 4.3 we introduce the classifica-
tion of verbs in niXYaZ into two main groups: nonactive and active verbs, and
the results of our survey regarding the nominalization patterns of these
groups. We demonstrate that an asymmetry exists between the two groups,
where active verbs are at an advantage relative to the nonactive group as far as
nominalizing potential is concerned. In Section 4.4 we explore in detail the
first group of verbs—nonactive verbs—and propose an analysis and an
account of the nominalization patterns they exhibit, based on the notion of
competition between forms. In Section 4.5 we move on to address the second
group of verbs in niXYaZ—active/unergative verbs—and offer an analysis of
their nominalization patterns. Section 4.6 concludes.

4.2 Complex Event Nominalizations

In this study, we focus on nominals which denote events/processes (CENs; see

Chapter 1).
 , ,   55

The nonobligatory status of the external argument in English CENs,

together with the licensing of by-phrases in some nominal constructions
(and the implied Agent interpretation in its absence), has led many to propose
that nominalized verbs and passivized verbs are alike:

1. The two processes share the suppression of the external argument

(Grimshaw, 1990; Alexiadou, 2001, 2017).
2. When not realized, the Agent is implicit, and has been claimed by some
to be present in the semantics through existential closure (Alexiadou,
2017), while others take it to also be syntactically present, as a null pro
subject (Roeper, 1987; Sichel, 2009, 2010; Bruening, 2012; Alexiadou
et al., 2015); see (5) below. But see Borer (1993, 2013, Chapter 6) and
van Hout, Masaaki, & Roeper (2013) for a review and a different
perspective.

The (simplified)¹ structure in (5) represents the nominalization of a transitive

verb:

(5) n

pro n

n VoiceP
-[at]ion
Voice vP

v PP

√root v (After Bruening 2012: 31)

We adopt this structure, and treat the nominalization as resulting from an

n head merged above VoiceP, without an external argument. In our
exploration of intransitive verbs and nominals, we keep in mind the
basic claims made by Grimshaw (1990) about the nominalizing potential

¹ Another unresolved issue is the presence vs. absence of Voice in deverbal nouns. See Lebeaux,
1986, Fu, 1994, Hazout, 1995, Kratzer, 1996, Engelhardt, 1998, 2000, Alexiadou, 2001, 2017c, Harley,
2009b, Borer, 2013, Chapter 6, and Bruening, 2012, for relevant discussions; and Ahdout (in prepar-
ation) for Voice in Hebrew nominalizations.
56     

of intransitive verbs (as well as the association between nominalization and

passivization):

1. Unaccusative verbs: lack an external argument, which makes them

ineligible as an input to nominalization (1990: 112).²
2. Unergative verbs: cannot produce a nominalization, as they are simple
events (activities). A verb must have a complex event structure to serve
as a basis for nominalization (Grimshaw, 1990: 45ff.).³

The Hebrew clause parallel to English examples of CENs derived from a

transitive verb is given in (7). As in English, the agentive by-phrase is optional,
and in its absence, the Agent is implied, as diagnosed based on the possibility
of control into a purpose clause and an agentive adverbial:

(6) ha-ovdim jism-u et ha-ʃita

the-workers implemented..-3  the-method
ha-xadaʃ-a
the-new-.
‘The workers implemented the method.’

(7) jisum ha-ʃita ha-xadaʃ-a

the.implementation.. (of ) the-method. the-new-.
(al-jedej ha-ovdim) be-mejumanut tox xodeʃ kedej
by the-workers in-skill in a.month in.order
le-ʃaper bitsuim
to-improve performances
‘The skilful implementation of the method (by the workers) in a month
in order to improve performance.’

In the following, we examine the Hebrew template niXYaZ, a form which

upon a closer look, hosts several different verb groups, distinguished from

² Alexiadou (p.c.) proposes that under Grimshaw’s system, unaccusative predicates are in fact
‘complex’, as they have both a change and a result state subevent. In this sense, they should produce
a CEN, which is what is reported in Alexiadou (2001) for several languages, see Section 4.4.3 and
discussion in Alexiadou (2001: 56).
³ For unergative verbs as well, an opposite prediction is considered in Alexiadou (2001: 56), who
suggests that under Grimshaw’s system, unergative verbs should in principle be able to produce CENs
as they have an external argument, unlike unaccusative verbs.
 , ,   57

one another in their semantic and syntactic properties. We show that

these distinctions are also meaningful in explaining inconsistencies in the
derivation of CENs. In the next sections, we present the basic data, and follow
with an in-depth inspection and analysis of the various groups we have
identified. Each subgroup is also described with regards to its nominalization
derivatives, attempting to reconsider several claims made in the literature on
nominalization.
The database used in this study consists of 3,272 Hebrew verbs, categorized
according to the five (nonactive) morphological templates of Hebrew (Ahdout,
in preparation). The original list of verbs was provided by Ehrenfeld (2012).
Verbs were then coded for their argument structure (unaccusative, unergative,
transitive, etc.). For intransitive verbs, unaccusativity and unergativity tests
were applied (see Section 4.4.1). For each verb, it was checked whether a
nominal derivative exists, and whether this nominal indeed has the CEN
properties described in this section. For this purpose, speaker judgments, as
well as corpora consultations were used (Itai & Wintner, 2008; He TenTen,
Google⁴). This chapter focuses on the 415 verbs which appear in the niXYaZ
template.

4.3 Three families under one roof:

the template niXYaZ

Verbs in Hebrew appear in one of seven verbal templates, a morphological

trait typical of Semitic languages. Two of these templates are directly derived
from other templates and host passive verbs only.
Descriptively speaking, templates are morpho-phonological objects made
up of consonant and vowel slots. The two templates in (8) will be notated
XaYaZ and niXYaZ, where X, Y, and Z stand for the root consonants which
combine with the template to create a verb. These two templates may reflect
argument structure alternations, along with other pairings of templates in the
language (Doron, 2003; Arad, 2005; Kastner, 2019b; among others). Examples
for such alternations are found in (8).

⁴ He TenTen (Corpus of the Hebrew Web).

58     

(8) Transitive (XaYaZ)—intransitive (niXYaZ)

ʃavar—niʃbar ‘broke’.
kara—nikra ‘tore’.
matax—nimtax ‘stretched’.

Alongside systematic alternations achieved through template pairs, such as in

(8), there exist numerous gaps in the paradigms, as not every root combines
with every template.
The focus of this chapter lies with the so-called ‘middle’ template niXYaZ,
traditionally viewed as a passive template. While it is true that many verbs in
niXYaZ have passive readings, these verbs are often mediopassive, compatible
with a passive or anticausative reading, while still other verbs are purely
anticausative/unaccusative, but not passive. Furthermore, another group of
verbs in niXYaZ has decidedly different syntactic and semantic behavior: They
are active verbs, ‘figure reflexives’ in the terminology of Wood (2014). The
classes of verbs and the diagnostics used to classify them are presented next.
Their uniform morphology will receive a nonuniform syntactic analysis within
our account.
It is important to note that in Hebrew, nominalization is not purely affixal,
but rather templatic. Verbal templates have nominal derivatives which are a
variation of the verbal base, either via a vowel change, addition of affixes, or
both. This allows us to easily identify the morphological class of a nominal-
ization, as the nominal form in Hebrew is typically determined by the verbal
template (e.g. Borer, 2013: 530).
We next outline the different verb classes in niXYaZ and their different
behavior with respect to nominalization.

4.3.1 niXZaY: main verb groups

Most verbs in niXYaZ have passive readings in that they are the passive
variant of an active verb in XaYaZ. This is the majority group of verbs in
niXYaZ and probably the reason why the template is traditionally viewed as
passive.⁵

⁵ Note that alongside niXYaZ, Hebrew also uses designated passive templates to host passive verbs
(e.g. (16a)). These templates categorically lack a nominalization—a corresponding nominal form does
not exist. Unlike niXYaZ passives, these are analyzed with a passive head on top of the Voice projection.
See Alexiadou & Doron (2012), Kastner (2019b), and Ahdout & Kastner (2019) for some differences
between the designated passives and niXYaZ passives.
 , ,   59

(9) Passive verbs in niXYaZ

Root XaYaZ verb niXYaZ passive
'mr amar ‘said’ neemar ‘was said’
srg sarag ‘knitted’ nisrag ‘was knitted’
bxn baxan ‘examined’ nivxan ‘was examined’
rtsx raʦax ‘murdered’ nirʦax ‘was murdered’
kb' kava ‘set, decided’ nikba ‘was decided’

Another class of verbs in this template is on the right-hand side of (10), to be

referred to here as unaccusatives. Intuitively, these are verbs which convey the
(structurally) unaccusative variant of an existing active verb in XaYaZ. The
English translations are labile, but Hebrew does not employ zero derivation in
the same way (Borer, 1991; Kastner, 2019b):⁶
(10) Unaccusative verbs in niXYaZ
Root XaYaZ transitive niXYaZ unaccusative
gmr gamar ‘ended’ nigmar ‘ended’
plt palat ‘eject’ niflat ‘got ejected’
tk' taka ‘jammed’ nitka ‘got stuck’

Finally, we find in this template verbs like those on the right-hand side of (11).
These verbs either are not an anticausative version of the transitive verb on the
left-hand side of (11), or do not have a transitive alternant in XaYaZ to begin
with. Importantly, verbs belonging to this group are active/agentive and take
an obligatory PP complement. These verbs are named ‘Figure Reflexive’, and
will be discussed in Section 4.5.
(11) Unergative verbs in niXYaZ
Root XaYaZ verb niXYaZ Figure Reflexive
kns — nixnas *(le-) ‘entered (into)’
dxf daxaf ‘pushed’ nidxaf *(derex/le-) ‘pushed his
way through/into’
rʃm raʃam ‘wrote, sketched’ nirʃam *(le-) ‘signed up for’
lxm laxam ‘fought’ nilxam *(be-) ‘fought (with)’
‘xz ‘axaz be- ‘held on to’ neexaz *(be-) ‘held on to’

⁶ Some verbs falling under the category of ‘unaccusative’ do not have an active alternant in XaYaZ,
e.g. neelam ‘disappeared’ and nirdam ‘fell asleep’, nimʃax ‘continued (intrans.)’.
60     

Note finally that many verbs are ambiguous between (at least) two of the
readings described above. Regarding ambiguous verbs, we will mainly address
ambiguous nonactive verbs—verbs which may get both unaccusative and
passive readings (‘mediopassive’). These are discussed further in
Section 4.4.2 A smaller group of verbs exhibiting active/nonactive ambiguities
exist as well, see (13).
Based on our database (Ahdout, in preparation), out of 415 verbs in
niXYaZ, 173 have only passive readings, ninety have only unaccusative read-
ings, and seventy-four are figure reflexives (or ambiguous between a figure
reflexive reading and a nonactive reading). Finally, seventy-eight verbs are
ambiguous nonactive verbs (unaccusative or passive).
In the next section, we report the results of our survey of verbs in
niXYaZ, and show that there is a bias against a nominalization for certain
verbs which is not random, but rather in correlation with the specific
group a given verb is a member of. We provide a corresponding analysis
for the verbal structure of each group, followed by an attempt to link the
properties of the various groups to the patterns of nominalization the
group exhibits.

4.3.2 niXYaZ: variation in rate of nominalization

The table at (13) summarizes the results of our investigation of verbs in

niXYaZ, based on the groups we have primarily identified: the nonactive
group (unaccusative, passive), the active group (figure reflexives), and the
ambiguous verbs.
The generalization obtained is that, in Hebrew:

(12) a. Nominalization is more likely to occur with unergatives (figure

reflexives) than with nonactive verbs [in (13d–g)].
b. Among nonactive verbs, a CEN is found more often with the
unaccusative verb. [(13c)] rather than with the passive [(13a), or
passive readings, (13b)].
 , ,   61

The quantitative findings are summarized in (13):

(13) niXYaZ verbs and rate of nominalization

Basic Group Pass Unacc Unerg Nominals/ %
structure verbs per
subgroup
a Nonactive Passive + 7/173 4
b Unaccusative + 25/90 28
c Ambiguous + + 11/78 14
(‘Mediopassive’)7
d Active Figure Reflexive + 19/31 61
e Active/ Ambiguous8 + + 12/18 67
nonactive
f + + 12/15 80
g + + + 10/10 100

Examples are given in Section 4.4 for nonactive verbs, and in Section 4.5 for
active verbs.
To try and make sense of these results, we now turn to a closer inspection of
our major groups in niXYaZ. In order to determine group membership, i.e. the
syntactic structure of a given verb in context, we apply a number of diagnostics.
These tests are standard for the literature on unaccusativity and argument
structure alternations. They include the traditional Hebrew unaccusativity diag-
nostics: verb-subject order (Shlonsky, 1987) and the possessive dative (Borer &
Grodzinsky, 1986), as well as compatibility with ‘by-itself ’. To establish that a
verb is unergative, i.e has an external argument, we check for compatibility with
Agent-oriented adverbs (Levin & Rappaport-Hovav, 1995, et seq.) and other
tests for the existence of an external argument (e.g. Baker, Johnson, & Roberts,
1989). All of the tests are consistent with the claim that the verbs classified as
unaccusative have no external argument, that the verbs classified as passives

⁷ Examples for ambiguous nonactive verbs are nisgar ‘got closed (from/by)’, nimax ‘got squished
(from/by)’. See e.g. Alexiadou & Doron (2012) for the term ‘mediopassive’, and discussion in Sections
4.4.3 and 4.4.4 in the context of nominalization.
⁸ Examples for ambiguous verbs for lines (13e–g) are (in accordance), e.g. niʦmad (le-) ‘attached to’,
nitla ‘hung on to/be hanged (by)’, niftax ‘open up/get/be opened (by)’. Overall, for ambiguous verbs, it
is usually either the unaccusative or (more often), the unergative reading that is attested in CENs—but
never the passive one.
62     

have an implicit Agent (or an explicit by-phrase Agent), and that verbs which
are classified as figure reflexive have an external argument.

4.4 Verb groups under niYXaZ I: nonactive verbs

The first and by far the largest group of verbs in niXYaZ, comprises nonactive
verbs—verbs which lack an external argument in their derivation (unaccusa-
tives), or where this argument is restricted to the semantics, and absent in the
syntax (passives). Only a few diagnostics are given in each case for space
considerations; see Kastner (2019b) for full details. The diagnostics suggest
that some verbs in niXYaZ are nonactive, i.e. lack a syntactic Agent. We analyze
these verbs using a framework in which nonactive verbs have a Voice head with
a [-D] feature, a feature which bans the projection of a DP in Spec,Voice.
Semantically, this Voice head may trigger both unaccusative (agentless) and
passive (implicit Agent) readings. We begin by looking at nonactive verbs, and
continue to discuss the nominalization patterns (Section 4.3.2).

4.4.1 Selected diagnostics: ‘by-itself ’, VS order, and the

possessive dative

A common assumption in studies of unaccusativity is that the existence of an

Agent can be probed using adverbial modifiers such as adverbs and the phrase
‘by itself ’ (Levin & Rapapport-Hovav, 1995; Alexiadou & Agnostopoulou,
2004; Koontz-Garboden, 2009; Alexiadou & Doron 2012; Kastner, 2017).
Hebrew me-aʦmo ‘by itself ’ diagnoses the nonexistence of an external argu-
ment, regardless of whether the external argument is explicit (as in transitive
verbs) or implicit (as in passives). The test is appropriate with unaccusatives in
niXYaZ, (14), but not with direct objects of transitive verbs, in XaYaZ, (15), or
with passives verbs, (16). The examples are adapted from (Kastner, 2017).

(14) ha-maxʃev nitka me-aʦmo

the-computer jammed.. from-itself
‘The computer jammed (of its own accord).’

(15) *miri ʃavr-a et ha-maxʃev me-aʦmo

Miri broke..-.3  the-computer from-itself
(int. ‘Miri broke the computer of its own accord.’)
 , ,   63

(16) a. *ha-kise porak me-aʦmo

the-chair dismantled.. from-itself
(int. ‘The chair was dismantled of its own accord.’)
b. *ha-sveder nisrag me-aʦmo
the-sweater knitted.. from-itself
(int. ‘The sweater was knitted of its own accord.’)

The syntactic literature on Hebrew has identified several unaccusativity diag-

nostics. Two of these diagnostics are Verb-Subject order and compatibility
with the possessive dative, although it is important to acknowledge that their
status as robust tests has been challenged in recent years (Borer, 2004; Gafter,
2014; Linzen, 2014; Kastner, 2017). Crucially for our purposes, the two classes
of verbs behave differently with regards to these diagnostics.
Modern Hebrew is typically SV(O), but promoted subjects may appear after
the verb, resulting in VS order. This is true for both unaccusatives, (17), and
passives, (18), presumably because the underlying object remains in its ori-
ginal VP-internal position. Unergatives do not allow VS, with the exception of
a marked structure referred to as ‘stylistic inversion’, (19). For additional
discussion, see Shlonsky (1987), to whom the test is attributed, as well as
Shlonsky & Doron (1991), Borer (1995, 2004), and Preminger (2010).

(17) nafl-u ʃaloʃ kosot be-ʃmone ba-boker

fell..-3 three glasses in-eight in.the-morning
‘Three glasses fell at 8am.’

(18) ne’esr-u ʃloʃa asirim be-ʃmone ba-boker

jail..-3 three prisioners in-eight in.the-morning
‘Three prisoners were jailed at 8am.’

(19) #jilel-u ʃloʃa xatulim be-ʃmone

whined..-3 three cats in-eight
ba-boker
in.the-morning
‘And thence whined three cats at 8am.’ (Marked variant)

The second unaccusativity diagnostic is the possessive dative, a construction in

which the possessor appears in a prepositional phrase in a separate constituent
from the possessee (possessor raising). This construction is taken to be unique
to internal arguments in the language (Borer & Grodzinsky, 1986). A transitive
64     

construction is compatible with the possessive dative, (20), as is an unaccusa-

tive construction in niXYaZ, (21), whereas an unergative verb leads to an
affected interpretation of the kind discussed by Ariel et al. (2015) and Bar-
Asher Siegal & Boneh (2016).

(20) miri ʃavr-a l-i et ha-maxʃev

Miri broke..-.3 to-me  the-computer
‘Miri broke my computer.’

(21) nitka l-i ha-maxʃev be-ʃmone ba-boker

fell..-3 to-me the-computer in-eight in.the-morning
‘My computer jammed at 8am.’

(22) #ʃloʃa xatulim jilel-u l-i be-ʃmone

three cats whined..-3 to-me in-eight
ba-boker
in.the-morning
‘And thence whined three cats at 8am.’ (Marked variant)

Taken together, as well as showing negative results of the by-phrase and

agentive adverbials diagnostics (which are compatible with unergatives, see
Kastner, 2019b), these tests provide support for the common assumption that
in addition to passives, at least some verbs in niXYaZ are unaccusative.
A formal analysis follows next.

4.4.2 Analysis

Our analysis is cast in Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz, 1993), in

particular adopting the assumption that Voice is the functional head introdu-
cing the external argument (Kratzer, 1996; Pylkkänen, 2008). We also adopt
the treatment of marked nonactive verbs in Hebrew and other languages
proposed by Alexiadou & Doron (2012), Kastner (2017, 2019b), and others,
in which nonactives are derived by merging a nonactive variant of Voice,
namely Voice[-D].
The relevant distinction is between regular Voice and nonactive or ‘exple-
tive’ Voice[-D], which does not project a specifier (see the works cited for more
detailed discussion), implemented using the EPP feature [D] (Chomsky, 1995)
on the head Voice.
 , ,   65

(23) Voice[-D] (Kastner, 2019b): A Voice head with a [-D] feature,

prohibiting anything with a [D] feature from merging in its specifier.

In the phonological component, the Vocabulary Items for the two variants
differ: Voice is spelled out as XaYaZ and Voice[-D] is spelled out as niXYaZ.
For simplification, the exponent corresponding to Voice[-D] is represented as
the templatic prefix ni-. The phonological details (Kastner 2019a,b) do not
matter for the current chapter.
These functional heads work in the following way. Verb phrases (vPs)
contain no reference to the external argument, since that role is licensed by
Voice (Kratzer, 1996). What this means is that a vP is simply a predicate of
events, potentially transitive ones. The verb gamar ‘ended, finished’ is made up
of a vP, denoting a set of finishing events, and a Voice head introducing an
additional external argument.⁹

(24) XaYaZ, gamar ‘ended, finished (trans.)’

VoiceP

DP Voice

Voice vP

v DP

√gmr v

Anticausative verbs differ minimally in that no external argument is intro-

duced. In line with the claim that causatives and anticausatives are derived
from a common core (Alexiadou et al., 2015), the grammar might build a
transitive vP as above (verbalizer, root, and internal argument) and then
merge Voice[-D]. This configuration gives us nigmar ‘ended’ in (25). Since no
external argument can be merged in the specifier of Voice[-D], the structure in
(25) is unaccusative.

⁹ Kastner (2016, 2019b) characterizes XaYaZ as underspecified for the D feature on Voice, which
means that verbs hosted in this template may also lack an external argument—are unaccusative. In this
chapter we are concerned with transitive XaYaZ verbs which have an intransitive (unaccusative)
alternant in niXYaZ, i.e. have (active) Voice.
66     

(25) niXYaZ, nigmar ‘ended, finished (intrans.)’

VoiceP

– Voice[-D]

Voice vP
ni-
v DP

√gmr v

This basic distinction between Voice and Voice[-D] allows us to derive some
typical argument structure alternations in the language, tracked by overt
morphology.
With unaccusative verbs in niXYaZ accounted for, we continue next
to discuss passive verbs in niXYaZ, which we claim share their structure
with the unaccusative verbs just described. Passives form the biggest
subgroup among niXYaZ verbs; 173 out of 415 verbs in our database
are passive only, and a hundred more are ambiguous between a passive
reading and some other reading. Below we present an example of a
passive verb in niXYaZ:

(26) ha-poʃea nirʦax al-jedej mitnakʃim

the-criminal was.murdered.. by assassins
‘The criminal was murdered by assassins.’

An important observation is that some verbs in niXYaZ are ambiguous

between nonactive readings (passive and unaccusative), a syntactic subclass
referred to as the mediopassive (Alexiadou & Doron, 2012). One verb belong-
ing to this class is the verb nisgar ‘close’:

(27) Unaccusative reading:

a. ha-delet nisger-a (me-ha-ruax ha-xazaka)
the-door closed..-.3 from-the-wind the-strong..
‘The door closed (from the strong wind).’
 , ,   67

Passive reading:
b. delet ha-kita nisger-a al-jedej
door (of) the-classroom. closed..-.3 by
ha-more
the-teacher
‘The classroom door was closed by the teacher.’

Moreover, passive verbs have been shown above to pattern with unaccusatives
with regards to unaccusativity diagnostics, (18), which is in line with their
subject DP being an underlying object. On the other hand, they pattern with
unergatives (see also Section 4.5) in not passing the ‘by itself ’ diagnostic (16),
suggesting that an Agent is semantically present.
This leads us to suggest that the structure in (25) above, and repeated here
in (28), derives the syntax of passives as well as unaccusatives (and necessarily
of mediopassives which are ambiguous between the two).

(28) VoiceP

_ Voice[-D]

Voice vP
ni-
v DP

√root v
The representation associated here with the three different structures has
been proposed for another language which shows a similar Voice syncretism,
namely Greek (Alexiadou & Doron, 2012; Alexiadou et al., 2015). ‘Nonactive’
Voice in Greek includes the same three groups described here for Hebrew
niXYaZ, albeit differing in the proportion each group holds overall (as well as
other implementational details).
Semantically, there are two approaches to the two possible interpretations
associated with the Voice[-D] head: Thematic (agentive) vs. Expletive (no
Agent) Voice as in Alexiadou et al. (2015), or contextual allosemy of Voice
as in Kastner (2019b). Contextual allosemy is a case where a functional head
has one interpretation in one context, and another in another context (e.g.
Wood & Marantz, 2017). In the context of some roots, the relevant interpret-
ation is (29a), where the Voice head is the identity function and takes an event
68     

(e.g. of finishing) without modifying it. For many other roots, however, the
relevant alloseme would be (29b), where an Agent is added, e.g. (9)/(26).
Finally, for mediopassives, e.g. the roots of the verb in (27), both options are
available.

(29) ⟦Voice[-D]⟧ = a. λP.P / {√gmr ‘finish’, √dlk ‘to light’, √tk ‘to jam’, √sgr, . . . }
= b. λPλe∃x.e & Agent(x,e) & Theme( . . . ) / {√rʦx ‘murder’,
√amr ‘say’, √sgr, . . . }

Thus, based on the same syntactic structure, we get the two different inter-
pretations associated with nonactive Voice[-D]: passive (Agent is existentially
closed over) and/or unaccusative (no external argument).

4.4.3 Nominalizations of nonactive verbs

Under Grimshaw’s (1990) system, unaccusative structures cannot serve as a

basis to nominalization, as a nominalization is required to have an external
argument to suppress in the first place (1990: 112), something which unac-
cusatives lack.
Generally, the literature identifies Catalan and Greek as languages reported
to have unaccusative CENs, e.g. in Alexiadou (2001: 40–2, 82, 84–5; see Sichel,
2010, on English; and Insacco, 2017, on Italian):

(30) a. la tornada dels turistes durant l’estiu (Catalan)

the returning of.the tourists during the summer
(Alexiadou, 2001: 82)
b. i sihni ptosi ton timon (Greek)
the frequent fall the prices-
(Alexiadou, 2001: 41)

Before turning to the Hebrew data and generalizations, a comment must be

made regarding unaccusative verbs in the language in general, i.e. those which
are hosted in templates other than niXYaZ. We do not enter a detailed
description here, but refer the reader to Ahdout (in preparation) and
Ahdout & Kastner (2019). From an initial survey of nominalizations derived
 , ,   69

from unaccusative verbs, we find that these are typically grammatical in

Hebrew. One example is in (31), derived in the hitXaY̯eZ template:

(31) a. hitada l-i ha-aʦeton ba-ʃemeʃ

vaporized..-3 to-me the-acetone in.the-sun
‘My acetone vaporized in the sun.’
b. ha-hitadut ha-mijadit ʃel ha-aʦeton
the-vaporization.. the-immidiate.. of the-acetone
ba-ʃemeʃ iʦben-a oti
in.the-sun annoyed..-.3 me

Hebrew then patterns with Greek and Catalan (30). More generally, the
congruence of unaccusatives with nominalization shows that a verb does not
require an external argument to undergo nominalization—contra Grimshaw
(1990).
According to the comprehensive survey in Ahdout (in preparation), the
average rate of CEN is around 71% of all Hebrew verbs (excluding niXYaZ
verbs). The investigation taken up here, and reported in (13), shows then that
niXYaZ unaccusatives nominalize to a relatively low extent (27%), and that
passives nominalize poorly (4%).
For unaccusative predicates the results are mixed. Some nominalize, while
others do not:

(32) a. nolad l-i tinok etmol ba-boker

was.born.. to-me a.baby yesterday in.the-morning
‘I had a baby yesterday morning.’
b. hivaldut lifne ha-zman hi davar mesukan
being.born.. before the-time is..3 a.thing dangerous
‘Being born prematurely is a dangerous thing.’

(33) a. nigmer-u l-i ha-xesxonot ekev bizbuz jeter

ran.out..-3 to-me the-savings due.to spending excess
‘My savings ran out due to over-spending.’
b. #higamrut
(int. ‘running out (of)’).
70     

We did not find any systematic lexical semantic differences between niXYaZ
unaccusative verbs which nominalize and those which do not (e.g. based on
animacy of the argument).
To better assess the inconsistent unaccusative class, the contrast with
passives proves to be informative; unlike unaccusatives, passives reject nom-
inalization almost sweepingly (96% of all passive verbs):

(34) a. ha-taarix la-mesiba nikba al-jedej ha-meargenim

the-date to.the-party was.set.. by the-organizers
b. #hikabut
(int. ‘being set (by)’).

(35) a. roʃ ha-memʃala nisxat al-jedej

head (of) the-government was.blackmailed.. by
tajkunim
tycoons
‘The prime minister was blackmailed by tycoons.’
b. #hisaxtut
(int. ‘being blackmailed by’).

This contrast is neatly reflected in the nominalizations patterns of medio-

passive verbs. Despite being ambiguous in the verbal domain, the nominal-
ization of these verbs tends to preserve the unaccusative reading alone
(Siloni & Preminger, 2009). This gap shows that although nominalizations
of unaccusatives are overall relatively degraded, they are still preferable to
nominalizations of passives. An example is the unaccusative/passive verb
nim’ax ‘get/be squished (by)’, which loses the passive reading (i.e. with a by-
phrase Agent) in the nominal (37b), whereas the unaccusative reading is
preserved (37a):

(36) Unaccusative verb, OK:

a. ha-uga nimex-a b-a-tik
the-cake got.squished..-3. in-the-bag
‘The cake got squished in the bag.’
Passive verb, OK:
b. ha-psolet nimex-a al-jedej ha-mexona
the-waste got.squashed..-3. by the-machine
‘The waste was squished using a machine.’
 , ,   71

(37) Unaccusative nominal, OK:

a. himaaxut ha-uga b-a-tik
the.squishing.. (of) the-cake. in-the-bag
Passive nominal, #:
b. #himaaxut ha-psolet al-jedej ha-mexona
the.squashing.. (of) the-waste. by the-machine

Based on the representation in (25), we propose the structure in (38) for

unaccusative nominalizations in niXYaZ. As with transitive inputs, the n
head in the case of nonactive verbs simply merges above VoiceP. Again, no
DP is present in Spec,VoiceP. We set the phonological details aside, assuming
they can be implemented in similar fashion to Kastner (2019a,b), where the
stem vowels and other morpho-phonological reflexes are generated on Voice[-D]
under allomorphy triggered by n.

(38) himaaxut ‘squishing (intrans.)’

n

-ut VoiceP

_ Voice

Voice[-D] vP
hi-
v DP

v √m’x

To summarize our results, we saw that within one and the same form,
nominalization rates differ based on syntactic group membership, whereby
nominalizations of unaccusative verbs are overall better than those derived
from passive verbs (see Section 4.5 for unergative verbs). We have seen that
passives fail to nominalize, although they share with unaccusatives the same
structure, hinting at the possibility that the gap is not due to syntax. While the
contrast between unaccusatives and passives is informative in the wider
exploration of intransitives and nominalization, this very contrast confronts
us with yet another puzzle: The two groups have an identical structure, but do
not pattern identically when undergoing nominalization, one group faring
better than the other. Borrowing some terminology from Remarks, the ‘bases’
72     

are the same and the ‘transformations’ are the same, so why should there be a
difference? We address this contrast next.

4.4.4 A competition account of niXYaZ passives

We account for the scarcity of nominalized niXYaZ passives using a processing-

performance view based on competition between forms (cf. Martin & Schäfer,
2014). As discussed in Section 4.3, Hebrew has a morpho-syntactic Voice
alternation between active/transitive and nonactive (unaccusative or passive)
forms. Importantly, this alternation is overtly marked in both verbs and nom-
inals (see Ahdout, 2017, 2019, in preparation, to appear, for other implications):

(39) Voice alternation and nominal derivatives (for the ‘simple’ paradigm)
Voice value Templatic form: Templatic form:
verb nominal
Active XaYaZ X(e)YiZa
(trans. reading) jaʦar ‘create sth.’ jeʦira ‘creating,
creation’
Middle niXYaZ hiXaYZut
(unacc/pass. noʦar hivaʦrut
reading) ‘be created (from/ ‘being created (from/
by)’ #by)’

Here, we focus on the two readings available for niXYaZ verbs/nominals,

passive (40b) and unaccusative (41b), which are at the focus of our interest.

(40) a. oman ʃveʦari jaʦar et ha-pesel

artist Swiss created..  the-sculpture
‘A Swiss artist created the sculpture.’
b. ha-pesel noʦar al-jedej oman ʃveʦari
the-sculpture created.. by artist Swiss
‘The sculpture was created by a Swiss artist.’

(41) a. ha-joveʃ jaʦar et ha-sedek

the-dryness created..  the-crack
‘The dryness created the crack .’
 , ,   73

b. ha-sedek noʦar (me-ha-joveʃ/me-aʦmo)

the-crack formed.. from-the-dryness/by.itself
‘The crack formed due to dryness/by itself.’
(Adapted from Siloni & Preminger, 2009: 369)

We claim that in the nominal domain, the active and the niXYaZ forms are in
competition, under certain circumstances. We assume that the choice of
reading (unaccusative or passive), as well as whether the speaker chooses to
express it in a nominal form rather than a verbal form, lies at the discourse
level and is not a matter of the grammar.
For the passive reading, an Agent is either realized or implied, as is the case
for a passive verb. We will show that only for this reading do the active
(XaYaZ) and nonactive (niXYaZ) forms compete. For the unaccusative read-
ing, no competition takes place. We begin with describing the latter case.

4.4.4.1 Unaccusative readings

The active-marked nominalization is derived as follows. The input structure is the
active-transitive XaYaZ verb jaʦar ‘create’, in (42a). The verb, naturally, cannot be
interpreted as unaccusative. The nominalization derived from the active-transitive
verb, in (42b), also differs from the nominalized unaccusative structure in (38); as is
frequently discussed in the literature, nominalizations based on transitive verbs entail
an Agent, even in the absence of the overt by-phrase Agent, exemplified below for
English in (43b), corresponding to the tree in (16).¹⁰ This behavior has motivated the
equation of nominalization to passivization, as discussed in Section 4.2.
What we then get with the nominalization of the active alternant in XaYaZ
(42a), is a ‘passive’ reading (42b) (to be discussed in Section 4.4.4.2).

(42) a. jaʦar (XaYaZ) b. jeʦira ‘creating’

VoiceP n

pro n
DP Voice

Voice vP n VoiceP
-a
Voice vP
v DP i-
v PP
√jʦr v
√jʦr v

¹⁰ See Marantz (1997), Harley & Noyer (2000a), and Sichel (2010) for exceptions in English; and
Ahdout (2019b, to appear) for Hebrew active-marked unaccusative nominalizations.
74     

(43) a. jeʦirat sedek be-xazit ha-binjan

the.creation.. (of ) crack. in-front the-building
(be-mejumanut)/al-jedej ha-poalim/(*me-aʦmo)
in-skill/by the-workers/by.itself
b. The (skilful) destruction of the city (*by itself)/(by the enemy).

Now suppose the speaker wishes to express what we call an ‘unaccusative

reading’, for example an event of creation without a volitional Agent. The
nonactive form in niXYaZ is associated with an unaccusative structure which
corresponds to a description of the event of creation without an Agent, (44):

(44) n

-ut VoiceP

_ Voice

Voice[-D] vP
hi-
v DP

v √jʦr

The nominalization derived from the nonactive verb (hivaʦrut) accordingly

conveys the same unaccusative reading, where no Agent is implied (as diag-
nosed with ‘by itself ’).

(45) hivaʦrut sedek be-xazit ha-binjan

formation.. (of ) crack. in-front the-building
(me-aʦmo)
by.itself
‘The formation of a crack in the front part of the building (by itself ).’

Thus, if the speaker wishes to express an ‘agentless’ nominalization of the

event, she will only be able to use the nominalization of the nonactive
(niXYaX) form, as in (45).
 , ,   75

4.4.4.2 Passive readings

For passive readings—those which obligatorily imply an Agent—we claim that
competition between the active and nonactive nominal forms does exist, and
derives the scarcity of passives in the nominal incarnation.
In contrast with unaccusative readings, in the nominal domain, both active
(46a) (in English, (46c)) and nonactive (46b) forms are, in principle, valid
when the speaker wishes to convey the passive reading (the Agent realized
with a by-phrase in both cases), and are thus interchangeable:

(46) a. jeʦirat ha-pesel (al-jedej oman

the.creation.. (of ) the-sculpture. by artist
ʃveʦari)
Swiss
b. #hivaʦrut ha-pesel al-jedej oman ʃveʦari
creation.. (of ) the-sculpture by artist Swiss
c. The destruction of the city (by the enemy).

What then makes the nonactive form degraded compared to the active form?
We suggest that this has to do with on-line usage preferences of a simplex form
over a complex one, and not with purely grammatical considerations.
As claimed in the literature (Alexiadou et al., 2015), the nonactive verb, the
anticausative/‘middle’, is cross-linguistically the marked alternant in a Voice
alternation. In Hebrew, we can draw an analogy between this and the account
in Kastner (2017, 2019b), where middle/nonactive Voice is always specified as
to its D feature—it is always minus [-D] (47b). The active, in contrast, is
underspecified (47a) (see Section 4.4.2).

(47) a. active Voice XaYaZ b. non-active Voice niXYaZ

VoiceP VoiceP

DP Voice – Voice [-D]

Voice vP Voice vP
ni-
v DP v DP

√root v √root v
76     

In this sense, the spell-out of middle/nonactive Voice—in this case niXYaZ—is

the marked form, a claim which translates into the contrast in (46). This
preference is related to the differences in (syntactic and morpho-phonological)
structures of the two forms at hand, but is not in itself ruled out because of
incongruence between the nominalizer with the underlying structure of the
nonactive verb. The choice of the nominalization of the active form is
rather due to the markedness of the nonactive form: There is no need to
choose the [-D] variant if the unmarked variant will do just as well. In this
sense, the speakers’ preference of one form over the other belongs to the
domain of performance.¹¹

4.4.5 Prediction

Because our account is transderivational rather than structural, it predicts that

niXYaZ can derive a nominalization if the meaning of this nominal is different
from the meaning of the nominal derived from the active XaYaZ form (since
in this case the two nominals will serve different discourse functions, simply by
virtue of meaning different things). To test this, we turn to examine a few
corpus examples of nominalizations derived from niXYaZ passives, showing
that when the active and nonactive forms are not interchangeable due to
lexical semantic/aspectual grounds, the nonactive form, typically degraded,
is instead deemed acceptable.
In examples (48)–(50), the use of the niXYaZ form allows a semantic
contrast with the active form, such that in these cases the forms are not
interchangeable, and thus the former is not blocked.
In (48), there appears to be some lexical semantic contrast between using
the active versus the nonactive nominals, e.g. that the latter is used in a
fantastic context, where the former would be odd, as it is in fact already
ruled out in the verbal clause, (48b)—hence, no competition with the active
form exists:

(48) a. axila ʃel tapuax be-jom moil-a la-briut

eating.. of an.apple in-day helpful-. to.the-health
‘Eating an apple a day is beneficial for one’s health.’

¹¹ See Ahdout (2019) for a similar competition between nominal forms in the domain of
noneventive readings for the Hebrew ‘intensive’ active-middle paradigm.
 , ,   77

b. ha-mifleʦet axl-a oto (#ba-xaim)

the-monster ate..-.3 him in.the-life
c. #axila ba-xaim al-jedej mifleʦet
eating.. in.the-life by a.monster
b. heaxlut ba-xaim al-jedej mifleʦet
being.eaten.. in.the-life by a.monster
‘Being eaten alive by a monster.’ (Itai & Wintner, 2008)

In (49), using the active form in (49a) would sound odd, as the noun plita is
associated with involuntary omission of gas or liquids (e.g. by babies) or the
result of this omission (in the Grimshaw, 1990, sense of ‘result’), (49a), which
is not the case in the event denoted in (49):

(49) a. plita ʃel mezahamej avir

emission.. of polluters (of ) air.
mi-taxbura kviʃ-it
from-transportation road-..
‘Emission of air polluters from road transportation.’
b. #le-axar plita (ʃel ha-nosea) min ha-matos
after emission.. of the-passenger from the-plane
al-jedej manoa raketi
by engine rocket
c. le-axar hipaltut (ʃel ha-nosea) min ha-matos
after being.emitted.. the-passenger from the-plane
al-jedej manoa raketi
by engine rocket
‘ . . . After being ejected from the plane by a rocket engine.’
(Itai & Wintner, 2008)

A different kind of contrast can be found in (50), where the use of the different
morphological forms seems to entail different values of telicity. The nonactive form
is restricted to an atelic reading, a restriction which the active form does not show:

(50) a. grirat ha-oto (l-a-musax) al-jedej

the.towing.. (of) the-car. to-the-garage by
masait (be-tox ʃaa)/be-meʃex ʃaa
a.truck in an.hour/in-duration (of) an.hour
78     

b. higarerut ha-oto (l-a-musax)

the.being.towed.. (of) the-car. to-the-garage
al-jedej masait (*be-tox ʃaa)/be-meʃex ʃaa
by a.truck in an.hour /in-duration (of) an.hour
‘The towing of the car by a truck in an hour to the garage/for an
hour.’

To sum up, we have compared the circumstances under which nonactive verbs
in Hebrew produce a CEN. The most substantial novel proposal is that
speakers, when wishing to express a ‘passive’ clause in a nominal environment,
would opt for the less complex active nominal form over the nonactive
nominal, thus rendering the latter form less acceptable.
In the next section, we round off the picture by exploring the less-studied
group found in the niXYaZ template, which challenges the view that this
template is nonactive only. We outline a different analysis for this class, one
which correlates their different syntax and semantics with different morpho-
syntactic configurations.

4.5 Verb groups under niYXaZ II: active verbs

(figure reflexives)

The previous section identified a class of verbs in niXYaZ which are nonactive.
As noted earlier, it has been commonly assumed that all verbs in niXYaZ lack
an external argument. However, we show that another class of verbs exists in
this template, namely verbs that do have an external argument and which also
take an obligatory prepositional phrase as their complement. Kastner (2016,
2019b) called them ‘figure reflexives’, a term coined by Wood (2014) for a
similar phenomenon in Icelandic. The name itself is meant to invoke the
figure-like, reflexive-like interpretation of a figure in a prepositional phrase
when it is the complement of certain verbs. A few examples of figure reflexives
are given in (51):

(51) nirʃam *(le-) ‘signed up for’ nidxaf *(derex/le-) ‘pushed his way through/into’
nilxam *(be-) ‘fought (with)’ neexaz *(be-) ‘held on to’

Based on the diagnostics discussed here, we have found that seventy-four of

the 415 verbs in niXYaZ are figure reflexive, or ambiguous between a
 , ,   79

nonactive and a figure reflexive reading. Some of these verbs are fairly recent
(e.g. nirʃam le- ‘signed up for’), indicating that we are not dealing simply with a
long list of lexicalized exceptions. In Section 4.3.2 we have already seen that
verbs belonging to this group also undergo nominalization to the highest
extent among the different groups (59%).
We will next confirm that these verbs are active and then present a structure
which involves an Agent in Spec,VoiceP and a prepositional phrase comple-
ment to the verb. In Section 4.5.1, we repeat the diagnostics from Section 4.4.1,
showing that figure reflexives pattern the opposite way from nonactives. We
then highlight the role of the complement to the verb and discuss the CEN
findings.

4.5.1 Selected diagnostics: ‘by-itself’, VS order, and the

possessive dative

Unlike unaccusatives and like passives, ‘by itself ’ is not possible with figure
reflexives, but an agentive adverbial is perfectly grammatical:

(52) dana neexza ba-maake be-xavana/*me-aʦma

Dana held.on..-.3 in.the-railing in-purpose/from-herself
‘Dana grasped the railing deliberately/(*of her own accord).’

Figure reflexives fail the accepted unaccusativity diagnostics: Unlike nonactive

verbs, VS order (53) and the possessive dative (54) are unavailable, the former
again being grammatical but resulting in ‘stylistic inversion’, in the same
manner as with simple unergatives, and the latter lacking a true ‘possessive’
reading:

(53) #neexz-u ʃaloʃ xajal-ot ba-maake

held.on..-3 three soldiers-. in.the-rail
(int. ‘The three soldiers grasped the railing.’)

(54) #ʃaloʃ xajal-ot neexz-u l-i ba-maake

three soldiers-. held.on..-3 to-me in.the-rail
(int. ‘My three soldiers grasped the railing.’)

This brief comparison with nonactives shows that figure reflexives pattern
differently (see Kastner, 2019b, for additional argumentation). The first main
80     

difference is the existence of an external argument, e.g. (52). The second is the
complement of these verbs: Figure reflexives take an obligatory prepositional
phrase, as in (51). The resulting generalization is that external arguments in
niXYaZ are possible if and only if a prepositional phrase is required, a claim
borne out by seventy-four verbs in our database. This generalization can be
derived from the analysis in the next section.

4.5.2 Analysis

In this section we adopt the analysis of Kastner (2016, 2019b), for which a
number of assumptions are necessary. First, subjects of prepositional phrases
are introduced by a separate functional head p (van Riemsdijk, 1990; Rooryck,
1996; Koopman, 1997; Den Dikken, 2003; Svenonius, 2003, 2007, 2010;
Gehrke, 2008). Borrowing terminology from Talmy (1978) and related work,
Wood (2014) is explicit in calling the DP in Spec,pP the ‘Figure’ and the
complement of P the ‘Ground’. The dashed arrows in (55) show the assign-
ment of semantic (thematic) roles in this system.

(55) pP

DP
The book p PP
FIGURE
P DP
on the table
GROUND

(56) ⟦Voice⟧ = λxλe.Agent(x,e)

⟦p⟧ = λxλs.Figure(x,s)

A concrete example of an ordinary prepositional phrase in Hebrew—a pP—is

given in (57), for a verb in the ‘simple’ template XaYaZ which comprises
minimal verbal structure, v, and Voice.

(57) eliana sama sefer al ha-ʃulxan

Eliana put a.book on the-table
‘Eliana put a book on the table.’
 , ,   81

VoiceP

DP
eliana Voice
AGENT v pP

√sjm v DP
sefer p PP
‘book’
FIGURE P DP
al-
‘on’ ha-ſulxan
‘the table’
GROUND

Consider next the similarities between Voice and p, both of which introduce
external arguments within their extended projection. We have assumed that a
variant of Voice exists, Voice[-D], which prohibits the Merge of a DP in its
specifier. Continuing this reasoning, and following Wood (2015), Kastner
(2019b) postulates a variant of p, namely p[-D], which prohibits the Merge of
a DP in Spec,pP.

(58) p[-D]: a p head with a [-D] feature, prohibiting anything with a [D] feature
from merging in its specifier.

(59) ⟦p[-D]⟧ = ⟦p⟧ = λxλs.Figure(x,s)

Voice[-D] and p[-D] are spelled out identically in Hebrew: a prefix (ni-) and
stem vowels, resulting in niXYaZ.
Since syntactic and semantic requirements of functional heads are separ-
ated, a given head might impose a semantic requirement which is fulfilled
immediately. If the semantic predicate is saturated later on in the derivation,
we have a case of delayed saturation (Wood, 2014, Myler, 2016, Wood &
Marantz, 2017, Kastner, 2017, 2019b, Tyler, 2019; cf. Higginbotham, 1985, and
Schäfer, 2012).
Kastner (2019b) analyzes figure reflexives in Hebrew following Wood’s
(2015) analysis of similar constructions in Icelandic. The intuition is that the
role of Figure is not saturated within the pP, since no DP is possible in
Spec,pP. Rather, an argument introduced later on (the Agent) saturates the
predicate. The schematic in (60) shows the saturation of semantic roles.
82     

(60) [Figure (Agent) verb P-Ground]

oren neexaz ba-maake
Oren held.on.. in.the-railing

VoiceP

DP
AGENT Voice
FIGURE v pP

p[-D] PP

P DP
GROUND

The two main consequences of this configuration are that an external argu-
ment may be merged in Spec,VoiceP and that the obligatory prepositional
phrase does not have a subject of its own. Since p[-D] does not allow anything
to be merged in its specifier, the preposition under p[-D] does not have an
immediate subject. Instead, the predicate p[-D] ‘waits’ until the external argu-
ment is merged in Spec,VoiceP and this DP is then interpreted as the subject of
the preposition. See Kastner (2019b) for full derivations.
The generalization on figure reflexives now receives an explanation:
External arguments in niXYaZ saturate the Figure role of an otherwise sub-
jectless preposition. The fact that these constructions are active is key to
understanding how their nominalization properties differ from those of the
other verbs in niXYaZ, as we illustrate next.

4.5.3 Nominalizations of unergative verbs

Grimshaw (1990) mentions simple unergative verbs like work in her discus-
sion of event structure in verbs, and naturally she is not concerned with
unergative verbs with properties as described above (nor have such verbs
been discussed elsewhere in the context of nominalization). In light of our
findings and analysis based on competition between forms in the nonactive
 , ,   83

realm, here we expect no competition by default, as no alternating verbs are

available for figure reflexives (or when a transitive form does exist, it does not
constitute a regular alternation with the niXYaZ figure reflexive). Accordingly,
figure reflexive verbs (or readings) are the likeliest group in niXYaZ to
undergo nominalization, for example in (61).

(61) a. ha-koxvan nidxaf le-kol erua be-agresivij-ut

the-starlet barged.. to-every event in-aggressive-
‘The starlet aggressively barged into every event.’
b. ha-hidaxfut ha-xozer-et ʃelo le-kol erua
the-barging.. the-repeated-. his to-each event
be-mejumanut
in-skill

Based on the representation in (57), we propose the following structure for

nominalizations derived from figure reflexives in niXYaZ:

(62) hidaxfut ‘barging into’

nP

pro/PP n

-ut VoiceP

Voice
hi- v pP

√dxf v
p[-D] PP

P DP
le-
‘(in)to’

The nominalization ‘process’ is identical to those we have seen earlier: The

nominalizing head n merges with a VoiceP which does not project its usual
external argument (if any). In the case of active verbs in niXYaZ, the figure
reflexives, the syntax, and the semantics of this VoiceP are markedly different
from those of the nonactive verbs in the same template.
84     

4.6 Conclusions

Remarks on Nominalization showed what an investigation of nominaliza-

tions and the structures they are derived from can look like, in particular
with regard to different analytical possibilities. In this chapter we looked into
nominalizations of verbs comprising the template niXYaZ in Modern
Hebrew, attempting to understand not only what they are derived from,
but also how the derivational process might lead to different results. We
reported a difference between the two main groups in the nominal domain,
where the active verbs were preferred over nonactive verbs in producing a
corresponding nominalization, despite the verb classes sharing the same
morphological form.
Whereas Remarks contrasted a Lexicalist analysis (different base struc-
tures) with a Transformationalist one (essentially different movement oper-
ations) for different constructions, we assumed that the nominalization
process is syntactically uniform, investigating the possible inputs to nomin-
alization. As a result—and to once again abuse the original terminology of
Remarks—we asked how the same transformation interacts with different
base structures. Our answer was given on two levels: the syntactic and the
pragmatic.
We hypothesized that nothing actually prevents active verbs in niXYaZ
from nominalizing; if anything, the existence of an Agent and directed
motion renders them similar to transitive verbs, which clearly produce
CENs. Our treatment of nonactive verbs, however, was cast in extra-
grammatical terms building on specific syntactic structures. The incongru-
ence of passives with a nominalized form is not syntactic, but has to do with
their markedness when contrasted with the alternant active form. This
markedness, we believe, translates to a dispreference of speakers toward
using this form, opting instead for the active, nonmarked one. With regards
to unaccusatives, we have shown that for this group, the nonactive is usually
the only possible form one may use to convey the agentless reading, and as
such competition does not play a role to the same extent as it does with
passives—rendering unaccusatives more acceptable (albeit overall still rather
degraded). Considering the account offered in this chapter as a whole, we
have made precise how within one morphological class, different forces
constrain a derivational process, influenced by general properties of the
linguistic system.
 , ,   85

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Artemis Alexiadou, Hagit Borer, Edit Doron, Louise McNally,
Malka Rappaport Hovav, and an anonymous reviewer, as well as the audiences at NELS49,
LSA93, WAASAP4, and the Humboldt University RUESHeL group for helpful feedback.
This work was funded by AL 554/8-1, DFG Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Preis 2014 awarded
to Artemis Alexiadou.
 5
D vs. n nominalizations within
and across languages
Artemis Alexiadou

5.1 Introduction

The point of departure of this chapter is the general consensus in the morpho-
syntactic literature that derived nominals come in different guises within a
language and across languages.¹ Building on Grimshaw (1990), there is sub-
stantial evidence from various languages and various types of nominalizations
that these can be verbal to a varying degree. Some of this literature further
acknowledges that derived nouns are derived from acategorial roots and
can include some but not necessarily all the verbal layers found within verbal
clauses. In particular, Borsley & Kornfilt (2000), Alexiadou (2001), Alexiadou
et al. (2010), Alexiadou et al. (2013), and Kornfilt & Whitman (2011b), among
others, have suggested that the internal structure of nominalizations differs
across languages (and also within a language). The consensus is that there is
variation as to the number of nominal and verbal projections involved. This is
schematically illustrated in (1), where we see that this variation concerns both the
nominal and verbal functional layers.

(1) [(NF) [NF [NF [(VF) [VP]]]]]

Building on this work, my first focus in this chapter will be on the cut-off
points between nominal and verbal structure. I show that these are not
random and do not necessarily correspond to phase heads, see Hiraiwa
(2005; cf. Panagiotidis, 2014 and references therein). I will then offer a possible
explanation thereof and discuss issues of extended projection, as mixed

¹ See Abney (1987), Picallo (1991), Borer (1993, 2013), Marantz (1997), Harley & Noyer (1998), van
Hout & Roeper (1998), Borsley & Kornfilt (2000), Alexiadou (2001), Fu et al. (2001), Iordăchioaia &
Soare (2008a,b), Alexiadou et al. (2010), Kornfilt & Whitman (2011a,b), Panagiotidis (2014), to
mention a few.

Artemis Alexiadou, D vs. n nominalizations within and across languages In: Nominalization: 50 Years on from Chomsky’s
Remarks. Edited by: Artemis Alexiadou and Hagit Borer, Oxford University Press (2020). © Artemis Alexiadou.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198865544.003.0005
88  

extended projections of the type found in nominalizations across and within

languages have been argued in Grimshaw (2005) not to be licit.
Second, Borsley & Kornfilt (2000) show that the structure of nominaliza-
tions across languages is subject to an important constraint. While (1) is well
formed, (2), where nominal functional categories are found below verbal
functional categories, is not. In other words, a nominal layer can be inserted
almost at every subpart of verbal structure in (1), while the reverse does not
hold. The second question I will then address is why verbalization is so limited
(Baker, 2000).

(2) *[VF [VF [NF [NF [VP]]]]]

The chapter is structured as follows. I will first offer the background for my
discussion, by summarizing our current understanding of the internal structure
of nominal and verbal clauses. In Section 5.3, I turn to mixed nominalizations
across and within languages. I briefly discuss some diagnostics used in the
literature to probe the internal structure of nominals that can be applied
cross-linguistically (see also Alexiadou, 2001). Summarizing literature that has
applied these criteria, I reiterate the empirical conclusion that nominalizations
come in different sizes both within and across languages. In Section 5.4,
I present the various nominal structures that can be assumed across and
within languages. In Section 5.5, I scrutinize the cut-off points and argue
that nominalization can apply to subparts of the functional hierarchy. The
picture found is captured by following the Universal Spine Hypothesis
(Wiltschko, 2014), according to which nominal and verbal functional layers
have parallel functions, thus mixed embeddings are licit, see also Hiraiwa’s
(2005) Supercategorial theory of DP/CP symmetry, cf. Iordăchioaia (2020). In
this section, I also deal with two potential counterexamples to my proposal.
In Section 5.6, I discuss the lack of verbalization. In Section 5.7, I conclude
my discussion.
While the empirical observations made in this contribution are not novel
and go as far back as Remarks, the way to treat the variation within a language
and across languages in terms of a universal and importantly acategorial
functional hierarchy is. I will build on insights in Hiraiwa (2005) and
Wiltschko (2014), which put forth a common structural skeleton in the
nominal and verbal domain. This allows the formation of mixed categories
which do not raise issues for extended projection. In particular, the cut-off
points for nominalization suggest that layers that share a semantic basis can be
interchanged. With respect to the second issue of this chapter, I will propose
that verbalization is out, as licensing of case blocks it. Thus, whenever a nominal
  .   89

substructure is built, it requires case licensing which blocks verbalization,

unless we treat incorporation as a particularly interesting subcase thereof.

5.2 Background on the functional structure of

DPs and clauses

In this chapter, I assume that the core element is a root embedded under functional
layers. This was already suggested in Remarks and adopted within current work in
Distributed Morphology and the Exo-skeletal model (Borer, 2013). For the nom-
inal domain, I will combine proposals in Borer (2005a) and Kramer (2015) and
take the layers to be as in (3a), see also Alexiadou (2017a). I assume that roots
combine with n, the nominalizer, which carries gender and inflection class
information in languages that have such features, see also Lowenstamm (2008);
and Iordăchioaia & Soare (2008a); among others. Plurality is realized under Div.
The layer of quantity introduces the counting function and hosts numerals. The
D layer is associated with the realization of definiteness. Adjectives can be intro-
duced between DP and nP and at the nP level.
For the verbal domain, I will follow standard assumptions about the layers
above Voice (Cinque, 1999; Hiraiwa, 2005; Ramchand & Svenonius, 2014) and
assume the structure in (3b). With respect to the lower layers of structure,
I assume that Voice, following Kratzer (1996), introduces the external argu-
ment, while v is the verbalizer and introduces event implications (the lower
clausal part builds on Alexiadou et al., 2015):

(3) a. [DP [#P (quantity) [DivP plural marking [nP gender [Root
b. [CP [TP [AspectP [VoiceP external argument [vP internal argument
[Root

The important issue here is that each layer is associated with particular properties
and features, as just briefly discussed. I will turn to a more detailed discussion of
this in Section 5.4. The realization of these features in nominalization will serve
as our guide detecting the presence of the respective layer in the structure.

5.3 The structural complexity of AS nominalizations

within and across languages

A lot of recent work has shown that nominalizations come either with the
verbal internal structure in (4a) or with the mixed internal structure in (4b).
90  

A verbal internal structure is associated with verbal functional projections,

while a mixed internal structure is associated with the additional presence of
nominal layers, see also Borsley & Kornfilt (2000) and Kornfilt & Whitman
(2011b). The structures in (4a) crucially differ with respect to the presence of n
in (4b), which triggers the projection of higher functional layers of associated
with nominal functions. This creates a mixed internal structure, while the one
in (4a) is internally verbal:

(4) a. [DP [verbal FP [vP . . . ]]] (verbal internal structure)

b. [DP [nominal FP [nP [(verbal FP) [vP . . . ]]]]
(mixed internal structure)

Alexiadou et al. (2011) have argued that there are two ‘categorial’ scales that
interact with one another: a verbal and a nominal one, see also Ackema &
Neeleman (2004); Panagiotidis (2014); and references therein. Each scale
contains a number of properties (cf. Sleeman, 2010). As we will see, not only
do languages differ as to the cut-off points they choose within these scales,
but also different types of nominalization within a language, cf. Alexiadou
(2001); Ackema & Neeleman (2004); Panagiotidis (2014); and Iordăchioaia
(2020). On this view, the distinction between Vs and Ns is not absolute, but
gradual in nature: The V/N cut-off point of a nominalization can be located at
various points in these scales. Examples (5) and (6) illustrate the properties
associated with the two scales, based on Alexiadou et al. (2011):

(5) The verbal scale

Presence of a complementizer
Subject with nominative case
Occurrence of modal or auxiliary verbs
Accusative case on objects
Projection of outer Aspect: evidenced by aspect shift and aspectual adverbs
(implicit external argument present)

(6) The nominal scale

Genitive/PP-subject
Genitive/PP-object
Gender features
Availability of plural
Possibility to combine with all types of determiners
Adjectival modification
  .   91

With this in mind, I will turn to some examples from the literature. The
English, German, and Spanish data are drawn from Alexiadou et al. (2011),
see also Iordăchioaia & Soare (2008b) for Spanish. The point Alexiadou
et al. (2011) made was that the properties in these scales align with nominal
and verbal layers respectively. For instance, the presence of gender suggests
the presence of an n layer, the presence of plural number that of Div, and
so on.

5.3.1 Some examples

As already discussed in Chomsky (1970), the English verbal gerund (EVG)

licenses accusative objects, while the nominal gerund (ENG, -ing of) takes PP-
objects. Furthermore, VGs take adverbial modifiers and disallow adjectival
ones, while NGs display the opposite behavior.

(7) a. Pat disapproved of John’s quietly leaving the room

b. *The carefully restoring of the painting took months

(8) a. His/John’s prompt answering of the question

b. *His prompt answering the question

Some English NGs allow plurals, if there is no competition with other affixes
(see Borer, 2005b; Alexiadou et al., 2010), but VGs do not (10):

(10) a. the repeated killings of unarmed civilians

b. *Emma’s readings the poem

Overt determiners are out in English VGs, while NGs allow all kinds of
determiners, (11).

(11) a. *That/*the/*a criticizing the book annoyed us

b. The/that/a reading of the manuscript pleased us

That VGs contain more verbal layers is suggested also by the fact that they may
include auxiliaries, while these are not possible in NGs:

(12) His having read War and Peace

92  

Alexiadou et al. (2010) point out that the English VG is also grammatical with
most verbs (13) (Borer, 2005b) and contributes imperfective/[-b] outer aspect, see
Pustejovsky (1995). The projection of AspP English VGs is further supported by
the availability of aspectual adverbs (Borer, 1993; Alexiadou, 1997; Cinque, 1999).

(13) a. John’s arriving at 5 pm is unlikely.

b. John’s eating breakfast
c. Mary’s blinking is annoying
d. John’s knowing the answer
e. John’s constantly reading the morning newspaper

The authors note that English NGs are incompatible with aspectual adverbs,
which indicates the unavailability of AspectP, but see Fu et al. (2001) for a
discussion.

(14) John’s constant omitting of details/*constantly

English derived nominals are similar to NGs, but less verbal, as discussed in
Alexiadou (2001) and Alexiadou et al. (2007). Kratzer showed that the -ing of
gerund patterns with the verbal passive in excluding a self-action interpret-
ation, the diagnostic adopted for the presence of VoiceP in Kratzer (1996). By
contrast, derived nominals allow a self-action interpretation indicating the lack
of VoiceP.²

(15) a. The children were being registered

*Th = Ag: The children registered themselves
Th ≠ Ag: The children were registered by someone
b. The report mentioned the painfully slow registering of the children
Th ≠ Ag / *Th = Ag
c. The report mentioned the painfully slow registration of the children
Th ≠ Ag / Th = Ag

Beyond English, Alexiadou et al. (2011) show that German verbal infinitives
(GVI) license accusative case and can be modified by adverbs. Nominal
infinitives (GNI) take genitive (or PP-)objects and are modified by adjectives.

² By this, I do not mean that they always lack VoiceP, but that they can lack VoiceP.
  .   93

(16) [häufig die Sterne Beobachten] macht Spass

frequently the. stars observe. makes fun

(17) [das häufige Beobachten der Sterne] macht Spass

the frequent observe. the. stars makes fun

A difference between German VIs and English VGs that the authors mention
is that the former cannot realize an overt subject, as (18) illustrates.³

(18) (*Peters) die Sterne Beobachten

Peters. the. stars observe.

As shown in (19), modals may be included within GVIs:

(19) [Dauernd Kuchen Essen Wollen] nervt

permanently cake eat. want. is-annoying

Genitive subjects are licit in GNIs, (20), but not in GVIs, (21):

(20) (Toms) Beobachten des Kindes (durch Tom)

Tom. observe. the. child by Tom

(21) *Toms häufig das Kind Beobachten

Tom. frequently the. child observe.

Furthermore, in German, dieses is an anaphor for nouns only, while das/dies

are anaphors for both nouns and CPs.

(22) a. Daß Maria bereits angekommen ist,

that Mary already arrived is
das/ dies/ *dieses weiß ich genau
it/ this/ this know I well
b. Hans hat ein rotes Buch.
Hans has a red book
Das/ Dies/ Dieses war sehr teuer
it/ this/ this was very expensive

³ In this sense, the authors suggest that the German VIs seem similar to PRO-ing gerunds, Siegel
(1998):
(i) PRO smoking cigars is fun.
94  

German NIs can be referred to by dieses (23a), but VIs cannot (23b).
This suggests to Alexiadou et al. (2011) that German NIs are neuter, while
VIs are genderless, i.e. bear default gender. This property also correlates with
the case defectiveness of VIs (24b), i.e. the VIs do not receive case in NP
positions.

(23) a. Nächtliches Beobachten der Sterne gefällt ihm.

at-night.Adj observe. the. stars pleases him
Dies/Dieses/Das entspannt ihn.
this/this/it relaxes him
b. Nachts die Sterne Beobachten gefällt ihm.
at-night.Adv the. stars observe. pleases him
*Dies/*Dieses/Das entspannt ihn.
*this/*this/it relaxes him

(24) a. wegen des Lesens eines Buches

because-of the. read. a. book
b. *wegen ein Buch Lesens
because-of a. book read..

When it comes to the availability of plural marking, Alexiadou et al. (2011)

show that both German nominalizations do not pluralize. With respect to
possibility to combine with all types of determiners, it has been noted that
German VIs allow definite determiners. The nominal counterpart allows all
kinds of determiners, suggesting the presence of a nominal core.

(25) a. Das/dieses/*ein/*kein/jedes die Marseillaise Singen

the/this/a/no/every the. Marseillaise sing.
b. Das/dieses/ein/kein/jedes Singen der Marseillaise
the/this/a/no/every sing. the. Marseillaise

Both German infinitives bring about imperfectivity (Ehrich, 1991); this is

shown by the fact that even NIs of telic verbs do not tolerate resultative VPs
but allow atelic process-VPs.

(26) Das Abholzen des Waldes

The deforest. the. forest
  .   95

a. *muss bis morgen früh erreicht sein

must till tomorrow morning achieved be
b. wird zwei Jahre lang fortgesetzt
is two years long continued

Turning to Spanish, Alexiadou et al. (2011) observe that the language has two
types of nominalized infinitives, verbal infinitives and nominal infinitives (SVI
vs. SNI). Miguel (1996) takes the distribution of the nominative vs. PP-subject
in (27) to be the main distinction between them.

(27) a. el murmurar la gente

the murmur. the people.
b. el murmurar de las fuentes
the murmur. of the fountains

Only VIs license accusative case and their subject can bear nominative:

(28) a. [El cantar yo la Traviata]

the sing. . the. Traviata
b. [*El cantar estas coplas de Lola] nos emociona
the sing. these. songs of Lola us moves
c. [El cantar coplas de Lola] nos emociona.
the sing. songs. of Lola us moves

(29) el escribir constantemente novelas (*de) ella

the write. constantly novels (of ) she

Spanish VIs allow adverbial modification, while NIs can only be modified by
adjectives, see Miguel (1996) and Ramirez (2003):

(30) a. El andar errabundamente/* errabundo Juan

the go-about. aimlessly/ aimless Juan
b. El (*constante) escribir ella novelas constantemente
the constant write. she novels constantly
c. El andar errabundo/ *errabundamente de Juan
the go-about. aimless/ aimlessly of Juan
d. El constante temer (*constantamente) de Juan
the constant fear. constantly of Juan
96  

Spanish NIs carry gender features which—although not visible in the suffix
-r—become obvious in anaphoric contexts, where an NI can be referred to
only by the masculine pronoun él and not by the default neuter pronoun ello
usually employed with CPs (see Miguel (1996).

(31) Accostumbrado al dulce mirar de su amada,

used-to the sweet gaze. of his beloved,
ya no podía vivir sin él/*ello.
now not could live without him/it
‘Used to the sweet gaze of his loved one, he could no longer live without it.’

Neither nominalization can pluralize. GEN/PP on object is possible with NIs

only. By contrast, auxiliaries are possible only with VIs:

(32) [El haber él escrito novelas] explica su fama

the have. he written novels explains his fame

The NI freely combines with all determiners, while this is not the case with
the VI:

(33) a. Aquel/ese/este/un/el lamentar (*desesperadamente) de dos pastores

that/this/a/the lament. (desperately) of two shepherds
b. *Ese/*aquel/el haber él escrito esa carta
this/that/the have. he. written that letter

Turning now to nominalizations of higher clausal layers, Japanese and

Turkish (and Quechua, see Lefebvre & Muysken, 1988) constitute examples
of nominalization of TPs, Kornfilt & Whitman (2012); see also Harley
(Chapter 9) and Moulton (Chapter 11) for further languages. Similar observa-
tions have been made for Jingpo in Zu (2009). Such nominalizations are
illustrated in (34) with examples from Japanese and Turkish.

(34) a. Haruo ga [[zyotyuu no soozisi-ta] heya] o mi-ta. (Japanese)

Haruo  maid- clean- room  see-
‘Haruo saw the room that the maid cleaned.’
b. Hasan [uşağ -ın oda-yı temizle-diğ -in] -i söyle-di. (Turkish)
Hasan servant- room-  clean --3.- say - (null 3.)
(: Factive Nominalization)
‘Hasan said that the servant cleaned the room.’
  .   97

As Kornfilt & Whitman (2012) show, while in both languages we find genitive
subjects, there are important differences between the two nominalization
types. The most important one is perhaps the fact that in Turkish genitive
subjects are argued to be in Spec,TP, while in Japanese they occur in a lower
position. A further difference is the fact that, according to Kornfilt &
Whitman, in Turkish a C with nominal features embeds a defective T, while
in Japanese a D head embeds a T with deficient or maybe no features.
Finally, Greek is a language that, next to deverbal nouns similar to English
-ing of gerunds, has nominalization of CPs, ( Roussou 1991; see also Borsley &
Kornfilt, 2000, Zu, 2009, Harley, Chapter 9, Moulton, Chapter 11, for other
languages). This is clearly shown by the fact that the determiner takes a CP as
its complement, (35). Objects of transitive verbs bear accusative and their
subjects nominative case:

(35) to oti o Nikes efige me stenahorise.

the that the Nikos- left me- upsetted
‘That he left upset me.’

In fact, the only nominal property of (35) is the presence of the definite D,
which is invariable, i.e. it is the default neuter form.

5.3.2 Summary

As already alluded to in the introduction to this section, nominal and verbal

properties are layered. There are core nominal and verbal properties and, for
example, peripheral nominal properties. This distribution aligns with the
functional hierarchy: Importantly, the most nominal properties involve gender
and plural marking. These are properties shared with underived nouns and are
clearly excluded in verbal nominalizations, i.e. those that allow accusative case.
The fact that this is so leads us to think that the common source in both cases
must be the n layer. By contrast, the presence of genitive subjects does not
seem to be a core nominal property, as it is sometimes also shared by verbal
nominalizations (e.g. the possessive subject in the English VG). In principle,
there are two possible licensers for genitive subjects: nP and DP. The question
that arises is why some verbal nominalizations contain at least DP. Moreover,
the presence of the nominative case seems to be a crucial verbal property and
as we saw, only Spanish VIs and Greek nominalized clauses license the
98  

nominative case for subjects. In the next section, I will turn to a more detailed
discussion of the layers involved and the properties they bring about.

5.4 Nominal structures across and within languages

Following Alexiadou et al. (2011), if we map properties and features to func-

tional layers, the empirical picture leads us to propose different sizes of
internal nominal and verbal structure within as well as across languages.
Example (36), (3) repeated, illustrates the layers of nominal and verbal func-
tional structure that build nominal and verbal extended projections:

(36)
a. [DP [#P (quantity) [DivP plural marking [nP gender [Root
b. [CP [TP [AspectP [VoiceP external argument [vP internal argument [Root

As we have just seen in the previous section, the most verbal nominalization
types are the Greek nominalized clause and Spanish VIs. The licensing of the
nominative case indicates that Tense is projected. Alexiadou et al. (2011) note
that the presence of Tense is evidenced by the presence of reflexive clitics in
Spanish VIs (Pesetsky & Torrego, 2001), assuming that clitics in Romance
attach to T .

(37) a. [DP [CP . . . (Greek nominalized CPs)

b. [DP [TP [Aspect [VoiceP [vP . . . (Spanish VIs)

(38) a. el afeitar-se la barba Juan

the shaving-clitic the beard Juan
b. *el afeitar-se de la barba

English VGs and German VIs have been argued to have the structure in (39).
The difference between them only concerns the features under Aspect⁰, which
are distributed as in (40).⁴ These nominalizations are genderless, thus no n
layer is included:

(39) [DP [AspectP [VoiceP [vP [ . . .

⁴ One could argue that different Aspect projections are involved in each case, following Cinque
(1999).
  .   99

(40) English verbal gerund → imperfectivity

German verbal infinitives → genericity

According to Alexiadou et al. (2011), (41) represents the constructions which

have a rich nominal internal structure in addition to the verbal layers. German
NIs have the structure in (41a), Spanish NIs the one in (41b), English NGs the
one in (41c). These all have gender thus, n is projected (Kramer, 2015;
Alexiadou, 2017a; Lowenstamm, 2008; respectively; and others), but n embeds
different sizes of verbal structure:

(41) a. [DP [nP [Aspect [VoiceP [vP . . . (German NIs)

b. [DP [nP [VoiceP [vP . . . (Spanish NIs)
c. [DP [(#P) [DivP [nP [VoiceP [vP . . . (English NGs)

Importantly, adjectival modification and genitive case assignment on the

internal argument are related to the presence of an nP. Plural is available
under DivP, which may be included. Low adverbs will be licit if AspectP is
present (Borer, 1993; Alexiadou, 2001). This means that German NIs will
license both adjectives and adverbs, as in (42):

(42) Das dauernde laut Singen der Marseillaise

the constant loudly sing. the. Marseillaise

English derived nominals seem to have the least verbal internal projections,
shown in (43):

(43) [DP [(#P) [DivP [nP -ation [vP/VoiceP . . .

The varied distribution of nominal and verbal layers explains the gradual
properties in nominalizations across languages (cf. Ross, 1972). Importantly,
however, as this discussion shows, the verbal functional hierarchy can be
stopped/nominalized at any point. Patterns that are not expected under any
definition of extended projection are found, i.e. D can embed TP, CP, or
AspectP. Following Borer (2013), parts of the extended projection are
optional, but their presence of absence has interpretational consequences.
But why is this possible and why cannot we not also verbalize the same way,
i.e. create a verb out of a not fully projected nominal structure?
100  

5.5 Scrutinizing the cut-off points

5.5.1 The proposal

The above picture, partially established in Alexiadou Iordăchioaia, & Soare

(2010) and Alexiadou Iordăchioaia & Schäfer (2011), leads to the general
conclusion that there are two nominalization strategies within and across
languages, see also Iordăchioaia & Soare (2008a,b), Soare (2019), and
Iordăchioaia (2020)): D-based (where D is the nominalizer) and n-based
(where n is the nominalizer). On the basis of this distinction, English VGs,
Greek nominalized clauses, Spanish VIs, and German VIs are D-based, while
English NGs, English derived nominals, and Spanish and German NIs are n-
based. Let us look at our structures in some detail. The structures discussed in
Sections 5.3 and 5.4 can be schematically represented as in (44) and (45), and
lead to the generalizations in (46) and (47) respectively:

(44) a. [DP [CP . . .

b. [DP [TP . . .
c. [DP [AspectP . . .

(45) a. [nP [AspectP . . .

b. [nP [VoiceP . . .
c. [nP [vP . . .

(46) a. If a nominalization is n-based, then gender is present in languages

that have gender.
b. If a nominalization is n-based, DivP may also be included.
c. If a nominalization is n-based, then all types of determiners and
adjectives are licensed.
d. If a nominalization is n-based, the internal argument surfaces with
genitive. By-phrases are possible.

(47) a. If a nominalization is D-based, external argument may surface

with genitive or nominative (depending on the presence of and
features on TP).
b. If a nominalization is D-based, determiners may be present, but
are invariable. By contrast, n-based nominalizations show variability
of determiners due to the presence of a nominal core (due to D-n
agreement; Iordăchioaia, 2014).
  .   101

Crucially then, the verbal extended projection can be interrupted at any point,
the nominal one cannot be interrupted. In other words, once n is inserted, the
projections higher than n will all be nominal, if present. While n-based
nominalizations are well formed in terms of extended projection, D-based
ones seem, at first sight, problematic. If we, however, look closer at the types of
embedding in (44) and (45), we observe that these are not random but seem to
correspond to subparts of the functional hierarchy, see in particular Hiraiwa
(2005), Wiltschko (2014), Ramchand & Svenonius (2014), Panagiotidis
(2014); cf. Alexiadou (1997), Cinque (1999), Ernst (2004), Haider (2004), for
earlier discussions.
Let us focus on the hierarchies in (48) and (49):

(48) Wiltschko (2014):

discourse linking anchoring point of view classification
CP - TP- AspectP- VP

(49) Ramchand & Svenonius (2014):

proposition situation event
CP - TP- VP

Ramchand & Svenonius (2014) argue that the C-T-V tripartition is seman-
tically grounded. In their model, propositions, situations, and events are
primitives and correspond to the layers CP-TP and VP respectively.
Situations have a time parameter and could be conceived in terms of
anchoring as in Wiltschko (2014). Propositions are elaborations of situ-
ations. Importantly, they argue that Aspect enables a transition from events to
propositions but is not directly included in their core layers. Wiltschko’s
system explicitly includes a projection of Aspect as a primitive, corresponding
to point of view, and uses labels such as ‘discourse linking’ for the CP layer
and as mentioned ‘anchoring’ for T. An important insight of Wiltschko’s
model is that the primitive concepts are category neutral. In the verbal
domain, CP-TP-AspectP and vP are candidates for realizing discourse linking,
anchoring, point of view, and classification respectively, (50). In the nominal
domain, other categories represent good candidates for such a realization, as
suggested in (50):

(50) discourse linking anchoring point of view classification

CP TP AspectP vP
DP QuantityP DivP nP
102  

Hiraiwa (2005: 24) proposes a similar parallelism, according to which DPs

and CPs are variants of a common syntactic structure. This is labeled
Supercategorial theory of DP/CP symmetry and relies on (51) for categorial
determination:

(51) The categorial status of the complement of each phase head c is deter-
mined by the phase head c via categorial feature insertion at Transfer.

Hiraiwa’s theory enables each head that is not a phase head to be category
neutral and phase heads to determine the categorial nature of their comple-
ments. Crucially, in Hiraiwa’s approach, there are not two different structures,
but one unique structure, which naturally gives rise to mixed structures, and
heads, such as T, Asp, and Num, are category neutral, which means they are
not phase heads.
We can now revisit our cut-off points from this perspective: The combin-
ations possible seem to make a good case for the parallelism hypothesis
between verbal and nominal layers, as summarized in Alexiadou, Haegeman,
& Stavrou (2007), and concretely elaborated upon in Hiraiwa (2005) and
Wiltschko (2014). If primitives such as anchoring, point of view, and classi-
fication are involved, these can be realized by both nominal and verbal
categories, and (46a) and (36b) present concrete realizations thereof.
Assuming this model then, I argue that the cut-off points do not really
correspond to phase heads in the strict sense, unless we allow for every verbal
functional category to be a phase. Rather they correspond to particular
semantic domains that can be nominalized. It appears to be the case that n
cannot nominalize anchoring or discourse linking, but point of view and
classification, at least in our sample.⁵ Both n and D are compatible with
nominalizations of point of view (which lead to a recategorization). By con-
trast, D cannot nominalize event classifications directly and requires point of
view. In other words, if a vP is present it has to be recategorized by n so that
D can embed a nominal core. Hiraiwa’s and Wiltschko’s systems provides a
natural explanation for this, since the semantic primitives are not category
specific but cf. Iordăchioaia (2020) for a different approach.
This in turn means that the functional hierarchy makes reference to more
abstract features than N and V; functional projections contain more abstract
semantic features or uF in the sense of Pesetsky & Torrego (2001), see Hiraiwa

⁵ A controversial issue is whether n ever takes clausal complements. Strings such as the claim that,
the idea that have been analyzed as involving modification in e.g. Grimshaw (1990).
  .   103

(2005) and Panagiotidis (2014). Because of this, sharing makes reference to

these abstract features, e.g. D can embed T (quantity) and Aspect (Division).
These features follow directly from versions of the functional hierarchy such as
Wiltschko’s that assume a more semantic basis, which is universal and cat-
egory neutral (see also Hiraiwa, 2005).
The ways these features can be realized across language show further
interesting patterns of parameterization. For instance, DPs are like CPs in
some languages, while they are like TPs in others (Alexiadou, 2001). In
English, where DP is similar to TP, as argued in detail by Abney (1987), it
can nominalize point of view. In Greek, where DP is similar to CP, see
Horrocks & Stavrou (1987) and Alexiadou (2001), this is not possible.
Furthermore, D-based nominalizations preserve verbal Case patterns (nom-
inative on the external argument and accusative on the internal argument) in
Spanish VIs and Greek nominalized clauses, where TP (anchoring) is not
defective. However, this is not the case in English verbal gerunds, where there
is no Tense and thus no nominative. By contrast, in Japanese and Turkish,
subjects bear genitive, as T is defective, and presumably not able to provide
anchoring. Internal arguments bear accusative as this is not an n-based
nominalization that triggers a nominal pattern on the internal argument.
Internal arguments in D-based nominalization receive dependent accusative,
as there is a higher argument in D (Baker, 2015, building on Marantz, 1991,
and Alexiadou, 2001, 2017b). In the presence of a D layer and in the absence of
TP or presence of a defective T, D assigns genitive to the external argument.
By contrast, on the basis of the structures we have seen, whenever the
nominalization is n-based the internal argument bears genitive case. This
means that n-based nominalizations do not preserve verbal patterns (they are
ergative/passive structures; Alexiadou, 2001, 2017b). In turn, this points to an
analysis of nominalization as akin to passivization, see Grimshaw (1990),
Bruening (2013), and Alexiadou (2019); cf. Borer (2013, Chapter 6). n is a
phase head and its presence in the structure introduces nominal case proper-
ties, genitive on the internal argument as default (Alexiadou, 2001; Baker, 2015;
Alexiadou, 2017b). In other words, n is a phase head that creates its own case
domain, see also Salanova & Tallman (Chapter 15). In this domain genitive is
assigned as a default. In the absence of n the case domain is different, as it
includes the layer that introduces the external argument, which the introduc-
tion of n blocks for the reasons discussed in Bruening (2013).
However, we observe variation as to whether a second genitive assigned by
D is possible, related to the status of DP. This is possible in English (John’s
destruction of the manuscript, ’s genitive is a possessor not a raised external
104  

argument), but not in Greek, where DP is similar to CP. A further point of

variation concerning D will be discussed in Section 5.5.2.

5.5.2 Two potential counterexamples

Two counterexamples were pointed out by two reviewers of this chapter. The
first one involves nominalization in Jingpo. In her discussion of nominaliza-
tion in Jingpo from the perspective of Hiraiwa’s (2005) theory, Zu (2009)
points out that this theory allows for eight logical possibilities:

(52) a. [DemP [DP [nP]]]

b. [DemP [DP [vP]]]
c. [DemP [FinP [nP]]]
d. [DemP [FinP [vP]]]
e. [ForceP [DP [nP]]]
f. [ForceP [DP [vP]]]
g. [ForceP [FinP [nP]]]
h. [ForceP [FinP [vP]]]

(52a) and (52h) are homogeneous DPs and CPs, while the rest are mixed
strictures. Zu takes (52b) to be the case of English gerunds, but as has been
argued in this chapter, citing earlier literature, the structure of English gerunds
contains AspectP. Zu leaves it open as to whether (52e–g) can be attested in
natural languages or not, thus I will have nothing to say about that.
Importantly, however, from this perspective of my analysis, (52c) is an illicit
structure, which Zu claims is instantiated in Jingpo. However, in none of Zu’s
structures does Fin (finiteness) directly embed nP. It can embed PossP, which
in turn takes takes nP as its complement. Nevertheless, FinP, the locus of the
particle -ai- in (53) seems to be able to intervene between DemP and PossP, as
well as DemP and TP:

(53) Anhte go tinang a shakut ai hpe machyu ga ai.

we  self- hardworking   rely -1..
‘we rely on the hardworking of our own’

Zu’s description of -ai- raises the question of whether it is possible to analyze

this element as related to a deficient TP projection, similarly to what we have
seen in Japanese and Turkish. If that is the case, then this does challenge the
main claims in this chapter.
  .   105

The second potential counterexample is Romanian supine, illustrated in (54):

(54) cititul (constant) al ziarelor (constant)

read--the constantly newspapers- constantly
‘constantly reading newspapers’

Iordăchioaia & Soare (2008a), Alexiadou et al. (2010), and Alexiadou et al.
(2011) argue that the supine is a D-based nominalization. It crucially lacks an
n layer, as it is genderless, has not case, and cannot be modified by adjectives. It
contains aspect, as can be also witnessed by the availability of aspectual
adverbs in (54). While the structure of the supine is similar to that of the
English VG, the case internal argument bears genitive. The subject bears
genitive as is the in verbal gerunds. This seems to contradict the claim in
Section 5.5.1 that D-based nominalizations preserve verbal case patterns to
some extent, as they embed projections that contain an overt external argu-
ment. Alexiadou et al. (2011) discuss this and propose the following: The
Romanian supine is the only structure discussed that is introduced by a
suffixed determiner. This suffixed article is responsible for the genitive case
on the internal argument in this nominalization. The authors follow Giusti
(2002), who extensively argued that the Romanian article is nothing more than
a grammatical morpheme responsible for realizing nominal features (cf.
Abney, 1987). Giusti shows that it lacks semantic import, as the co-occurrence
of two definite articles in one DP does not produce a two-referent interpret-
ation effect. This is certainly not the case for the English or the German
determiners. This points to a situation, according to which D-based nomin-
alizations in languages where D is basically an exponent of nominal features
will have similar case patterns with n-based nominalization. This variation
boils down to the different properties of determiners across languages, as
suggested in Section 5.5.1.

5.6 Lack of verbalization

In this section, I turn to the second point made by Borsley & Kornfilt and
labeled in Baker (2000) as the lack of verbalization. Specifically, we do not
seem to find cases where a verbal head attaches to a nominal head leading to
partial verbalization, as in (55), discussed in Baker (2000), we only have full
verbalization:

(55) *That solution will become John’s best crystalize.

106  

Baker (2000) explains this by proposing that n introduces a referential index

and that no syntactic node can have both a referential index and thematic grid.
At first sight, English denominal verbs would provide a counterargument to
this, but as Baker states, we see complete lack of nominal properties. In
particular no reference can be made to a nominal core, as there are no gender
and no number features. Naturally, the verb is not marked for definiteness
either. That leads us to conclude that we never have verbalization of n, i.e. v
always combines with an acategorial root. However, Arad (2005), building on
Kiparsky (1997), provided arguments from noun derived verbs. The examples
in (56) suggest that the verb tape must include the noun tape, as one can only
tape something with a tape:

(56) a. I hammered the nail in (with my sandal). (root derived verb)

b. I painted the wall (with lacquer).
c. I taped the picture (*/#with pushpins). (noun derived verb)
d. I lacquered the wall (*/#with paint).

Harley & Haugen (2007) and Borer (2013) show, however, that the judgments
appear to result from a certain misclassification of the canonical content of
e.g. tape, lacquer, and screw, respectively, and discuss data such as (57), which
show that it is indeed possible to use something other than a tape in order to
tape. Borer’s proposal is then that English simply does not have zero categor-
izers, i.e. n and v heads are never realized via zero, contra Embick (2010) and
others.

(57) a. Lola taped the poster to the wall with band aids/mailing labels.
b. Screw the fixture on the wall with nails.

But if verbs and nouns are all root derived, this then means that there is no n to
v derivation, there is only v to n derivation. See also Rimell (2012), who has
shown that denominal verbs in English are root derived.⁶ Consider now the
asymmetry between n/D and v:

⁶ Note that Borer (2013: 325) uses (i)–(ii) to argue that English lacks null nominalizers.
(i) *an acidify to acidify
(ii) a salutation *to salutation
(ii) can be accounted for if there is never n to v derivation. With respect to (i), the generalization
Borer makes is that in English affixed verbs required overt nominalizers. Embick (2010) argues that
there is a special list giving rise to obligatorily overt nominalizers, z-nominals; Fábregas (2014)
proposes a linearization in terms of spans, i.e. zero forms spell-out the n-v-Root complex; once a
  .   107

(58) a. *[v [[DP [#P [DivP [nP

b. *[v [#P [DivP [nP
c. *[v [DivP [nP
d. ??[v [nP

The structures in (58) could be instances of complementation, where v takes

nominal objects of different sizes as complements. This means that v cannot
interrupt the extended projection of an n, while n and D behave differently in
this respect and can surface within the hierarchy, (59). Thus, the parallelism
discussed in the previous section applies only in one direction.

(59) a. D [CP D [TP D [AspectP [VoiceP [vP

b. [CP [TP n [AspectP n [VoiceP n [vP

This now raises the question why n is different from v. I argued in Section 5.5
that nominalization is akin to passivization/ergative structure formation. v
does not have this property; it is just a categorizer (see Salanova & Tallman,
Chapter 15, for discussion on domains). That is, in Bruening’s (2013) system,
n is similar to a PASS head in that it blocks the projection of an external
argument, when it applies to a verbal source, but importantly v is not PASS. It
only verbalizes roots. The contrast between (58) and (59) suggests that once a
subpart of nominal structure is built, case becomes an issue. This is what
makes n very different from v: case must somehow be licensed. If nouns have
case, case blocks verbalization. In the complementation pattern, some version
of Agree or dependent case will take care of case on nP/DP.
A further option is incorporation of subparts of nominal structure to v
(Baker, 1988). Noun incorporation was thought as involving head movement
(NI), which would perhaps yield a verbalization structure. Interestingly, the
structures in (58) have been recently analyzed as cases of phrasal movement.⁷
This movement can target various layers of the nominal structure and it is

particular affix realizes v, an overt affix has to realize n. David Embick (p.c.) points out, however, that
formation can in principle have a structure with a zero v, thus the overt vs. covert realization of v does
not seem to play a role. -ing nominals are also not sensitive to the form of v. Arguably these contain
Voice and thus the realization of v is contextually determined by the Voice head. Note here that Borer’s
view runs into problems by the fact that there are zero nominals that have AS (iii), see, Alexiadou &
Grimshaw (2008); Newmeyer (2009); Lieber (2016); and Iordăchioaia (Chapter 10):
(iii) my constant change of mentors
Note that most of the pairs of the type in (i) include verbs with Romance verbal affixes, so it is expected
that they undergo Romance type nominalization with an overt affix.

⁷ Many thanks to Coppe van Urk for pointing this out to me.
108  

crucially not head movement, see Barrie & Mathieu (2016) for discussion.
These authors show that incorporated nominals can be much larger than bare
roots with a structure incompatible with head movement. The empirical
foundation for the phrasal movement claim comes primarily from
Onondaga (for Northern Iroquoian) and Ojibwe (for Algonquian), illustrated
in (60) from Barrie & Mathieu (2016: 13). In these languages, incorporated
nouns appear with nominalizers and inflectional morphemes.

(60) ngii-bengwhinaagane mii dash taaswin n- gii- bengw -h -i -naag -an -e

1- - dry - - -dish - -
mii dash taas-win n- gii- atoon -an
and then cupboard- 1- - place -3
‘I dried the dishes, and then I put them away.’

Barrie & Mathieu (2016) argue that the target of NI can in principle be
any phrasal projection in the nominal domain as in a version of (3a): nP
(categorized/nominalized stems), dP (modified N-stem), DP (possessor DPs,
demonstratives), KP (case-marked nominals), and CP (relative clauses). This
‘verbalization’ pattern involves precisely the cut-off points we would expect
from our discussion on nominalization, the difference being that this type of
‘verbalization’ is found in polysynthetic languages. Importantly, it does not
involve head movement and category change but phrasal movement for case
reasons, supporting my hypothesis that verbalization is out, as licensing of case
blocks it.
We can thus restate our generalization as follows: The contrast between (58)
and (59) is one between polysynthetic and non-polysynthetic languages. The
structures in (58) are licit if there is NI (= phrasal movement) for case
reasons.⁸ Why should that be so? Presumably this is related to how word-
hood is parametrized. Word-hood in polysynthetic languages is seen in Barrie
& Mathieu (2016) as an epiphenomenon, actually a phonological phenom-
enon. On their view, words in polysynthetic languages correspond to phono-
logical phrases rather than prosodic words, while this is not the case in e.g.
English.

⁸ In e.g. English, this happens only in synthetic compounds (Iordăchioaia et al., 2017). The question
that arises is why this is only limited to compounds. If indeed phrasal movement of this type is
somehow associated with phonological considerations, this leads us to reevaluate Harley’s (2009a)
claim that the English verbal domain does not allow complex phrases for phonological reasons.
  .   109

5.7 Conclusions

In this chapter, I discussed the view that the distinction between Vs and Ns is
not absolute, but gradual in nature. Based on cross-linguistic and inner
language variation, I discussed two types of nominalizations: D-based vs.
n-based. n-based nominalizations create ergative/passive structures. D-based
ones do not. Building on Hiraiwa (2005) and Wiltschko (2014), I assumed a
common skeleton in the nominal and verbal domain. This allows then the
formation of mixed categories and the inclusion of layers of the same semantic
basis, which can be interchanged. With respect to verbalization, I proposed
that it is not possible in languages such as English, as licensing of case blocks it.
Thus, whenever a nominal substructure is built, it requires case licensing,
which can be done via Agree or incorporation. I discussed recent analyses of
incorporation which treat it as involving phrasal movement. This in turn
means that verbalization is literally cross-linguistically impossible. In the spirit
of Remarks, it was shown that not all noninalizations are equally verbal,
although they have a verbal core. Importantly, however, nominalizations are
not derived transformationally from clauses, rather both verbal and nominal
clauses are assembled in the syntax, share functional layers, and thus show
similar properties.

Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at a colloquium in Cornell University in

September 2016; at the What’s in a Label workshop in Arezzo in September 2016; at the
linguistics seminar in Queen Mary University, London, in May 2017; and at the workshop
on Linguistic Variation at the Interfaces, in Madrid, November 2017. Many thanks to these
audiences for their input. Special thanks to Hagit Borer, Coppe van Urk, and two anonym-
ous reviewers for comments and discussion. AL 554/8-1 is hereby acknowledged.
 6
Nominalizing verbal passive
PROs and cons
Hagit Borer

6.1 Introduction

6.1.1 General

Argument Structure Nominals (ASNs), Grimshaw’s (1990) Complex Event

Nominals (CENs), come in two varieties—one in which the external argument
is prenominal and is marked as genitive, henceforth Long Argument Structure
Nominals (LASN), and the other in which it is not, henceforth Short Argument
Structure Nominals (SASN). The Short variety comes, itself, in two flavors—
one in which the external argument is expressed as a by-phrase, and the other,
in which it goes unmarked, overtly. These varieties are in (1)–(2):¹

(1) LASNs:
The dean’s formation/forming of the committee

(2) SASNs, optional by-phrase:

a. the formation/forming of the committee (by the new dean)

Relative to the diagnostics originally proposed in Grimshaw (1990 et seq.) to

distinguish ASNs from derived nominals without argument structure (RNs),
we note that SASNs, as in (3)–(4), are definitely ASNs (and in fact, some of

¹ A third option for SASN involves the logical object occupying the prenominal position, with or
without a by-phrase, as in (i). As is well known, that variant is excluded with -ing nominals.
i. a. the committee’s formation (by the dean)
b. *the committee’s forming (by the dean)
The contrast in (i) is largely tangential to the narrative about to unfold. For some discussion, see
Borer (2013).

Hagit Borer, Nominalizing verbal passive: PROs and cons In: Nominalization: 50 Years on from Chomsky’s Remarks.
Edited by: Artemis Alexiadou and Hagit Borer, Oxford University Press (2020). © Hagit Borer.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198865544.003.0006
112  

Grimshaw’s tests such as implicit argument properties and the availability of

an argumental by-phrase single out the short variety):

(3) a. The (organized) reaction to the Muslim Ban (by the courts / in few hours)
b. The (deliberate) refusal to pass the bill (by the Republicans / for
10 months)

(4) The forming/formation of the committee in order to improve faculty-

student contact

This chapter focuses on SASNs. In particular, I will provide evidence that

they embed passive structure, with the latter showing most of the syntactic
properties of clausal verbal passive, including the promotion of the internal
argument. Nominalization, in turn, emerges as an operation which can com-
bine a passivized verbal extended projection (ExP[V]) with a higher nominal
head. The logic, once articulated, mandates that LASNs are nominalizations
which bring together a nominalizer with an active ExP[V], complete with all
its arguments, including the external.
There are two take-home messages here. The first, in (5), concerns derived
nominals. The second, in (6), concerns the modeling of the syntax-word
formation interface:

(5) Derived Nominals:

a. ASNs (deverbal/de-adjectival) must contain a verbal/adjectival ExP.
b. The argument array in ASNs is that which is associated with ExP[V]
and ExP[A] respectively, and not with the noun.
c. Passive, specifically, may apply within the ExP[V] embedded under
the nominalizing affix.
d. LASNs are nominalizations of ‘active’ verbal projections.
e. SASNs are nominalizations of ‘passive’ verbal projections.

(6) Morphosyntax:
a. The morphological operation Nominalization, which brings together
a verbal/adjectival stem with a nominalizing affix, may apply to the
output of syntactic operations which involve complex syntactic
phrases, including passive and movement.
b. Therefore Nominalization, and by extension many other morpho-
logical processes, must be syntactic.
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6.1.2 The issues

Relative to the distinction between SASNs and LASNs, the most common
theoretical claims made in the literature are summarized in (7)–(8). (Boxed
letters refer to the positions I will endorse.)

(7) a. The prenominal possessor in ASNs is never a true event argument,

i.e. it never corresponds to a Grammatical Subject (GS), whether
external or internal. ‘Agent’ prenominal DPs are, rather, free
interpretation possessors with an agentive construal.2
b. The prenominal position in ASNs is a GS, and even more strongly,
it is the logical (‘external’) subject. When null, as in SASNs, the
prenominal position, as GS, is occupied by a silent nominal of
some kind.3
c .☞ The prenominal position in ASNs is GS when it is overt and thus
an argument. In LASNs it corresponds to the external argument.
SASNs, in turn, are cases of passive in which the internal argument
is the GS, but has failed to be promoted to the prenominal
position, and where the external argument, on a par with external
argument in clausal verbal passives, is a null indefinite pronoun
(or, possibly, optionally expressible through a by-phrase).4

(8) a. Passive, in SASNs, involves the arguments of the noun itself

(possibly lexically inherited from an embedded verb)
b .☞ Passive, in SASNs, involves arguments which are licensed within
a syntactic ExP[V] that is embedded under N (see fn. 4 for
references).

The organization of this chapter is as follows. In Section 6.2, I provide an

argument for (7c), showing that the silent external argument (SEA) in SASNs
has properties which differ from those of both PRO and pro when they occur as
GSs. This argument is based on what I term the Lebeaux Effect. Section 6.3

² Chomsky (1970); Williams (1987); Grimshaw (1990); Marantz (1997); Alexiadou (2001, 2017a);
Harley (2009b); i.a By extension, expressions such as the city’s destruction cannot be ASNs, a position
explicitly endorsed in Grimshaw (1990). For some criticism, see Doron & Rappaport Hovav (1991);
Borer (1991); i.a.
³ Roeper (1987); Safir (1987); Sichel (2009); i.a.
⁴ Borer (1991, 1999, 2003, 2013); with some differences, Bruening (2013); i.a.
114  

strengthens (7c) by providing evidence that the properties of SEA in SASNs

correspond directly to those of SEAs in short (clausal) passives, thereby further
supporting (8b).
In Section 6.4, I provide a direct argument for a passivized ExP[V] within
SASNs (i.e. (8b)), by contrasting deverbal ASNs with de-adjectival ASNs. That
very same argument supports the existence of a full adjectival ExP within de-
adjectival ASNs (ExP[A]). A further argument for (8b) is provided in
Section 6.5, based on the scope effects reported in van Hout, Kamiya, &
Roeper (2013). That argument serves not only to bolster (8b), but to also
strongly support the displacement of the internal argument, within the pas-
sivized ExP[V], to the position of the GS, thereby refuting (7b). Section 6.6
provides schematic syntactic structures for ASNs, both verbal and adjectival,
and for verbal passive, such that it can occur identically within sentences and
within SASNs.
Finally, in Section 6.7, I turn to cases of de-adjectival and deverbal ASNs
which do allow a silent nominal as a GS. In these cases, I will show, the
behavior of these silent nominals mirrors exactly their behavior in gerunds
and infinitives, but differs from the behavior of SEAs in passives and in SASN,
thereby lending further support to the absence of a silent GS in SASNs.
Section 6.8 provides a conclusion, focusing on the consequences for the
investigation of derived nominals, and for morphosyntax in general.

6.2 SEA is not PRO

The argument in this section centers on the fact that SEA, regardless of its
presumed syntactic position, does not exhibit the Lebeaux Effect, given in (9):

(9) The Lebeaux Effect:

Within an appropriately defined local domain, all occurrences of uncon-
trolled silent subject need to have a universal interpretation (=PRO-arb),
and are hence identified. (Lebeaux, 1984)

The Lebeaux Effect as originally proposed targets cases in which the relevant
silent subjects do not co-command each other, nor is there an obvious
antecedent that could control both of them. To exemplify, consider (10)–
(11), with gerunds and infinitives. These examples were chosen to favor a
distinct construal for the silent subjects, and, yet, such distinct construal is not
possible, in spite of being, by far, the most plausible one:
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(10) ✗DS (Distinct Subject construal excluded)

a. [PRO to unionize the labor force] entails/is [PRO to fire workers]
b. [PRO to unionize the labor force] entails/means [PRO firing
workers]

(11) ✗DS
a. [PRO unioizing the labor force] entails/means [PRO firing workers]
b. [PRO destroying the work environment] entailed/meant/was [PRO
reorganizing the labor force]
c. #[PRO beating the bicycle rider] while [PRO filming him] made the
headlines
(and compare with replacing while with after, where Same-Subject
construal is plausible)

In contrast, distinct subject construal is entirely licit for SASNs, at times

contrasting directly with the correlating gerunds:⁵

(12) ✓DS
a. The unioizing of the labor force entails the raising of salaries.
b. The destruction of the work environment entailed the reorganization
of the labor force.

At the very least, then, proponents of SEA as GS would need to provide

reasons for why the Lebeaux Effect is inert in such cases. In particular, if
gerunds are DPs which share with nominals the syntactic position in which
genitive is assigned, say [Spec,DP], defining the relevant domain for the
applicability of the Lebeaux Effect while maintaining the claim that SEA is a
GS in SASNs may be a tricky matter.

6.3 SEA in SASNs behaves like SEA in short passives

On a par with the SEA in SASNs and as already observed in Borer (1998), the
Lebeaux Effect does not apply to the SEA of verbal passives, aka the implicit
external argument, as shown in (13a–b):

⁵ The arguments advanced here exclude PRO as the GS of SASN regardless of its putative position,
or, indeed, the presence of an embedded ExP[V] within it. For the explicit structures proposed, see
Section 6.6.
116  

(13) ✓DS
a. That the workers were unionized meant that salaries were raised.
b. The bicycle rider was beaten while he was filmed

Nor does it hold for SEA in passivized infinitives or gerunds, as shown in

(10)–(11):

(14) a. The workers being unionized meant that salaries were being cut
b. The bicycle rider being beaten while the documentary was being
filmed

The Lebeaux Effect does not hold in (14) between the GSs of the two
infinitival clauses, which are not SEAs, but rather are the (overt) promoted
logical objects. It does, of course, hold for the subjects in (15). These GSs are
not external, but the distribution of PRO is not sensitive to argumental roles,
but rather to grammatical functions, and in (15) we have GSs, by assumption
PROs, which adhere to the Lebeaux Effect as expected:

(15) To be organized entails/means to be fired/hired

Note, finally, that the implicit argument in verbal passive may receive both
existential and generic construal, depending on context:

(16) a. It was decided this morning that Dina should travel to New York on
her own →by some
b. Committee work was successfully avoided →by some

(17) a. In the Middle Ages it was believed that if you travel west you would
get to India →by all
b. Committee work is despised →(possibly) by all

(18) a. Old people were once appreciated →by all; (by some)
b. In some countries, girls are still excluded from school →by all; by some

In its generic construal, the implicit argument does entail a Same-Subject

construal, which is to be expected. In its existential construal, however, such
construal is strongly dis-preferred:

(19) Mail was collected before tea was prepared (favors distinct perpetrators)
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(20) Committee work is despised while administrative titles are adored

(→by all)

The very same properties are attested in SASNs, with Same-Subject con-
strual attested when genericity is implicated, but strongly disfavored where
existential interpretation is contextually more plausible:

(21) a. the appreciation of old people →by all; (by some)

b. the exclusion of girls from school (→by all; by some) entails the
denial of education (→by all; by some)

(22) a. The decision that Dina should travel to New York →by some
b. the exclusion of girls from school entails the imposition of the new
law → distinct perpetrators

Example (23) summarizes the conclusions of Sections 6.2–3

(23) Gerunds, Infinitives (uncon- SASN, Passive

troled contexts):
Exhibits the Lebeaux Effect
SEA is universal only (PRO);
Do not exhibit the Lebeaux Effect
SEA normally existential, but could
have generic force in specific
syntactico-semantic contexts

This identity of interpretational properties between implicit arguments in

verbal passive and the properties of SEA in SASNs finds a natural explanation
in the claim that the latter are nominalizations of verbal passive structure. It
also has a couple of other consequences.
First, it means that contrary to much discussion in the literature (and
beginning with Chomsky, 1970), external arguments are no more optional
in ASNs than they are in (clausal) passives. The syntactic parallel for SASNs is
thus not (24a), as is sometimes claimed, but (24b):⁶

⁶ See, i.a. Hazout (1991, 1995); Borer (1991, 2003, 2013); Engelhardt (2000); Alexiadou (2009); van
Hout, Kamiya, & Roeper (2013); and Bruening (2013) for positions for and against passive analyses for
SASNs.
118  

(24) a. *organized the union

b. The union (was) organized.

Second, if a unified account is available for the properties of SEA in ASNs

and in verbal passive, SEA must be equally syntactically (and semantically)
(un)real in both. In turn, the context-dependent ambiguity between generic
and indefinite readings attested for the SEA in both clausal passives and ASNs
is difficult to reconcile with an existentially closed semantic argument devoid
of syntactic realization (e.g. as in Bruening, 2013). Rather, it suggests the
presence of a silent syntactic element, call it proindef, possibly with the prop-
erties of German man or those of indefinite plural null subjects in Italian,
Spanish, and Hebrew (Jaeggli, 1986; Cinque, 1988; Borer, 1998,), and which at
the very least in verbal passives and SASNs must occupy a position which is
distinct from that of the GS.⁷,⁸
This latter conclusion might suggest another potential analysis. Could it be
that GS in SASNs is proindef with PRO, in turn, excluded for some reasons that
hold for ASNs, but not for gerunds and infinitives (cf. Sichel, 2009)? But as we
shall see in the following sections, there is direct evidence for passive in SASNs
that goes well beyond the properties of SEAs. Furthermore, in Section 6.7,
I show that in well-defined contexts, SEA can be a GS even in (apparent)
SASNs, but when that is the case, it exhibits the Lebeaux Effect, thereby
supporting the claim that when it does not, SEA is not GS.

⁷ To exemplify from Italian:

i. a. Prima, hanno telefonato: mi pareva tua sorella
earlier, have- telephoned: me seems your sister
‘There was a phone call earlier. I think it was your sister’
b. Lo hanno cercato: era un signore anziano
him have- searched: was a man old
‘Somebody was looking for him. It was an old man’
ii. a. Li, odiano gli stranieri
there, hate-- strangers
‘They hate strangers there’
b. Qui, lavorano anche di sabato
‘Here, they work even on Saturday’ (Cinque, 1988)
In Borer (1998) I show that where c-command relations hold, Same-Subject construals with
existential meaning are entirely excluded, e.g. as in (i), due to the impossibility of binding/coreference
between two (existentially closed) instances of proindef. As such, that account lends additional support
to the syntactic existence of proindef (but see Sichel, 2009, for some refinements):
i. it was announced that the city was bombed (announcer ≠ bomber)
⁸ See Condoravdi (1989) and Borer (1998) for the claim that proindef is the null equivalent of the
English bare plural.
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6.4 Passivized clauses within ASNs 1: de-adjectival vs.

deverbal nominals

In line with Roy (2010) I assume the existence of adjectival ASNs, with the
properties in (25):

(25) De-adjectival ASNs, AASNs (Roy’s S-Nominals)

a. stative reading
b. subjects are obligatory
c. constant, rapide (and English equivalents) are possible modifiers
d. de-phrase in French is an argument; of-phrase in English is an
argument
e. aspectual modification (duration) possible within the nominal
f. affect only predicational adjectives

Note, in particular, (25f). As is well known, a wide range of adjectives which

are available in attributive positions are not possible predicates (former, alleged
among others) and others which are ambiguous in attributive contexts
between an intersective and a subsective reading are only available with an
intersective reading in predicative position. As Roy (2010) shows, the avail-
ability of AASNs tallies exactly with that of predicative adjectives, and not with
that of attributive adjectives:

(26) a. nasal voice

b. nasal cavity
c. close friend (ambiguous)

(27) a. his voice is nasal

b. #this cavity is nasal
c. this friend is close (intersective only)

(28) a. the nasality of his voice

b. #the nasality of this cavity
c. the closeness of this friend (intersective only)

(29) a. une peinture abstraite

a painting abstract
‘an abstract painting’
120  

b. un peintre abstraite
a painter abstract
‘an abstract painter’

(30) a. cette peinture est abstraite

this painting is abstract
b. *ce peintre est abstraite
this painter is abstract

(31) a. l’abstraction de cette peinture

the abstractness of this painting
b. *l’abstraction de ce peintre
the abstractness of this painter

While an account for the difference between attributive and predicative

adjectives is clearly outside the scope of this chapter the correlation between
the distribution of predicative adjectives and AASNs strongly supports the
derivation of AASNs not from bare adjectives, but rather from a predicative
adjectival structure, complete with arguments and eventuality information. If
we assume that such predicative structures include the subject of the adjective,
deriving AASNs from predicative adjectival structures yields not only their
obligatory intersectivity, but also the obligatoriness of the subject, Roy’s
diagnostic (25b).
While the thrust of Roy’s discussion concerns nominalized intransitive
adjectives, adjectives with complements do nominalize to give rise to the
long variants in (32):

(32) a. the court’s (constant) awareness of the problem

b. Pat’s (frequent) consciousness of my presence

The external argument may occur postnominally as well, providing the

internal argument is not itself marked with of:⁹

⁹ A. McIntyre (p.c.) notes his acceptance of (i) and similar:

i. The awareness of the court of the problem
Given the acceptability of e.g. (33b) with a postnominal subject, the obvious move would be to
assume that in some dialects of English, of is homophonous between a ‘structural’ marker available in
some nominal specifier, and a preposition available to complements.
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(33) a. Robin’s readiness to leave , the readiness of Robin to leave

b. the courtier’s closeness to the , the closeness of the courtier to
throne the king
c. the house’s proximity to the , the proximity of the house to
road the road
d. the party’s eagerness for , the eagerness of the party for
change change

What is striking now is that the AASN equivalents of SASNs are

ungrammatical:¹⁰

(34) a. *The awareness of the constitutional problem (by the court)

b. *The consciousness of my presence (by Pat)
c. *The fondness of/for classical music (by Jill)11
d. *The readiness to leave (by Robin)
e. *The proximity to the road (by the house/Kim)
f. *The eagerness for change (by the party)

The ungrammaticality of (34a–f), now, would be extremely puzzling if

the GSs in deverbal SASNs were SEA. However, if SASNs embed a passivized
ExP[V], the ungrammaticality of (34a–f) reduces directly to the fact that
adjectives do not passivize. The ungrammaticality of (34a–f), therefore, is
exactly on a par with that of (35a–d) and similar:

(35) a. *The problem is aware (of) (by the court)

b. *My presence is conscious (of) (by Pat)
c. *Classical music is fond (of/for) (by Jill)
d. *The change is eager for (by the leadership)

The conclusion here is straightforward enough: Deverbal ASNs contain an

ExP[V], while AASNs contain an ExP[A]. In consequence, deverbal LASNs
are nominalization of active verbal structures, in which all arguments must be
realized. On the other hand, deverbal SASNs (with or without by-phrases) are
nominalizations of passivized ExP[V], which, in the standard manner, allow

¹⁰ (34a–f) are much improved if the definite article is omitted. I address the contrast at some length
in Section 6.7.
¹¹ While fondness for is preferred (approximately 4.5 million Google hits), fondness of is licit
(approximately 0.5 million Google hits). I will take the optional occurrence of for to be a spell-out
effect.
122  

for an implicit external argument which is not the GS. Short versions are
excluded for AASNs quite simply because adjectives do not passivize.
If this conclusion is correct, it follows that in LASNs as well as in AASNs the
prenominal DP must be the external verbal or adjectival argument. Such an
external argument merges below the N, and in the very same position that it
would merge in the clausal correlates of ExP[V] or ExP[A]. Its occurrence
prenominally, in turn, is the result of movement to some nominal functional
specifier (say [Spec,DP]), triggered by Case considerations. In Section 6.6,
I return to this matter in the context of more fully articulated structures for
ASNs, both verbal and adjectival, and for passive.
Adjectival structures are not the only syntactic constructions which prohibit
passivization. Unaccusatives as well bar passivization even in languages which
do allow monadic predicates to passivize. We thus predict that ASNs corres-
ponding to unaccusatives would pattern with (34) in barring a silent GS, giving
rise to an obligatory overt subjects. This prediction is borne out, as the rather
surprising contrasts between (36) and (37) show:¹²

(36) a. the departure of the guests in three hours (is/was unrealistic)

b. the arrival of the guests in three minutes
c. the disappearance of the symptom in three hours
d. the emergence of the magician in three seconds

(37) a. *the departure in three hours

b. *the arrival in three minutes
c. *the disappearance in three hours
d. *the emergence in three seconds

Crucially, no such effects are attested in RNs, as shown in (38), thus indicating
that the ungrammaticality of (37a–d) is linked to the obligatoriness of an argument
and cannot be attributed to any anomaly of the derived nominals themselves:

(38) a. the departure

b. the arrival (was delayed)
c. the disappearance

¹² Here, as well, bare nominals (e.g. ‘departure in three hours’) show improvement. See Section 6.7
for treatment.
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Note again that the ungrammaticality of (37a–d) cannot be accounted for if

the GS, either prenominally or postnominally, can be occupied by a silent
referring expression. Such a putative silent expression, were it allowed in
(37a–d), would be interpreted as an internal argument, but infinitives and
gerunds most certainly allow null GS for unaccusatives, thereby showing that
there is no independent restrictions on such occurrence:

(39) [PRO departing / to depart before dawn] is our best option

[PRO disappearing / to disappear so suddenly] is rude

That such an option is not available in (37a–d) thus clearly indicates that the
GS in ASNs cannot be silent, regardless of its interpretation, and that the only
cases in which an argument can be silent are cases of passive. As passive is not
available for unaccusatives, (37a–d) are ungrammatical.
By way of final evidence for the claims in this section, consider the contrast
between the ungrammaticality of (34a–f) and the grammaticality of the
AASNs in (40a–b):

(40) a. the likelihood that Roger will be on time

b. the possibility/probability that the boat would be released

In the absence of passive in adjectival constructions, I argued, (34a–f) are

ungrammatical because the external argument of the embedded adjectives
cannot be silent. In contrast, the nominals in (40) are derived from ‘ergative
adjectives’ in the sense of Cinque (1990) and most importantly, they lack an
external argument altogether. Here, we find, the absence of an overt GS is licit,
precisely because such GS would not correspond to an argument.¹³

¹³ Most ergative adjectives, including tough adjectives, do not have licit nominalized forms, regard-
less of Raising or Tough movement. Whatever the reason, it may go some way toward accounting for
the absence/scarcity of both Raising and Tough in derived nominals observed in Chomsky (1970) (and
contrast with the nonergative instantiations, at times of the same adjectives, in (iii)):
i. *the obviousness/clarity that Roger will be late (it is obvious/clear that . . . )
ii. a. *the easiness/difficulty/toughness/niceness/attractiveness to settle the conflict
b. *the easiness/difficulty/toughness/niceness of settling the conflict
iii. a. the clarity of the water
b. the toughness/attractiveness of the leather
c. the difficulty of the problem
124  

Before moving on, note that deverbal SASNs are attested not only with
‘objects’, but with PP and CP complements as well, as the small sample in (41)
shows:

(41) a. the objection to gun control (in order to gain NRA support)
b. the decision/proposal to bomb the hospitals (in order to demoralized
the civil population)
c. the (desperate) grasping for power (in order to gain control)

I return to these cases in Section 6.6, where I suggest that these are cases of
impersonal passive.

6.5 Passivized VP within ASNs 2—scope and movement

The contrast in (42) is discussed in some detail in Roeper & van Hout (2009)
and van Hout, Kamiya, & Roeper (2013):

(42) The electability of nobody surprised me

a. ??I am surprised that nobody was electable (??narrow scope)
b. Nobody is such that his electability surprised me (√wide scope)

As van Hout, Kamiya, & Roeper (2013) note, nobody in (42) must receive a
matrix scope, and cannot scope under surprise. The same effect holds for
LASNs and for unergative ASNs. In all these cases, GS is an external argument:

(43) Nobody’s rejection of the offer surprised me (✗narrow /√wide)

(44) The disobedience/rebellion of nobody surprised me (✗narrow/√wide)

The converse effects hold for objects in LASNs. Here, only narrow scope is licit:

(45) The council’s election/electing of nobody surprised me (√narrow/✗wide)

Strikingly, in SASNs, and in these constructions alone, we get an ambiguity:

(46) The election/electing of nobody surprised me (√narrow/√wide)

As noted in van Hout, Kamiya, & Roeper (2013), the ambiguity of (46) follows
directly if we assume that the sole overt argument in (46) has moved from
    125

the object position to the GS position. The wide scope reading is computed on
the basis of its postmovement position, while the narrow scope reading results
from reconstruction. Otherwise put, this scope configuration emerges if, and
only if, we assume a passive-like movement of the object to a higher position,
presumed GS.
We now predict, correctly, that unaccusative ASNs behave like (46),
displaying scope ambiguity, thereby providing further support for the
passive/movement analysis of SASNs:

(47) The arrival of nobody surprised me (√narrow/√wide)

The account is finally directly supported by two additional observations.

Note, first, that only narrow scope is available in PRO-gerunds, as in (48a),
and in the context of prenominal expressions such as yesterday’s in (48b):

(48) Electing nobody surprises me (√narrow/✗wide)

(49) Yesterday’s election of nobody surprised me (√narrow/✗wide)

If, indeed, [Spec,DP] is occupied by PRO in gerunds, and yesterday’s

occupies the [Spec,DP] position in the SASN in (49) where it effectively
functions as GS, the availability of exclusively narrow scope follows imme-
diately for both. In turn, it follows that there could not be a silent external
GS in [Spec,DP] of SASN where wide scope is available for the (logical)
object.¹⁴

¹⁴ I am particularly grateful to the reviewer for pointing out the cases in (48)–(49). On the flip
side, the reviewer also points out a number of cases where narrow scope is available for –ability
nominals:
i. a. The electability of only two candidates surprised anyone / me too. (wide/narrow)
b. The {visibility of no stars / availability of no good candidates} worried me too. (narrow only)
The reviewer further postulates wide scope only for the SASN in (ii), thereby contrasting few with
nobody in the same context, but the judgments in this case appear less clear cut:
ii. The election of few candidates surprised anyone/*me too. (wide only)
A better understanding of scope within ASN is thus clearly required, a matter not pursued here.
Note, however, that (i–ii) have little impact on the main claims made. What appears to be at stake for
(i) is the external status of the arguments of –able adjectives. Regarding (ii), the judgment as indicated
in fact requires movement of the internal argument, but shows that reconstruction construal for some
NPI is blocked.
126  

6.6 Architecture

The primary purpose of this chapter is to provide evidence for the presence of
a passivized ExP[V] within SASNs, and by extension, for an adjectival or
verbal ExP in all ASNs. This result, I believe, holds regardless of the precise set
of functional labels that are proposed for verbal, adjectival, and nominal ExPs.
It does, however, require a particular architecture. To ensure an appropriate
architectural focus, suffice it to grant that the external argument merges as the
specifier of some member of ExP[V] call it F1[V], and that the complement
merges as the specifier of some lower member of ExP[V], call it F2[V]. For
similar reasons, functional nodes within the nominal sequence remain
unlabeled.¹⁵ Finally, I set aside here the ongoing debate on the existence, or
lack thereof, of head movement.
With these considerations in mind, (50) is the proposed (schematic) struc-
ture of LASNs:

(50) a. Kim’s formation/forming of the team

b. Dmax

Kim
’s F1[N]

Kim
F1[N] Nmax

Kim
N F1[V]
-ation
-ing Kim
F1[V] F2[V]

[of] the team

F2[V] [v √form ]

¹⁵ By extension, the external argument of ExP[A] is the specifier of F1[A], while the complement is
the specifier of F2[A]. As the focus here is on passive, the structure in (50) centers on ExP[V]. The
translation to ExP[A] should be straightforward. For some comments on the distribution of of in
AASN, see fn. 9. For the author’s position on what the actual labels might be, see Borer (2005a, b, 2013).
    127

I assume that (among its other roles) of spells out Case assigned to DP in some
nominal specifier which is below the ultimate realization site for N (e.g. [Spec,
NP] or some higher [Spec,F[N]]). In (51), the external argument of form has
moved to [Spec,NP] from [Spec,F1[V]]. That very same nominal specifier is
available for of complements of underived nominals, such as (52a), with the
structure in (52b) (N displacement set aside):

(51) a. the repeated objection of the candidates to the proposed bill

b. [DP the [F1[N] F1[N] [NP of the candidates N [F1[V] the candidates . . .
]]]]]

(52) a. the name/dress of the girl

b. [DP the [F1[N] F1[N] [NP of the girl N ]]]

Finally, in (50), where Kim has moved to [Spec,DP] through [Spec,NP], the
‘of ’ associated with the object, the team, represents the realization of objective
Case in the absence of T, making ‘accusative’ in English contingent on
propositional structure in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Pesetsky &
Torrego (2004).
Turning now to SASNs, it would be prudent to start by proposing a
(schematic) structure for verbal passive, such that it can be embedded under
nominalization. Concretely, I propose that the analytic form of passive in
English and similar signifies the existence of an embedded, dependent (sub)
event. If we take F1[V] in (50) to stand for the embedding event, the embedded
subevent, call it f1[v], may be implicated not only in the emergence of passive,
but possibly in the emergence of other participial constructions. According to
this approach, there exists, at the core of passive constructions, an active
subevent, which is further embedded under some operator π (for passive).
π C-commands and locally binds the external argument of f1[v], thus barring
it from moving. The emerging structure is as in (53):

(53) [t be [f1[V]…[π π [f1[V] DP1 f1[v] [f2-v DP2 f2[v] [v … √XYZ … ]]]]]
ext. arg int. arg

As Case is not available in f1[v], the external argument in (53) may only be
realized as Caseless proindef. In turn, the object, if present, must enter Agree
relations with T, thereby (potentially) undergoing movement to receive
nominative Case. Finally, proindef is interpreted either through existential
128  

closure, or through the existence of a generic operator as discussed in

Section 6.3.¹⁶
Analyticity in passive now emerges because f1[v] and F1[V] are realized
separately. As a result, an auxiliary is required to support T, and the main verb
itself is realized in whatever morphological form is required in the context of
an auxiliary. From this perspective, neither be nor participial marking are, in
and of themselves, markers of ‘passive’ as such, but are collateral effects of the
presence of π and f1[v].
Severing both be and participial morphology from the passive function
receives independent support from the existence of passive constructions
without dedicated morphology. At least one case frequently discussed is
Romance causatives, where a clause embedded under a causative verb may
display the diagnostics of passive, but is missing both auxiliary and participial
morphology, as is illustrated in (54) (see Kayne, 1975; and Postal, 1992; i.a.):

(54) a. Marie fera laver le chien à Jean. (French)

Marie make. wash the dog to Jean
‘Marie will cause Jean to wash the dog.’
b. Marie fera laver le chien (par Jean).
Marie make. wash the dog (by Jean)
‘Marie will cause the dog to be washed (by Jean).’

That faire-par constructions are passives is strongly supported by their

interaction with nonpassivizable idioms, possible in (active) faire-à construc-
tions, but not in faire-par constructions (Kayne, 1975):

(55) a. Sa famille a cassé la crôute.

his family has broken the crust
‘His family had a snack.’
b. Jean a fait cassé la croute à sa famille
Jean has made break the crust to his family
‘Jean made his family have a snack.’

¹⁶ The execution broadly follows the version of Agree and a view of dependent Case/Nominative
obligatoriness articulated in Borer (1986). Other executions which achieve the same end are easy to
imagine.
I side-step here the question of why existential closure/generic interpretation should be available for
proindef in [Spec,f1[v]], but not for a proindef merging in some lower position, or the specific nature of π
as an operator which may give rise to both generic and existential interpretation. These puzzles, note,
extend well beyond passive, at the very least to the cases of indefinite pro subjects briefly touched upon
in Section 6.3, and possibly to bare plurals and German-type man as well.
    129

(56) a. *La crôute a été cassé (par sa famille).

the crust has been broken by his family
b. *Jean a fait casser la crôute (par sa famille).

Note finally that the passive structure in (53) accounts for impersonal
passives straightforwardly, and in fact, impersonal passives emerge from it
as simpler, structurally, than canonical passive, in requiring no additional
object movement. Transitive passive such as (57) has postphrasal movement,
the structure in (59a), while impersonal passives (58a–b) have the structures
in (59b), with expletives inserted in [Spec,TP] for EPP reasons, or due to the
obligatoriness of nominative Case in finite contexts. For reasons of expedi-
ency, PP and CP complements are assumed to merge in [Spec,f2[v]], but not
to require Case:

(57) The window was shuttered (to bring in the piano)

(58) a. Er wordt (door de jongens) gefloten (Dutch)

expl. become (by the boys) whistled
‘There is whistling (by the boys’)
b. Xe stà tełefonà a Marco.
expl. was telephoned to Marco (Venetian, Schoof, 2003)

(59)
pffiffi
a. [T DP2 aux[F1[V] . . . [π DP2π [f1[v] proindef f1[v][f2[v] DP2 f2[v][V ]]]]]
 ext. arg int. arg
pffiffi
b. [T [there] aux[F1-V . . . [π π [f1[v] proindef f1[v] ([f2[v] PP/CPf2[v])[V . . . ]]]]
 ext.arg complement

Armed now with an approach to passive which requires neither participial

morphology nor an auxiliary, we return to SASNs, which are derived by
embedding π in (59a–b) under a nominalizer. The result is as in (60).
Examples (61a–b) now emerge as a result of movement for Case (to [Spec,
NP] or [Spec,DP]). When no movement for Case is required, (62a–c)
emerge:
130  

(60) Dmax

{the/’s} F1[N]

( ) F1[N] Nmax

(of )-
π
N

π f1[v]

proindef
f1[v] f2[v]

[the team]
[to gun control] f2[v] [v √form]
[v √object]

(61) a. the formation/forming of the team (in order to win the race)
b. the team’s formation (in order to win the race)

(62) a. the objection to gun control (in order to gain NRA support)
b. the decision to bomb the hospitals (in order to demoralized the
population)
c. the frequent sleeping in unmade beds (by tired adolescents)

A final comment is in order concerning the cases in (41) and (62c). Given
the structures in (59)–(60), these now emerge as cases of embedded imper-
sonal passive, i.e. cases in which the external argument is realized as proindef in
the context of π, but the complement fails to move, as it does not require
structural Case (or is possibly altogether missing). While decide, announce,
believe, and a few others do, arguably, allow impersonal passive in English
(cf. (16a)), the reader may, at this point, object on the grounds that many of
the specific verbs which underlie SASNs without a direct object, as in (41) and
(62c), do not otherwise allow sentential impersonal passive in English. While
that is certainly correct, note that the problem could not reside with the
    131

structures in (59)–(60), as these do allow impersonal passive in a straightfor-

ward way, and along a derivational route that is minimally different from that
of direct passive. (This, in fact, is the case for most passive accounts within
Generative Grammar in the past thirty years, all of which require a particular
stipulation to block impersonal passive in English.) Nor could it reside with
the verbs under consideration, as most of them do allow pseudo-passive,
suggesting that little which is either semantic or morphological could block
impersonal passive:

(63) a. Gun control was objected to (in order to gain NRA support)
b. Unmade beds are all too frequently slept in (by tired adolescents)

The mystery, then, is not why SASNs allow an impersonal passive deriv-
ation, but why impersonal passive should be otherwise so limited in English.
From our perspective, then, it is SASNs which are straightforward, and the
scarcity of propositional (impersonal) passives, which remain, at present,
unexplained.

6.7 PRO, after All

Sections 6.2 and 6.3 were devoted to arguments against the existence of a silent
external argument (SEA), as the grammatical subject (GS) of SASNs.
Specifically, I showed that a putative GS-SEA in such nominals does not
behave like the definite GS-SEAs in infinitives and gerunds, call it PRO. The
empirical conclusion is compelling, but the account for it is not obvious. Why
should PRO be barred in SASNs? The puzzle is enhanced if we assume,
following Abney (1987) and much subsequent literature, that both gerunds
and nominals are DPs, and that PRO is in [Spec,DP] in gerunds.
The purpose of this section is to convince the reader that PRO (or some
other species of null pronominal with the properties of uncontroled PRO) is,
in principle, licit as the GS of nominals, but is excluded, nonetheless, in the
SASNs in (2) and (34), as a filled [Spec,DP], or indeed [Spec,DP] itself, is
incompatible with the English definite article.¹⁷

¹⁷ See Roeper (1987) for this claim in the context of cases such as (i) (attributed to D. Charney, p.c.):
i. a. John2 is in [PRO2 control of the ship]
b. John is in [the control of the ship] (no control construal)
132  

To observe the crucial role played by the definite article, note the contrast
between the ungrammatical cases in (34a–f) and their minimal licit correlates
without the definite article:

(64) a. awareness of the constitutional problem

b. consciousness of my presence
c. fondness of/for classical music
d. readiness to leave
e. eagerness for change

Let us suppose, then, that (64a–e), but not (34a–f), allow GS-SEA. But if that
is, indeed, the case, we expect these cases to exhibit the Lebeaux Effect.
Specifically, recall, the Lebeaux Effect is suspended in SASNs (65) (cf. (12)),
which, as such, contrast with e.g. verbal gerunds (66) (cf. 11):

(65) ✓Different Subject (DS)

a. The unionizing of the labor force entails the raising of salaries.
b. The destruction of the work environment entailed the reorganization
of the labor force.

(66) ✓DS
a. [PRO unionizing the labor force] entails/means [PRO firing workers]
b. [PRO destroying the work environment] entailed/meant/was [PRO
reorganizing the labor force]

This prediction, as it turns out, is directly borne out by the impossibility of

DS-construal for (67a–b). Once again, examples were chosen to encourage
DS-construal thus creating an anomalous reading precisely because such a
construal is barred. For completeness sake, note no such anomaly when the
subjects are overt and distinct, as in (68):

(67) ✗DS
a. #openness to liberal ideas entails eagerness to suppress them
b. #closeness to mafia figures entails willingness to condemn them in public

(68) ✓DS
a. The Democrats’ openness to liberal ideas entailed the Republicans’
eagerness to suppress them.
b. The president’s closeness to mafia figures entailed our willingness to
condemn them in public.
    133

The Lebeaux Effect is further attested when the nominal is preceded by an

indefinite article (where otherwise licit), some, little/much, or no:

(69) ✗DS
a. #an openness to liberal ideas entailed much eagerness to suppress
them
b. #no/little fondness of/for classical music entails some readiness to
attend concerts

The direct conclusion, now, is that in the absence of a definite article,

AASNs may contain PRO-GS. This conclusion, in turn, immediately raises
the possibility that the very same must hold for deverbal ASNs, a matter to
which I turn shortly, exploring first the incompatibility of PRO and the
definite article.
Recall that in principle the GS in ASNs could occupy either the prenominal
position, which it shares with possessors and the GS of gerunds, or, absent of
complement, GS in both deverbal and de-adjectival ASNs can occupy a
position below the final realization site of the head N. I will assume without
further discussion that the latter position, for structural reasons, cannot host
PRO. The former position, plausibly [Spec,DP], clearly does allow PRO, e.g. in
gerunds. Gerunds, however, independently do not occur in the context of a
definite article, thus providing an unsuitable environment for corroborating
the incompatibility of PRO and the.
A suitable corroboration is, however, available from Saxon Genitives, where
prenominal possessors are in complementary distribution with the [Dthe] of
the possessum:

(70) a. *[the boy]’s the hat

b. *the [boy’s hat]
c. [the boy]’s hat

Setting aside the precise explanation for the effects in (70) (but see Borer,
2005a: 38–43, for a suggestion), note that the very same restriction applies to
derived nominals, ruling out cases such as (71a–b) and similar:

(71) a. *the court’s the awareness of the problem

b. *Melisa’s the proximity to British royals
134  

If indeed PRO is in [Spec,DP], we can now proceed to derive the grammat-

icality of (72a) but the ungrammaticality of (72b), thereby yielding the contrast
between (64a–f) and (34a–g):¹⁸

(72) a. [DP-1[DP-2 PRO/Melisa’s] eD . . . [NP (awareness) ]]

b. *[DP-1[DP-2 PRO/Melisa] THED . . . [NP (awareness) ]]

With this in mind, suppose we consider again the ungrammaticality of

(34a–f). These derivations, we now claim, are not ruled out because SEA can
never be a GS within ASNs, nor are they ungrammatical due to the fact that
passive is somehow obligatory. To the contrary, GS can, and sometimes
must be SEA (=PRO) in ASNs (e.g. in (64)). Examples (34a–f) are ruled out,
rather, because of a complementarity between DEF in D and a filled [Spec,DP],
whether overt or covert. Because AASNs do not have recourse to a passive
derivation as an alternative way to licence the external argument, ungram-
maticality results. In other words, in AASNs the external argument is obliga-
torily GS, whether overt or covert. When blocked in [Spec,DP] by the presence
of the, it might still occur, overtly, postnominally, if otherwise licit, as in (73),
but if such occurrence is blocked, e.g. in the presence of an independent of
complement, ungrammaticality results, again, regardless of whether GS is
overt or covert (but see fn. 9):

(73) a. the readiness of Robin to leave immediately

b. the proximity of the house to the road
c. the happiness of the party with the polls

(74) a. *the awareness of the court of the problems

b. *the fondness of Kim of classical music

Consider, however, SASNs. Here, even with a definite article, the derivation
can be saved if it incorporates a passivized structure, thereby allowing SEA to
occupy a position which is not [Spec,DP]. This SEA, crucially, is neither PRO
nor GS, but proindef, and as noted already, subject to distinct interpretational
and structural conditions.

¹⁸ As is clear from (69), at least some AASNs are felicitous with the indefinite article as well as with
some, much/little, or no. If the complementarity observed here between PRO and the is to be extended
to all filled instances of D (with the exception of ’s), the logic here dictates that a, some, much/little, or
no must be lower than D, thereby allowing PRO to be in [Spec,DP]. See Borer (2005a, chapter 6) for the
placement of at least some determiners in #P (NumP).
    135

It now emerges that when a deverbal ASNs is missing both an overt subject
and a definite article, as in (75), the derivation is, in principle, ambiguous. It
could be a case of nominalized passive, as outlined in some detail in sections
6.4–6 (cf. (76a)), or alternatively, it could involve the presence of a SEA-PRO
in [Spec,DP], as in (76b).

(75) (ongoing) deprivation of entire populations

(76) a. [D N ... [π π . . . [f1[v] proindef ... deprive]]]

b. [D PRO N [F1[V] . . . PRO [ ... deprive]]]

Recall now that the implicit argument of passives, proindef corresponding

broadly to the English bare plural, may receive either an existential or a generic
interpretation. Uncontroled PRO, on the other hand, is always universal or
generic. As a consequence, the range of interpretations for PRO is a subset of
the range of interpretations available for proindef, and we expect these nom-
inals, as is indeed the case, to freely allow both Same-Subject and Different-
Subject construals:

(77) ✓DS; ✓SS

a. Destruction/construction of nature reserves entailed enacting of pro-
gressive legislation.
b. (Organized) reaction to the austerity measures entailed harassment/
empowerment of political activists.

Recall, however, that not all deverbal ASNs are amenable to a passive
derivation—specifically, for the unaccusative nominalizations in (37), repeated
here as (78), the derivation in (76a), with π and proindef, is not available.
However, the derivation in (76b), where no passive took place and the definite
article is absent, should be licit with PRO-GS. The predicted contrast, rather
surprising in itself, is directly verified by the full grammaticality of (79):

(78) a. *the departure/arrival in three minutes (was/is unrealistic)

b. *the emergence/disappearance in three seconds

(79) a. departure/arrival in three minutes (is unrealistic)

b. disappearance/emergence in three seconds (is doable)
136  

Finally, and precisely because prodef is not available in (79), but PRO-GS is,
we expect the cases in (79) to exhibit the Lebeaux Effect. They do (and
compare again with the DS-construal available with overt subjects):

(80) PRO-GS in unaccusative ASN → ✗DS:

a. #Departure in an hour entails/means arrival in ten minutes
b. #Reappearance in three seconds entailed/meant disappearance in
seven hours

(81) And compare with

a. Departure of (the) guests in an hour entails arrival of (the) cabbies in
ten minutes
b. My reappearance in three seconds entailed your/my disappearance in
seven hours

6.8 Conclusion

At the core of Constructivist approaches there lies the conviction that contrary
to Chomsky (1970), there is only one computational component that gives rise
both to classical constituent structure, and to word-internal hierarchies.
Within such approaches it goes without saying that e.g. destruction and
formation are syntactically derived, but on the other hand, so are the verbs
destroy and form, each consisting, at the very least, of some acategorial root
and some syntactic structure which is responsible for the emergence of the
verbal category. It is rather ironic, therefore, that within many Constructivist
approaches the refusal to allow for the syntactic derivational relationship
between e.g. [V form] and [N formation] does persist, in the guise of the
claim, harking back directly to Chomsky (1970), that while [V form] and
[N formation] are derived, per force syntactically, from the same root
√form, nonetheless, and very much in line with the nonsyntactic views in
Chomsky (1970), there is no direct derivational relationship between [V form]
and [N formation]. As a consequence, [V form] and [N formation] are equally
complex and event arguments of formation, when they occur, are effectively
arguments of the noun (Marantz, 1997; Harley, 2009b; i.a.).
To be sure, the claim that a verbal constituent of variable complexity is
syntactically embedded within all derived nominals has been made repeatedly
and amply supported during the past thirty or so years, with many of the
    137

central protagonists noted in the previous pages.¹⁹ The original Remarks tenet,
denying syntactic derivational relationship between verbs and deverbal nom-
inals, remains, nonetheless, the default hypothesis, recently reinforced by
Lieber (2016), and with burden of proof lying entirely with the ‘syntactic’
camp. To the extent that the present chapter establishes, I believe conclusively,
that deverbal SASNs emerge from the nominalization of a specifically verbal
syntactic passive structure, and AASN from syntactic adjectival structure, it
contributes additional building blocks to what is presently an already impres-
sive body of evidence necessitating, at the very least, a re-evaluation of where,
exactly, the burden of proof lies at present.
Beyond the specific properties of deverbal and de-adjectival nominals
outlined here, the significance of the analysis proposed resides in establishing
that what is realized as a single phonological word, e.g. bombardment or
awareness, at times corresponds to a considerably larger constituent contain-
ing syntactic phrases, which in themselves may have undergone some syntac-
tic operations, including phrasal movement. A nonsyntactic account for the
piecing together of the verb and the nominalizer, so as to give rise to an SASN
with all its pertinent properties, is extremely hard to imagine. Complex words,
then, are per force syntactic constituents, formed and manipulated by the very
same combinatorial mechanism that gives us phrasal syntax.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank audiences in São Paulo, Leiden, Newcastle, and Solang for valuable
comments. Special thanks go to Andrew McIntyre for his extensive input.

¹⁹ Noteworthy (post-Remarks) early claims are Roeper (1987) and subsequent work; Hazout (1991,
1995); Valois (1991); Borer (1991/3), et seq.) Rozwadowska (1997, et seq.; Engelhardt (2000); Fu,
Roeper, and Borer (2001); & Alexiadou (2001 et seq).
 7
Nominalization and selection in two
Mayan languages
Jessica Coon and Justin Royer

7.1 Introduction

This chapter investigates the pervasive use of nominalization in Ch’ol and

Chuj, languages from two different branches of the Mayan language family.
Building on the discussion of different types of nominalization in Chomsky
(1970), we investigate the relationship between semantic requirements of
roots, and the functional structure available to license arguments. As we
demonstrate below, Mayan languages are particularly illuminating in this
area due to (i) the presence of clear and definable classes of roots; and (ii)
rich systems of derivational and inflectional morphology which provide overt
clues to functional structure.
Like other Mayan languages, Ch’ol and Chuj show a basic ergative system of
alignment, visible in the two sets of agreeing morphemes on the predicate: Set
A (ergative and possessive) and Set B (absolutive). In the sentences in (1) and
(2), we find transitive subjects in both languages cross-referenced via the Set
A prefix immediately preceding the verb root.¹ Transitive objects and intransi-
tive subjects are marked with Set B; Set B appears stem-finally in Ch’ol, and
following the TAM marker in Chuj.

¹ Ch’ol is a language of the Tseltalan branch spoken by around 200,000 people in Chiapas,
Mexico. Chuj is a Q’anjob’alan language spoken by around 70,000 people in Huehuetenango,
Guatemala, and Chiapas, Mexico (Piedrasanta, 2009; Buenrostro, 2013). Further details about
Ch’ol and Chuj grammar can be found in Vázquez Álvarez (2011) Buenrostro (2013), and works
cited there. Unless otherwise attributed, examples in this chapter come from the authors’ elicitation
with speakers. —‘Set A’ (ergative/possessive); —Agent Focus; —voice suffix, described below;
—‘Set B’ (absolutive); —derived intransitive suffix; —epenthesis; —nominal suffix; —plural;
—singular; —status suffix. Glosses in examples from other sources have in some cases been modified
for consistency; translations from Spanish are our own.

Jessica Coon and Justin Royer, Nominalization and selection in two Mayan languages In: Nominalization: 50 Years on from
Chomsky’s Remarks. Edited by: Artemis Alexiadou and Hagit Borer, Oxford University Press (2020).
© Jessica Coon and Justin Royer. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198865544.003.0007
140     

(1) Ch’ol (Tseltalan) (2) Chuj (Q’anjob’alan)

a. Tyi k-mek’-e-y-ety. a. Ix-ach-ko-chel-a’.
 1-hug---2 -2s-1-hug-
‘I hugged you.’ ‘We hugged you.’
b. Tyi wäy-i-y-ety. b. Ix-ach-way-i.
 sleep---2 -2s-sleep-
‘You slept.’ ‘You slept.’

Ch’ol and Chuj show a pattern of aspect-based split ergativity. In both

languages, the ergative pattern disappears in the progressive aspect, and is
replaced by what is known as an ‘extended ergative’ pattern (Dixon, 1979):
Set A is extended to mark not only transitive subjects, but intransitive
subjects as well.

(3) Ch’ol
a. Choñkol [NP k -mek’-ety].
 1-hug-2
‘I’m hugging you.’
b. Choñkol [NP k -wäy-el].
 1-sleep-
‘I’m sleeping.’

(4) Chuj
a. Lan [NP hach ko -chel-an-i].
 2 1-hug--
‘We’re hugging you.’
b. Lan [NP ko -way-i].
 1-sleep-
‘We’re sleeping.’

This is where nominalization comes in. In addition to marking transitive

subjects, Set A marking also cross-references possessors in Mayan languages,
and work going back to at least Larsen & Norman (1979) has attributed the
‘split’ pattern in examples like (3) and (4) to the use of (i) an aspectual matrix
predicate (i.e. choñkol and lan) which combines with (ii) a possessed nomin-
alized verb form (in brackets). These nominalizations are shown to be
Complex Event Nominals (CENs) (Grimshaw, 1990), discussed further
below. The proposal, spelled out in more detail in Section 7.2, is thus that
while the Set A markers in (1) and (2) reflect ergative agreement, the Set
    141

A markers (boxed) in (3) and (4) mark possessor agreement. Because both
transitive and intransitive subjects are realized as possessors in these nomin-
alized constructions, the appearance of a nominative pattern arises (Coon,
2013a; Coon & Carolan, 2017).
The similarities and differences between CENs in Ch’ol and Chuj discussed
in Section 7.2, combined with requirements of smaller Result Nominals and
argument nominalizations discussed in Section 7.3, lead us to conclude that
transitive and unaccusative roots in both languages require semantic satur-
ation of an internal argument slot. The fact that this requirement is seen not
just in verbal forms, but in nominalizations of different sizes, lends support
to the proposal that this is a semantic requirement of roots, independent of
the amount and type of higher functional structure (on variation in func-
tional structure in nominalizations, see, among others, Abney, 1987;
Alexiadou, 2001, Chapter 5; and Harley, Chapter 9). While we follow the
larger body of work which takes argument structure to be at least partly
determined during the course of the derivation (see e.g. Halle and Marantz,
1993; Arad, 2003; Borer, 2005a; Alexiadou et al., 2006; Harley, 2017), we also
provide evidence that Chuj internal arguments are selected directly by roots.
This proposal falls in line with work which takes roots to directly compose
with arguments (in line with Harley, 2014, and contra Borer, 2005a;
Acquaviva, 2009) and to belong to classes which may be at least partially
distinguished based on their semantic types (Levinson, 2007, 2014; see also
discussion in Alexiadou et al., 2014). Finally, in Section 7.4, we discuss how
variation in the inventory of functional heads between Ch’ol and Chuj
accounts for differences in the behavior of unergatives, leading to Ch’ol’s
‘Split-S’ alignment.

7.2 Complex Event Nominals and nominative alignment

Coon (2010, 2013a) and Coon & Carolan (2017) have argued for Ch’ol and
Chuj, respectively, that the split alignment pattern exemplified by the progres-
sives in (3)–(4) above is due to the fact that the progressive morphemes are
one-place stative predicates, which select for nominalized clauses as their
single arguments (for related analyses of split alignment patterns in other
languages, see e.g. Laka, 2006; Salanova, 2007; and Salanova & Tallman,
Chapter 15).

(5) PRED [nP i [vP PROi Verb (Object)]]

142     

Thematic subjects of both transitive and intransitive nominalizations are

controled by the possessor internal to the nominalization, resulting in the
nominative pattern characteristic of split ergativity. We briefly review some of
this evidence for the basic progressive structure in (5) in Section 7.2.1, and
then turn to the structure of the nominalization itself—which is shown to
contain verbal structure—in Section 7.2.2.

7.2.1 Progressives as predicates with nominalized

complements

In both languages, the progressive aspect markers are stative predicates which
combine with a single nominal(ized) internal argument. In both Ch’ol and
Chuj, the stem forms which appear under the progressive morphemes choñkol
and lan are identical to those found under clear embedding verbs like tyech
‘start’ in Ch’ol and lajw ‘finish’ in Chuj (and distinct from stem forms
appearing in the nonsplit aspects, like the perfective in (1) and (2) above).
This is consistent with the claim that choñkol and lan are predicates.

(6) a. Choñkol [i-chuk-oñ-la].

 3-catch-1-.
‘It’s catching us.’
b. Mi ke i-tyech [i-chuk-oñ-la].
  3-start 3-catch-1-.
‘It starts to catch us.’ (Ch’ol; Vázquez Álvarez, 2011: 206)

(7) a. Lan [ko-b’o’-an ko-kape].

 1-make- 1-coffee
‘We’re making our coffee.’
b. Ix-lajw-i [ko-b’o’-an ko-kape].
-finish-ss 1-make- 1-coffee
‘We finished making our coffee.’ (Chuj; Buenrostro, 2004: 256)

Space prevents us from reviewing arguments in favor of the predicative status

of the aspect marker in detail, but see Coon (2010, 2013a) and Coon & Carolan
(2017).
Note that the progressive predicate is not a raising or control verb; rather it
is a one-place stative predicate which combines with a single nominal argu-
ment. The fact that the progressive aspect markers combine not only with
nominalized verb stems, but also with underived event-denoting nominals,
    143

like k’iñijel ‘party’ in the Ch’ol example in (8), lends support to the proposal
that the progressive predicates select for stems that are nominal, not simply
nonfinite.²

(8) Choñkol k’iñijel tyi aw-otyoty.

 party  2-house
‘There’s a party at your house.’

The relevant nominalized stem forms for both languages are schematized in
(10) and (12), contrasted with the verbal forms in (9) and (11). Note that
eventive verbal stems in both languages appear with ‘status suffixes’ (-e’, -i, -V,
and -V’), which encode information about verb class membership, such as
transitivity and derivational status; these are dropped in certain environments
in Chuj, indicated with square brackets. Turning to the nominal stems, we see
that nominalized clauses in both languages—(10) and (12)—consistently mark
their subjects via Set A (possessive) morphology, in boxes. Ch’ol shows special
suffixes in nominalized forms, of which -el is transparently nominal, appearing
on nouns and nominalizations elsewhere in the language (see Section 7.3.1),
and cognate with a Proto-Mayan nominalizing suffix (Bricker, 1981; Law &
Stuart, 2017). Chuj nominalizations both appear with the suffix -i, and transi-
tives additionally require the suffix -an, discussed below.³

(9) Ch’ol verbal stems; see (1) (10) Ch’ol nominalized stems; see (3)
a. S A – Verb – V – S B a. S A – Verb – [e’] – S B
b. Verb – i – S B b. S A – Verb – el

(11) Chuj verbal stems; see (2)

a. S B – S A – Verb – [V’]
b. S B – Verb – [i]

(12) Chuj nominalized stems; see (4)

a. S B – S A – Verb – an – [i]
b. S A – Verb – [i]

² Predicate nominal constructions in these languages—along with stative and ‘non verbal’ predicates
more generally—may not appear with aspectual morphology, ruling out the possibility that k’iñijel is a
predicate in (8). The equivalent of (8) with the perfective aspect marker tyi is ungrammatical. This is
expected under an account in which the progressive aspect marker is a predicate which takes k’iñijel as
its argument, while the perfective aspect marker is a particle occupying finite Infl⁰.
³ Note that in Chuj, there is no change in stem form between intransitive verbal forms and what we
take to be intransitive nominal forms: both appear simply with -i. See Coon & Carolan (2017) for
further discussion.
144     

The nominalized stems in (10) and (12) are shown in Coon (2010, 2013a) and
Coon & Carolan (2017), respectively, to (i) occupy canonical argument posi-
tions; (ii) trigger third person agreement; and (iii) appear with nominal
morphology, including possessors and (depending on transitivity) nominaliz-
ing morphology. They may not appear preceded by determiners, in keeping
with cross-linguistic patterns found in Complex Event Nominals, described in
the next section (see e.g. Grimshaw, 1990; Borsley & Kornfilt, 2000). The
verbal stems in (9) and (11) share none of these properties, appearing only in
matrix predicate positions. For examples, additional evidence, and more
detailed discussion, see the works cited above. We now turn to the internal
structure of these nominalizations.

7.2.2 Progressive stems are nominalized

We propose that the nominalized stem forms in the progressive aspects are
nominalized above the functional head which introduces the external argu-
ment, but below finite Infl⁰. Initial evidence for this structure comes from the
licensing of internal arguments. Though both Ch’ol and Chuj progressives
share the general characteristics discussed thus far, we find a difference in
transitives between the two languages: all transitive stems in Chuj progressives
appear with the obligatory addition of the suffix -an (compare (10) and (12)
above). Examples (3) and (4) are repeated in (13) and (14).

(13) Ch’ol
a. Choñkol [k-mek’-ety].
 1-hug-2
‘I’m hugging you.’
b. Choñkol [k-wäy-el].
 1-sleep-
‘I’m sleeping.’

(14) Chuj
a. Lan [hach ko-chel-an-i.]
 2 1-hug--
‘We’re hugging you.’
b. Lan [ko-way-i.]
 1-sleep-
‘We’re sleeping.’
    145

In both languages, we take absolutive/Set B morphemes to be pronominal

clitics, generated via an Agree relationship between a functional head and the
argument DP (see Preminger, 2019, and references there). We propose that
this difference between transitives connects to differences in the source of
absolutive/Set B morphology for objects in the two languages: transitive v⁰ in
Ch’ol and finite Infl⁰ in Chuj (see Coon et al., 2014, on Mayan, building on
Legate, 2008).⁴ In Chuj nominalizations, finite Infl⁰ is absent and -an must be
inserted to license the internal argument. In Ch’ol, transitive v⁰ licenses
objects, and since nominalization occurs above v⁰, no additional morphology
is required (as in the English equivalents). This difference between Ch’ol and
Chuj connects to independently motivated differences among morphologic-
ally ergative languages.

7.2.2.1 Agent Focus and absolutive licensing

Transitive progressive stems in Chuj (and in related Q’anjob’alan languages)
require the addition of the morpheme -an, also found in another environment:
the Agent Focus (AF) construction (Kaufman, 1990; Quesada, 1997; Pascual,
2007). The AF stem is required in many Mayan languages in clauses in which a

transitive subject undergoes A-extraction for focus, wh-questions, or relativ-
ization (Smith-Stark, 1978; Stiebels, 2006; Aissen, 2017). A baseline transitive
clause in the perfective is shown in (15), and the asymmetry between transitive
subject and object extraction for Chuj is shown in (16). Extracting the object in
(16a) requires no other changes to verbal morphology. However, extracting
the transitive subject requires the special AF construction, as in (16b). Because
only transitive (i.e. ergative) subjects require this special construction, this falls
in the domain of syntactic ergativity (see Deal, 2016; Polinsky, 2017).

(15) Ix-ach-s-chel ix ix.

-2-3-hug  woman
‘The woman hugged you.’

(16) a. Mach ix-s-chel ix ix?

who -3-hug  woman
‘Who did the woman hug?’

⁴ Here we assume that v⁰ and Voice⁰ are bundled into a single head, following Harley (2017); see
discussion in Coon (2019). We represent the head which introduces the external argument and which
may license the internal argument as v⁰, though nothing crucial hinges on this assumption here.
146     

b. Mach ix-ach-chel-an-i?
who -2-hug--
‘Who hugged you?’

Given that Chuj and its close relatives use the same verb form in (i) A- 
extraction of transitive subjects, and (ii) nominalized transitives, the question
becomes: What do these two environments have in common? Building on
Ordóñez (1995) on related Popti’, Coon et al. (2014) argue for a unified
account of Q’anjob’al’s cognate suffix -on in embedded nominalized transi-
tives like (14a) and AF contexts like (16b). Mayan languages with ergative
extraction restrictions, they propose, are languages in which finite Infl⁰ is
responsible for licensing absolutive clitics (see also Campana, 1992,
Murasugi, 1992, Bittner & Hale, 1996, Legate, 2008, for nominative-as-abso-
lutive approaches to ergativity). In a regular transitive clause, the object must
raise to a position above the subject to be cliticized by Infl⁰. We adopt this
analysis for Chuj, shown in (17).

(17) Chuj transitive clause

[InflP Infl0 . . . [ vP object [ subject [VP V object ]]]]

Set B

As a side effect of this object raising, the ergative subject is trapped in its base
position, as shown in (18). See Deal (2016) for an overview of this approach
to syntactic ergativity, as well as Coon, Mateo Pedro, & Preminger (2014),
Baier, & Levin (2020) and Assmann et al. (2015) for different formalizations of
this blocking in Mayan, not directly relevant here.

(18) Chuj ergative extraction restriction

[CP . . . [vP object [subject [VP V object ]]]]

As foreshadowed above, we adopt the proposal of Coon et al. (2014) that the
AF morpheme is a v⁰/Voice⁰ head which provides a low source of absolutive or
Set B marking—effectively it is an accusative assigner. In an AF clause like
(16b), the -an head permits the object to be licensed low, avoiding the problem
for ergative extraction, as schematized in (19).
    147

(19) [CP . . . [vP subject vaf [VP V object ]]]

Set B

In a nominalized clause like (14a), finite Infl⁰ is absent altogether, and -an
must appear to permit the internal argument to be licensed. This provides a
unified account of the appearance of -an in both (i) ergative extraction
contexts, and (ii) transitive nominalizations (schematized below).
Ch’ol, on the other hand, shows no ergative extraction restriction. In (20), the
ergative subject freely extracts with no change to verbal morphology (cf. Chuj (16b)).

(20) Majchki tyi i-mek’-e-y-ety?

who  3-hug---2
‘Who hugged you?’

The free availability of absolutive morphology in Ch’ol transitive nominalized

clauses like (13a), coupled with the absence of an ergative extraction restric-
tion, as in (20), lead Coon et al. (2014) to conclude that absolutive has a low
source in Ch’ol transitives: transitive v⁰. So long as a nominalization contains
vP, absolutive morphology is predicted to be available. Furthermore, since the
Ch’ol object need not raise in order to be licensed, ergative extraction is not
blocked (cf. (18)). This approach is in line with Legate’s (2008) proposal for a
division in the locus of absolutive across ergative languages.

7.2.2.2 The internal structure of progressive nominalizations

Proposed structures for transitive and intransitive nominalizations in the two
languages are shown in (21) and (22).

(21) nP (22) nP

DPi n’ DPi n’

possessor n vP possessor n vP

Set A Set A
PROi v’
v VP

v VP
V PROi
Chuj: -an
V DP
Ch’ol: -Ø

Set B
148     

We take these nominalizations to involve verbal structure up to the functional

heads responsible for introducing the external argument, here represented
as vP. Because these forms license arguments, we follow Grimshaw (1990) in
caling these CENs (see also Coon & Carolan, 2017). Subjects are generated as
PROs obligatorily controled by the Set A-marked possessor.⁵ Crucially, the
fact that PRO consistently tracks the subject accounts for the fact that subjects
pattern alike in nominalizations, deriving the ‘split’ alignment pattern.
The fact that control is subject-oriented is typologically unsurprising.
Morphologically ergative languages vary in whether ergativity has a syntactic
effect. While a number of ergative languages are like Chuj in restricting the
extraction of ergative subjects, even these typically show a nominative
pattern of control; see discussion in Legate (2012); Deal (2015). As shown
in these diagrams, we take Set A to be the realization of an Agree relationship
between the functional head which introduces the possessor, and the in situ
possessor itself (on par with the assignment of Set A by v⁰ to external
arguments in the verbal domain). The transitive object is absolutive (Set
B). In Ch’ol, absolutive is always assigned by v⁰ in transitives, and no
additional morphology is required. In Chuj, -an must be used to achieve
the same pattern.
Further evidence that these nominalizations contain verbal structure comes
from the availability of the full repertoire of voice- and valence-adjusting
morphology internal to the nominal stems. This is shown for the Ch’ol passive
and Chuj causative forms in (23) and (24).

(23) Choñkol [i-mejl-el crus].

 3-make.- cross
‘They’re making the cross.’ (Ch’ol; Vázquez Álvarez, 2002: 345)

(24) Lan [ko-k’ib’-tz-it-an heb’ k-unin].

 1-grow---  1-child
‘We are raising our children.’ (Chuj)

Similarly, these CEN forms can appear with verbal modifiers, shown for
example with the adverbial lu’ ‘all; to completion’ in the Ch’ol example in (25).

⁵ Note that there is no evidence for A-movement internal to the grammars of these languages. We
thus represent the pattern as one of possessors controling subject PROs, though nothing in the analysis
below would change if this were instead a case of raising to possessor position. See Coon (2013a) for
further discussion.
    149

(25) Choñkol [ i-lu’ k’ux jiñi ixim].

 3-completely eat  corn
‘He ate all the corn.’

7.3 Nominalizations and the nature of roots

The CENs above not only provide an explanation of the appearance of aspect-
based split ergativity in the progressive aspect, they also illustrate an important
difference between the two languages in terms of the licensing of absolutive
objects: While Ch’ol transitives have a low source for licensing objects (tran-
sitive v⁰), Chuj transitive objects are licensed by finite Infl⁰. In a nominalized
clause—nominalized above vP but lacking finite Infl⁰—we correctly predict
that nothing additional will be necessary to license an object in Ch’ol. Chuj, on
the other hand, requires the addition of a special v⁰ head, -an (Section 7.2.2.1).
In previous work focusing on Ch’ol, Coon (2013a) proposed not only that v⁰
may license absolutive internal arguments in Ch’ol, but rather, it must. This
biconditional requirement of v⁰ was intended to capture the empirical gener-
alization found in Ch’ol that while transitive and unaccusative stems surface as
verbs, as in (1) above (or CENs, nominalized above v⁰, as in (3)), unergative
and antipassive stems surface as nominal. Unergative and antipassive stems in
Ch’ol require a light verb in order to predicate, as in (26). According to Coon
(2013a), this can be captured by a biconditional property of v⁰: because
unergative and antipassive constructions lack a syntactic internal argument,
and because v⁰ must assign absolutive, v⁰ may not merge in unergative and
antipassive (‘complementless’) stems.

(26) Ch’ol unergative and antipassive stems are nominal

a. Tyi k-cha’l-e [N soñ].
 1-do- dance
‘I danced.’
b. Tyi i-cha’l-e [N wuts’-oñ-el].
 3-do- wash--
‘She washed (something).’

In this section we argue that the requirement for certain verbs to appear with
internal arguments must extend beyond Ch’ol v⁰, and is instead best captured
as a semantic requirement of roots. We provide evidence for the semantic
requirement of roots from two domains: (i) a comparison with Chuj
150     

(Section 7.3.1), which has the same requirement but a different source for
absolutive (i.e. Infl⁰ not v⁰); and (ii) from smaller Result Nominals and derived
nominals in both languages (Section 7.3.2), which lack v⁰ but also require that
objects either be realized or overtly suppressed. The semantic requirement is
formalized in Section 7.3.3. Section 7.4 returns to the question of Ch’ol’s
nominal unergative and antipassives.
First, a note about roots in Mayan languages is in order. As in other Mayan
languages, Ch’ol and Chuj roots may be classed by the types of stems they
produce, and by the morphology required to produce these stems (see e.g.
Haviland, 1994). Roots which directly form verbal stems can generally be
pffi pffi
classed as either transitive ( TV) or intransitive ( ITV). For example, the
cognate roots choñ/chonh ‘sell’ are classed as transitive (annotated with
subscript ) because they form transitive stems in (27a) and (28a) directly,
without the addition of any derivational morphology. Transitive stems are
characterized by the appearance of transitive status suffixes (harmonic -V in
Ch’ol and -V’ in Chuj; Chuj status suffixes are conditioned by prosodic factors
and are sometimes omitted (Royer, to appear), as seen in (28)), and by the
ability to combine with two DPs showing Set A and Set B cross-referencing
morphology (third person Set B is null). Intransitive roots like chäm/cham
‘die’, on the other hand, surface directly in intransitive stems, as in (27b) and
(28b); intransitive stems appear with the intransitive status suffix -i and take
only a single DP argument (marked with Set B in nonsplit aspects).

(27) Ch’ol
a. Tyi k-choñTV-o k-wakax.
 1-sell- 1-cow
‘I sold my cow.’
b. Tyi chämITV-i k-wakax.
 die- 1-
‘My cow died.’

(28) Chuj
a. Ix-in-chonhTV nok’ hin-wakax.
-1-sell  1s-cow
I sold my cow.’
b. Ix-chamITV nok’ hin-wakax.
-die  1s-cow
‘My cow died.’
    151
pffi
Non- TV roots—i.e. intransitive, nominal, adjectival, and ‘positional’
roots—may form transitive stems, but they require derivational morphology
pffi
(e.g. causative) in order to do so. Similarly, while roots from non- ITV
classes may form intransitive stems, they require derivational morphology
(e.g. passive, antipassive). While a number of roots show overlap between
more than one class, we only focus on those which clearly follow the diagnostics
pffi pffi pffi
for TV and ITV.⁶ The class of ITV roots in each language is relatively
small and consists largely (or perhaps entirely, but see fn. 9) of unaccusatives, as
in (27b) and (28b). Constructions which correspond to unergatives—i.e. have a
single, external argument—are typically built from nominal and positional
roots, discussed further in Section 7.4.
pffi
In the remainder of this section we propose that TV and
pffi
ITVð¼ unaccusativeÞ roots require semantic saturation of an (internal)
argument slot; we focus primarily on transitives since this is where we find
the clearest alternations in how the internal argument is realized. The semantic
pffi
requirement of TV roots can be achieved either by merging a DP comple-
ment, or by overt morphology which we suggest indicates existential binding
of an implicit argument. Different types of nominalization provide evidence
that this is a requirement imposed by the root itself, rather than by higher
functional structure.

7.3.1 Ch’ol and Chuj transitives require objects

When transitive roots appear in transitive stem forms in both Ch’ol and
Chuj, a syntactically present internal argument is required. Illustrative
examples from Ch’ol are shown in (29). The transitive stem in (29a)—
formed directly from the transitive root wuts’ ‘wash’—appears with an overt
object. Like many Mayan languages, Ch’ol is robustly pro-drop, and the object is
realized as null pro in the appropriate anaphoric context, as in the question/
answer pair in (29b).

(29) a. Tyi k-wuts’-u jiñi pisil. (Ch’ol)

 1-wash-  clothes.
‘I washed the clothes.’

⁶ See Haviland (1994) for more on root classes and stem forms in Mayan, and Coon (2019) on Chuj
specifically. The class of positional roots is not discussed further here (see Henderson, 2019), though
the behavior of positionals under nominalization is an interesting topic for future work.
152     

b. Q: What did you do with the clothes?

A:
Tyi k-wuts’-u pro.
 1-wash- them
‘I washed them.’

Crucially the transitive stem form in (29b) must be interpreted as having a

referential object. In order to refer to the activity of washing in general, the
antipassive from (26b) is required.
The requirement for objects extends to the CENs from Section 7.2. A Ch’ol
progressive transitive with a full syntactic object is shown in (30a). As above,
the object may be pro-dropped, but in the absence of a syntactic object, an
antipassive is required, as in (30b). In (30b), the root wuts’ appears with
antipassive and nominalizing morphology as the complement to the prepos-
ition tyi; the thematic subject combines directly with the progressive predicate.
We return to antipassives in Sections 7.3.3.3 and 7.4.

(30) a. Choñkol [k-wuts’ {jiñi pisil / pro]. (Ch’ol)

 1-wash  clothes them
‘I’m washing {the clothes/them}.’
b. Choñkol-oñ tyi [wuts’-oñ-el].
-1  wash--
‘I’m doing some washing.’ (lit.: ‘I’m at washing.’)

If the requirement that verbal forms have objects in Ch’ol were specifically
connected to a property of v⁰, we might expect it to be absent in Chuj. Recall
from Section 7.2.2 that while transitive objects in Ch’ol are licensed by v⁰,
transitive objects in Chuj are licensed by finite Infl⁰ (see (17)). All else being
equal, Ch’ol’s little-v⁰ requirement is predicted not to apply, and so we might
expect Chuj objects to be omittable.
However, transitive verbs in Chuj also require an internal argument. As
shown in (31a), the transitive verb appears with an overt object, introduced by
the noun classifier anh, used with nominals that denote plants and plant-
derived entities.⁷ Noun classifiers are used to mark (weak) definiteness in Chuj
(see Buenrostro et al., 1989; Royer, 2019). However, they can also appear

⁷ The variant of Chuj under study has sixteen noun classifiers, which vary according to physical or
social properties of the nominal referent. See Craig (1986), Buenrostro et al. (1989), Zavala (2000), and
Hopkins (2012b) for more on noun classifiers across Q’anjob’alan languages.
    153

without an overt nominal, in which case they function as third person

pronouns, henceforth ‘classifier pronouns’ (see Craig, 1986, on related
Popti’). This is shown in example (31b) where the verb’s internal argument
is satisfied by the classifier pronoun alone. In this context, the classifier
pronoun is obligatory, and used to refer back to the beans.

(31) a. Ix-ko-man anh tut. (Chuj)

-1-buy  beans
‘We bought the beans.’
b. Q: Did y’all buy the beans?
A:
Hi, ix-ko-man *(anh).
yes -1-buy 
‘Yes, we bought them (the beans).’

Unlike Ch’ol and most other Mayan languages, which are robustly pro-drop,
Chuj is not pro-drop: Classifier pronouns must appear wherever possible.
If full DP objects are required in transitive clauses, as in (31a), then the
obligatory presence of the classifier pronoun in (31b), and by extension of
the null pro in Ch’ol (29b), is unsurprising.⁸
Paralleling the Ch’ol facts again, the only way to omit the object and refer to the
activity of grinding in general is to derive the transitive root with the absolutive
antipassive suffix -waj, which we return to in Section 7.3.3. While in Ch’ol
antipassive stems must be nominalized (see (30b)), such stems in Chuj are verbal:

(32) Ix-onh-man-waj-i.
-1-buy--
‘We did some buying.’

We just saw that underived transitive verbs in Chuj, unless further derived as
in (32), require an internal argument. The Ch’ol v⁰-biconditional discussed
above does not naturally extend to Chuj, since transitive objects are licensed by
finite Infl⁰. Porting the generalization to Infl⁰ in Chuj will also not work since

⁸ Note that transitive verb stems in Chuj sometimes appear without an overt classifier pronoun in a
highly circumscribed set of environments, but we nevertheless contend that such clauses contain a null
pronominal object (as in Ch’ol). Crucially, such examples only arise when the internal argument
cannot be pronominalized with one of Chuj’s classifiers. This is possible because not all Chuj nouns are
classifiable, including nominals that denote body parts, abstract nouns, and some recently introduced
nouns.
154     

CENs lack Infl⁰ but nevertheless require an internal argument, as shown in

(33a) and (33b). This is not expected if the obligatoriness of the internal
argument is determined by a requirement on Infl⁰.

(33) a. Lan [NP ko-man-an anh tut].

 1-buy-  beans
‘We’re buying beans.’
b. Q: Are y’all buying the beans?
A:
Hi, lan [NP ko-man-an *(anh)].
yes  1-buy- 
‘Yes, we’re buying them (the beans).’
c. Lan [NP ko-man-waj-i].
 1-buy--ss
‘We’re doing some buying.’

Unlike the transitive verbs inflected with perfective aspect in (31), which have
their internal argument licensed by Infl⁰, the CENs (bracketed) in (33a) and
(33b) lack finite Infl⁰. As discussed in Section 7.2.2, this means that -an must
surface to allow the licensing of the obligatory internal argument. The
only way for transitive CENs to appear without their internal argument is
for the root to be derived with antipassive morphology, as in (33c). The
internal argument requirement found in Chuj thus cannot be attributed to
properties of the absolutive case-assigning head, as proposed in Coon (2013a)
for Ch’ol.

7.3.2 Derived nominals and agentive nominalizations

Further evidence that the internal argument requirement is one imposed

by roots in both languages, not by higher functional heads, comes from
nominalizations which lack a vP layer. Specifically, if the requirement on
the appearance of internal arguments follows from semantic properties
of the verbal root, as proposed above, then we expect this requirement
to remain across all nominalization sizes. We examine Result Nominals
in Section 7.3.2.1, and turn to agentive argument nominalizations in
Section 7.3.2.2.
    155

7.3.2.1 Result Nominals

Here we discuss nominalizations which we propose contain no verbal struc-
ture, and are instead nominalized directly from a root. We adopt Grimshaw’s
(1990) terminology of ‘Result Nominal’ (RN) since, like the English RNs she
examines, these nominalizations in Mayan lack the functional structure to
license full arguments. Note, however, that we depart from analyses which take
derived nominals to (necessarily) contain verbal functional structure, instead
claiming that these are nominalized directly from a (verbal) root (for related
discussion, see Grimshaw, 1990; Alexiadou, 2001, Chapter 5; Alexiadou &
Schäfer, 2010; Borer, 2013; Iordăchioaia, Chapter 10; and Roy & Soare, 2014,
Chapter 13; among others). Nonetheless, we argue that certain roots—i.e.
pffi pffi
TV and ITV roots—are semantically specified to combine with an
internal argument. In the absence of the functional structure to syntactically
license a full DP complement, RNs resort to alternatives described below.
Chuj RNs are shown in (34), and discussed in Buenrostro (2013). Coon &
Carolan (2017) contrast these with the CENs of Section 7.2. While the
progressive predicate requires a CEN-type complement, some predicates like
yamoch ‘begin’ may appear with either RNs (34) or CENs (35).

(34) Chuj Result Nominals

a. Ix-a-yamoch [RN mol-oj kape].
-2-begin gather- coffee
‘You began coffee-gathering.’
b. Ix-a-yamoch [RN munlaj-el].
-2-begin work-
‘You began working.’

(35) Chuj Complex Event Nominals

a. Ix-a-yamoch [CEN ha-mol-an te’ kape].
-2-begin 2-gather-  coffee
‘You began to gather the coffee.’
b. Ix-a-yamoch [CEN ha-munlaj-i].
-2-begin 2-work-
‘You began to work.’

Coon & Carolan (2017) propose that while the Complex Event Nominalizations
are nominalized above vP and contain PRO subjects (see (21) and (22)),
the Result Nominals in (34) are nominalized directly from the root and
156     

contain no verbal structure. Transitive roots appear with -oj and intransitive
roots appear with -el; no voice or valence morphology is possible internal to
these forms, compatible with the proposed absence of verbal structure (cf.
(24)). Similarly, while CENs in Chuj may be modified by adverbial elements
(as in Ch’ol in (25)), the RNs may not. The -el suffix in (34b) is not
productive, appearing only on a small class of what appear to be
unspecified-object transitives.⁹ The -oj suffix in (34a) is more productive,
appearing on transitives but requiring the presence of a bare nonreferential
NP object, illustrated in (36).

(36) Chuj derived nominal

nP

n √P

-oj √TV NP

object

Crucially, the bare object kape ‘coffee’ in (34a) cannot be omitted.¹⁰ Moreover,
the object cannot appear with higher DP-level material such as classifiers or
possessors, as shown in (37).

⁹ Unergative verb stems in Chuj are typically derived from nominal and positional roots via
one of several suffixes, discussed further in Section 7.4. These derived unergative stems may not
appear with -el, compatible with the proposal that -el combines directly with roots. Besides munlaj
above, roots which may appear with -el include lolon ‘speak’, wa’ ‘eat’, and uk’ ‘drink’ (Buenrostro,
2013). The first, like munlaj in (34), appears to be historically derived (by virtue of being larger
than CVC), but is not synchronically decomposable. The latter two have transitive equivalents but
are unlike regular transitive roots in their ability to appear with and without internal arguments—
i.e. these appear to be true unergatives. Both wa’ and uk’ are listed in the Hopkins (2012a)
dictionary as both transitive and intransitive roots, attesting to their unusual status among
transitive forms.
¹⁰ There appear to be at least some transitive roots which exceptionally permit the total absence of
an object NP in -oj nominals, including jach’-oj ‘the act of harvesting’ from the transitive jach’ ‘harvest’
(Hopkins, 2012a), and aw-oj ‘planting’, given in Buenrostro (2013) without an object. Initial investi-
gation suggests that these forms
pffi correspond to
 very common activities, and may be grammaticalized.
Also note that at least some TVoj þ OBJ forms appear to have specialized meanings, unattested
with the CENs. Hopkins (2012a) gives, for example, k’an-oj ix (‘ask.for woman’) as a particular form of
marriage. This is compatible with proposals that the domain of specialized meaning is low in the
structure (e.g. Arad, 2003).
    157

(37) *Ix-a-yamoch [mol-oj te’/ ha- kape]. (Chuj)

-2-begin gather- / 2 coffee
intended: ‘You began to gather the/your coffee.’

In order to omit the internal argument and refer to the act of buying, the
root must be derived with the suffix -wal, which we decompose as the anti-
passive suffix -w (see Section 7.3.3.3), and a nominalizing suffix -al, as in (38a).
Suffixes of the form -Vl are present in nominal and nominalized forms both
in Chuj and throughout the Mayan family (Hopkins, 1967; Bricker, 1981;
Law & Stuart, 2017). In (38b) we observe that theme NPs are ungrammatical
with -wal nominals.

(38) a. Ix-ko-yamoch [RN man-w-al]. (Chuj)

-1-begin buy--
‘We began buying.’
b. *Ix-ko-yamoch [RN man-w-al tut].
-1-begin buy-- beans
intended: ‘We began bean-buying.’

In Ch’ol, RNs show a similar pattern, discussed in greater detail in Gutiérrez

Sánchez, 2004, Vázquez Álvarez (2011) and Coon (2013a). RNs in Ch’ol
frequently appear as complements to the preposition tyi, as in (39a). As in
pffi
Chuj, RNs formed from TV roots require an object; determiners, posses-
sors, and other D⁰-level elements are impossible with these objects, as shown
pffi
in (39b). Finally, just as in Chuj, a TV may appear without a theme NP in
the presence of an antipassive morpheme, as shown in (39c). This pattern
holds across the class of transitive roots in Ch’ol.

(39) a. Tyi ujty-i-y-oñ tyi [RN wuts’ pisil]. (Ch’ol)

 finish---1  wash clothes
‘I finished clothes-washing.’
b. *Tyi ujty-i-y-oñ tyi [RN wuts’ jiñi pisil].
 finish---1  wash  clothes
intended: ‘I washed the clothes.’
c. Tyi ujty-i-y-oñ tyi [RN wuts’-oñ-el].
 finish---1  wash--
‘I finished washing.’
158     

7.3.2.2 Agentive nominalizations

A similar pattern is found with transitive roots in argument nominalizations.
pffi
Agentive nominalizations in Chuj are derived with the suffix -um. TV roots
may either appear with a bare NP internal argument, as in (40a), or in the
absence of an object, further derived with the antipassive suffix -waj, as in
(40b).¹¹

(40) Agent nominalizations in Chuj

a. Ix-w-il [DP ix chonh-um *(wa’il/ ixim/ k’apak)].
-1-see  sell-. tortilla/ corn/ clothes
‘I saw the tortilla-/corn-/clothes-seller.’
b. Ix-w-il [DP ix chonh-waj-um (*wa’il/ *ixim/ *k’apak)].
-1-see  sell--. tortilla/ corn/ clothes
‘I saw the saleswoman.’

When the agentive morpheme -um suffixes directly to the transitive root
chonh ‘sell’, as in (40a), a bare NP corresponding to the internal argument
cannot be omitted. To make reference to ‘salespeople’ more generally, the
transitive root must be further derived with the absolutive antipassive suffix -
waj, also required to eliminate the requirement on internal arguments with
pffi
regular transitives, as in (32) above. A TV root suffixed with -waj-um may
not appear with an internal argument, as in (40b).
Just like the derived event nominals seen in Section 7.3.2.1, the internal
argument in examples like (40a) must be a bare NP; classifiers and possessors
are impossible inside the nominalization, as demonstrated in (41).

(41) Ix-w-il [DP ix chonh-um (*ixim/ *s- ) wa’il].

-1-see  sell-.  3 tortilla
‘I saw the tortilla-seller.’

This pattern is replicated in Ch’ol in (42). To form an agent nominalization,

the transitive root choñ may either combine with a bare NP object, as in (42a),
or with the antipassive suffix -oñ followed by the nominalizing suffix -el and
no object, as in (42b). Again, the object in forms like (42a) must be a bare NP.

¹¹ Even though -um and waj-um nominalizations are highly productive for transitive roots, special-
ized meanings sometimes arise (see also fn. 9 for similar facts on -oj). For example, the form joy-um
lu’um, with the transitive root joy ‘to dig’ and the nominal lu’um ‘land’ translates to ‘grave-digger’; and
the form il-waj-um, with the transitive root il ‘to see’ translates as ‘guardian’.
    159

(42) Agentive nominalizations in Ch’ol

a. Tyi k-il-ä [DP aj-choñ- *(waj/ ixim/ pisil)].
 1-see- .-sell- tortilla/ corn/ clothes
‘I saw the tortilla-/corn-/clothes-seller.’

b. Tyi k-il-ä [DP aj-choñ-oñ-el (*waj/ *ixim/ *pisil)].

 1-see- .-sell-- tortilla/ corn/ clothes
‘I saw the salesperson.’

7.3.2.3 Summary of small nominalizations

To summarize, we have observed the pattern summarized in (43): Transitive
roots in the smaller RNs and agent nominalizations seen so far either require
the presence of an NP object, or appear with overt antipassivizing
morphology—the suffix -oñ in Ch’ol and -w(aj) in Chuj.

(43) Nominalizations in Ch’ol and Chuj

Chuj Ch’ol
pffi pffi
Result Nominal ‐oj ðNPÞ  ðNPÞ
pffi pffi
‐w‐al ‐on͂‐el
pffi pffi
agent ‐um ðNPÞ aj‐  ðNPÞ
pffi pffi
nominalization ‐waj‐um aj‐ ‐on͂‐el
pffi
The patterns illustrated here are highly productive across the class of TV
roots in both languages, and we propose they offer support for the proposal
that the internal argument requirement is a semantic requirement of roots.
Because these structures do not contain the functional structure to license a
full DP argument, the semantic requirement must be met either by (i) a bare
NP complement or (ii) an implicit argument, existentially bound by the
antipassive morpheme, detailed in the following section.

7.3.3 Obligatory internal arguments: A semantic requirement

Here we develop the proposal in Coon (2019) for Chuj that the internal
pffi
argument requirement follows from semantic properties of TV and
pffi
ITV (unaccusative) roots (i.e. verbal eventive roots). The way in which
these arguments may be realized—as full DPs, bare NPs, or as existentially-
bound implicit arguments—follows from the presence of absence of functional
160     

structure available to license arguments. Specifically, we argue that transitive

and intransitive roots in Chuj and Ch’ol are semantic type 〈e, 〈v, t〉〉 (functions
from entities to functions from eventualities to truth values), where v is used
as the type for eventualities. The requirement for internal arguments is
explained by independent compositional facts: Hardwired into the semantics
of Ch’ol and Chuj verbal roots is the necessity to express a relation between
individuals (the internal argument) and events, as illustrated by the Chuj
root denotations in (44).

(44) a. [[b’at]]= λx.λe.(x)(e)

b. [[man]] = λx.λe.(x)(e)

We assume following Kratzer (1996) and subsequent work that agents are not
directly arguments of the root, but are added by higher functional structure.
pffi
For our purposes here, we suggest that TV roots are those roots that are
directly compatible with external causation by an agent (Levin & Rappaport
pffi
Hovav, 1995); ITV roots require derivational morphology to add an agent.
Crucially, we do not assume that Ch’ol or Chuj behave differently from
other languages in requiring verbs to take internal arguments. Previous work
has proposed that what is special about the class of verbs in any given language
is that they must combine with arguments (see Baker, 2003, and discussion
there). What is special about Ch’ol and Chuj is the robust morphology
illustrating the different processes by which this requirement is satisfied. In
what follows, we demonstrate that there are different strategies for the root’s
internal argument requirement to be satisfied, and that syntactic and mor-
phological differences in the structure of nominalizations make these different
pffi pffi
strategies apparent. Specifically, TV and ITV roots may combine with (i)
DPs via Functional Application (Section 7.3.3.1); (ii) bare NPs via Restrict and
Existential Closure (Section 7.3.3.2); and (iii) an implicit internal argument,
existentially bound by a higher antipassive head (Section 7.3.3.3).

7.3.3.1 Functional Application

The most basic strategy to saturate the root’s internal argument requirement is
to compose it with an internal argument of type e via Functional Application.
Consider (45), with the transitive root il ‘to see’:

(45) Ix-y-il winh winak ix Malin. (Chuj)

-3-see  winak  Malin
‘Malin saw the man.’
    161
pffi
Assuming a Davidsonian event semantics (Davidson, 1967), the TV root’s
internal argument requirement is successfully saturated via Functional
Application by the full DP expression winh winak ‘the man’ (type e), as
illustrated in (46). (We assume that the unsaturated event argument under-
goes existential closure later in the derivation, and we ignore the contribution
of perfective aspect marking.) For transitive roots, we also assume that the
external argument is added via Kratzer’s (1996) Event Identification by v⁰/
Voice⁰.

(46) [[vP yil winh winak Malin]] = λe. ([ιx. (x)])(e) & A = Malin

Crucially, arguments of type e must also be licensed in the derivation by an

appropriate functional head, as discussed in detail for each language in
Section 7.2. In the domain of verbs, Infl⁰ licenses absolutive (internal) argu-
ments in Chuj, while v⁰ licenses absolutives in Ch’ol. CENs contain at least a
vP layer below the layer of nominalization; as a result, no additional licensing
morphology is required in Ch’ol, and the morpheme -an is obligatorily
inserted in Chuj. A Chuj example is shown in (47).

(47) Lan hin-man-an ch’anh libro. (Chuj)

 1-buy-  book
‘I’m buying the book’

(48) [[vP hin-man-an ch’anh libro]] =

λe. ([ιx. (x)])(e) & A = S

7.3.3.2 Restrict and Existential Closure

The smaller nominalizations examined in Section 7.3.2 do not contain the
functional heads required to license arguments of type e and must use other
strategies to satisfy the root’s internal argument requirement. This is evi-
denced by the fact that such nominalizations must combine with bare
nouns, disallowing all material indicative of D⁰-level structure, such as noun
classifiers and possessive marking (see Section 7.3.2).
Since full nominal arguments of type e must be licensed by v⁰ or finite Infl⁰,
the absence of verbal structure with such nominalizations prevents full DPs
from occupying the internal argument position. However, as illustrated in
examples like the agentive nominalizations in Chuj (40a) and Ch’ol (42a), an
overt bare noun, which we take to be a function of semantic type 〈e,t〉, is
162     

nevertheless required. Since Functional Application requires semantic com-

position with an argument of type e, the internal argument requirement in
such cases must be satisfied by means of another mechanism.
Coon (2019) argues that such a mechanism independently exists to derive a
construction known as the incorporation antipassive in Chuj, and that this
mechanism corresponds to Chung & Ladusaw’s (2004) operations of Restrict
and Existential Closure (EC).¹² In the interest of space, readers are referred to
Coon (2019) for a detailed account of how these operations proceed (also see
Maxwell, 1976, and Coon, 2019, for further details on the incorporation
antipassive). The crucial point here is the use of the antipassive morpheme,
indicative of Restrict+Existential Closure, offers an alternative route to satisfy
the root’s internal argument requirement, by allowing it to compose with an
argument of type 〈e,t〉. Unlike full DP arguments, the bare NP complement
does not require licensing by a functional head.

7.3.3.3 Derivational morphology: -w(aj) and -oñ

Finally, recall that for all three types of nominalizations examined above—
CENs, RNs, and agentive argument nominalizations—the requirement on a
syntactically-present internal argument appears to be lifted with the addition
of specific antipassive derivational morphology. As was schematized in table
(43), Ch’ol consistently uses the suffix -oñ in both derived and agentive
nominalizations which lack syntactic internal arguments. Chuj, on the other
hand, uses either -w or -waj, as shown in examples (33c), (38), and (40b). We
suggest that -w and -waj are variants of the same morpheme when appearing
internal to nominalizations, which we represent as -w(aj) in the remainder of
the chapter; see section 7.4 on -w(aj) in the verbal domain.¹³
Building on Coon’s (2019) analysis of the absolutive antipassive in Chuj, we
argue that -w(aj) in Chuj and -oñ in Ch’ol can be construed as overt reflexes of
existential closure (Diesing, 1992), used to bind a variable—i.e. an implicit
pffi
object.¹⁴ For instance, in the case of the antipassive CEN in (33c), the TV

¹² Restrict and Existential Closure are defined as follows. (i) Restrict = λP<e,<v,t>>. λQ<e,t>. λx. λe.
[P(x)(e) ∧ Q(x)]; (ii) Existential Closure = λP<e,<v,t>> λe. ∃x[P(x)(e)].
¹³ Note that both -w and -waj are also found in the verbal domain, in the context of antipassive
constructions. Specifically, in the verbal domain, -w appears with incorporation antipassives, while -waj
appears with antipassives which lack a theme, as in (32) above; Coon (2019) decomposes this into
-w-aj. If these heads can be analyzed as having the same function in both nominal and verbal domains,
we might expect the derived event nominals to end in -waj-Vl. One possibility is that -waj-Vl collapsed
into -al, accounting for the difference in vowels between -al here and -el in nominals like (34b) above.
¹⁴ In Coon (2019), the morpheme that is argued to be an overt reflex of existential binding in the
verbal domain is -aj; -w introduces the agent in verbal antipassives. The use of -aj is shown to extend
beyond absolutive antipassives, as it can appear in passive constructions where the author argues that it
binds an implicit external argument. We leave open the question of whether -waj should be decom-
posed in this way in the context of smaller nominals, which do not contain an external argument.
    163

root’s semantic requirement is semantically satisfied by a covert variable,

repesented as x∃, which combines with the root via Functional Application.
The role of the antipassive morpheme is to existentially close (EC) this
variable. This is schematized in example (49). We use ‘∃P’ to label the
projection headed by -w(aj), and ignore for the purposes of this diagram
progressive marking, agreement marking, and the suffix -i.

(49) Existential closure of internal argument in CEN; (33c)

[nP DPposs [n [∃P -waj [vP PRO [v [VP ROOT x∃ ]]]]]]
EC

A similar analysis can be extended to cases of smaller RNs and agentive

nominalizations, with the minimal difference that they lack verbal structure,
as schematized for an RN in (50):

(50) Existential closure of internal argument in RN; (38)

[nP [n -al [∃P -w [√P √TV x∃ ]]]]
EC

7.3.4 Summary

In sum, we argued in this section that the requirement on internal arguments

of verbal roots in Ch’ol and Chuj follows from a semantic requirement
pffi pffi
associated with TV and ITV roots, namely that they must compose
with an internal argument (see e.g. Baker, 2003, on the class of verbs). Given
these languages’ clearly diagnosable classes of roots, combined with their
robust stem-forming morphology, the different options available for satisfying
this requirement are visible in a way that we do not find in morphologically-
pffi pffi
poorer languages like English. Since the requirement for TV and ITV
roots to compose with internal arguments is visible not only in verbal forms, but
in nominalizations with and without verbal structure, we contend that it must
come from the root, and not from higher categorizing/functional material.
Specifically, we observe that the semantic requirement interacts with the
syntactic heads available for licensing full arguments. When a DP internal
argument of type e is present, it composes by means of Functional
Application—an option only available in structures which contain verbal struc-
ture, including Complex Event Nominalizations. When this option is not
164     

available, two alternatives are possible.¹⁵ First, we argued that the root’s internal
argument can be saturated by a bare NP via Chung & Ladusaw’s (2004) Restrict
and Existential Closure operations. Second, the root may combine with an
implicit argument, but then overt morphology is required to existentially bind
this variable. Specifically, the antipassive suffixes -(w)aj in Chuj and -oñ in Ch’ol
were argued to instantiate an overt reflex of existential closure.

7.4 Derived nominals and Split-S

Recall the generalization that we began with in Section 7.3: in Ch’ol, all and
only verbs (or nominalizations containing verbal structure) combine with full
type e internal arguments. Specifically, unaccusatives, passives, and transitives
all appear directly in verbal stem forms, shown in the perfective aspect in (51).

(51) Ch’ol ‘complementing’ stems are verbs

a. Tyi majl-i-y-oñ.
 go---1
‘I went.’ (unaccusative)
b. Tyi mejk’-i-y-oñ.
 hug.---1
‘I was hugged.’ (passive)
c. Tyi i-mek’-e-y-oñ.
 3-hug---1
‘She hugged me.’ (transitive)

On the other hand, unergatives, antipassives, and incorporation antipassives

must all appear in nominal stem forms in Ch’ol, and all require the use of a
light verb like cha’l in order to predicate, as shown in (52). This results in what
has been described as a Split-S system in Ch’ol (Gutiérrez Sánchez, 2004;
Vázquez Álvarez 2011): while unaccusative and passive subjects are encoded
via Set B (absolutive) morphology in (51), the subjects of the unergative and

¹⁵ Due to lack of space, we have intentionally left out a discussion of how verbs compose with
complement clauses (CPs), which are arguably not of type e. One possibility which should be further
explored is that they move, leaving a trace of the right type for the verb to compose. This is in line with
previous accounts on the syntax and semantics of CPs (see e.g. Moulton, 2009, 2015, as well as
Chapter 11). Evidence that this type of analysis could be on the right track comes from word order
facts: While both Ch’ol and Chuj are VOS, sentences with complement clauses exhibit obligatory VSO
order, suggesting they undergo obligatory movement (see also Aissen, 1992, for similar observation in
other Mayan languages).
    165

antipassive stems in (52) are encoded via Set A (ergative) morphemes on the
transitive light verb.

(52) Ch’ol ‘complementless’ stems are nouns

a. Tyi k-cha’l-e soñ.
 1-do- dance
‘I danced.’ (unergative)
b. Tyi k-cha’l-e mäñ-oñ-el.
 1-do-ss buy--
‘I did some buying.’ (antipassive)
c. Tyi k-cha’l-e juch’-ixim.
 1-do- grind-corn
‘I did some corn-grinding.’ (incorporation antipassive)

Note, however, that the crucial generalization is that unergative and antipas-
sive stems are nominal. In the perfective aspect, the transitive light verb cha’l is
used and the subject is simply encoded as a transitive subject. However, the
progressive already contains a predicate—the intransitive aspectual predicate
choñkol (see Section 7.2.1). Subjects of progressive unergatives and antipas-
sives are marked directly on the aspectual predicate; given that choñkol is
intransitive, it is unsurprising that subjects are encoded via Set B (absolutive)
morphology. The lexical stem surfaces as a derived nominal (Section 7.2.1),
introduced by the preposition tyi, as shown in (53).

(53) a. Choñkol-oñ tyi soñ.

-1  dance
‘I’m dancing.’
b. Choñkol-oñ tyi mäñ-oñ-el.
-1  buy--
‘I’m doing some buying.’
c. Choñkol-oñ tyi juch’-ixim.
-1  grind-corn
‘I’m corn-grinding.’

As reviewed in Section 7.3, Coon (2013a) proposed a two-way requirement on

v⁰ in order to capture the division of labor between verbal stems, which always
contain an internal argument, and derived v⁰-less nominal stems, which do
not. This is shown in (54).
166     

(54) Ch’ol little-v generalization (Coon, 2013a)

a. All internal arguments must be assigned (absolutive) case by a v0
head;
b. All v0 heads must assign absolutive case to an internal argument.

However, in Section 7.3 we argued that the requirement that an internal

argument be present—a requirement seen in both Ch’ol and in Chuj, and
independent of verbal structure—is not due (solely) to v⁰, as (54b) would have
pffi pffi
it, but rather due to the semantic type of TV and ITV roots themselves.
The question then remains of how to capture the generalization that stems
which lack type e internal arguments may only surface as nominal stems in
Ch’ol. Here again, Chuj provides an instructive point of comparison. In exactly
the environments in which Ch’ol stems must surface as nouns—unergatives
and antipassives—Chuj verb stems require the suffix -w. Compare the forms in
(55) and (56).

(55) Ch’ol
a. Choñkol-oñ tyi soñ.
-1  dance
‘I’m dancing.’
b. Choñkol-oñ tyi wuts’-oñ-el.
-1  wash--
‘I’m washing.’
c. Choñkol-oñ tyi wuts’-pisil.
-1  wash-clothes
‘I’m clothes-washing.’

(56) Chuj
a. Lan hin-chanhal-w-i.
 1-dance--
‘I’m dancing.’
b. Lan hin-juk’-w-aj-i.
 1-wash---
‘I’m washing.’
c. Lan hin-juk’-w-i k’apak.
 1-wash-- clothes
‘I’m clothes-washing.’
    167

Coon (2019) analyzes -w as a v⁰/Voice⁰ head which introduces the external

argument, but does not participate in Set A-inducing agreement. Note that in
Chuj, this suffix is present not just on antipassives, but on unergatives as well.
The unergative in (56a) is built from the nominal root chanhal; since nominal
roots do not combine with internal arguments, none is present here. On the
other hand, the transitive root juk’ requires an internal argument, as argued at
length in Section 7.3. As was the case internal to the nominalizations above,
the internal argument may either be a bare NP, as in (54c), or an implicit
argument, as in (56b). Here we propose that Ch’ol simply lacks any equivalent of
Chuj’s v⁰/Voice⁰ head. That is, it does not possess a verbal stem-building head
which introduces external arguments but does not participate in Set
A agreement. This captures the fact that forms without internal arguments—
all of which require -w to form verbal stems in Chuj—must surface as nominals.
pffi
We thus split apart the pattern covered by the generalization in (54): TV
pffi
and ITV roots require internal arguments, regardless of the amount and
type of higher functional structure; we take this to be a property of Ch’ol and
Chuj, and likely of verbs cross-linguistically (Baker, 2003). On the other hand,
the fact that Ch’ol forms without full type e internal arguments cannot
surface as verbs, we connect to the wholesale absence of a particular type of
v⁰/Voice⁰ head, present across agentive intransitives in Chuj, and absent
altogether in Ch’ol.

7.5 Summary and conclusions

This chapter reviewed the role and nature of nominalization in the Mayan
languages Ch’ol and Chuj, with an eye toward alignment patterns, the nature
of roots, and the role of functional heads. In both languages, nominalization
has been argued to play a role in the system of aspect-based split ergativity,
discussed in Section 7.2. Progressive aspect morphemes are predicates which
select for nominal complements; the Complex Event Nominalizations which
appear in the progressive aspect in both languages were argued to contain
verbal structure, including PRO subjects. The fact that these PRO subjects—
both transitive and intransitive—are then bound by Set A possessors accounts
for the appearance of a nominative alignment pattern.
In Section 7.3 we turned to smaller Result Nominals and agentive nominals.
We proposed that these forms contain no verbal structure but nonetheless show
pffi pffi
consistent reflexes of a requirement that verbal— TV and ITV—roots are
168     

of semantic type 〈e, 〈v,t〉〉 and must always compose with an internal argument.
In the absence of functional verbal structure (i.e. v⁰ or Infl⁰) to license a full DP,
roots either combine with a bare NP (which composes via Restrict and EC) or
an implicit argument which must be existentially bound via overt antipassive
morphology.
Throughout this chapter, we investigated the tension between semantic
requirements of roots, on the one hand, and the syntactic mechanisms avail-
able to build stems and license arguments, on the other. In Section 7.4, we
proposed that Ch’ol’s ‘Split-S’ system amounts to a generalization that forms
without full type e internal arguments may not surface as verb stems. Exactly
these same forms in Chuj require the appearance of the suffix -w, argued in
Coon (2019) to be a v⁰/Voice⁰ head which introduces external arguments but
does not participate in Set A agreement. In other words, an apparently large-
scale grammatical property of Ch’ol can be attributed to the general absence of
a single type of functional head, apparently required to form agentive intransi-
tive verb stems.
While our discussion focused on Ch’ol and Chuj, we take the simplest
proposal to be that the robust morphology in these two Mayan languages
shows overtly requirements that are also present in morphologically impov-
erished languages like English. Specifically, roots may be classified based on
their semantic types, which in turn dictate—together with specific inventories
of functional heads and their ability to license arguments—possibilities for the
formation of verbal and nominal stems. The fact that the need for internal
arguments is present not only in verbal forms, but in nominalizations of
different sizes, lends support to the proposal that this is a requirement
imposed by the roots themselves.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Magdalena Torres for work with Chuj, and to Morelia Vázquez Martínez
for Ch’ol. This work would not have been possible without their insights and patience.
Many thanks also to the volume’s editors, as well as an anonymous reviewer for helpful
feedback. This work was supported by a SSHRC Insight Grant to Coon. Authors’ names are
listed in alphabetical order.
 8
Three ways of unifying participles
and nominalizations
The case of Udmurt
Éva Dékány and Ekaterina Georgieva

8.1 Introduction

Chomsky’s (1970) Remarks on Nominalization deals with the syntax of

different types of nominalizations in English, placing the theoretical focus
on how syntax and the lexicon interact. In this chapter, we discuss the so-
called participle-nominalization polysemy, that is, cases in which the suffix
involved in (deverbal) nominalizations is form-identical to the suffix
employed in non-finite (typically prenominal) participial relative clauses
(henceforth ‘relatives’ or RCs). This scenario is schematized in (1) (with the
nominalization of (1a) occupying the object position).

(1) a. [VP [nominalization V-sfx] matrix-V] (nominalization)

b. [DP [relative V-sfx] N] (relative)

A shared suffix between (participial) relatives and nominalizations is cross-

linguistically wide-spread, for instance, it is frequently observed in Uralic and
Altaic languages (Koptjevskaja-Tamm, 1993: 2.2.5, Serdobolskaya & Paperno,
2006; Shagal, 2018) as well as in the Quechua family (Koptievskaja-Tamm,
1993: 2.2.5) and in Tibeto-Burman languages (Noonan, 1997).¹ Example (2)
provides a specific illustration from Udmurt (Permic, Uralic), where the suffix
-m appears in deverbal nouns with a complex internal structure (2a) as well as
in (participial) relative clauses (2b).

¹ This pattern is also attested in more familiar languages, e.g. English: the reading director vs. the
director’s reading (of) the book.

Éva Dékány and Ekaterina Georgieva, Three ways of unifying participles and nominalizations: The case of Udmurt
In: Nominalization: 50 Years on from Chomsky’s Remarks. Edited by: Artemis Alexiadou and Hagit Borer,
Oxford University Press (2020). © Éva Dékány and Ekaterina Georgieva. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198865544.003.0008
170 ˊ ˊˊ   

(2) a. [Pinal-jos-len Lim ̮ i ̮ Te̮d’i-̮ jez kir̮ dźa-m-zi]̮ min̮ im

̮
child-- Snow White- sing-m-:3 1.
jaraz.
appeal..3
‘I liked that/how the children sang the song “Snow is White”.’
(deverbal noun)
b. [Kil̮ ’em ar-in̮ pukt-em] korka džuaz.
last year- build-m house burn..3
‘The house that was built last year has burned down.’ (relative clause)

The fact that the same morpheme appears in both deverbal nouns and
participial RCs with relative systematicity in different language families
makes it unlikely that we are dealing with unconnected cases of accidental
homophony in the lexicon. Instead, a principled syntactic account is called for.
The aim of this chapter is to lay out the hypothesis space for an explanatory
account of the cross-linguistic participle-nominalizer polysemy, and to discuss
which of the hypotheses is best suited to capture the Udmurt facts in particular.
The discussion will proceed as follows. Section 8.2 lays out three different ways
in which the polysemy can be given a unified syntactic account, such that the
same lexical entry underlies the shared suffix of relatives and deverbal nouns.
Section 8.3 proceeds to the empirical focus of the chapter, detailing the
morpho-syntactic properties of Udmurt relatives and deverbal nouns with
-m. In Section 8.4 we argue against treating -m as a nominalizing head, and in
Section 8.5 we develop an account of -m as a head in the extended verbal
projection. Section 8.6 closes the chapter.

8.2 Principled approaches to the polysemy

Under a unified analysis for a suffix appearing in both (participial) relatives

and nominalizations, the null hypothesis is that the suffix spells out either a
functional head in the extended VP or a nominalizing head which requires an
extended VP as its complement. In the former case the head exponed by the
suffix is inherently verby (taking care of the relative use without further ado
and requiring something additional to be said about nominalizations), while in
the latter case it is inherently nouny (which delivers the nominalized cases and
requires further explanation of the relative use). In this section we will explore
both options.
     171

If the morpheme under consideration expones a verbal head, then the

participial RC use can be represented as in (3), where Ptcp is a head within
the extended VP and FP is a projection in the extended NP.²

(3) Relative
FP

PtcpP F'

vP Ptcp F NP
-sfx
verb noun

Nominalizations can then be analyzed in two different ways. First, they might
involve a nominal layer topping off the extended VP, yielding a mixed
extended projection (cf. Borer, 1997, 2013; Borsley & Kornfilt, 2000;
Fu et al., 2001; Alexiadou, 2001, 2013, Chapter 5; Alexiadou et al., 2011, 2010,
2013; Kornfilt & Whitman, 2011a; Baker, 2011; among many others). This
scenario could involve a phonologically zero head specialized for nominal-
ization (a DM-style categorizer, which we are going to call n) (4), or the
extended VP could be embedded directly under a nominal functional head,
e.g. Num or D, without the mediation of a nominalizer proper (5). In either
case, the topmost nominal projection takes care of the external nominal
distribution of the phrase.

(4) ‘direct’ nominalization (5) ‘indirect’ nominalization

DP DP

nP D PtcpP D

PtcpP n vP Ptcp
ø -sfx
vP Ptcp verb
-sfx
verb

² In our trees Ptcp should be understood as an independently motivated verbal functional head. The
identity of this head (e.g. Asp, T, etc.) is not of immediate concern to us and therefore we do not discuss
it here. What is important is that it is a head with verbal characteristics, as in Collins (2005) and Baker
(2011). Importantly, it is not equivalent to Ptcp in Doron & Reintges (2005), where this label designates
a head with nominal properties.
172 ˊ ˊˊ   

Second, the nominalization cases could involve a PtcpP modifying a covert

noun, either in a relative-clause configuration (6) or in a complement config-
uration (7). (On the latter possibility, see also Moulton, Chapter 11.) The
covert noun could be a lexical noun or a type of light noun. In either case,
this is the head of the whole constituent, which means that the phrase under
consideration has a nominal external distribution.

(6) ‘nominalization’ (underlying RC syntax)

FP

PtcpP F'

vP Ptcp F NP
-sfx
verb NOUN/covert light noun

(7) ‘nominalization’ (underlying complement syntax)

NP

N PtcpP
NOUN/covert light noun
vP Ptcp
-sfx
verb

In this case what we have called the ‘nominalized’ cases do not involve any
nominalization: They have exactly the same underlying structure as relative or
complement clauses, except they have a covert N head.
Let us now turn to the possibility that the suffix shared by relatives and
nominalizations spells out a nominalizing head. The nominalizations can then
be treated as mixed projections, with the suffix taking an extended VP
complement. Example (8) is similar to the direct nominalization case in (4);
the difference lies in the verbiness/nouniness of the suffix in question. This
analysis would have to posit that for some reason, relatives (or extended VPs
in general) cannot directly modify nouns: They must be nominalized before
they can be merged in an adnominal position (9).
     173

(8) nominalization (9) relative

nP FP

PtcpP n nP F'
-sfx
vP Ptcp PtcpP n F NP
-sfx
verb vP Ptcp noun

verb

The three hypotheses discussed above may all be options afforded by

Universal Grammar, materializing in different languages of the world. In
other words, the participle-nominalizer polysemy does not necessarily have
to receive the same analysis cross-linguistically; it should be investigated on a
case-by-case basis which analysis is most explanatory for the dataset of a given
language.

8.3 The participle-nominalization polysemy in Udmurt

As said in the introduction, the Udmurt suffix -m is employed in both RCs and
deverbal nouns. Most deverbal nouns with -m have a complex internal structure,
with the base verb’s arguments retained. We will argue that these correspond to
English verbal gerunds (the gerundive nominals of Remarks). In addition, -m is
also employed in result nouns (RNs) (the derived nominals of Remarks) and
other deverbal nouns which look like simple event nouns (SENs). These are
illustrated below (cf. GSUJa I, 1962: 117–18; Winkler, 2001: 58).

(10) kil̮ ’-em, ńula-m, vera-m, kul-em, piž̮ -iśk-em,

remain-m sweat:-m speak-m die-m bake--m
kin̮ -t-em
freeze--m
‘leftovers, sweat, speech/utterance, dead person, pastry, ice-cream’ (RN)

(11) puk-em, uža-m, vordiśk-em, vu-em, kir̮ dźa-m, kin̮ ma-m

sit-m work:-m be.born-m arrive-m sing-m get.cold-m
‘sitting, working, birth, arrival, singing, getting/having a cold’ (SEN?)
174 ˊ ˊˊ   

Udmurt -m deverbal nouns thus fall into different types, similarly to English.
Below we present the key diagnostics with which gerunds and RNs can be told
apart. It will be shown, however, that we do not find enough evidence for
positing a third type of deverbal noun, namely, SENs. We also discuss the
(morpho)syntactic properties of -m-relatives.

8.3.1 Verbal gerunds

An example of a verbal gerund (henceforth, gerund) is given in (12).

(12) [Pet’a-len pinal-jos-se kńiga(-jez)

Petya- child--:3. book-
lid̮ dź-it̮ -il̮ -em-ez] min̮ im
̮ jaraz.
read---m-:3 1. appeal..3
‘I liked (the fact) that Petya made his children read a/the book (several
times).’

Sentence (12) shows that gerunds have several verbal properties, such as (i) the
presence of aspect morphology (cf. the frequentative suffix), (ii) the possibility of
expressing voice morphology (cf. the causative suffix), (iii) full argument structure
(i.e. subject and an accusative-marked direct object), and (iv) an event reading.
The presence of frequentative and causative markers suggests that the
extended verb phrase of gerunds includes an AspP and a VoiceP.³ The
presence of a vP is also supported by the fact that agent-oriented adverbs
(e.g. juri ‘deliberately’) and manner adverbs (e.g. ros-pros ‘thoroughly, in
detail’) are also licit with gerunds (13).⁴

(13) [Maša-len ta śariś̮ juri ros-pros

Masha- this about deliberately thoroughly
jua-l’l’a-śk-em-ez] Kol’a-li ̮ e̮-z jara.
ask---m-:3 Kolya- .-3 appeal..
‘Kolya didn’t like that Masha deliberately keeps/kept asking thoroughly
about this.’

³ Following Tánczos (2016), we assume that causatives in Udmurt involve a VoiceP, but nothing
hinges on this and our analysis is fully compatible with a vP-analysis of causatives.
⁴ Udmurt adverbs do not take any extra morphological marking compared to adjectives, thus many
words are ambiguous between an adverb and an adjective. We circumvent this problem by using
adverbs which cannot be used as adjectives (juri ‘deliberately’, ros-pros ‘thoroughly, in detail’ and
pi̮r-poć ‘in detail, accurately’), thus their adverbial status is not in question.
     175

Furthermore, gerunds can only be modified by adverbs, but not by adjectives.

In (14), only the adverbial pe̮rtem śamen ‘in different ways’ is allowed; the
adjective pe̮rtem ‘different’ is ruled out.

(14) [Pinal-jos-len Lim ̮ i ̮ Te̮d’i-̮ jez *pe̮rtem/ pe̮rtem śam-en

child-- Snow White- different:/ different way-
kir̮ dźa-m-zi]̮ min̮ im
̮ jaraz.
sing-m-:3 1. appeal..3
‘I liked that the children sang the song “Snow is White” in different
ways.’

On the other hand, gerunds also show ‘nouny’ behavior: (i) they appear as
the complement of Ps and structural/oblique cases,⁵ (ii) their subject is
genitive-marked, similarly to regular possessors, and (iii) the participial verb
bears possessive morphology agreeing with the genitive-marked subject. Let us
take a closer look at these properties.
As for their distribution, gerunds can be used as subjects (cf. examples
(12)–(14)) and objects (cf. (18b)). Crucially, unlike finite clauses, they are also
used as complements of structural/semantic cases and postpositions, as in
(15). Thus based on their external distribution, gerunds clearly show nominal
rather than clausal behavior.

(15) [So-len pu daśa-m-ez-li]̮

3- wood. prepare-m-:3-
anaj-ataj-ez tuž šumpotem.
mother-father-:3 very be.happy..3
‘Hisi parents were very happy about hisi preparing wood.’
(Kel’makov & Hännikäinen, 1999: 207)

Furthermore, the subject of the gerund is encoded with the genitive case,
similarly to possessors.⁶ It must be emphasized that the genitive-marked

⁵ Udmurt -m-gerunds are selected by different predicates, e.g. todi̮ni̮ ‘to know sth / about sth; to find
out sth’, jara ‘to appeal, like’, šumpoti̮ni̮ ‘to be happy about something’, addźini̮ ‘to see’, vit’i̮ni̮ ‘to wait
(for something to happen)’ (for a complete list, see Serdobolskaya et al., 2012). Serdobolskaya et al.
(2012: 455) and Klumpp (2016: 578–80) argue that unlike finite subordination, gerunds typically
express given information.
⁶ The similarity between the subjects of gerunds and possessors is particularly striking in argument
clauses. Adverbial clauses, on the other hand, show a strong tendency not to be nominalized, i.e. their
subject appears in the nominative case and they do not bear possessive agreement (for a discussion, see
Georgieva 2018). Similar facts have been reported for other Finno-Ugric and Altaic languages, e.g.
Tatar (Sahan, 2002; Lyutikova & Ibatullina, 2015), Kazakh (Ótott-Kovács, 2016), Modern Standard
176 ˊ ˊˊ   

noun always corresponds to the subject of the gerund and cannot correspond
to the internal argument (16). This means that Udmurt gerunds are, in fact,
similar to English verbal gerunds.

(16) *[Pinal-len vaj-em-ez] umoj ortć-i-z.

child- bring-m-:3 well pass--3
Intended: ‘The child’s birth went well.’

Similarly to possessors, the subjects of gerunds also display the so-called

‘genitive–ablative alternation’. Possessors bear genitive case by default, but
possessors of direct objects must have ablative marking (17). Genitive-marked
subjects also turn to ablative in object clauses (18).⁷

(17) a. [Pet’a-len/*leś puni-̮ jez] ute.

Petya-/ dog-:3 bark..3
‘Petya’s dog is barking.’
b. [Pet’a-*len/leś puni-̮ ze] śud-i.
Petya-/ dog-:3. feed-.1
‘I fed Petya’s dog.’

(18) a. [Diš̮ etiś-len/*leś diš̮ etskiś-jos-li ̮ urok-jos-iz̮

teacher-/ student-- lesson--
valekt-em-ez] min̮ im̮ jaraz.
explain-m-:3 1. appeal..3
‘I liked that the teacher explained the lessons to the students.’

Turkish (Kornfilt, 2001, 2003), and Sakha (Baker, 2011), which has raised the question whether subjects
of gerunds and possessors can be fully assimilated, and the account of non finite adjunct clauses is still
open to debate. In Udmurt at least, the subjects of gerunds used as argument clauses appear in the
genitive case (see Serdobolskaya et al., 2012; Brykina & Aralova, 2012; Georgieva & Ótott-Kovács, 2016,
2017; Dékány & Tánczos, 2017; Georgieva, 2018). There are two potential exceptions discussed in
Georgieva (2018: 66–68): (synthetic) compounds and dative-arguments. In this chapter, we leave these
cases aside, as the precise account of these patterns would require further research, and we concentrate
on gerunds with genitive-marked subjects.

⁷ On the genitive–ablative alternation, see Edygarova (2010); for a possible theoretical account, see
Assmann et al. (2014). Here we do not wish to commit ourselves to a particular analysis of this
alternation; what we consider important is that the subjects of gerunds pattern after possessors in
terms of case-marking.
     177

b. [Diš̮ etiś-*len/leś diš̮ etskiś-jos-li ̮ urok-jos-iz̮

teacher-/ student-- lesson--
valekt-em-ze] vań-zi ̮ todo.
explain-m-:3. all-3 know..3
‘Everybody knows that the teacher explains/explained the lessons to
the students.’

Furthermore, the possessive agreement morphology on the gerund is obliga-

tory. This also suggests that gerunds obligatorily include a subject argument as
well, even if it is a covert one, i.e. a pro. Example (19) contains a nonnomina-
lized gerund, i.e. no possessive agreement and no overt subject, with an
intended arbitrary reading, and it is judged as ungrammatical.

(19) *[Radio pir̮ vil̮ ’ udmurt kir̮ dźan-jos voźmat-em] min̮ im ̮

radio via new Udmurt song- show-m 1.
jaraz.
appeal..3
Intended: ‘I liked the playing of new Udmurt songs on the radio.’

The nouny properties of gerunds are limited, however. We have seen that
adjectival modification is out (14), and demonstratives are not allowed to modify
gerunds either (20).⁸ Demonstratives are ruled out even when there is no genitive-
marked subject in the gerund, i.e. demonstratives cannot replace the subject (21).

(20) *<Ta> [diš̮ etiś-len *<ta> urok-ez *<ta> ros-pros

this teacher- this lesson- this thoroughly
valekt-em-ez] min̮ im
̮ jaraz.
explain-m-:3 1. appeal..3
‘I liked that the teacher explained the lesson thoroughly.’

(21) *[Ta urok-ez ros-pros valekt-em] min̮ im̮ jaraz.

this lesson- thoroughly explain-m 1. appeal..3
Intended: ‘I liked this explanation of the lesson thoroughly.’

Plural marking is also ungrammatical with gerunds (22) (see Serdobolskaya

et al., 2012; Dékány & Tánczos, 2017; Georgieva, 2018).

⁸ Since Udmurt is an articleless language, we cannot test the possibility of modifying gerunds by an
article.
178 ˊ ˊˊ   

(22) [Diš̮ etiś-leś di š̮ etskiś-jos-li ̮ urok-jos-iz̮ (tros pol)

teacher- student-- lesson-- many times
valekt-em-ze/ *valekt-em-jos-se] vań-zi ̮
explain-m-:3. explain-m--:3. all-3
todo.
know..3
‘Everybody knows that the teacher explains/explained the lessons to the
students (many times).’

Based on these facts, we conclude that Udmurt gerunds have both nominal
and verbal properties, and they resemble English verbal gerunds rather than
Grimshaw’s (1990) Complex Event Nominals.

8.3.2 Result nouns

Recall than the suffix -m can also form result nouns (RN). Some examples are
repeated below for the reader’s convenience. As can be seen from (23), RNs are
typically derived from transitive or unaccusative verbs. They often have a
lexicalized/idiosyncratic meaning.

(23) ki l̮ ’-em, ńula-m, vera-m, piž̮ -iśk-em, kin̮ -t-em

remain-m sweat:-m speak-m bake--m frost--m
‘leftovers, sweat, speech/utterance, pastry, ice-cream’

RNs can only be modified by adjectives:

(24) Dže̮k vil̮ in̮ pe̮rtem/ *pe̮rtem śam-en kil̮ ’-em-jos vań.
table on different: different way- remain-m- 
‘There are different leftovers on the table.’

Furthermore, in contrast to gerunds, RNs can be modified by demonstratives

(25). This example also shows that RNs can be pluralized.

(25) So kil̮ ’-em-jos-ti ̮ kušt-ono.

that remain-m-- throw.away-.
‘Those leftovers are to be/have to be thrown away.’

Some of these RNs contain voice or causative morphology, e.g. pi̮ži-śk-em ‘pastry’
or ki̮n-t-em ‘ice-cream’ (we will return to the presence of voice and causative
     179

morphology in RNs in Section 8.5.3). Crucially, frequentative morphology is

illicit in RNs, suggesting that RNs contain a small verbal structure:

(26) a. *Piž̮ -iśk-il̮ -em dže̮k vil̮ in̮ .

bake---m table on
b. *Piž̮ -il̮ -iśk-em dže̮k vil̮ in̮ .
bake---m table on
Intended: ‘The pastry baked several times is on the table.’

Since RNs are clearly nouns, they can be possessed, however the genitive-
marked noun does not (necessarily) correspond to the subject argument of the
base verb, as indicated in the translation lines of (27) and (28). Thus, we
conclude that the genitive noun in RNs is a possessor rather than a subject.

(27) Pet’a-len piž̮ -iśk-em-ez dže̮k vil̮ in̮ .

Petya- bake--m-:3 table on
‘The pastry baked/bought/eaten by Petya is on the table.’

(28) [ . . . ] so-li̮ kofta-len kertt-em-ez tuž kel’šem.

3- sweater- knit-m-:3 very appeal..3
‘[ . . . ] s/he very much liked the knitting pattern of the sweater.’
(Kel’makov & Hännikäinen, 1999: 207)

The following table summarizes the main properties of gerunds and RNs.

Gerund RN
Event reading ✓ ✗
Argument structure ✓ ✗
Gen-marked noun subject possessor
Frequentative morphology ✓ ✗
Dem modification ✗ ✓
Adj/adv modification adv adj
Plural ✗ ✓

8.3.3 Are there simple event nouns with -m in Udmurt?

In addition to the deverbal nouns with complex internal structure that we

argued to be verbal gerunds, we also find other event-denoting deverbal nouns
with -m that show rather different morphosyntactic properties in comparison
to gerunds. Some examples are given in (29):
180 ˊ ˊˊ   

(29) puk-em, uža-m, vordiśk-em, vu-em, kir̮ dźa-m, kin̮ ma-m,

sit-m work:-m be.born-m arrive-m sing-m get.cold-m
‘sitting, working, birth, arrival, singing, getting/having a cold’

Given that nominalizations show different complexity: complex event nouns,

simple event nouns, and RNs, and given that Udmurt utilizes verbal gerunds
and RNs, one might raise the question whether a third, intermediate
type, broadly corresponding to SEN, is also attested in Udmurt. By definition,
SENs have an event reading, but lack argument structure, in other words,
no internal argument and no subject are found (see Grimshaw, 1990;
Moulton, 2014).
Probing for SENs in Udmurt is problematic, however, as SENs derived with
-m from transitives do not seem to be attested (30).⁹

(30) [*Je̮nat-em/ je̮nat-on] kema kis̮ tiśk-i-z.

cure-m cure-n long be.prolonged--3
‘The treatment took a lot of time to finish.’

The examples in (29) are all derived from intransitives. We will argue that
intransitive verb-based nominalizations in Udmurt correspond either to ver-
bal gerunds or to RNs. These two types can be distinguished with the help of
the diagnostics we present below. Thus, in our view, we do not find enough
evidence for positing a third category, i.e. SENs formed with -m.
First, frequentative morphology is possible, as shown in (31), thus indicat-
ing the presence of AspP. Agent-oriented adverbs are also licit (32).

(31) [Kol’a-len tetća-l’l’a-m-ez] anaj-ataj-os-se

Kolya- jump--m-:3 mother-father--:3.
pajmit̮ -i-z.
amaze--3
‘Kolya’s jumping/dancing amazed his parents.’10

⁹ We think that there are two language-specific reasons for this gap. The first is that Udmurt also
utilizes another nominalizer (-n) that seems to be used in these cases, cf. (30) (the differences between
the two nominalizers are rather poorly understood, see Kalinina, 2001; Serdobolskaya et al., 2012;
Brykina & Aralova, 2012; Klumpp, 2016; Georgieva, 2018). The second reason is that Udmurt also has
a fully productive intransitivizer (-śk) used to derive passive, antipassive, anticausative, and reciprocal verbs
(see Tánczos, 2016, 2017; Gulyás & Speshilova, 2014); thus, it might be the case that the productive use of
intransitivising morphology ‘bleeds’ the formation of SENs from transitive verbs.
¹⁰ The verb tetća- can either mean ‘jump’ or ‘dance’, depending on the context.
     181

(32) [Kol’a-len (divan vil̮ in̮ ) juri tetća-m-ez]

Kolya- sofa on deliberately jump-m-:3
anaj-ataj-os-iz̮ -li ̮ e̮-z jara.
mother-father--:3- .-3 appeal..
‘Kolya’s parents didn’t like his deliberate jumping/dancing on the sofa.’

Thus, based on these two criteria, these deverbal nouns behave like gerunds.
However, they allow for either adjectival or adverbial modification (33). In this
respect, they resemble Polish -nie/-cie-nominalizations (Alexiadou et al.,
2010), German nominal infinitives (Alexiadou et al., 2011) and English pro-
cess nominals (Fu et al., 2001).

(33) [Kol’a-len pe̮rtem/ pe̮rtem sˊam-en tetća-m-ez]

Kolya- different: different way- jump-m-:3
anaj-ataj-os-se pajmit̮ -i-z.
mother-father--:3. amaze--3
‘Kolya’s <different> dancing/jumping <in different ways> amazed his
parents.’

Furthermore, they can be pluralized, as shown in (34) and (35). Observe that
in the singular, the deverbal noun is ambiguous. However, in the plural, the
deverbal noun does not express (multiple) instances of the same event, but
rather different types of events, i.e. different (types of) swings. This interpret-
ation is given as a ‘manner’ reading below.

(34) [Ivan-len dźećir̮ a-m-ez] anaj-ataj-os-se

Ivan- swing-m-:3 mother-father--:3.
pajmit̮ -i-z.
amaze--3
‘The way in which Ivan was swinging amazed his parents.’ ‘manner’
‘Ivan’s swinging amazed his parents.’ ‘event’
(Georgieva, 2018: 53)

(35) [Ivan-len dźećir̮ a-m-jos-iz̮ ] anaj-ataj-os-se

Ivan- swing-m--:3 mother-father--:3.
pajmit̮ -i-zi.̮
amaze--3
‘The ways in which Ivan was swinging amazed his parents.’ ‘manner’
*‘Ivan’s swingings amazed his parents.’ ‘event’
(Georgieva, 2018: 53)
182 ˊ ˊˊ   

Thus, on the one hand, these deverbal nouns show a verbal structure similar to
verbal gerunds, but on the other hand, they seem to be more ‘nouny’. We would
like to cash this out by proposing that those deverbal nouns that are pluralizable
and allow for adjectival modification are actually RNs. This is supported by the
fact that the pluralizable deverbal noun in (35) cannot have an event reading.
Further support in favor of this view comes from the interpretation of the
genitive-marked noun in these deverbal nouns (which also follow the genitive-
ablative alternation discussed in Section 8.3.1). The genitive-marked noun is
interpreted as the subject of the deverbal noun in an out-of-the-blue context
(36a), but speakers also allow for a nonsubject interpretation, if provided an
appropriate context. Thus, Kol’a can also be construed as a nonsubject, for instance
in the following context: ‘Kolya has invented a special kind of jump. But he was sick
today, so Petya had to perform Kolya’s special jump(s) instead of him’, cf. (36b).

(36) Context: Kolya is an acrobat in the circus.

a. [Kol’a-len tetća-m-ez] ućkiś-jos-ti ̮ pajmit̮ -i-z.
Kolya- jump-m-:3 spectator-- amaze--3
‘Kolya’s jumping amazed the spectators.’ (subject reading) (gerund)
b. [Kol’a-leś tetća-m-ze] Ivan voźmat-i-z.
Kolya- jump-m-:3. Ivan show--3
‘Kolya’s jump was performed by Ivan.’ (nonsubject reading) (RN)

The non subject interpretation of the genitive-marked noun in (36b) suggests

that we are dealing with an RN. In fact, such an interpretation is impossible if
an agent-oriented adverb is present, even with the appropriate context (37).
We propose that in this case we are dealing with a gerund. Recall that gerunds
obligatorily contain a subject, and are thus incongruent with the non subject
reading supplied by the context.

(37) ??/#[Kol’a-leś juri tetća-m-ze]

Kolya- deliberately jump-m-:3.
Ivan voźmat-i-z.
Ivan show--3
Intended: ‘Kolya’s deliberately jumping was performed by Ivan.’
(gerund)

The crucial piece of evidence against the analysis of intransitive-based dever-

bal nouns as SENs comes from cases in which the deverbal noun does have an
event-reading, and it is thus compatible with predicates like take place/last
X hours, but lacks arguments. Recall from Section 8.3.1 that gerunds always
     183

retain the base verb’s arguments, as evidenced by the obligatory possessive

morphology on them. The deverbal noun in examples like (38) lacks posses-
sive morphology, thus, it cannot be a gerund. Since its intended meaning
denotes an event, this would be the perfect candidate to be labeled as
SEN. However, the example is ungrammatical, suggesting that intransitive-
based deverbal nouns in Udmurt are not SENs.

(38) *Tolon cirk-in̮ tetća-m odig ćas (čože) min̮ -i-z.

yesterday circus- jump-m one hour for go--3
Intended: ‘Yesterday, the jumping in the circus lasted one hour.’

In our view, the most straightforward way to explain the mixed properties of
the deverbal nouns derived from intransitive verbs is to say that they can either
exemplify gerunds or RNs, and the two types can be told apart with the tests
summarized in Table 8.1. Thus, we do not find enough evidence to classify
them as SENs.

8.3.4 Participial RCs

Relatives with -m are prenominal, nonfinite modifiers of nouns. Similarly to

the gerunds discussed in Section 8.3.1, -m-relatives can have an accusative
object and adverbial modifiers, and the participial verb may be inflected for
voice and aspectual morphology (39).¹¹

(39) a. [tros pol lid̮ dź-il̮ -em] kńiga

many times read--m book
‘the book read many times’
b. [pići dir̮ jaz tros pol kńiga lid̮ dź-it̮ -il̮ -em] murt
young as many times book. read---m person
‘a/the person who was made to read a book several times as a child’

However, in contrast to verbal gerunds, participial RCs may lack a subject

altogether, as shown by the lack of possessive morphology in (39). Previous
work on relatives has identified two different case possibilities for overt

¹¹ The example in (39b) does not contain an overt causer in contrast to the verbal gerund in (12). This
might be due to independent reasons, thus it is not necessarily suggestive of structural differences between
-m-relatives and -m-gerunds. For instance, some differences might be attributed to the impossibility of
relativizing certain arguments, e.g. a causer (to our knowledge relativization of causatives has not been
discussed in the literature, e.g. in Brykina & Aralova, 2012). What is crucial for our purposes is that voice
and aspect morphology can appear on both participial relatives and gerunds.
184 ˊ ˊˊ   

subjects: They can bear either an instrumental or a genitive suffix (40a,b).

In the latter case a possessive agreement suffix cross-referencing the subject’s
ϕ-features appears on the head noun (Kalinina, 2001, Serdobolskaya et al.,
2012, Brykina & Aralova, 2012; see also Georgieva, 2018: 57–62).¹²

(40) a. [Pet’a-jen tue mertt-em] pispu umoj bude.

Petya- this.year plant-m tree well grow..3
‘The tree planted by Petya this year is growing well.’
b. [Pet’a-len tue mertt-em] pispu-ez umoj bude.
Petya- this.year plant-m tree-:3 well grow..3
‘The tree planted by Petya this year is growing well.’
(Georgieva, 2018: 60)

The pattern in (40b) whereby possessive agreement tracks the feature specification
of the subject but appears on the head noun rather than the participial verb is also
known as nonlocal agreement. It is an areal feature of Central and Northern
Eurasia, found in Uralic, Mongolic, Turkic, Tungusic, and Indo-European lan-
guages as well as Palaeosiberian isolates (Ackerman & Nikolaeva, 2013: 66).
In the next sections we turn to the analysis of -m-relatives and
-m-nominalizations. First, in Section 8.4 we will consider the possibility of
analyzing -m as a nominalizer. This line of analysis will be discarded, though.
Then, in Section 8.5 we will present a verbal analysis of the suffix and a unified
treatment of relatives and nominalizations.

8.4 Against treating -m as a nominalizer

As discussed in Section 8.3, Udmurt -m forms appear in participial RCs and

nominalizations. If the Udmurt -m suffix is a nominalizing head, then verbal
gerunds and Result Nominals can be captured by attaching -m at different
heights in the functional sequence: to TP/AspP/VoiceP/vP in the case of
gerunds and to the VP in the case of RNs.¹³

¹² Additionally, it has been claimed that the subject of RCs can bear nominative case (Kalinina, 2001:
88, and Serdobolskaya et al., 2012; though Brykina & Aralova, 2012, consider this pattern marginal in the
Beserman dialect of Udmurt). Georgieva & Ótott-Kovács (2016: 56) argue that nominative subjects are
ungrammatical in today’s Udmurt and Georgieva & Ótott-Kovács (2017) point out that all attested
examples come from older sources. For this reason, in the present chapter we disregard this pattern.
¹³ We assume with Hale & Keyser (1993), Bowers (1993), Arad (1996), Den Dikken (2015), among
others, that objects are introduced in a specifier position, and that this position is outside of the
VP. Thus cutting off the projection line at the VP level yields nominalizations without arguments.
     185

(41) verbal gerunds (42) RNs

nP nP

AspP/TP n VP n
-m -m
vP Asp/T

However, if gerunds and RNs are derived with the same nominalizer head,
then it remains mysterious why only the latter can be modified like non-
derived nouns. Alexiadou (2013, Chapter 5) argues that the presence of a
nominalizing head (n) licenses nominal modifiers, e.g. adjectives and number
marking. Indirect nominalization, where a VP is embedded directly under a
nominal functional head, on the other hand, is incompatible with such
modification. If both gerunds and RNs involve the same nominalizer, then it
is unclear why (the projections responsible for) adjectival modification and
plural marking can embed (42) but not (41).
Treating -m as a nominalizer is even more problematic when we turn to the
analysis of -m-relatives. Relatives with an overt genitive subject could be
treated as in (43), with a DP topping off the nominalizing layer. The subject
then could be moved to or inserted directly into Spec,DP, receiving genitive
case there, similarly to possessors. The appearance of the possessive suffix on
the head noun could be taken to indicate that relatives with a genitive subject
involve a nominal structure modifying the head noun indeed.

(43) rejected structure for relatives

FP

DP F'

subject-GEN D' NP F

nP D noun+Poss

AspP/TP n
-m
vP Asp/T

verb
186 ˊ ˊˊ   

The analysis of relatives which have an instrumental subject or no overt

subject is highly problematic, however. Relatives with covert subjects would
have the structure in (44). Outside of relatives, instrumental subjects in
Udmurt also occur in passives (F. Gulyás & Speshilova, 2014), where they
function as the equivalents of English by-phrases. We suggest that in both
passives and relatives, an instrumental subject is a demoted PP-subject which
does not occupy the canonical subject position but is instead adjoined to vP
(the projection which introduces the subject of active sentences). Relatives
with an instrumental subject would then be represented as in (45).

(44) rejected structure for relatives

FP

nP F'

PtcpP n NP F
-m
vP Ptcp noun

PRO verb

(45) rejected structure for relatives

FP

nP F'

PtcpP n NP F
-m
vP Ptcp noun

subject-INS vP

verb

Relatives with a covert subject and with an instrumental subject cannot

reasonably be analyzed as nominals, as in (44) and (45), however: They
show no independently verifiable nominal properties whatsoever (recall that
they do not trigger the appearance of the possessive suffix on the head noun
either). We consider this to be an insurmountable problem for the nominalizer
analysis of -m, and therefore reject it. This leads us to conclude that -m is best
treated as an exponent of a verbal head, which we will call Ptcp. In the
remainder of the chapter we explore the details of this analysis.
     187

8.5 A verbal analysis of -m

In the traditional grammars and in some recent descriptive studies

(cf. GSUJa I, 1962; Kalinina, 2001; Brykina & Aralova, 2012; Serdobolskaya
et al., 2012) two different -m suffixes were assumed: one that appears in
participial RCs and another that surfaces in verbal gerunds (RNs with -m are
not discussed in these studies in detail). In light of the participle-nominalizer
polysemy discussed in Section 8.1, however, we will pursue a unified analysis
for the suffix of -m-relatives and -m-nominalizations. Below we spell out our
proposal regarding relative clauses, verbal gerunds, and result nouns.

8.5.1 Participial RCs

With -m as a spell-out of a head in the extended VP, the core structure of

participial RCs can be depicted as in (46). (As the Udmurt extended NP is
generally head-final, we assume that FP is also a head-final projection, but
nothing hinges on this.) We suggest that internal to the nonfinite PtcpP, no
structural case is available for the subject. As a result, the subject can appear
only if it is demoted to a PP-adjunct (47).

(46) FP

PtcpP F'

vP Ptcp NP F
-m
verb noun

(47) FP

PtcpP F'

vP Ptcp NP F
-m
PP vP noun

subject-INS verb

As already mentioned in Section 8.3, descriptive grammars also discuss

relatives which feature an overt genitive subject and possessive agreement on
the head noun.
188 ˊ ˊˊ   

(48) [Pet’a-len tue mertt-em] pispu-ez umoj bude.

Petya- this.year plant-m tree-:3 well grow..3
‘The tree planted by Petya this year is growing well.’
(Georgieva, 2018: 60)

We suggest, however, that these examples have been misanalyzed: In contrast

to instrumental NPs, genitive NPs are not true subjects of the relative.
Evidence in favor of this conclusion is found in the relative order of nominal
modifiers in the Udmurt DP. The basic order of N-modifiers is (49).

(49) possessor > demonstrative > participial RC > numeral > adjective >
noun

As demonstratives follow possessors but precede relatives, they can be used to

test the position of genitive NPs. It turns out to be the case that a genitive NP
can only precede the demonstrative (which in turn precedes the relative) (50).
Instrumental subjects, on the other hand, are clearly in the RC (51).

(50) a. Pet’a-len ta [tue mertt-em] pispu-ez umoj

Petya-this this.year plant-m tree-:3 well
bude.
grow..3
b. ??Ta [tue Pet’a-len mertt-em] pispu-ez umoj
this this.year Petya- plant-m tree-:3 well
bude.
grow..3
‘This tree planted by Petya this year is growing well.’

(51) Ta [kil̮ ’em ar-in̮ peśataj-en pukt-em] korka

this last year- grandfather- build-m house
tolon džuaz.
yesterday burn..3
‘This house built by grandfather last year burned down yesterday.’

This shows that genitive NPs occupy a different position from instrumental
subjects: While the latter are inside the relative, the former are not. We
conclude from the contrast above that the genitive NP is merged outside of
the relative, in the ordinary possessor position of the head noun (i.e. Spec,DP).
     189

The reader will recall that possessors bear genitive case by default, but
possessors of objects have to be ablative marked (17). Crucially, ‘genitive subjects’
of relatives modifying an NP in object position must also switch to ablative.

(52) a. Pet’a-len/*leś mertt-em pispu-ez umoj bude.

Petya-/ plant-m tree-:3 well grow..3
‘The tree planted by Petya is growing well.’
b. Pet’a-*len/leś mertt-em pispu-ze kora-j.
Petya-/ plant-m tree-:3. cut-.1
‘I cut the tree planted by Petya.’

As we analyze the genitive NP as a possessor, this is exactly what we predict (no

such prediction is made if the genitive NP is an RC-internal subject, however).
The case facts thus support our proposal from yet another angle. A further pay-off
of our account is that the obligatory possessive agreement between the ‘genitive
subject’ and the head noun can receive a simple, natural explanation: This is a
garden-variety (local) possessive agreement between a possessor and a possessum.
Further support for the posssessor analysis of the genitive NP comes from
inanimate subjects. Crucially, they are degraded in the genitive, but fully
grammatical in the instrumental case (53).

(53) a. ??[zor-len miśk-em] śures-ez

rain- wash-m road-:3
‘the road washed by the rain’
b. [zor-en miśk-em] śures
rain- wash-m road
‘the road washed by the rain’ (Georgieva, 2018: 62)

We argue that this falls out from the possessor analysis: The inanimate NP
cannot be construed as a possessor (even in a very vague possessor relation), as
it has a [cause] thematic role.¹⁴

¹⁴ Although the possessive relationship might be rather vague, it is impossible to establish such a
relationship between a [cause] NP and an NP affected by the [cause]. Thus, (i) cannot have the
intended meaning:
(i) zor-len śures-ez
rain- road-:3
*‘the road destroyed/washed/cleaned by the rain’
A reviewer remarks that (53) is possibly an instantiation of the so-called ‘Direct Participation Effect’
(DPE) (Sichel, 2010), whereby prenominal genitives and by-phrases of derived nominals must encode a
direct participant in the event (cf. the hurricane’s destruction of our crops vs. *the hurricane’s
190 ˊ ˊˊ   

With the genitive NP sitting outside of the RC, we must answer the question
of why examples containing such NPs are normally ambiguous between a
possessor reading and a subject reading.

(54) mil’am mertt-em pispu-os-mi ̮

1. plant-m tree--:1
‘the trees that we planted’ (subject reading)
‘our trees planted (by someone)’ (possessor reading)
(Georgieva & Ótott-Kovács, 2016: 56)

It has been known for a long time that possessive structures do not necessarily
express possession proper. Instead, they code an underspecified relationship
between the possessor and the possessee, the nature of which is interpreted
based on the context (Williams, 1981). Thus possessive structures may express
a family relationship (my father), a part-whole relationship (the roof of the
house), a thematic relationship (the city’s destruction), authorship (my book
which I wrote), and other vague, entirely context-based relationships as well
(my train leaves in an hour). Similar uses of possessive constructions are
attesed in Udmurt as well (see Edygarova, 2010, for discussion). Thus, following
Kratzer (1996), we suggest that in Udmurt, too, agentivity or actorhood is one
of the ways in which the underspecified possessive relationship can be under-
stood (see also the references in Borer, Chapter 6, fn. 5). As an alternative to this
pragmatic linking of possessor to subject, syntactic linking is also possible when
the possessor in Spec,DP binds a covert subject inside the RC. In this way, our
proposal is similar to Kornfilt’s (2015) analysis of a type of RC in Sakha & Ótott-
Kovács’s (2019) analysis of Kazakh RCs.
The alternative analysis, namely, that the genitive NP is the subject of the RC,
has received a lot of attention in literature, see Hale (2002), Kornfilt (2005, 2015),
Aygen (2011), Asarina & Hartman (2011), Ótott-Kovács (2016) on Altaic
languages; and Nikolaeva (1999), Ackerman & Nikolaeva (2013) on Northern
Khanty. If the genitive NP is indeed the subject, then the question arises why

justification of the evacuation). However, the [cause] NP in (53) is the direct causer of the event, thus
the DPE cannot explain the ungrammaticality of (53a). Even more strikingly, verbal gerunds allow for
[cause] subjects:
(ii) [Zor-len śures-ez miśk-em-ez-li̮] gurto-os šumpoto.
rain- road- wash-m-:3- villager- be.happy..3
‘The villagers are happy about the rain’s washing of the road.’
We interpret this as additional support for the analysis presented in this chapter, namely, that the
genitive NP that appears with RCs is a possessor, but the genitive NP of gerunds is a subject.
     191

agreement is marked on the head noun and not on the participle, instantiating a
non local agreement pattern. We refer the reader to the studies mentioned above
for discussion of various proposals regarding this agreement pattern, but we do
not discuss them in detail since in our view, the Udmurt data do not support the
subject analysis of genitive NPs, thus the placement of agreement on the head
noun is not unexpected. In our view, relative clauses with a ‘genitive subject’ have
the structure shown in (55), i.e. they are garden-variety possessives with a
participial RC modifier.

(55) RCs with ‘genitive subjects’

DP

NP-GEN D'

FP D
Poss
PtcpP F'

vP Ptcp NP F
-m
PRO verb noun

To summarize, we propose that -m-relatives are extended nonfinite VPs (with

no nominalization involved). These relatives can occur without overt subjects
and with instrumental subjects. In contrast to the previous descriptions,
however, there are no relatives with genitive subjects: The genitive NP is
merged outside of the relative, as a possessor of the head noun.

8.5.2 Verbal gerunds

Let us now turn to the analysis of verbal gerunds with -m. Earlier we estab-
lished that -m is a verbal head, thus the core of all -m phrases is (56).

(56) [PtcpP vP Ptcp=-m]

We have also seen that gerunds have an external nominal distribution:

They take possessive marking and case marking and also combine with
postpositions. Nouny syntax is also observable on their left edge: Their subject
bears genitive case and participates in the genitive—ablative alternation, like
possessors do. However, the rest of the internal syntax of gerunds is not
192 ˊ ˊˊ   

nouny: They resist adjectival and demonstrative modification as well as plural

marking. We suggest that this set of properties naturally falls out from an
indirect nominalization structure in which PtcpP is directly embedded under
D. Example (57) is essentially also the structure proposed for English verbal
gerunds in Alexiadou et al. (2011) and Alexiadou (2013).

(57) Verbal gerunds

DP

NP-gen D'

PtcpP D
Poss
vP Ptcp
-m
object-acc verb

A further argument in favor of analyzing Udmurt gerunds as topped off only

by a DP, without an nP and other nominal layers, comes from verb agreement
patterns. As discussed in Abney (1987: 111–12), coordinating English verbal
gerunds and that-clauses licenses singular agreement on the verb, whereas
coordinated nominal gerunds license plural agreement. Applying this to
Udmurt, we see that with coordinated gerunds only singular morphology is
licit (58), in contrast to coordinated DPs, which trigger plural morphology on
the verb (59).

(58) [Pet’a-len peśanaj-ez-li ̮ emjum

Petya- father’s.mother-:3- medicine.
baśa-m-ez] no [Maša-len čužanaj-ez-li ̮
buy-m-:3 and Masha- mother’s.mother-:3-
śaśka pukt-em-ez] min̮ im
̮ kel’še/
flower. plant-m-:3 1. appeal..3
*kel’šo.
appeal..3
‘I like/approve of Petya’s buying medicine for his grandmother and
Masha’s planting flowers for her grandmother.’

(59) Pet’a-len suzer-ez no Maša-len

Petya- younger.sister-:3 and Masha-
apaj-ez min̮ im
̮ *kel’še/ kel’šo.
older.sister-:3 1. appeal..3 appeal..3
‘I like Petya’s younger sister and Masha’s older sister.’
     193

The DP layer makes it possible for the -m phrase to appear in nominal

positions. As an added benefit, it also provides a position, i.e. Spec,DP,
where the subject of PtcpP can move and receive (genitive) case. This amounts
to saying that gerunds are derived possessive structures. That Spec,DP is a
derived position for the subject is supported by the fact that subject idiom
chunks used in gerunds retain their idiomatic meaning (we adopt this test
from Baker, 2011). In (60), we use the idiom porpios ib̮ il̮ iśko ‘wood is cracking
from the cold’ (lit. ‘the Mari boys are shooting’):¹⁵

(60) Context: Today it was a very cold winter day.

Azbar-e potem val=no, porpi-os-leś
yard- go.out..1 .= Mari.boy--
i̮b-i̮l-iśk-em-zes kil̮ i-̮ sa, berlań korka
shoot---m-:3. hear- back house.
pir̮ -i.
go.in-.1
‘I went out to the yard, but after I heard the wood’s cracking from the
cold, I went back inside.’

The reader will recall that in participial RCs the subject may be marked with
instrumental case (40a). This is not possible in gerunds, however: Here the
subject must bear genitive case. We propose that this is because demoting the
subject to a PP-adjunct in Udmurt is a last resort operation which is employed
only if there is no available structural case. We argued that relative clauses are
bare PtcpPs, that is, nonfinite clauses. As such, they have no structural case for
a subject. Therefore the subject either has to be covert (PRO) or if it is to
appear overtly, it must be included in a(n instrumental) PP. In verbal gerunds,
however, PtcpP is embedded directly under a DP, and in this mixed projection
there is structural case available for the subject in Spec,DP. The last-resort
operation of subject demotion is therefore not employed here.
Our proposal provides a unified analysis for participial RCs and gerunds:
They feature the same verbal head Ptcp, which -m expones. PtcpP appears on its
own in RCs and is part of a mixed extended projection in gerunds. As said at the
beginning of this section, recent descriptive studies (Serdobolskaya et al., 2012;
Brykina & Aralova, 2012) have argued against unifying RCs and gerunds.
One of their arguments was the possibility of instrumental subjects in RCs,

¹⁵ Thus Udmurt gerunds are analyzed as raising structures. On control structures in verbal gerunds,
see Coon & Royer (Chapter 7).
194 ˊ ˊˊ   

in contrast to gerunds. Our analysis overcomes this potential problem. The

aforementioned studies also point out two further differences between RCs and
gerunds, which concern: (i) their temporal orientation and (ii) negation.
Serbobolskaya et al. (2012) and Brykina & Aralova (2012) argue that -m relatives
always express an event completed before the time of the matrix predicate, while
-m-gerunds can express not only an anterior event, but also a simultaneous one
when selected by perception verbs. Georgieva (2018: 53–5) has shown that
gerunds express events whose starting point is anterior to a reference time
(thus, we are dealing with relative time, i.e. aspect), but the event need not be
completed prior to this reference time. Thus, gerunds are compatible with
perception verbs, giving the false appearance of expressing a simultaneous
event. Their second argument is that in the Beserman dialect of Udmurt they
investigate, negation is only possible with relatives, but not with gerunds.
However, the differences with respect to negation are absent from other dialects
of Udmurt as well as from the standard variety (see Georgieva, 2018: 65).
As we have already seen, -m-relatives and -m-gerunds both interact with
possessive agreement. Following Baker (2011), we assume that possessive agree-
ment features are bundled with the D head. Relatives without an overt subject
and with an instrumental subject do not trigger possessive agreement
(Section 8.3.4). Their structure does not involve a DP as RCs are bare PtcpPs
(46). We proposed that relatives with a ‘genitive subject’ involve a noun
modified separately by a relative (which has no overt subject) and a relative
clause external possessor (61). In these cases possessive agreement appears on
the head noun because the head-final DP tops off the extended projection of
N. Finally, verbal gerunds were also argued to involve a possessive D, with PtcpP
in the complement position and the subject of the vP moving to Spec,DP (62).
In this case the possessive agreement is linearized on the participial verb because
the head-final DP tops off a mixed projection that bottoms out in the verb.

(61) RCs with ‘genitive subjects’

DP

NP-GEN RC D'

FP D
Poss
PtcpP F'

vP Ptcp NP F
-m
PRO verb noun
     195

(62) Verbal gerunds

VP/PP

V/P DP

NP-geni D'

PtcpP D
Poss
vP Ptcp
-m
ti verb

To summarize, the possessive agreement appears on the verb+m complex in

gerunds but the verb of -m-relatives is unmarked (with possible agreement on N).
In spite of appearances, however, in our analysis the placement of possessive
agreement is governed by the same rule in RCs and gerunds: In both cases it is
hosted on D and is linearized on the head of the extended projection.
In Section 8.2 we also sketched a possible analysis in which a PtcpP modifies
a covert noun, either as a relative clause or as a complement to the covert
N (which would have the meaning ‘fact’ or ‘event’), and this gives the mistaken
impression that PtcpP is nominalized. Let us now examine if an analysis along
these lines is viable for the Udmurt phrases discussed in this section.
A structure in which a participial clause is merged as the complement of a
covert noun has been suggested to be part of the grammar of several Altaic
languages, e.g. Dagur (Hale, 2002), Modern Standard Turkish (Aygen, 2011),
Japanese (Maki & Uchibori, 2008), and Uyghur (Asarina & Hartman, 2011).
While we do not doubt that this structure is possible in natural languages, the
Udmurt data do not seem to lend themselves to this analysis. This is because
participial complements of overt nouns do not seem to be attested in Udmurt,
in contrast to Uyghur, Korean, and Kazym Khanty (see Kim, 2009; Asarina &
Hartman, 2011; Starchenko, 2019). An analysis that posits nouns with no
phonological exponent and with different selectional properties from what is
otherwise attested for overt Ns in the language simply lacks empirically solid
foundations. Furthermore, as argued by Moulton (Chapter 11), predicates like
true/false and believe/know/say require NP arguments (possibly comprising a
covert N with a clausal complement); mixed projections cannot be used with
these predicates. This holds for Udmurt, too (63).
196 ˊ ˊˊ   

(63) [Kol’a-len tolon kik̮ pispu mertt-em-ez] šońer

Kolya- yesterday two tree. plant-m-:3 true
e̮ve̮l.
.
*‘That Kolya planted two trees yesterday is just plain false.’ (e.g. because
I know that he planted three)16

That Udmurt gerunds cannot appear with true/false, and believe/know/say

constitutes a further counter argument against treating them as complements
of a covert N.¹⁷ Thus we will not explore this route any further here.
Udmurt overt nouns do, however, take participial RC modifiers (see
Section 8.5.1), therefore an analysis in which an ordinary participial RC
modifies a covert N (and hence gives the impression of nominalization)
would be compatible with independently known properties of the language.
This is depicted in (65).

(64) [FP [PtcpP verb-m] F [NP N]]-Poss relative

(65) [FP [PtcpP verb-m] F [NP covert N]]-Poss ‘gerund’

(relative with a covert head)

Asarina & Hartman (2011) argue that (65) is the structure of some participial
expressions in Uyghur. In this language the posited covert nouns freely
alternate with the corresponding overt lexical nouns without a change in
meaning. In Udmurt we do not attest a regular alternation between overt
and covert nouns in the case of verbal gerunds. The ‘hidden relative’ analysis
of verbal gerunds in (65) thus would be most plausible if it relied on a single
general, all-purpose covert (light) noun; essentially the covert counterpart of
Korean kes (Kim, 2009) or Kazym Khanty wεr (Starchenko, 2019).
Similarly to the mixed projection approach, the hidden RC analysis could
also account for the placement of possessive of morphology in an elegant way.
With a covert N, as in (65), the obligatory nominal suffixes (Poss, Case) attach
to the linearly adjacent participial verb for phonological support at PF

¹⁶ The example is grammatical, but only with the meaning: ‘That Kolya planted two trees yesterday
was wrong/(a) bad (idea)’.
¹⁷ The Udmurt equivalents of believe/know/say typically select for finite complements. In
Section 8.3, we saw that todi̮ni̮ ‘to know’ can select for gerunds as well, but this verb can also mean
‘find out’, ‘guess’, or ‘recognize’, so it is plausible to assume that it is not a direct equivalent of English
know.
     197

(cf. Asarina & Hartman’s 2011, analysis of the Uyghur data). Alternatively, we
could envision a (postsyntactic) operation that displaces the possessive
morphology from the light noun onto the participial verb of the RC.¹⁸
There are a number of considerations, however, which make this approach
less attractive to us than the mixed projection analysis. First, as already
mentioned, the free alternation between overt and covert nouns in Uyghur
is not attested with Udmurt gerunds, and the existence of an overt light noun
in Kazym Khanty and Korean does not make it necessary that Udmurt has a
covert counterpart of this lexical item. Second, (65) posits a nominal head to
Udmurt gerunds, but as already discussed, these phrases lack genuine nominal
properties (such as adjectival or demonstrative modification). This property
could perhaps be ascribed to the light noun, though it would be difficult
to independently confirm the correctness of this assumption. Third, if
-m-gerunds involve ordinary, noun-modifying relatives, then it is difficult to
see why they disallow instrumental subjects: In the approach outlined in (64)
and (65) the participles are expected to have identical internal properties.
Finally, this approach also falls short of explaining why verbal gerunds in
object position must be marked with overt accusative case. Udmurt is a DOM
language, with indefinite/nonspecific objects being unmarked. The obligatory
accusative suffix on gerunds is predicted on the mixed projection analysis
advanced here, since their structure necessarily includes a DP (cf. also Ótott-
Kovács, 2016, on Kazakh).

8.5.3 Result nouns

Turning to result nouns, we have seen that they exhibit the internal syntax of
nouns, including the possibility of pluralization as well as adjectival and
demonstrative modification. Under the mixed projection analysis of verbal
gerunds we attributed the lack of such nouny properties to an indirect
nominalization structure (66), in which there is no nominalizer proper in
the structure. Thus in the mixed projection analysis RNs would be best treated
as direct nominalizations of PtcpP (67).

¹⁸ Aygen (2011) proposes that nominalizations similar to Udmurt gerunds in Modern Standard
Turkish also contain a covert head noun. Crucially, however, agreement in Modern Standard Turkish
RCs is marked on the participial verb, and not on the head noun, in contrast to Udmurt. We will leave
open the question of the (cross-linguistic) variation between these patterns.
198 ˊ ˊˊ   

(66) Verbal gerund (67) Result noun

DP DP

PtcpP D NumP D

vP Ptcp nP Num
-m
PtcpP n
ø
VP Ptcp
-m

The nominalizer in (67) allows for the emergence of nominal modifiers. The
suffix -m attaches directly to VP. On the assumption that arguments are
licensed by higher functional structure, this accounts for the fact that RNs
do not have arguments. In (67) the small verbal structure of RNs correlates with
their large nominal layer. In gerunds, on the other hand, we observe the reverse
situation: rich verbal structure and only one nominal projection. This trade-off
between the size of the nominal and verbal layers is predicted by Alexiadou
et al.’s (2010) proposal that AspP and NumP (hosting the plural marker) are in
complementary distribution in nominalizations. (See also Wiltschko, 2014,
where verbal aspect and nominal plurality both code ‘point of view’.)
While (67) could be a plausible analysis of result nouns in general, this clearly
cannot be the whole story in the case of Udmurt. In Section 8.3.2 we saw that
certain RNs can feature the intransitivizing/anticausative -śk voice morpheme or
the -t (external) causative suffix.¹⁹ These RNs must be bigger than VP. The
following examples are from Kirillova’s (2008) dictionary.

(68) piž̮ -iśk-em, baśa-śk-em

bake--m buy--m
‘pastry, goods/purchase’

(69) a. kin̮ -t-em, pir̮ gi-̮ t-em, sul’a-t-em

freeze--m crumb--m bake/fry/melt--m
‘ice-cream, a type of sauerkraut, a type of omelette’
b. be̮t’ir̮ -t-em, žal’tir̮ -t-em, dźil’ir̮ -t-em, dźabil̮ ’-t-em
--m --m --m --m
‘babbling/prattling, strumming, twitting/strumming, splashing/chirp’

¹⁹ The -śk suffix is investigated in detail in Kozmács (2008) and Tánczos (2017). On the -t
morpheme, see Tánczos (2016).
     199

The intransitivizing/anticausative and the external causative morpheme have

in common that they alter the argument structure of the base verb by remov-
ing or adding arguments. As shown in (26a), verbal morphology that operates
on top of a full argument structure, e.g. frequentative morphology, is illicit
with RNs. In order to accommodate -śk and -t, we might envisage a structure
that contains a VoiceP or CauseP (70).

(70) Rejected structure for result nouns

DP

NumP D

nP Num

PtcpP n
ø
VoiceP Ptcp
-m
vP Voice
- ś k
verb

If however, we allow for RNs to contain a larger chunk of verbal structure,

then it becomes impossible to exclude the appearance of arguments or adver-
bial modifiers.
As the mixed projection analysis of RNs either cannot accommodate the
argument structure changing morphology (67), or it wrongly predicts argu-
ment structure and adverbial modification (70), it is worth exploring the
alternative whereby RNs arise from a PtcpP modifying a covert noun. As
was mentioned in Section 8.5.2, Udmurt nouns do not take PtcpP comple-
ments, therefore an analysis with a covert N is plausible only if the PtcpP is a
relative modifier:

(71) [FP [PtcpP verb-m] [F [NP covert N]]] ‘RN’ (relative with a covert head)

One of the reasons why something like (71) was not attractive for verbal
gerunds was that the posited covert N does not alternate with overt Ns. In
the case of RNs, however, we do attest this alternation: The nouns following
the -m forms in (72) can be omitted without a change in meaning.
200 ˊ ˊˊ   

(72) a. kul-em ~ kul-em murt; mertć-em ~ mertć-em pu

die-m die-m person sink-m sink-m wood
‘dead person’ ‘splinter’
b. piž̮ -iśk-em ~ piž̮ -iśk-em make ~ piž̮ -em make
bake--m bake--m thing bake-m thing
‘pastry’
c. kin̮ -t-em ~ kin̮ -t-em je̮l
freeze--m freeze--m milk
‘ice-cream’

Numerous similar examples are also listed in Kalinina (2001: 26–31); there
they are treated as the juxtaposition of a deverbal noun and a noun. The nouns
that co-occur with RNs in her examples can be grouped semantically into time
and place-denoting nouns as well as abstract nouns such as ‘mood’, ‘reason’,
‘manner/way’, etc.
This makes the analysis of RNs in terms of an underlying RC structure more
plausible than in the case of gerunds. If RNs involve underlying RCs, then we
can also accommodate the intransitivizing/anticausative and the external
causative morpheme: We have seen that this morphology is licit in RCs
(39b). Although the overt nouns in (72) and in Kalinina’s (2001) examples
are semantically light, syntactically they behave like garden-variety nouns:
They allow for pluralization, adjectival modification, etc. If their covert coun-
terparts share these grammatical properties and the difference mainly con-
cerns exponence (which is what we attest with Uyghur covert nouns, cf.
Asarina & Hartman, 2011), then the nouny properties of RNs are also cor-
rectly predicted.
Example (71), however, does not straightforwardly account for the fact that
RNs reject frequentative morphology, adverbial modification and the expres-
sion of the base verb’s subject argument as an instrumental PP. As shown in
Section 8.5.1, ordinary RCs have these properties (because they allow a large
verbal constituent under -m). In other words, the posited covert nouns seem to
correlate with the lack of arguments and modifiers within the relative clause.
We propose that RNs which contain the intransitivizing/anticausative or
the external causative morpheme as well as those which optionally modify
another N (such as those in (72) and the ones listed in Kalinina, 2001),
regardless of whether they contain Voice/Cause morphology, are indeed RCs
of some sort. If an RC+N combination is frequently used (e.g. because this
specific collocation names an everyday household object, a traditional food
     201

item, or an object connected to regularly recurring activities), then this

combination can develop a conventionalized meaning, which can ultimately
lead to a shortening of the phrase by dropping the head noun (which, we have
seen, is often semantically quite light anyway). Examples such as džoktem lit.
spooled ‘ball of yarn’, sul’atem lit. baked ‘omelette’, kin̮ tem lit. frozen ‘ice-
cream’, kulem lit. dead ‘dead person’, pir̮ git̮ em lit. chopped ‘chopped and
pickled cabbage’, kil̮ ’em lit. left ‘leftovers’, etc., are, in our view, outputs of
this process.²⁰ A conventionalized meaning can emerge and the RC+N com-
bination can function as a generic name of a kind when the semantic content
of the RC is general enough to allow this, that is, it does not contain any
modifiers that would lead to an episodic reading. An overtly expressed instru-
mental subject, an adverbial modifier, or the frequentative morphology will
usually lead to an episodic reading, and so the N modified by such an RC will
refer to a particular object in the world.²¹ That is, these modifiers are perfectly
licit in RCs, including RCs projected by the base-verb of RNs, but the modified
noun will not have a general, kind-denoting meaning in their presence, and
therefore it will not be omissible either.
While we take RNs with the intransitivizing/anticausative or the external
causative morpheme and RNs freely juxtaposed to other nouns to be RCs in
disguise, we leave open the possibility that other RNs (comprising just the base
verb plus -m and not appearing in the juxtaposed construction) are mixed
projections along the lines of (67). In Section 8.3.3 we discussed RNs derived
from intransitive verbs. As they do not feature voice and causative morph-
ology and they are more transparent semantically than the ones discussed in
this section, it might be the case that these RNs instantiate the direct nomin-
alization structure depicted in (67). If this is on the right track, then it might
turn out that RNs in Udmurt have different underlying structures. We leave
this question open for future research.

8.6 Conclusion

The central problem addressed in this chapter was how to capture the cross-
linguistically widespread participle-nominalization polysemy in a principled,
structure-based account. We outlined three ways to unify participles and

²⁰ Over time, these short RCs with a covert head can grammaticalize into regular, morphologically
nondecomposable nouns.
²¹ The object of the participial verb will not appear within the RC either, as the object corresponds to
the overt or covert head noun and it is therefore necessarily unexpressed in the RC.
202 ˊ ˊˊ   

nominalizations which share the same suffix, and as a case study, we explored
which of these is most suitable to capture the facts in Udmurt. We discarded
the possibility of analyzing the suffix -m of participles and nominalizations as a
nominalizer, and concluded that this suffix is a verbal head, with gerunds
involving mixed projections. Although still refinable in various ways, our
proposal can serve as a basis on which to attempt a nonstipulative approach
to the participle-nominalization polysemy in other languages as well.

Acknowledgments

Our names appear in alphabetical order. We wish to thank our informants for being
generous with their time and making this research possible. This material is based upon
work supported by grants NKFIH KKP 129921, NKFIH FK 125206, and PPD-011/2017,
which is gratefully acknowledged.
 9
Relative nominals and event
nominals in Hiaki
Heidi Harley

Remarks on Nominalization centered on the question of whether certain

derived nominals should be derived from underlying clauses, the ‘transform-
ational’ approach, or base-generated in their nominal form. Given the conclusion
that many complex nominals should be base-generated in their nominal form,
the parallels between the phrase structural behavior of the corresponding verbal
and nominal forms led to the proposal that phrase structure itself was best
understood as an acategorial template—X-bar theory. It was the beginning of
the end for language-specific syntactic rules, and the beginning of the beginning
for a universal syntactic theory.
Since then, however, it has become common to suppose that derivational
morphemes take phrasal (though not necessarily ‘clausal’) complements (e.g.
Miyagawa, 1998; Alexiadou, 2001, 2009; Borer, 2003, 2005a,b). In such pro-
posals, the head of the embedded phrasal category is typically supposed to
head-move and adjoin to the affix which projects the derivational phrasal
category, resulting in the affixation of the derivational morpheme to its base,
and effecting the category change triggered by the affix, if any.
An important conceptual advance facilitated this development, namely
the discovery that the clausal category (‘S’, or CP) consisted of a detailed
hierarchy of projections intervening between the root node and the VP node.
This allowed analysts to contemplate many subtle variations on a ‘clausal’
complement, each with varying properties: A CP complement would exhibit
different properties than a TP, vP, or VP complement. Besides break-
throughs in our understanding of the morphosyntax of causatives and
event nominals, key advances were made in ‘purely’ syntactic areas such
as restructuring (Wurmbrand, 2003) or control vs. raising infinitives
(Sigurðsson, 1989).

Heidi Harley, Relative nominals and event nominals in Hiaki In: Nominalization: 50 Years on from Chomsky’s Remarks.
Edited by: Artemis Alexiadou and Hagit Borer, Oxford University Press (2020). © Heidi Harley.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198865544.003.0009
204  

Many cases of category-changing derivational morphology in this phrasal

approach involve a nominalizer taking a phrasal complement at or within
the level of ‘first-phase’ syntax (Ramchand, 2008): the VoiceP, vP, VP,
√P-projections that between them account for the syntactic and semantic
properties of the constituent corresponding to the traditional verb phrase,
see e.g. Borer (1993, 2003), Kratzer (1994, 1996), Alexiadou (2001, 2009), and
many others. Less work has considered nominalization of constituents larger
than VoiceP, but Alexiadou (2001) laid the foundations for investigation of
nominalized phrases in the verbal extended projection that include at least
AspP, in Greek (Alexiadou, 2011b), Romanian, Polish, Bulgarian, German,
and Spanish (Alexiadou et al., 2010), Cherokee (Stone, 2012), and other
languages; see Kornfilt & Whitman (2011b) for a cross-linguistic overview.
Such nominalizations are predicted to exhibit many clausal characteristics
internally—mandatory argument realization, adverbial modification, uncon-
strained verb class—but nominal characteristics externally.
I build on these developments to argue that Hiaki possesses nominalizations
of this type, embedding (outer) AspP but not higher projections, such as TP or
CP, supporting the conclusions of Martínez Fabian & Langendoen (1996) and
Álvarez González (2012). Although they are not ‘true’ relative clauses, I also
argue that the filler-gap structure evident in most of them requires an
operator-movement treatment.
Interestingly, although these constructions are usually predicates of indi-
viduals, a subset are event nominalizations. The event nominalizations are for
the most part constructed from argumentless predicates—weather predicates
and impersonal passives. Building on this observation, I propose that the
nominalizing head is an identity predicate, reifying the outermost unsaturated
argument in the nominalized projection, whether it is an entity (relative
reading) or an event (event-nominal reading). I follow Kraus (2001) in
suggesting that the assignment of genitive case to the subject conditions the
allomorphy of the main exponents of the nominalizing head.
I argue, building on Álvarez González (2012), that these clausal forms
behave externally as unexceptional nouns, hence the term ‘nominalization’ is
appropriate. However, I also argue that the syntactic patterns in the entity-
denoting nominalizations requires an analysis involving lambda-abstraction
over a saturated predicate, characteristic of relative clauses. Hence, Kraus’s
term ‘reduced relative clause’ is also appropriate. I compromise on ‘relative
nominal’ as a descriptive term.
        205

9.1 Hiaki relative nominals: nP embedding AspP

Hiaki is a Uto-Aztecan language spoken in Sonora, Mexico, and the south-

western US. It is SOV and agglutinating, with a nominative-accusative case
system, and shows concord for case and number within the DP. Although it
has ‘lexical’ nominalizers, such as-reo, an agentive nominalizer borrowed from
Spanish-ero, it frequently derives nouns and adjectives from verbs by means of
suffixes which preserve the base verb’s argument structure (modulating what-
ever changes the suffix itself imposes).
Three types of suffixes have been called ‘relativizers’ in Hiaki (e.g. by
Dedrick & Casad, 1999: 370). Subject ‘relatives’ are formed by adding the
suffix -me to a verb, object and oblique ‘relatives’ are formed with -‘u, and
locative ‘relatives’ are formed with -‘Vpo or -‘Vwi/-‘u. Below, we see pairs of
examples, the first illustrating the declarative clause corresponding to the
relative nominal form, the second the relative nominal itself. As is the case
for adjectives in Hiaki, relative nominals can be freely used without a head
noun. No relative pronoun is in evidence.

(1) Subject-referring relative nominals with -me:

a. Peo usita mahta.
Peo usi-ta mahta
Pete. child- teach
‘Pete is teaching the child.’
b. Uu usita mahtame
Uu usi-ta mahta-me
The. child- teach-.
‘The one who is teaching the child’

(2) Object-referring relative nominals with -‘u:

a. Vempo aa teak.
Vempo aa=tea-k
3. 3.=find-
‘They found it.’
b. Vem teaka’u
Vem tea-ka-‘u
3. found--.
‘What they found’
206  

(3) Oblique-referring relative nominals (with resumption) with -‘u:

a. Vempo aetuk yeu yoemtuk.
Vempo ae-tuk yeu yoem-tu-k
3. it-under out person-become-
‘They were born under it (referring to the nurturing earth)’
b. Vem aetuk yeu yoemtuka’u
Vem ae-tuk yeu yoem-tu-ka-‘u
3. it-under out person-became-.
‘(The land) in which they were born (which nurtured them)’

(4) Location-referring relative nominals (syntactically PPs) with -‘Vpo:

a. Empo hunum karimpo hoakan
Empo hunu-m kari-m-po hoa-kan
2. - house--in live-.
‘You have lived in those houses.’
b. Em hoaka’apo
Em hoa-ka-‘apo
2. live--.
‘Where you have lived’ (Álvarez González, 2012: 78)

Álvarez González (2012) argues that these forms should all be considered
nominalizations, rather than relative clauses. Martínez Fabian & Langendoen
(1996) come to a similar conclusion for the -me forms based on the fact that
perception verbs can take -me forms as complements, but suggest that -‘u forms
are true relative clauses; they do not address -‘Vpo constructions.
The core of the argument presented by Álvarez González (2012) is that these
forms exhibit most of the external morphological and syntactic properties of
Hiaki noun phrases. In particular, he provides extensive documentation of the
potential for each of these construction types to bear nominal inflection. The -me
forms are inflected for accusative singular when they occur in object position
or as the object of an accusative-assigning preposition. In addition to this,
they may optionally inflect for plural number. The -‘u forms, which refer to
nonsubjects, exhibit a more restricted pattern of nominal inflection. Object-
referring -‘u forms can be marked for plural number. However, the -‘u forms
appear to be unlike regular nouns and -me forms in that they cannot be marked
accusative. I contend, however, that this is not unexpected. Rather, it is a subcase
of a general property of Hiaki noun phrases: Object noun phrases with genitive
possessors usually fail to inflect for accusative case (Estrada-Fernandez &
        207

Álvarez González, 2008; Sanchez et al., 2017). Since object relative nominals
must express their subject arguments, and since those subject arguments are
marked with genitive case (e.g. vem, ‘their’ in (2b)), the failure of -‘u forms to take
accusative is a subcase of the general incompatibility of a genitive DP with
accusative marking on the head noun. Hence, even when they cannot bear
nominal inflection, Hiaki relative nominals show the morphosyntactic patterns
of underived nouns.
More evidence that these forms behave like underived nouns can be seen when
they appear in predicate position. Adjectival and nominal predicates in Hiaki
may occur bare in present tense (5a), but in order to be marked with other TAM
suffixes, they must first be verbalized by the copular verbalizer -tu, ‘be/become’ (5b):

(5) a. Hunuu kari. b. Hunuu’u karitukan.

Hunuu’u kari Hunuu’u kari-tu-kan
That. house That house--.
‘That is a house.’ ‘That was a house.’

In (6) we see -tu reverbalizing a -me nominal for use as an inflected predicate:

(6) Uu ili uusi weemtuka veha vuivuititaitek.

uu ili uusi wee-m-tu-ka=veha vui-vuiti-taite-k
The little child. walk-.--=then -run.-begin-
‘The little child, having learned to walk, is starting to run.’
lit. ‘ . . . having become one who walks’

The subject nominal weem(e), ‘one who walks’, is reverbalized by -tu, permit-
ting the attachment of the participial -k(a).
Similarly, an -‘u relative nominal can occur as a predicate with TAM suffix-
ation as long as it is reverbalized by -tu, as in the following corpus example:

(7) Bweta vat naatekai wa’a bwa’ame ama mana’aname, huna’a vea mukilam
tu’urisuka’utune.
Bwe-ta vat naatekai wa’a bwa’ame ama mana’a-na-me,
Well-but first beginning that food there set-.-.
huna’a=vea mukilam tu’u-ri-su-ka-‘u-tu-ne
that.=then deceased good-find---.--
‘But since the beginning the food set [at the altar] is the kind that the
deceased would have liked.’
(lit. ‘would be that which the deceased found good’) (Leyva, 2019)
208  

The use of -tu- to verbalize -m(e) and -‘u forms is more evidence
that they are nouns, as this is one key category diagnostic in Hiaki (Harley
et al., 2019).
Álvarez González (2012) also notes that these forms are never headed by a
relative pronoun, the hallmark of true relative clauses, and concludes that
these Hiaki constructions should be analyzed as nominalizations rather than
relative clauses. It is unlikely that the verbal suffix can plausibly be treated as a
relative pronoun or determiner. Hiaki DPs are left-headed, with a preceding
D. Hiaki wh-words are similarly left-peripheral; in questions, wh-words
always occur clause-initially, presumably in a specifier of CP. If these forms
were relative clauses and had a wh-pronoun (or other A-bar-moved pronom-
inal element) in Spec, CP, we would expect to see it surface clause-initially, not
as a verbal suffix.
A relative clause analysis might instead posit a null wh-operator in Spec, CP,
and propose that the relative affixes spell out a head-final relativizing C on the
right, agreeing with the wh-operator in its specifier. This would be consistent
with the rigid right-headedness of the Hiaki extended verbal projection. But it
would not explain their external nominal properties.
However, there is other evidence these forms are internally not finite
relative CPs. Neither -me clauses nor -‘u or -‘Vpo forms permit the full
range of TAM suffixes inside the nominalizer. Although irrealis -ne (8a),
(9a) and perfective -k(a) (2b), (3b), (4b) can occur inside the nominalizers,
past -n (8b), (9b) and past perfect -kan cannot (8c), (9c):

(8) a. Uu yoeme eu nokneme ama weyek.

Uu yoeme e-u nok-ne-me ama weyek
The. man. you-to speak--. over.there stand
‘The man who will speak to you is standing over there.’
b. *Uu yoeme eu nokanme . . .
*Uu yoeme e-u noka-n-me . . .
The. man. you-to speak--.
‘The man who was speaking to you . . . ’
c. *Uu yoeme eu nokakanme . . .
*Uu yoeme e-u noka-kan-me . . .
The. man. you-to speak-.-.
‘The man who had been speaking to you . . . ’
        209

(9) a. Humee nava’asom hume kuusim ae a’a kututane’u

humee navá’áso-m hume kúusi-m á-e
The. blade- the. rosary- with it
a’a kutúta-ne’u
3s. carve--.
‘The knife with which he would carve the beads’ (Crumrine, 1961: 23)
b. *In amet tekipanoan’u
*In a-met tekipanoa-n-‘u
1. it-with work--.
‘The thing with which I was working’
c. *In aet tekipanoakan’u
*In ae-t tekipanoa-kan-‘u
1. it-on work-.-.
‘The thing I had been working on’

Although a past interpretation is normally impossible for an uninflected

verb, uninflected verbs in a relative nominal can get either a past or present
reading (10), suggesting that Tense is unspecified.

(10) Uu yoeme eu nokame . . .

Uu yoeme e-u noka-me . . .
The. man. you-to speak-.
‘The man who is/was speaking to you’

The constrained range of TAM inflection inside nominalizations thus also

suggests they are not fully finite relative CPs, but rather a nominalization of a
lower functional projection.¹
The typological conclusions of Kraus (2001) further mitigate against a CP-
analysis of the Hiaki relative nominals. She argues that genitive subject
marking is cross-linguistically a hallmark of a ‘reduced’ relative structure,
reflecting the omission of the nominative-assigning finite TP projection.
Positing a reduced extended projection inside Hiaki relative nominals thus
can explain why object, oblique, and locative relative nominals require
genitive-marked subjects.

¹ This argument is weaker than it could be in that there is a potential phonological reason why these
forms might not surface. Although coda [n] and onset [m] are both well formed in Hiaki, clusters of the
form [n.m] are not attested, so it could be that the inflection is abstractly licit but deleted at the surface
due to phonotactics. Further work is necessary to devise other diagnostics for the presence of the TP
layer. Thanks to A. Álvarez (p.c.) for discussion of this possibility.
210  

Following Kraus, we can ask which of the projections below TP is selected

by these nominalizers. In previous work, Harley & Tubino-Blanco (2013)
proposed the following templatic view of the extended projection of a
Hiaki verb:

(11) V-(V*)-(Derivation*)-Voice/Mood-Asp-Tense-C

They argued that irrealis -ne resides in the Voice head, and that perfective -
k(a) resides in Aspect. Past -n is a realization of Tense. Given that -ne and -ka
are licit, while -n is excluded from these forms, I conclude that AspP is selected
by the nominalizers. This comports with Álvarez González’s (2012) observa-
tion that accusative case (a feature of Voice) and habitual Aspect (indicated by
reduplication of V) and all varieties of derivational suffixation are preserved
inside these nominalizations.
A preliminary structural analysis of subject and object relative nominals is
given in (12). The nominalizing n
head selects an AspP, and the verb head-
moves to it. In the nonsubject relative nominals (12b), the subject DP,
deprived of case within its own clause, raises to Spec, nP (or higher) to receive
genitive case.

(12) a. nP

AspP n

VoiceP Asp

vP Voiceacc

VP v

DP[acc] V

kava’i-ta hahase- ø- ø- ka- me

horse-acc chase pfv S.nmlz
‘one that chased the/ahorse’
        211

b. nP

DP[gen] n’

AspP n

VoiceP Asp

ti Voice’

vP Voice

VP v

vem tea ø- ø- ka ‘u
3pl.gen found pfv o.nmlz
‘one that they found.’

When a relative nominal modifies another head noun, I assume, with

Álvarez González (2012), that it occurs in apposition to the modified noun,
adjoined to the nP and yielding an intersective reading.²
The structures above, however, do not account for the forms’ interpret-
ations, and, relatedly, they have unexplained gaps where arguments should be.
In Hiaki, valency is a rigid property of most predicates. In (12a), the subject
position (Spec, VoiceP) is not realized, although the signs of active Voice and
an external argument are present—no passive markers, accusative case on
kava’ita, ‘horse.’. Similarly in (12b), the object of the transitive verb tea
‘find’ is absent, which otherwise never occurs; overt realization of selected
objects in Hiaki is mandatory. In Section 9.3 a standard operator-movement

² This is thus a ‘matching’ analysis of the filler-gap structure, at least when these relative nominals
occur in apposition with a ‘head’ noun. This predicts the absence of reconstruction effects or idiomatic
interpretations with idiom chunks in the head position; further testing will be needed to investigate
these predictions. I hypothesize, with Álvarez González, that apposition of a relative nominal can yield
the same range of restrictive and nonrestrictive interpretations as ‘true’ relativization, perhaps depend-
ing on the height of attachment of the relative nominal; this issue also requires further investigation. See
also discussion in fn. 5.
212  

account of these gaps is proposed. First, however, we meet a class of nomin-

alizations that appear semantically and syntactically distinct, but are formed
with the same -me suffix as the subject relative nominals already discussed.
They will motivate a proposal for the semantics of nominalizing n.

9.2 The subject nominalizer -me and

abstract/event nominalizations

We now turn to a closer examination of the subject nominalizer -me. As we

have seen, this nominalizer creates relative nominals referring to subjects. It
does not care what theta role that subject argument bears, nor what event type
the verb belongs to. Rather, -me creates nominals that refer to whatever entity
would be the nominative subject of the corresponding declarative, whether
derived or base-generated. That subject argument is mandatorily absent, and
the complex nominal is interpreted as referring to it—the nominative argu-
ment is ‘reified’, in Landau’s (2010a) sense.
For example, as shown in Álvarez González (2005), a passive clause with a
promoted internal argument, which has become the nominative subject (13a),
forms a relative nominal in -me that refers to the promoted internal
argument (13b):

(13) a. Huna’a kesu ama hoowa.

Huna’a kesu ama hoo-wa
That cheese there make-
‘That cheese is made there.’
b. Huna’a kesu ama hoowame
Huna’a kesu ama hoo-wa-me
That cheese there make--.
‘That cheese that is made there.’

Similar patterns obtain for other derived argument structures. If a new

object is added to the clause by applicativization, and then promoted to subject
by passivization, -me suffixation produces a nominal referring to the pro-
moted applied argument. Similarly, if a verb that has an agentive subject is
causativized, the former subject is marked as an object and the causer becomes
the new nominative subject. The -me nominal of such a causative refers to the
nominative causer, not the verbal Agent. In short, if the corresponding
        213

declarative has a nominative subject, -me suffixation creates a nominal that

refers to it, whatever its selectional relation to the main verb.³
Surprisingly, Hiaki also permits subjectless clauses to be suffixed with -me.
Consider an intransitive which has had its nominative subject suppressed by
(impersonal) passivization (15a), available in Hiaki for any intransitive verb
with a human subject (Harley & Jelinek, 2014). This verb has zero valency; it
takes no entity arguments and would translate as an impersonal passive in e.g.
Dutch. Here, affixation with -me yields a nominal that refers to the event
denoted by the zero-valency verb (14b). The best translation is an English
event nominal:

(14) a. Aman nahsuawa.

Aman nahsua-wa
There fight-
‘Fighting is going on there.’ lit. ‘(It) is being fought there.’
b. Hunu’u nahsuawame
hunu’u nahsua-wa-me
that fight--.
‘The fighting’

Importantly, note that in the base sentence in (14a) there is no grammatical

subject. Aman is adverbial, and does not figure in the argument structure of
the sentence. Nonetheless, the supposed ‘subject’ nominalizer creates a nom-
inal referring to the event argument.
Molina et al. (1999) list several Vintr-wa-me forms as translations of English
event nominals, all built from impersonal passives (15). Even these fairly
‘lexicalized’ forms (I call them ‘lexicalized’ since they merited inclusion in
the dictionary) are clearly still clausal nominalizations; consider (15b) for
example, which includes a clausal negator and adverb:

(15) a. aleewame
alee-wa-me
happy--.
‘health, happiness, well-being’

³ Note that this insensitivity to verb type or thematic role, and sensitivity to purely grammatical
roles, is another motivation for deriving these nominals syntactically, taking as a base a larger structure
in the functional domain. Typical examples of ‘lexical’ derivational morphology attend to thematic or
event-structural properties of the stem.
214  

b. kaa ama’ali anwame

kaa ama’ali an-wa-me
not properly do--.
‘sin’, lit. ‘not doing properly’
c. atwame
at-wa-me
laugh--.
‘smiles, laughter’
d. bendisiroawame
bendisir-oa-wa-me
bless-do--.
‘blessing’
e. bwanwame
bwan-wa-me
cry--.
‘crying’
f. yee chupa’awame
yee-chupa’a-wa-me
people-finish--.
‘ambition’
g. eteho-wa-me
speak--.
‘conversation.

The productive character of event nominals in -wa-me is further supported

by nonce forms in natural speech, like these corpus examples:

(16) Kaita wana haksa to’owame.

Kaita wana haksa to’o-wa-me
Nothing from.side somewhere lie.down--.
‘There was no lying down anywhere.’ (Leyva, 2019)

(17) Hunaa intok vat yee varkaroawame

Hunaa=intok vat yee=varkaroa-wa-me
That=and first people=deport--.
‘And that’s when the deportations began.’ (Leyva, 2019)
        215

The forms to’owame and yee varkaroawame do not occur in any dictionary
and do not appear to be lexicalized; they seem to have been created for use in
the moment. As with the previous examples, they are formed from impersonal
passives of intransitive verbs, to’ote ‘lie down’ and the verb yee-varkaroa
‘people-deport’, which has transitive varkaroa as its base but which has been
detransitivized with the incorporation of the indefinite prefix yee- ‘people’.
In previous descriptions (Dedrick & Casad 1999), the -wame sequence is
treated as an unanalyzable event nominalizer. Álvarez González (2005) rec-
ognizes the bimorphemic diachronic source of this form, but suggests that the
abstract event-denoting meaning is due to lexicalization/reanalysis. He pro-
posed that the reanalysis started with transitive-base forms in -wa-me, as in
(12), forms which refer to a patient entity, ‘the one who is Vd’. He proposes
that an abstract sense for the -wame combination was developed via lexicali-
zation: The interpretation ‘the one who is Vd’ lost its concrete denotation via
metonymy and ‘abstractivization’ and came to refer to ‘the result or event of
V-ing’. This new abstractivizing suffix -wame could then apply to intransitive,
yielding the event/Result Nominals typified by (15).
In support of this proposal, Álvarez González (2005: section 3.5.2) exhibits
two transitive-base verbs which have nominalizations in -wame that can either
refer to the promoted patient argument (subject relative denotation) or to the
event or result:

(18) a. Hoan kaarota etbwa.

Hoan kaaro-ta etbwa
Juan car- rob
‘Juan is robbing the car.’
b. etbwawame
etbwa-wa-me
rob--.
‘The one who is robbed’ or ‘The result or action of robbing’
c. Ume yoemem maasom suak.
Ume yoeme-m maaso-m sua-k
The. men- deer- kill.-
d. suawame
sua-wa-me
kill.--.
‘The ones who are being killed’ or ‘the result or action of killing’
216  

In our data, these forms are more the exception than the rule. For example, no
event/result reading is available for my consultants for (12b). For suawame
‘kill-pass-s.nmlz’, (18d), my consultants agree it has the abstract meaning (as
well as the concrete meaning) when presented with the form out of context,
but when asked to generate a sentence using the abstract sense, they prefer
instead the detransitivized form hissuawame, which only has the event/result
meaning. For etbwawame, (18b), they agree that it has the event-denoting
meaning, as in Etbwawame si kaa tu’i ‘Stealing is really not good’, but note that
it can also have the meaning ‘That which is being stolen’; for them, however, it
cannot refer to the person being robbed.
If the event/result readings in (14) and (15) were dependent on a lexical-
ized -wame suffix, we might expect that -wame forms generally would receive
an event/result reading. That is, transitive bases in -wame would receive event/
result readings as often as entity readings, since there would be two derivations
available: (i) the subject-nominalizing -me attached to a passive verb in -wa,
yielding a relative nominal referring to the patient, and (ii) the event/result
nominalizing -wame attached to the transitive verb. However, for my consult-
ants, this does not seem to generally be the case. Transitive verbs suffixed
with -wame seem to receive (patient) entity-denoting readings, while event/result
readings are reserved for intransitive verbs with -wame. That is, the hypothesis
that -wame is a monomorphemic event nominalizer misses the generalization, for
my consultants, that it is primarily attested with intransitive verbs.
If we take seriously the decomposition of -wame into passive -wa-, which
suppresses an argument, and the nominalizer -me, we arrive instead at the
generalization that the event reading for a -wa-me form is only available with
intransitive verbs—that is, with verbs whose adicity has been reduced to zero
by the removal of their only argument via the impersonal passive suffix -wa.
This makes two predictions. First, only intranstive verbs that independently
take -wa should be able to form event nominals in -wame. This is borne out by
the ill-formedness of -wame event nominals of verbs which take nonhuman
subjects. For example, the verb bwase ‘cook.’, cannot form an event nom-
inal *bwasi-wame ‘cooking’. This is expected on the bimorphemic hypothesis,
since there is no impersonal passive *bwasi-wa ‘(it) is being cooked’/‘cooking is
happening’, because the verb does not take a human subject.
Second, if -wa and -me are independent in these forms, we can seek
confirmation in inflection. If -wa and -me are separate morphemes, perfective
-ka will surface at the end of the verb but before the nominalizer. Such
perfective event nominalizations require special context to make them felici-
tous, but in an appropriate context, they are perfectly acceptable.
        217

Consider the following examples. The first, (19a) refers to drinking in general.
The second, perfective, form refers to a specific event of drinking. It could be
used in a context where people are discussing the deleterious effects of drinking
tap water in e.g. Mexico City, which can give Americans diarrhea. The speaker
remembers a particular night when she drank tap water, and then says (19b)

(19) a. hi’iwame
hi’i-wa-me
drink--.
b. Hunu’u hi’iwakame nee nasontak.
Hunu’u hi’i-wa-ka-me nee nasonta-k
that drink---. 1s. destroy-
‘That event of drinking wrecked me’

In this example we can see that the impersonal passive internal to the event
nominal, hi’i-wa, ‘drink-’, can be inflected for Aspect, prior to the attach-
ment of -me. This is predicted by an analysis which treats the -wa and the -me
as independent suffixes in their own right, each performing normally in the
clausal syntax.
Further confirmation comes from certain -me nominalizations without -wa,
formed from inherently impersonal predicates—weather predicates—which
do not have a thematic subject argument at all. Martínez Fabian &
Langendoen (1996) give nominalized forms derived from yuke, ‘to rain’, that
have an event denotation even without -wa:

(20) Yukemta ne hikkahan.

yuke-m-ta=ne hikkaha-n
rain-.-=1 hear-
‘I listened to it raining.’

A true relative clause formed on ‘rain’ or other intrinsically argumentless

weather predicates could not denote since there is no argument position to
abstract over. For example, #the event/time/weather that was raining does not
work as a subject relative in English. Since the corresponding declaratives
contain no grammatical subject, these forms cannot be relative clauses; rela-
tivization cannot proceed when there is no syntactic argument to relativize.⁴

⁴ As in English, there is no subject nominal possible in Hiaki weather predicates; examples like (i)
are out:
218  

This observation forms part of Langendoen and Martínez Fabian &

Langendoen’s argument against treating -me forms as relative clauses.
The availability of an event-denoting reading for -me relative nominals of
weather predicates confirms that -me on its own can yield an event nominal; -wa
is not needed. This suggests that the inclusion of -wa in the other event nominals
above is necessary to suppress the argument structure of the base predicate.
The core generalization, then, is relative nominals with -me denote the
subject of the clause, unless the clause was subjectless to begin with, i.e. unless
the clause was an impersonal passive or a weather predicate. If -me attaches to
such a subjectless clause, the resulting nominalization denotes the event or
situation argument of the verb.
Assuming that such zero-adicity verbs are predicates of events, and taking
seriously the unity of subject-nominalizing -me and event-nominalizing -me,
we propose that when -me attaches to a verb, it reifies whatever open argument
is available. This will be the subject argument, in the case of the entity-
denoting -me forms—but if there is no open entity argument, -me reifies the
open event argument. This is what yields event/result denotations with argu-
mentless predicates.⁵
In Section 9.1, we sketched the syntax of these relative nominals. Now we
can develop a proposal about their interpretation.

(i) *Yuku aman yuke.

Yuku aman yuke
Rain over.there rains
‘Rain is raining over there.’
I take this as evidence against the possibility that these event nominals are actually true subject
relativizations of a null cognate subject, akin to the (dance) that was danced or the (song) that was
sung. Although some of the unergative Hiaki predicates exemplified above, such as yi’i- ‘dance’, can
optionally take an incremental-theme cognate object argument referring to an event, others cannot (e.g.
hi’i- ‘drink’). As noted, weather predicates like yuke ‘rain’ prohibit any overt argument. I conclude a
subject relativization analysis of these event nominals is untenable. Nonetheless, further investigation is
warranted; the intuition resembles that expressed by Álvarez’s (2015) concept of ‘abstractivization’ of
the relativized patient argument. Schäfer (2008b) describes some ambiguous -er nominals in German.
Such nominals normally would refer to agents, but also have event-referring meanings, e.g. ein Hüpfer
‘a jumper/a jump’.

⁵ We might expect that an event nominal in -me could occur in apposition to another event-
denoting nominal, modifying it. It can, albeit with a significant prosodic break:
(i) Hiawata, atwamta ne hikkahak.
Hiawa-ta j at-wa-m-ta=ne hikkaha-k
Sound- laugh--.-=1. hear-
‘I heard the sound of laughter’; ‘I heard the sound—the laughter’
Restrictive uses of entity-denoting -me nominals in apposition do not usually require a prosodic break.
However, little is known about nominal apposition and its relationship to prosody. It is possible that (i)
is an instance of a nonrestrictive relative appositive use of an event nominal in -wa-me, and thus
supports the unified treatment of -me here.
        219

9.3 An identity function

The introduction noted that the modern understanding of the extended verbal
projection permits finer-grained hypotheses about the phrase structure of
nominalizations. Similarly, the development of Davidson’s (1967) event argu-
ment will allow us to make a more concrete proposal concerning the inter-
pretation of the Hiaki relative nominalizers.
Davidson added the event argument to verbal predicates to capture entail-
ments and anaphoric reference to the event. He argued that verbal predicates
typically do not point to specific events, but simply assert the existence of the
described type of event. Rather than hypothesize that the event argument is
saturated or bound by a projected syntactic element, the consensus is that it
remains unsaturated in the syntax until the verbal predicate merges with a
particular functional projection, typically Tense. At that point either a default
semantic operation of unselective binding existentially binds the event argu-
ment (as well as any other unbound variables), or else the lexical content of the
T node existentially binds the event argument. In the syntactic representation,
up to a certain level, the extended verb phrase remains an open predicate of
events.
This allows us to propose a treatment of the Hiaki nominalizers. At the
constituent that is the correlate of the former VP node in the modern
framework, i.e. at VoiceP, we have a denotation equivalent to that of the
former VP, i.e. a predicate of events. In fact, I will propose that the event
argument in Hiaki remains unbound even into AspP. This will allow us to
adopt a univocal denotation for all the relative nominalizers of Hiaki.
Here is the core idea: In a Hiaki nominalized clause, the nominalizer selects
a verbal predicate, regardless of its type, and passes the denotation of the
predicate up. The nominalizer functions purely syntactically: It changes the
predicate’s category from verbal to nominal. If necessary, it also checks
genitive case on the external argument of the predicate. (In Section 9.4,
I follow Kraus, 2001, in suggesting that the form of the nominalizer is
determined by whether it bears a [+gen] case feature or not.) The nP thus
still denotes a predicate but due to its nominal category it will only subse-
quently compose with elements from the nominal extended projection. The
nP can compose via predicate modification with another noun, to give the
appearance of a headed-relative structure, or simply compose with D itself to
have its open role bound and form a referring expression.
220  

Let us see how the semantic derivation works. I will notate the nominalizer’s
identity function as λP.P, where P is a variable over predicates.⁶
The most straightforward cases are the event nominals formed from pas-
sivized intransitive verbs or subjectless weather verbs. Let us consider the form
in (15e), bwanwame ‘crying’, whose tree diagram in (21a) is annotated with the
types of each of its constituents, with each node numbered for ease of reference. We
follow Kratzer (1996) in assuming that external arguments are introduced by
Voice. Let us look at the denotations corresponding to the numbered nodes
from the bottom up. The unergative verb and its verb phrase 1 is a predicate of
events, characterizing all and only crying events. The passive Voice head 2
introduces and existentially binds the only entity argument of the verbal
predicate at VoiceP 3, yielding the ‘some Agent of this event exists’ entailment
of an impersonal passive. The VoiceP itself is thus a predicate of events only.
Aspect 4 is merged next, projecting to AspP 5. Since Aspect is unmarked,
I assume it also denotes the identity function. Finally, the nominalizer n 6 is
introduced and changes the category of the projection to nP 7; its denotation,
however, is still that of a predicate of events. A subsequent nominal projection,
most likely D, binds the open argument position in the predicate and yields the
event-referring denotation crying for the full projection headed by this nominal.

(21) 7
nP<st>
a.

5AspP 6n
<st>

3Voice 4Asp
<st> <st>

1VP 2
<st> VoicePass<<st>,<st>>

V<st>
bwan- -wa ø- -me
cry pass s.nmlz

b. 1. ⟦VP⟧=λe.cry(e)
2. ⟦VoicePass⟧= λP<st>λe∃x.P(e) & Agent(x, e)
3. ⟦VoiceP⟧=⟦VoicePass⟧(⟦VP⟧)=λe∃x.cry(e) & Agent(x, e) by
Function Application (FA)

⁶ In the formulas, s is the type of events/situations and e is a variable over events/situations; e is the
type of entities/individuals; and x, y are variables over entities/individuals. Truth values are type t.
        221

4. ⟦Asp⟧=λP.P
5. ⟦AspP⟧=⟦Asp⟧(⟦VoiceP⟧)= λe∃x.cry(e) & Agent(x, e) by FA
6. ⟦n⟧=λP.P
7. ⟦nP⟧=⟦n⟧(⟦AspP⟧)= λe∃x.cry(e) & Agent(x, e) by FA

So far we have not learned much by working through the semantic deriv-
ation, but we can at least see how the content of nP is inherited from AspP to
derive the abstract/event nominalization interpretation.
Next we turn to subject-referring relative nominals, like (22) below:

(22) Uu usita mahtakame

Uu usi-ta mahta-ka-me
The child- teach--.
‘The one who taught the child’

In this case, the derivation is constrained by our understanding of the syntax

of Voice. Since the verb occurs in its active form, and assigns accusative case to
the object of the verb, the Voice head above mahta must be an active Voice
head—a syntactic argument must be projected in its specifier. The nP must
denote a monotransitive predicate in order to compose with D, and since n is
the identity function, its complement AspP must share this denotation. Since
nP is a predicate of entities in this case, AspP must also be a predicate of
entities, and its argument must be identified with the external argument of the
verb mahta ‘teach’. To satisfy both the syntactic and semantic requirements on
the construction, we must posit operator movement from Spec, VoiceP, creating
a predicate of entities by lambda-abstraction over AspP. Spec, VoiceP is filled by
Heim & Kratzer’s (1998: 186) lambda-operator, which moves to spec, AspP to
create the predicate of entities that n selects in subject nominalizations.
As usual, the trace of operator movement is interpreted as a variable.
I illustrate the derivation in (23), this time including a D which binds the
open lambda-abstracted argument to yield the entity-denoting referring
expression.⁷ There is a key difference between this derivation and the previous
one in the binding of the event argument; see discussion below. Again, the
nodes of the tree are annotated with superscript numerals and subscript types
to make discussion easier.

⁷ I omit intervening nominal projections for simplicity, though I assume they are there; the number/
case suffixes, for example, likely head NumP between DP and nP. For discussion of number in event
nominals, see Alexiadou et al. (2010).
222  

(23) 15DP
<e>

14 13
D<<et>,<e>> nP<e,st>

11AspP 12
<e,st> n<<e,st>,<e,st>>

10 9
λi<st,<e,st>> Asp’<st>

7 8
VoiceP<st> Asp<<st>,<st>>

6t 5Voice’
i<e> <e, st>

3 4
VP<st> Voice[acc]<st, <e,st>

1 2
DP[acc] <st> V<e, st>

Uu usi-ta mahta -ø -ka -me

The.nom child-acc teach -pfv -s.nmlz

1. ⟦DP⟧=ιx.child(x)
2. ⟦V⟧=λxλe.teach(x)(e)
3. ⟦VP⟧= ⟦V⟧(⟦DP⟧)= λe.teach(⟦the.child⟧)(e) by FA
4. ⟦VoiceAct⟧= λP<st>λyλe.P(e) & Agent(y, e)
5. ⟦Voice’⟧ = ⟦VoiceAct⟧(⟦VP⟧)= λyλe.teach(⟦the.child⟧)(e) &
Agent(y, e) by FA
6. ⟦ti⟧= yi
7. ⟦VoiceP⟧=⟦Voice’⟧(⟦ti⟧)= λe.teach(⟦the.child⟧)(e) & Agent(yi, e)
8. ⟦Asp⟧=λP<st>λe.P(e) & pfv(e)
9. ⟦Asp’⟧=⟦Asp⟧(⟦VoiceP⟧)= λe.teach(⟦the.child⟧)(e) & Agent(yi, e) &
pfv(e)
10. ⟦λi⟧= λP<st>λxλe.P(x)(e)
11. ⟦AspP⟧=⟦λi⟧(⟦Asp’⟧)= λxλe.teach(⟦the.child⟧)(e) & Agent(x, e) &
pfv(e) by FA
12. ⟦n⟧=λP.P
13. ⟦nP⟧=⟦n⟧(⟦AspP⟧)= λxλe.teach(⟦the.child⟧)(e) & Agent(x, e) &
pfv(e) by FA
14. ⟦D⟧= λPιx.P(x)
15. ⟦DP⟧=⟦D⟧(⟦nP⟧) ← type mismatch! nP is type <e,st>, not type
<et> (or <st>).
        223

Hypothesis: Merge of D triggers repair operation to permit composition:

Existential Binding of open event argument:
⟦nP’⟧= λy∃e.teach(⟦the.child⟧)(e) & Agent(y, e) & pfv(e)
⟦DP⟧=⟦D⟧(⟦nP’⟧)= ιx∃e.teach(⟦the.child⟧)(e) & Agent(x, e) &
pfv(e)

Working from the bottom up, the transitive verb mahta ‘teach’ 2 is a function
from entities to predicates of events; its sister DP 1, usita ‘child’, is an entity.
They compose via FA to yield a ‘teach children’ predicate of events, the VP 3.
The Voice head 4 then merges with VP 3. It checks accusative case on usita
and introduces the Agent predicate, a function from entities to predicates of
events, to the derivation. The VP 3 and Voice 4 heads compose to yield Voice’
5, a function from entities to predicates of events. Voice’ is now an <e,st>
function that will assign the Agent role to an entity it composes with. This
function takes a variable over entities 6 as its argument, the trace of movement
of the lambda-operator.⁸ The resulting VoiceP 7 is then a predicate of events
again, with a variable in the Agent role. Aspect 8 adds a perfective interpret-
ation, yielding a predicate of the same type at Asp’ 9. The lambda-operator 10,
looking for a predicate of type <s,t>, composes with Asp’, abstracts over and
binds its coindexed trace, the variable, and yields the AspP 11. AspP is now a
function from entities to predicates of events, type <e,st>, whose unsaturated
entity argument corresponds to the Agent role. The identity function nomi-
nalizer n 12 passes that denotation up to nP 13. The nP and D 14, cannot
compose, however, since D requires a simple property-denoting predicate but
instead is confronted with a predicate of type <e,st>. I hypothesize that this
type of mismatch is resolved by a repair operation, the introduction of an
existential operator to bind off the situation/event argument. I assume that this
is the same mechanism that binds the open event in regular declarative
clauses.⁹ D, which for our purposes here we treat like an English definite
determiner, then asserts the existence of a unique entity with the properties

⁸ For simplicity, I take the needed assignment function for granted here.
⁹ There are other options here. If we adopted a different type for D, the open event argument could
be passed up to DP and existentially bound when DP is interpreted, but that would incorrectly predict
that these DPs might be able to act as predicates of events in some circumstances. Another option
would be to build the binding of extraneous open arguments into the composition of n and its
complement, giving n a more robust semantic role, perhaps needed for ‘reification’ of the topmost
open argument. This denotation would force existential binding of any open event argument in the case
of entity-relativization nominals, but instead reify the open event argument itself in event nominal-
izations. However, since the goal here is to propose a uniform denotation for the nominal relativizer
across constructions, this option seems less attractive.
224  

described by the (coerced) nP predicate: the unique Agent of a perfective event

of teaching the child.
What have we learned from this walkthrough? First, that lambda-
abstraction, implemented here via operator movement, must be part of these
relative nominals, since active VoiceP must be saturated in the syntax but the
final nP is a predicate of Agent entities. Second, that we need a repair
operation to existentially bind the event argument after the nP level, since it
cannot be bound by D’s iota operator as it can in event nominals.
The object relative nominals in -‘u receive the same analysis, except the
lambda-operator merges in object position rather than subject position. In all
other respects the derivations are identical. Here is the (almost) complete
derivation of Uu vem te’aka’u, ‘the one that they found’, from (12b):

(24) 16
DP<e>

15 14
D<et, e> nP<e, st>

DPk [GEN] 13n’

<e,st>

11AspP 12n
<e,st> <e,st>

10λ 9
Asp’<st>
i<<st,<e,st>>

7VoiceP 8Asp
<st> <st, s>

6
tk<e> 5Voice’
<e,st>

3 4Voice
VP<st> <st>, <e,st>

1t 2V
i<e> <e, st>
uu vem te’a -ø -ka -‘u
The.nom 3pl.gen find pfv o.nmlz
‘The one that they found’
        225

1. ⟦ti⟧= xi
2. ⟦V⟧=λxλe.find(x)(e)
3. ⟦VP⟧= ⟦V⟧(⟦ti⟧)= λe.find(x i)(e) by FA
4. ⟦VoiceAct⟧= λP<st>λyλe.P(e) & Agent(y, e)
5. ⟦Voice’⟧ = ⟦VoiceAct⟧(⟦VP⟧)= λyλe.find(xi)(e) & Agent(y, e) by FA
6. ⟦tk⟧=⟦DPk⟧=⟦3pl⟧= ιx.[-Part](x) & [-sg](x)10
7. ⟦VoiceP⟧=⟦Voice’⟧(⟦tk⟧)= λe.find(xi)(e) & Agent(⟦3pl⟧, e) by FA
8. ⟦Asp⟧=λP<st>λe.P(e) & pfv(e)
9. ⟦Asp’⟧=⟦Asp⟧(⟦VoiceP⟧)= λe.find(xi)(e) & Agent(⟦3pl⟧, e) & pfv(e)
10. ⟦λi⟧= λP<st>λxλe.P(x)(e)
11. ⟦AspP⟧=⟦λi⟧(⟦Asp’⟧)= λxλe.find(x)(e) & Agent(⟦3pl⟧, e) & pfv(e)
by FA
12. ⟦n⟧=λP.P
13. ⟦n’⟧=⟦n⟧(⟦AspP⟧)= λxλe.find(x)(e) & Agent(⟦3pl⟧, e) & pfv(e) by
FA
⟦nP⟧=⟦n’⟧= λxλe.find(x)(e) & Agent(⟦3pl⟧, e) & pfv(e) by
inheritance11
14. ⟦D⟧= λPιx.P(x)
15. ⟦DP⟧=⟦D⟧(⟦nP⟧) ← type mismatch!
Existential binding of λe in ⟦nP⟧ allows FA, yielding
ιx∃e. find(x)(e) & Agent(⟦3pl⟧, e) & pfv(e)
i.e. ‘the unique thing that the unique 3pl entity found.’

The result, then, is not too dissimilar from a true relative clause, invoking
operator movement to create the familiar gap structure in the case of entity
nominalization. The main difference is that the whole form, externally, mor-
phologically behaves like a noun.
The treatment suggests that long-distance nominalization should perhaps
be possible, depending on the availability of successive-cyclic A-bar movement
in Hiaki. In-depth work on Hiaki A-bar movement remains to be done, but we
note the possibility here for future work.

¹⁰ Or whatever the right interpretation for a 3 pronoun turns out to be.
¹¹ The re-merge of the agent DPk to check its genitive case in Spec, nP is semantically vacuous, since
it is interpreted in Spec, VoiceP, so I do not indicate the additional step of lambda-abstraction over n’
and saturation via re-Merge of DPk that would be required to interpret it in its moved position.
Alternatively, DPk could check its genitive case against n in situ, via Agree; I leave these options open
here.
226  

9.4 Morphosyntax

Example (25) is the complete paradigm of relative nominalizers in (1)–(4),

plus the event nominalizer in (14)–(15). The form of the nominalizer correl-
ates with the presence of a genitive subject argument in the embedded clause:

(25)
n suffix Genitive subject? Abstracted argument
-me N subject
-me N event
-‘u Y object
-‘u Y oblique
-‘Vpo Y location
-‘u/-‘Vwi Y goal

All the forms beginning in a glottal have a genitive subject. I propose that this
form of the nominalizer is conditioned by the [+gen] n needed in object, oblique,
location, and goal relative nominals. It is likely best to treat the location and goal
nominalizers in (25) as bimorphemic, consisting of a relativizer plus postpos-
ition. The nominalizer then would simply be the glottal, -‘(V), followed by the
independently motivated postposition (-po, -wi, -u). This would explain why
none of the locative relatives can be marked for nominal inflection, and why they
behave like PPs, syntactically. The echo vowel before the postposition is condi-
tioned by the phonotactics of the postposition—consonant-initial postpositions
like -po or -wi trigger the insertion of the echo vowel, while the vowel-initial
postposition -u does not. Álvarez González (2016: 132) hints at the possibility
that the glottal is the nominalizer in his discussion of the development of the Old
Cahita nonsubject nominalizer -ye; the glottal may be the reflex of the defunct ye.
With a bimorphemic treatment of the location and goal relative nominali-
zers in mind, I propose the following Vocabulary Insertion rules for nomin-
alizing n, ordered as usual from most-specific conditioning context to least
specific. Under normal assumptions about the Subset Condition (Halle, 2000),
more specific rules block less specific ones.

(26) Vocabulary Items for n

n[+gen] ← → -‘ / [___ P]PP
n[+gen] ← → -‘u
n ← → -me
        227

In the case of subject relative nominals and event nominalizations, no

genitive subject argument is present, so the nongenitive-assigning variant
-me is used.
It is worth noting another difference between subject, object, and locative
nominalizations, which use the gap strategy, and oblique nominalizations,
which use a resumption strategy, as illustrated in (3), and further illustrated
in (27) with a corpus example and an example from Álvarez González (2012):

(27) waka hekata vem aetuk nahkuakteka’u

waka heka-ta vem ae-tuk nah-kuakte-ka-‘u
that. canopy- 3. it-under around-move--.
‘The shelter where they lived.’ lit. ‘The shelter that they lived under it.’

(28) waa yoeme nim amak yepsaka’u

Waa yoeme nim a-mak yepsa-ka-‘u
That man 1. he-with arrive--.
‘That man that I came with.’ (Álvarez González, 2012: 76)

The use of a resumptive pronoun for relativization of roles lower on Keenan

& Comrie’s (1977) hierarchy is typologically well attested. I hypothesize that
this pattern in Hiaki does not suggest any modification of the movement-
based approach outlined above for subject and object nominalizations. Instead
I suggest that the resumptive pronominal clitics in oblique relative nominals
are motivated by the affixal postpositions themselves—Hiaki does not permit
adposition stranding. Pending further investigation, I assume that null oper-
ator movement creates these forms too.
We can also note that the present treatment brings Hiaki into the typo-
logical fold, in terms of Keenan & Comrie’s (1977) accessibility hierarchy. In
Martínez Fabian & Langendoen’s (1996) proposal, according to which -me
forms are nominalizers while -‘u forms are ‘true relative clauses’, Hiaki would
be an outlier, with no subject relativization but with productive relativization
of objects and obliques. Keenan & Comrie (1977) established that if a language
permits relativization of any role on the subject>object>oblique hierarchy, it
also permits relativization of all higher roles. Under Martínez Fabian &
Langendoen’s treatment, Hiaki would be a language with object and oblique
relativization, but without subject relativization, counter to the hierarchy.
228  

9.5 Outstanding issues and problems

There are two primary types of example which pose problems for the analysis,
having to do with copular and unaccusative verbs.
Certain unaccusative verbs, besides permitting subject relative nominals
with the predicted -me suffix, also permit subject relative nominals with -‘u,
despite having no genitive-marked subject. Alongside the expected (29a), we
find the unexpected (29b), apparently with the same meaning.

(29) a. yaha-ka-me
arrive.--.
‘Those who arrived’
b. yaha-ka-‘u
arrive.--.
‘Those who arrived’

Similarly, in corpora we find the expected (30a) alongside the unexpected

(30b), again with the same meaning.

(30) a. Kokokame hiva aman kom woowota.

Koko-ka-me hiva aman kom woo-wota
die.--. only there down -throw
‘Only the ones who died were thrown down there.’
b. Hunum te kaa hu’unea haikimsa kokoka’u
Hunum=te kaa hu’unea haikim-sa koko-ka-‘u
There-1 not know how.many- die.--.
‘We do not know how many died there.’

Although such forms are unexpected, in one respect they are perhaps
not surprising, in that these apparent ‘object’ relative nominals are formed
on unaccusative intransitives, which are independently argued to base-
generate their single argument in object position (Harley et al, 2006). If
further investigation shows that the optional use of -‘u in these forms is
related to the ‘deep object’ status of the relativized argument, that could be
independent verification of the class of unaccusative intransitives in Hiaki.
However, it would not bode well for the allomorphic treatment of the -me/-‘u
alternation proposed in Section 9.4, since it suggests that the choice of
        229

nominalizer depends on the grammatical role being relativized, rather than

on the presence of a genitive-marked subject argument.
On the other hand, these unexpected -‘u forms may also be related to the other
class of challenging -‘u forms, created from perfective copular sentences. This
construction is most frequently used with proper names in predicate position, and
translates roughly as ‘the late Name’, or more literally, ‘the one who was Name’:

(31) uu Luis Tonopoatuka’u

uu Luis Tonopoa-tu-ka-‘u
the Luis Tonopoa---.
‘The late Luis Tonopoa’, lit. ‘the one who was Luis Tonopoa’ (Leyva, 2019)

It is also used with regular predicate nouns, often denoting roles or profes-
sions, as in (32). Álvarez González (2016) also documents its use with predi-
cate adjectives:

(32) a. kompae Rego komandantetuka’u.

kompae Rego komandante-tu-ka-‘u
compadre Rego commandante---.
lit. ‘Compadre Rego who was commandante’
b. uu uhyoli-tu-ka-‘u (Álvarez González, 2016)
uu uhyoli-tu-ka-‘u
the pretty---.
‘The one who was pretty.’

If the forms with unaccusative verbs in (29)–(30) require the use of per-
fective -ka with the -‘u suffix, that could suggest unifying those cases with the -
ka’u ‘one who was’ cases in (31)–(32). Álvarez González (2016) argues that
these descend from a separate construction in Old Cahita, and are a holdover
in Hiaki; he reports that Mayo has either regularized these forms to -me (for
the nondeath-related meanings) or innovated a novel construction (for the
death-related meanings). I set these forms aside here for future investigation.

9.6 Conclusion

Although much remains to be done, certain conclusions seem to be supported.

Filler-gap strategies for constructing relative-clause-like structure do not require
CP; they can be implemented at lower levels of clause structure, like AspP.
230  

Nominalization by a selecting n head can provide an account of why the subjects

in these relative nominals are marked with genitive case.
The analytical picture of available nominalization types cross-linguistically
has been significantly enriched by developments since Remarks, built on
advances that were only made possible by discoveries arising from the pro-
posals in that paper. However, this new understanding suggests that
Chomsky’s original arguments for expanding the base to accommodate nom-
inalizations, rather than creating them via syntactic transformation, were
perhaps off the mark. These Hiaki nominalizations are clearly created from
inflected phrasal forms, not as separate neologisms in the lexicon. Our theory
of UG does need a universal syntactic combinatoric operation, in the form of
Merge, but instead of an X-bar template, Merge is constrained only by the
selectional restrictions and interpretive possibilities of the specific lexical items
involved. This analytical picture has a lot in common with the pre-Remarks
framework, with its language-specific phrase-structure rules.
 10
Categorization and nominalization
in zero nominals
Gianina Iordăchioaia

10.1 Derived nominals

Chomsky (1970) draws a fundamental distinction between gerunds, as in (1b),

and derived nominals, as in (1c), in how they relate to the parallel sentential
construction in (1a).

(1) a. John has refused the offer.

b. John’s refusing/having refused the offer
c. John’s refusal of the offer

As summarized in Alexiadou & Borer (Chapter 1), the two types of nominal-
ization present crucial differences with respect to productivity, composition-
ality of interpretation, and morphosyntactic properties, which led Chomsky to
argue that only gerunds deserve a ‘transformationalist’ account, i.e., a syntactic
derivation from corresponding sentences in the spirit of Lees (1960) and
Lakoff (1965). Derived nominals lend themselves to a ‘lexicalist’ treatment,
in which both the verb and the noun category are available for the base in the
lexicon, with fixed category-specific selectional properties.
Later literature readily acknowledges the contrast between gerunds and
derived nominals, which leads to two parallel trends in the study of nomin-
alization. On the one hand, mixed projections like the gerund are investigated
in close connection with clausal structure and infinitival constructions (see
Chierchia, 1984, Abney, 1987, Pires, 2001; cf. Panagiotidis, 2014, and Pires &
Milsark, 2017, for overviews). On the other hand, the polysemy and often
intriguing morphosyntactic behavior of derived nominals has made the focus
of research studies that attempt to model regularity and idiosyncrasy in word
formation, whether part of syntax or the lexicon (e.g. Grimshaw, 1990;

Gianina Iordăchioaia, Categorization and nominalization in zero nominals In: Nominalization: 50 Years on from Chomsky’s
Remarks. Edited by: Artemis Alexiadou and Hagit Borer, Oxford University Press (2020). © Gianina Iordăchioaia.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198865544.003.0010
232  ̆

Marantz, 1997; Harley & Noyer, 2000a; Alexiadou, 2001; Borer, 2005a, 2013;
Lieber, 2016). This chapter belongs to the latter orientation.
Grimshaw (1990) set another important milestone after Chomsky (1970),
by showing that among derived nominals we can further delimit compos-
itional readings, which inherit event structure properties from the base verb,
from more idiosyncratic readings, whose relation to the base verb may be as
weak as in lexicalization. I refer to the former as Argument Structure Nominals
(ASNs; i.e., Grimshaw’s Complex Event Nominals); the latter come in two
versions: Result Nominals and Simple Event Nominals, as Grimshaw calls
them. The crucial difference between ASNs and the other two readings is the
realization of argument structure as a diagnostic for the presence of verbal
event structure (cf. Rappaport Hovav & Levin, 1998; et seq.), as illustrated in
(2), and this is shown to pattern with further other morphosyntactic tests
summarized in Alexiadou & Borer (Chapter 1):

(2) a. The examination of the patients [took a long time / *was on (ASN)
the table].
b. The examination/exam was [long / on the table]. (RN)

Grimshaw does not dwell much on the difference between Result Nominals
and Simple Event Nominals, and in this chapter I shall refer to them together
as Referential Nominals (RNs) as in Borer (2013), in contrast to ASNs. On its
RN reading, examination is synonymous with the clipped form exam and
compatible with predicates of individuals like was on the table in (2b). On its
ASN reading, it requires predicates of events such as took a long time in (2a).
This distinction is recurrent in most of the subsequent literature, and
especially in syntax-based models of word formation such as Distributed
Morphology (DM) and the Exo-Skeletal Model (XSM), which have posited
implementations of various cross-linguistic types of ASNs and RNs in terms of
presence/absence of verbal and nominal structure.
This chapter dwells on a type of derived nominal that has not figured very
prominently in this tradition until Borer (2013)—namely, Zero-derived
Nominals (ZNs) such as break (< to break). Grimshaw (1990) mostly discusses
derived nominals built with the Latinate suffixes -al, -(at)ion, -ance, -ment,
which Borer (2013) calls ATK-nominals (‘-ATion and Kin’). For the sake of
contrast, Grimshaw occasionally mentions gerundive nominals (i.e. the ing-of
gerund), which she takes to always form ASNs, and ZNs, which she takes to
always form RNs. Neither of the two claims holds, however. Borer (2013: ch. 4)
    233

shows that gerundive nominals may be RNs in the absence of argument

structure, and I will show below that ZNs may form ASNs.
The debate concerning the status of ZNs remains unsettled. Syntactic
approaches initially followed Grimshaw (1990) (a lexicalist account, other-
wise) and assumed that ZNs are always RNs, given examples as in (3a)
(Marantz, 1997), to eventually admit the existence of so-called ‘exceptional’
ZNs that behave like ASNs, as in (3b) (Borer, 2003, 2013; Harley, 2009b).

(3) a. *John’s break of the glass (Marantz, 1997: 215)

b. My constant change of mentors from 1992–1997 (Borer, 2003: 53)

Lexicalist accounts, in general, reject the event structure tests proposed by

Grimshaw and reduce the description of derived nominals to a polysemy
between eventive readings (including states) and referential readings (i.e.
result, product, instrument, location, agent, path), a distinction for which
argument realization does not play a role in itself, since arguments are
understood in their semantic nature only, and not as a result of syntax-
semantic mapping as in Grimshaw (1990) (Lieber, 2004, 2016; Newmeyer,
2009). Lieber (2016), for instance, takes the possessive and the of-PP to be
arguments of the ZN in (4) on its RN reading, although she mentions that
possessives and of-PPs that appear with RNs ‘are interpreted as possessors,
creators, or authors rather than as subjects or objects of the verbal base’
(Lieber, 2016: 43). In this chapter, I follow Grimshaw’s notion of argument
structure and consider only the syntactic-semantic arguments that ZNs inherit
from the verb on their eventive ASN readings; the possessive and the of-PP in
(4) would thus qualify as modifiers and not arguments:

(4) Guiding ethics have always required these guides to keep within the legal
limits and never personally help fill a client’s catch of fish or bag of game.
(Lieber, 2016: 43)

The first goal of this chapter is to find out which ZNs may realize argument
structure and what exactly, in the lexical semantics of their base verbs, allows
ASN-formation. The second goal is to place these empirical facts in the context
of the contemporary syntactic modeling of word formation and argue against
labeling ZNs as a simple process of ‘categorization’ by which roots get cat-
egorized as nouns. I will show that, just like ATK-nominals, ZNs instantiate
both categorization of roots and nominalization of verbal structures.
234  ̆

I start in Section 10.2 with a short summary of the main theoretical

assumptions in the syntactic modeling of derived nominals and explicate the
notions of categorization and nominalization as I use them from this perspec-
tive. In Section 10.3 I proceed with the empirical picture of ZNs, in which
I present previous claims and challenges to them. Section 10.4 presents a
substantial body of empirical evidence from semantic verb classes, which
shows that ZNs may form ASNs for particular types of verbs but not for
others. In Section 10.5 I conclude on my results.

10.2 Syntactic approaches to derived nominals

This work will be couched in DM so I focus on this framework and make

additional remarks for comparison to XSM, when necessary. Both DM and
XSM assume that word formation involves uncategorized and nondecompo-
sable roots as basic elements (e.g. √, √), which combine with func-
tional categories to form words. An important difference is that DM assumes
that roots first combine with lexical categorizers such as n(oun), v(erb), and
a(djective), while in XSM these are inexistent, and roots are indirectly categor-
ized by higher category-specific functional heads such as D or T for nouns and
verbs (Borer, 2005a,b, 2013; cf. De Belder, 2011).
In DM, lexical categorizers are crucial, since Marantz (2001, 2007, 2013)
argues that they are phase heads and delimit the level where idiosyncratic
meaning is negotiated between roots and functional categories, leading to two
cycles of word formation, as in (5): root-based (inner) derivation in (5a) and
word-based (outer) derivation in (5b) (see also Arad, 2005; Embick &
Marantz, 2008; Embick, 2010; Panagiotidis; 2011, 2014).

(5) a. Root-based derivation b. Word-based derivation

xP xP

x √ROOT x n/v/aP

n/v/a √ROOT

The outputs of the two cycles exhibit different properties. Root-based

derivations as in (5a) are characterized by: (i) negotiated (idiosyncratic)
meaning of the root in the context of the categorizer; (ii) reduced productivity;
    235

(iii) the meaning of the construction depends on root semantics independent

of argument structure operations. Word-based derivations show opposite
properties: (i) compositional meaning predicted by the base word; (ii) appar-
ent full productivity; (iii) the meaning of the construction may involve
arguments structure.
The first two properties remind us of Chomsky’s (1970) contrast between
gerunds and derived nominals, and the two cycles in (5) perfectly capture the
distinction between ASNs and RNs, as argued even before lexical categorizers
were specifically introduced in DM (Alexiadou, 2001) or in their absence in
XSM (Borer, 2013). This suggests that RNs, which receive relatively free
interpretations in relation to their base verbs and inherit no properties from
them, are root-based derivations, while ASNs are word-based derivations, i.e.,
nominals derived from categorized verbs, from which they inherit various
amounts of functional structure that includes at least vP and possibly as high
as VoiceP or even higher, as in (7).
The root-based structure in (6) derives the RN examination in (2b): in the
context of -ation, the root √ negotiates the meaning ‘set of questions
or tasks designed to test a person’s knowledge’, and, possibly, other readings,
which is typical of polysemous deverbal nouns. A root-based derivation
accounts for polysemy (Marantz, 2013) and for the selectional restrictions
with respect to suffixes (cf. *examin-ance, *examine-ment, etc.). In the absence
of verbal event structure, the absence of argument structure as for examination
in (2b) is accounted for.¹

(6) Root-based derivation of RNs

nP

n √EXAMINE
-ation

Following Grimshaw’s (1990) insights, the ASN reading of examination

would receive a word-based derivation as in (7), which includes at least the

¹ Some RNs may involve the phonology of a verbalizing suffix: e.g. organ-iz-ation on its RN reading
of an institution involves the verbalizer -ize, which should instantiate v and form a word-based
derivation in DM (e.g. Borer, 2013: 447). Marantz (2013) discusses similar examples with root-
derived stative participles including such suffixes and, following also Anagnostopoulou & Samioti
(2013), shows that these suffixes do not introduce an event variable and do not carry event structure
properties typical of v. This aspect does not bear on my discussion of ZNs, as they do not include
verbalizers, but I refer the reader to Anagnostopoulou & Samioti (2013) for a possible implementation
of the differences between such suffixes and those that involve event structure properties.
236  ̆

event structure responsible for argument realization (but possibly also higher
levels like AspectP; see comparable analyses in Harley, 2009b; Alexiadou et al.,
2011; and Borer, 2013: 179). In a neo-Davidsonian approach, I take the
internal argument to be hosted by ThemeP and the external one by VoiceP
(see Alexiadou et al., 2015). Importantly, ASNs are word-based formations,
predicting compositional interpretation, productivity, and availability of argu-
ment structure, as in (7).

(7) Word-based derivation of ASNs

the doctor’s examination of the patients
nP

n VoiceP
-ation

the doctor VoiceP

Voice ThemeP

the patients vP

v √EXAMINE

10.2.1 Categorization and nominalization by n

From this perspective, there is no morphosyntactic difference between root-

derived RNs and lexical nouns such as cat: both are categorizations of roots
into nouns. In DM, cat is derived by a zero nominalizer, as in (8), while the RN
in (6) involves an overt suffix -ation.

(8) nP (9) vP

n √cat v √examine
-Ø -Ø

The implication is that there is no reason to consider RNs deverbal,

since they do not present any morphosyntactic properties of a verb in their
behavior (leaving aside possible verbal phonology mentioned in fn. 1). Their
    237

interpretation solely relies on encyclopedic knowledge about the correspond-

ing root, which is also associated with the verb examine, similarly derived from
a root, as in (9). Accordingly, the RN readings may be seen as independent of
the existence of the verb and qualify as categorizations of roots by n, while
ASNs are built on top of verbs and represent nominalizations of verbal
structures. I will keep the term nominalization only for structures as in (7),
where a nominalizing suffix indeed changes the category of a word.

10.3 Zero nominals

In what follows I review recent critical takes on the formation of ZNs, as

developed in Borer (2013), and then focus on one generalization—namely,
their alleged inability to build ASNs.
Most of the data I use originates in natural text corpora available at
www.english-corpora.org (Davies & Fuchs, 2015; Davies, 2017): COCA
(Corpus of Contemporary American English), NOW (News on the Web),
and GloWbE (Corpus of Global Web-based English). My examples come from
US, Canadian, British, and a few Australian web domains.

10.3.1 ZNs in syntactic approaches

ZNs have rarely been closely investigated before—exceptions are Irmer (1972)
and Cetnarowska (1993), which represent comprehensive overviews of the
semantic and morphosyntactic diversity of these derived nouns. In general, the
generative literature paid more attention to denominal zero-derived verbs,
which are more productive than ZNs in English. In DM, in particular, the
latest view on zero-derived verbs is that they are (re-)categorizations of roots,
following the derivation pattern in (5a) (see Rimell, 2012), a result also
supported by computational studies on their distributional semantics such as
Kisselew et al. (2016).
In spelling out her implementation of word formation in XSM, Borer (2013:
ch. 7) explicitly argues against lexical categorizers and zero derivational
suffixes as used in DM, proposing instead that roots implicitly receive a
category from the extended projection head they combine with once they
appear in the syntax. She employs zero-derived verbs and nouns to illustrate
her claims. Although this is not her primary goal, Borer offers a worked-out
proposal for ZNs in XSM, which is theoretically close enough to allow a direct
238  ̆

comparison with the patterns in (5). Moreover, her work also includes an
extended critical overview of the properties of ZNs and their previous
accounts, which I will not review here.
In the context of the two word formation types in (5), Grimshaw’s (1990)
claim that ZNs never form ASNs but only RNs leads to a derivation as in (5a).
Their lack of overt marking further supports this analysis, as they would
pattern with lexical nouns as in (8). This is also what Borer (2013) proposes.
Specifically, in rejecting lexical categorizers like n and v, she argues that a root
like √ gets categorized either as a noun or as a verb by corresponding
nominal and verbal extended projections such as D and T in (10a) and (10b).

(10) a. [[C=N √]] b. [[C=V √]]

Borer (2013) discusses several characteristics of ZNs that lead her to this
analysis, which I summarize in three main aspects below. I present these
properties strictly from the perspective of ZNs as an empirical domain and
not that of the theoretical modeling in DM or XSM, as Borer does. The
framework I assume is DM, and I will not attempt to defend it over XSM, or
take issue with Borer’s reasons to reject its foundations.
The first and most important property of ZNs, which requires the root-
based analysis in (10a) in Borer’s view, is their alleged inability to form ASNs,
as illustrated especially by the contrast with overtly suffixed nominals built on
the same root offered in (11) (Borer, 2013: 332); we will see, however, that
these judgments are challenged by corpus data in (14) and (15):

(11) a. the walking/*walk of the dog for three hours

b. the importation/*import of goods from China in order to bypass
ecological regulations
c. the salutation/saluting/*salute of the officers by the subordinates

Second, as previously noted in Kiparsky (1982b), ZNs may exhibit stress

shift in comparison to the corresponding verb form, as in (12). In XSM, like in
DM, phonological changes on the root are an indication of root-based deriv-
ation, which also supports the analysis in (10a).

(12) a. permítV > pérmitN

b. progréssV > prógrèssN
    239

Third, Borer notes that if ZNs were able to include verbal structure in their
make-up, roughly corresponding to an ASN pattern as in (7), they should be
available with complex verb forms that include overt verbalizing suffixes such
as -ize or -ify, just like overt suffixes are. Example (13) shows that this is not
possible, enforcing Borer’s conclusion that ZNs are root-derived.

(13) a. crystal(l)-ize > *the crystal(l)-ize-Øn (cf. crystallization)

b. acid-ify > *the acid-ify-Øn (cf. acidification)

Borer (2013: 331) lists some—in her view, ‘exceptional’—ZNs that realize
arguments: e.g. change (exchange), release, use (misuse, abuse), murder, dis-
charge, endeavor, consent, resolve, descent (ascent), decline, collapse, rape (see
(3b)). For these, she suggests a possible ASN treatment and argues that they
may involve a suffix that is phonologically robust enough as to block stress
shift in Latinate ZNs. Thus, argument-realizing ZNs such as abúse, descént,
collápse with no stress shift contrast with ímport, éxport, prógress, which
involve stress shift and do not form ASNs (see (12)). The former behave as
expected under the ASN derivation in (7), the latter conform to the root-
derivation in (6)/(10a). We will see in (16), however, that stress shift does not
always prevent argument realization as predicted by Borer.
To conclude, Borer’s account presents ZN formation as nominal categor-
ization of roots (see Section 10.2.1), and not as nominalization of verbal
structure, with some limited exceptions. To this extent, there is no morpho-
syntactic difference between lexical nouns and ZNs.

10.3.2 Some challenges to previous generalizations on ZNs

The generalization that ZNs cannot form ASNs and the data in (11) are
challenged by counterexamples from natural text corpora: import and export
frequently realize argument structure, as shown by (14), where ZNs realize of-PPs
in eventive contexts (in bold), pointing to ASNs. Although they are not so
frequent as for import and export, we also find examples with salute and walk
realizing of-phrases and possessors on eventive readings, as in (15), showing that
at least for some speakers they are possible, contra (11) (see also McIntyre, 2019).²

² Examples without a period at the end represent fragments from longer sentences in the corpus.
Those that have a period appear as such in the corpus.
240  ̆

(14) a. And ending that also means ending import of slaves. (GloWbE)
b. Tokyo allowed the continued import of South African (COCA)
coal
c. Beijing’s continuing export of dangerous missiles and (COCA)
nuclear technology
d. to help Russia privatize its nuclear program and stop (COCA)
export of scientists and plutonium

(15) a. Trump defended his salute of one of Kim’s generals. (NOW)

b. Dave headed off for his first daily walk of the dog. (GloWbE)
c. I have made the conscious choice not to exercise much (GloWbE)
beyond a brisk walk of the dog.

Stress shift is indeed a property of ZNs, yet it does not automatically block
realization of argument structure, as predicted by Borer’s analysis. This is
shown by ímport in (14a,b) and other ZNs such as íncrease and réwrite in (16).
There are additionally many other recent ZNs derived from complex verbs
with particles/prefixes—which, like réwrite, involve stress shift and realize
argument structure: e.g. dównload, úpload, úpdate, óverride, óvercount, réstyle
(see also Iordăchioaia, to appear, and Roeper, Chapter 12, on particle verb
nominals).

(16) a. [T]he events of recent days have brought a rapid (NOW)

rewrite of the Green story.
b. the ongoing rewrite of the city’s land use code (NOW)
c. A White House blog post highlighted Microsoft’s (NOW)
efforts to expand Internet access in schools, as well as
its increase of paid leave for mothers
d. Progressives say that his increase of the top tax bracket (GloWbE)
did not prevent economic growth

Examples (15) and (16) show that ZNs do not entirely conform to the
predictions of a root-based derivation and have the potential of realizing
argument structure to various degrees. For instance, while salute and walk
typically denote RNs, as Borer (2013) rightly points out, appropriate contexts
as in (15) enforce ASN readings for some speakers. I will not dwell here on
why ZNs cannot be formed from verbs with overt verbalizers as in (13), but
see Iordăchioaia (2019b) for some suggestions. In what follows, I show that
the ASN potential of a ZN depends on the type of root that the base verb is
built on.
    241

10.4 ZN formation from the perspective of verb classes

In this section, I seek to explain why some ZNs ‘exceptionally’ form ASNs and
to determine this on the basis of the semantic type of the verb they are derived
from. I will eventually make the case that ZNs may form both ASNs and RNs,
largely depending on the base verb’s root ontology and the type of event
structure that these roots require. I concentrate on two larger groups of
verbs that are built on stative roots: psych verbs and change of state verbs.

10.4.1 Property concept and result roots

Beavers & Koontz-Garboden (2020) differentiate between change of state

verbs built on property concepts and result roots. A list of both types
of roots is given in (17) and (18) (from Beavers & Koontz-Garboden, 2020:
78–9; and Dixon 1982: 16).³

(17) Property concept roots

a. Dimension: large (big), small, short, long, deep, wide, tall
b. Age: old (age)
c. Value: bad (worse), good
d. Color: white, black, red, green, blue, brown
e. Physical Property: cool, cold, warm, hot, dirty, dry, wet
f. Speed: fast, slow
g. Human Propensity: angry, calm, scare, sick, sad (depress), hurt, tire,
embarrass

(18) Result roots

a. Entity-specific Change of State: burn, melt, freeze, decay (rot),
swell, grow, bloom (flower, blossom), wither (wilt), ferment, sprout
(germinate), rust, tarnish
b. Cooking Verbs: cook (bake, fry, roast, steam), boil
c. Breaking Verbs: break, crack, crush, shatter, split, tear (rip), snap
d. Bending Verbs: bend, fold, wrinkle (crease)
e. Verbs of Killing: dead/die/kill, murder, drown
f. Destroying Verbs: destroy (ruin)

³ The Human Propensity class in (17g) follows Dixon’s classification (1982) of the seven classes of
property concepts, which Beavers & Koontz-Garboden (2020) also largely adopt.
242  ̆

g. Verbs of Calibratable Change of State: go up (rise, ascend, increase,

gain), go down (fall, drop, descend, decrease, decline), differ
h. Verbs of Inherently Directed Motion: come, go, go in (enter), go out
(exit), return

Semantically, property concepts are simple states, while result roots entail a
change that leads to the state, and this associates with a difference in their
categorization as adjectives or verbs. Beavers & Koontz-Garboden (2020) argue
that in English the former are typically lexicalized as adjectives (as expected for
simple states) and the latter as verbs (which typically lexicalize change).
Consequently, change of state verbs built on property concepts are usually
de-adjectival (see to redden, to lengthen, to cool), while adjectives built on result
verbs are deverbal (see burnt, frozen, shattered). This predicts a contrast
between simple (root-based) and deverbal adjectives built on property concepts,
in that the latter will entail a change and the former will not. The data in (19),
where negating the event is contradictory with the deverbal adjective but not with
the simple one, confirms this prediction. Moreover, adjectives built on result roots
as in (20) behave like the deverbal adjectives in (19).

(19) a. The red/#reddened dirt has never (been) reddened.

b. The long/#lengthened river has never (been) lengthened.

(20) a. #The shattered vase has never (been) shattered.

b. #The dead man has never died.

A cross-linguistic investigation of the two classes shows that labile roots that may
express both property concepts and change of state are overwhelmingly lexicalized
as verbs, leading Koontz-Garboden et al. (2019) to conclude that the presence
of a change of state meaning component requires the verb category, as formulated
in (21) (see also Koontz-Garboden, 2005: 103–7; cf. Beavers et al., 2017).

(21) The same property concept word can give rise to state and change of
state lexical entailments just in case it is a verb.

This generalization is relevant for ZNs, as it gives us a means to find out

which, if any, must be derived from a verbal structure (not a root) and, possibly,
realize arguments. As I will argue, ZNs with a change of state meaning built on
result roots as in (18) are such cases.⁴ Following (21), the change of state

⁴ The formulation ‘ZNs derived from/built on (result) roots’ should be read in a strictly morpho-
logical sense and not taken to suggest a root-derived analysis for ZNs. My argument will be that some
are derived from verbs, while others from roots.
    243

meaning with state roots should not be available in the absence of a verb, which
for ZNs entails that they should include some verbal event structure.

10.4.2 ZN formation with stative verbal roots

10.4.2.1 Methodological preliminaries

ZNs are not as productive as other deverbal nominals—like, for instance, those
formed with -ing or -ation. Yet, they are not unproductive either: Oxford
English Dictionary (OED) records about 300 (i.e. 11%) ZNs that appeared after
1900.⁵ The direction of the derivation from noun to verb or verb to noun is not
always straightforward, but I generally follow the historical attestation and
consider nouns attested later or around the same time with the verbs (cf. fn. 11
on verbs of killing).⁶
In identifying the ZNs built on the roots in (17) and (18), I rely on their
entries in the OED, which records their various senses.⁷ I classified these OED
senses in four general categories: event, state, agent/instrument/cause, and
result entity, of which the latter two morphosyntactically behave like RNs,
while events and states potentially form both ASNs and RNs. I take argument
realization to disambiguate in this case and I focus on events, since only
these are dynamic and would encode a change of state. Besides the entries in
(17)–(18), I consider additional verbs of the same class from VerbNet (Kipper
Schuler, 2005).
As already discussed in (4) and pointed out by Grimshaw (1990), not every
possessive or of-PP realization with a derived noun qualifies as a structural
external/internal argument, and additional tests are usually needed. It is well
known, however, that unequivocal diagnostics offered in the theoretical lit-
erature are barely ever found in corpora (Lieber, 2016). The most reliable test
provided by Grimshaw (1990) for ASNs is their co-occurrence with aspectual
in- and for-PPs (Alexiadou & Borer, Chapter 1). However, corpora exhibit
close to no such occurrences.⁸ For the corpus data below, if possessives and/or

⁵ Thanks to James McCracken (OED Technology) for providing me with this list.
⁶ Many of these ZNs are, of course, borrowed from French or Latin and not formed in English.
However, to the extent that their formation merged with an internal word formation process in English,
identifying semantic verb classes from which they are derived is a step toward understanding this
process.
⁷ Many of the ZNs discussed here come from a database that I developed together with my student
assistants Yaryna Svyryda, Susanne Schweitzer, and Camila Buitrago Cabrera in the DFG Project IO
91/1-1 (see Iordăchioaia, Schweitzer et al., 2020).
⁸ Iordăchioaia, van der Plas et al. (2020) created a frequency-balanced list of 125 ATK- and gerundive
nominals derived from transitive verbs and automatically extracted their occurrences in a head-modifier
244  ̆

of-PPs are realized with ZNs on a reading parallel to that of the base verb,
and the ZN appears in an eventive context, I interpret this combination as
indicating an ASN reading, similarly to Grimshaw’s (2a). See more clarifica-
tions at the end of Section 10.4.2.2.

10.4.2.2 ZNs derived from verbs with result roots

I start with ZNs that are built on the result root classes in (18) and show that
many of these indeed realize argument structure, which speaks for event
structure in their make-up. All the result root classes in (18) build ZNs except
for the destroying verbs in (18f) (ruin is at least chronologically a noun first).
ZNs derived from breaking verbs typically are RNs and favor a result entity
reading (see break, crack, crush, shatter, rip, split, tear), as Levin (1993: 8–9)
also observes for break. Although some are recorded with an event meaning in
OED (break, rip, split, tear, crash), only crash appears with of-phrases, mostly
on an inchoative reading, as in (22a), but causative readings are also available
with agentive modifiers, as in (22b).⁹

(22) a. what I think will ultimately lead to a complete crash of (GloWbE)

the US economy
b. investigated the deliberate crash of a Germanwings (GloWbE)
passenger jet into a mountainside

ZNs derived from cooking and bending verbs also primarily display RN
readings (see agentive cook, and result entity bake, fry, roast, steam, boil, broil,
stew, scald, toast, as well as bend, fold, crinkle, crumple, stretch). Boil, roast,
scald, bake, bend, fold, and stretch may refer to actions, but only roast
occasionally realizes argument structure, as in (23).

(23) the sun resumed its slow roast of the forest canopy (COCA)

The classes of entity-specific change of state, verbs of killing, verbs of

calibratable change of state and verbs of inherently directed motion are

relationship with in- and for-PPs from an annotated corpus of general domain English (c. 4 billion words).
However, this led to no usable data. The few attested in-PPs were not aspectual modifiers and, among the
few aspectual for-PPs, we found only result state modifiers, which modify not the extension of the event
itself but that of the result state following the event (as in Manuela jumped into the water for twenty minutes
from Piñón, 1999).

⁹ I employ the term ‘causative’ in its broad sense of the transitive use of a verb, without any
implications related to causative semantics.
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most productive in deriving ZNs that realize what looks like argument
structure. The first three also derive result entity ZNs: especially entity-
specific change of state verbs (burn, melt, rot, swell, bloom, blossom, sprout,
tarnish, molt), some of calibratable change of state (increase, rise, raise, vary)
and kill, among verbs of killing. Like most of the other ZNs corresponding to
the verb classes in (18a,e,g,h), some of these have event readings, many of which
exhibit of-phrases and possessives (or by-phrases) introducing arguments: burn,
melt, thaw, decay, rot in (24); murder, kill, dispatch, massacre, slaughter in (25);
rise, increase, fall, drop, decrease, raise in (26) (besides (16c,d)); exit and return
in (27).¹⁰

(24) ZNs with entity-specific change of state verbs

a. Coast Guard begins controlled burn of oil in Gulf. (NOW)
b. This approach translates into a faster and more com- (NOW)
plete burn of the fuel
c. if we don’t stop [ . . . ] the continued melt of sea ice, that (NOW)
population will disappear
d. a continuing, slow thaw of a credit card lending industry (GloWbE)
that nearly froze up during the recession
e. [ . . . ] who came of age in Kruschev’s thaw of Stalinism (COCA)
f. a continued decay of British society (GloWbE)
g. the ongoing decay of culture (GloWbE)
h. you are just describing the continued slow rot of self- (GloWbE)
interested politicians

(25) ZNs with verbs of killing11

a. [he] probably witnessed their murder of his mother (NOW)
b. legalizing the on-site kill of meat animals on farms (GloWbE)
c. their dispatch of Osama bin Laden last May (NOW)
d. the Uzbek army’s massacre of civilians in Andija (NOW)
e. the slaughter of the city’s Jews by crusaders (NOW)

¹⁰ Causative thaw and kill in (24e) and (25b) may not be fully natural to every speaker, but I cited
them for their potential use in such contexts.
¹¹ The nouns murder, slaughter, and massacre are attested earlier than the verbs. For murder and
slaughter, OED suggests connections with Proto-Germanic roots indicating that at an earlier stage they
could have been deverbal nouns with a suffix that then disappeared. This would explain the subsequent
formation of new verbs with the same form. Massacre is borrowed from French and attested a few years
earlier than the verb, also a borrowing. According to the OED, the direction of the derivation is also
debated for French, but I treat them all as ZNs, since they conform to the others in the class and are
semantically felt as such (see also Borer, 2013: 331).
246  ̆

(26) ZNs with verbs of calibratable change of state

a. satellites have tracked the gradual rise of the world’s (GloWbE)
ocean
b. It’s been an expensive year, especially with the constant (GloWbE)
rise of living costs
c. the surgery will also stop the constant increase of pain (GloWbE)
d. It is the result of the continued fall of the dollar. (GloWbE)
e. the continuous drop of the budget deficit (NOW)
f. the gradual decrease of the patient’s white cell count. (COCA)
g. the biggest focus of the military in recent years has been (GloWbE)
a continuous raise of salaries

(27) ZNs with verbs of inherently directed motion

a. The oldest most experienced workers [ . . . ] are begin- (GloWbE)
ning their gradual exit from the workforce.
b. Their quick exit from the playoffs (COCA)
c. In my opinion, the book suffers because of his constant (GloWbE)
return to Google Wave as an (irrelevant) whipping post.
d. His gradual return to music began in 2009 with shows (GloWbE)
in Las Vegas.

As mentioned in Section 10.4.2.1, corpus examples are challenging, since

not all instances of possessives and of-phrases qualify as structural arguments,
and additional evidence is needed, which is often not available in corpora. In
the data from (14) to (16) and (22) to (27), I took causative ZNs that either
realize both internal and external arguments (see (14c), (15a,b), (16c,d), (23),
(24e), and (25)) or include agent-oriented modifiers (as in (22b) and (24a)) in
parallel readings to those of corresponding verbal constructions to be clear
ASNs. However, many of the verbs in (18) lack causative readings and appear
only inchoatively. Their ZNs realize inchoative readings, which are more
susceptible of ambiguity with RNs than the causative ones.
For these inchoative ZNs, I cited contexts that include event modifiers
indicative of event structure and pointing to a structural licensing of the
apparent semantic arguments. Among these modifiers, constant, illustrated
in (26b,c) and (27c) is employed in Grimshaw (1990) as a test for ASNs, while
continuous (or continuing, continued) in (24c,d,f,h)–(26d,e,g) and ongoing
in (24g) show similar aspectual properties. The degree modifier complete
measures the scalar change undergone by the internal argument in the incho-
ative event in (22a) and (24b), while gradual, as illustrated in (26a,f ) and
    247

(27a,d), has been argued to modify scalar change and diagnose telicity (see
Piñón, 2000, on gradually; Borer, 2013: 162, on gradual; Piñón, 2005, on
completely). Manner modifiers such as slow in (23), and (24d,h), fast in
(24b), and quick in (27b) confirm the eventive use of these ZNs, although
they would be compatible with eventive RNs as well; in these examples,
however, argument structure is attested by other means. In addition, ZNs
occasionally appear with event-selecting verbs such as witness in (25a) and
aspectual verbs such as resume in (23), begin in (24a) and (27a), and stop in
(24c) and (26c).
Some of the ZNs above commonly realize arguments (e.g. crash, thaw, melt,
rot, exit, return), while others like decay, drop, rise, increase, decrease, and fall
very frequently do so—we find hundreds of examples in the mentioned corpora.
Moreover, my current OED-based collection includes about one hundred
ZNs derived from change of state verbs, half of which exhibit what could be
interpreted as eventive uses, and over thirty of these also realize at least
the internal argument (see Iordăchioaia et al., 2020). Further examples are
plunge, soar, decrease, causative move, reheat, topple, change, collapse, advance,
close, drain, overturn, defreeze, meltdown, close-down, rebalance, refill, revise,
and repair. Interestingly enough, one may notice that many of Borer’s (2013:
331) ‘exceptional’ AS-ZNs belong to some class of change of state verbs.
Beavers & Koontz-Garboden (2020) argue that the verbs built on result
roots obligatorily include an inchoative subevent. Given the argument struc-
ture available in their corresponding inchoative ZNs in (22) to (27), I propose
in Section 10.4.3 that these ZNs must inherit the verbal event structure from
the verb to realize arguments and thus form ASNs. By contrasting them with
ZNs derived from psych property concepts, I show that their argument
realization cannot come from the root alone but must originate in verbal
event structure.

10.4.2.3 ZNs built on psych property concept roots

There are not many ZNs derived from the property concept roots in (17),
which may be due to their lexicalization as adjectives and the fact that ZNs are
not derived from deadjectival verbs for reasons that I cannot address here (see
Kiparsky, 1982b, Borer, 2013: ch. 7, for morphological restrictions on ZNs).
A subclass that productively builds ZNs is that in (17g), which Dixon (1982) calls
human propensity. This class includes psychological states, which in English
are often lexicalized as verbs, besides adjectives (Pesetsky, 1995): see subject
experiencer verbs like love, hate, adore; and object experiencer verbs like depress,
worry, amuse, anger. I will call their nonexperiencer argument a stimulus.
248  ̆

Subject experiencer verbs are usually stative, while the object experiencer
ones have been argued to involve (stative or eventive) causation (Iwata, 1995;
Pesetsky, 1995; Arad, 1998a). The latter are interesting for our purposes, as
they may involve a change of state meaning which, in principle, could be
inherited by their ZNs (see Alexiadou & Iordăchioaia, 2014b). I will argue,
however, that this is not the case and that ZNs built on psych roots are derived
from the root.
We find close to fifty ZNs derived from Levin’s (1993) amuse class of psych
verbs, which realize their experiencer argument as an object. Following their
definitions in the OED, some of these ZNs lack a psych interpretation (e.g.
dazzle, disarm, exhaust, refresh) but most denote simple psych states
(e.g. anger, baffle, concern, content, daze, delight, discomfit, disgrace, disgust,
disquiet, dismay, fluster, lull, muddle, puzzle, rankle, sting, trouble, worry) or
the stimulus of the psych state (e.g. affront, bother, charm, concern, delight,
haunt, lull, puzzle, rankle, shock, surprise, torment, wound).
Unsurprisingly, few of these ZNs receive what could count as an eventive
psych meaning, which is what we are after: e.g., ZNs like transport and ruffle
are psych only on the stative meaning and nonpsych on the eventive one.
Exceptions are shock, surprise, stun, and torment, which have both stative and
eventive readings, according to the OED. Shock, surprise, and torment can be
found in corpora realizing a possessive experiencer and a prepositional stimu-
lus as in (28a–c), which could be instances of argument structure, while
torment occasionally also exhibits a causative reading, as in (28d).

(28) a. Larry Fisher’s shock at her accusation could have resulted (COCA)
from [ . . . ]
b. Whether it was my foreign accent or Belle’s surprise at my (COCA)
information
c. Britain’s torment over EU membership is rooted in (NOW)
history.
d. He redoubled his torment of the poor animal (COCA)

The question, however, is whether these ZNs do indeed express eventive

change of state readings (like the ones built on result roots in (22) to (27)). In
(29) I test whether they denote inchoative events when they realize the
experiencer and the stimulus to see if they pattern as ASNs.¹² Each sentence
in (29) diagnoses states with the verb persist and events with happen.

¹² These data were tested with five native speaker consultants, whose judgments mostly converged.
    249

(29) a. Amanda’s shock at the news [persisted for half an hour / *happened
in the garden].
b. Olivia’s surprise at the present [?persisted for a while / *happened in
the kitchen].
c. Sam’s torment over the loss of his wife [persisted for years / *happened
two years ago].
d. The murderer’s torment of his victim [??persisted for hours / ?happened
at noon].

As the contrasting contexts in (29) show, none of these ZNs denotes events,
except for torment—however, on the causative reading in (29d) and not on the
inchoative one in (29c). We can conclude that these psych ZNs with apparent
arguments lack an eventive reading, which would be obligatory if their argu-
ments came from event structure. The stative reading does not require a verb;
it may be derived from the stative root (Iordăchioaia et al., 2015). The stimulus
argument comes with a root-specific preposition (see at, over in (28)–(29)), not
a structural one like from assigned by event structure (Pesetsky, 1995; Alexiadou
& Iordăchioaia, 2014b). The presence of the experiencer is not enough to posit
event structure, since experiencers may always appear as possessors with psych
nouns, whether they are ZNs derived from subject experiencer verbs as in (30a),
de-adjectival as in (30b), or simply underived as in (30c–d):

(30) a. Ann’s love for her sister

b. Sam’s sadness at the news
c. the boy’s passion for soccer
d. my horror/joy at the news

In Iordăchioaia (2019a) I argue that such stative ZNs are root-derived and
do not represent ASNs (cf. Rozwadowska, Chapter 14, on Polish psych nom-
inalizations); they realize only semantic arguments of the root, which for the
derived ZNs act as modifiers, in the absence of event structure. Torment
exceptionally allows a causative event reading in (29d), in which its internal
argument appears with structural of-genitive. Given, however, the overwhelm-
ing majority of stative psych ZNs, I assume that in this eventive use, the
property concept root of torment is coerced into a result-like root. In this
reading, torment is an ASN, but psych ZNs in general are derived from the
root (see Iordăchioaia, 2019a; cf. Rozwadowska, Chapter 14).¹³

¹³ A reviewer mentions the US torture of Cuba for 60 years, used by Noam Chomsky in a recent
article (http://inthesetimes.com/article/21893/iran-war-trump-bolton-neoliberalism-venezuela-cuba-
world-order), as a ZN derived from a nonresult verb. It is debatable whether torture is a
250  ̆

This conclusion complies with Alexiadou & Iordăchioaia’s (2014b) obser-

vation that English psych verbs never exhibit a causative alternation.
Alexiadou & Iordăchioaia argue that psych verbs like worry, grieve, thrill,
madden, weary, which have subject and object experiencer cognates, do not
form a causative alternation, as their subject experiencer forms do not denote a
change of state like typical change of state verbs built on roots as in (18) do (see
also Marin & McNally, 2011, on Spanish). If the verbs do not exhibit such
readings, the expectation is that their ZNs will not do that either, as confirmed
by (29).¹⁴

10.4.3 Categorization and nominalization with ZNs

Having looked at ZNs built on the two types of stative roots in Section 10.4.2
we see a clear contrast: Many of those formed on result roots appear in
contexts that indicate inchoative or causative event readings with structural
arguments ((22)–(27)), while those formed on psych property concept roots
rarely present other semantic arguments than experiencers, and, when
they do, they require root-specific prepositions and denote states as shown
by (29a–c).
Following Beavers & Koontz-Garboden (2020) and the generalization
in (21), stative roots can express change of state only as verbs. This implies
that the ZNs in (22)–(27) must include event structure like the ASN in (7),
otherwise their inchoative/causative meaning cannot be obtained. I propose
the structures in (31a) and (31b) for inchoative and causative ZNs, respect-
ively. I follow Alexiadou et al. (2015) in assuming that the syntax of causative
and inchoative verbs solely differs in the presence of VoiceP licensing external

ZN. According to the OED, it was borrowed a few years before the verb from French, where the noun
also predates the verb. Its morphology reminds us of the nominalizing suffix -ure (see enclosure),
indicating a suffix-based nominalization not analyzable anymore. If we take it to be a ZN, it would
denote an activity (not a state), given its occurrence after verbs that require events: e.g. to stop/end
torture of prisoners, people who have witnessed torture of animals (GloWbE). While I am arguing that
change of state readings of ZNs derived from result roots embed a verb with argument structure and
represent ASNs, this does not exclude the possibility of other eventive ZNs to do so. However, I would
not expect stative ZNs to form ASNs (see Iordăchioaia, 2019a).

¹⁴ Alexiadou & Iordăchioaia (2014a) argue that Romanian and Greek exhibit causative nominal-
izations similar to those of change of state verbs, which are expected, given the causative alternation
available in these languages (Alexiadou & Iordăchioaia, 2014b). Pending closer investigation, I would
assume that these are cases similar to torment, where the psych root has been coerced into a change of
state root. I see no reason why these readings should not be part of the notional category of
psychological verbs, even though most of these verbs behave as derived from property concept roots
and lack change of state readings.
    251

arguments in the former and its absence in the latter. The root specifies the
result state of the inchoative/causative event in a ResultP small clause that also
accommodates the internal argument.

(31) a. the crash of the US economy

[DP the [nP Ø ( . . . ) [vP v [ResultP the US economy √ ]]]]
b. their murder of his mother
[nP Ø ( . . . ) [VoiceP they [VoiceP Voice[vP v [ResultP his mother √ ]]]]

Arguably, between n and vP/VoiceP, the structures in (31) may include

further layers like AspectP for aspectual modifiers, but since these also target
various attachment levels, I will not address them in detail. What is important
is that these ZNs inherit verbal event structure that structurally licenses
internal arguments with of-PPs and external arguments with possessives or
by-PPs. By contrast, psych ZNs as in (29a) receive the root derivation in (32),
where both the stimulus PP and the possessive experiencer act as modifiers.

(32) Amanda’s shock at the news

[DP Amanda [DP ’s [nP [nP Ø √] [PP at the news]]]]

A possible argument against my claim that the ZNs in (22) to (27) include
event structure and represent ASNs may come from Beavers & Koontz-
Garboden’s (2020) claim that result roots carry change of state meaning
inferences that are not available with property concept roots. One may wonder
if ZNs built on result roots are not also root-derived and if the change of state
meaning does not come from the root alone. The presence of arguments would
be explained as for the psych ZNs in (29a–c). The crucial difference between
the ZNs in (22) to (27) and those in (29a–c), however, is that the former mark
their arguments with structural case (i.e. possessive or by-phrase and of-
genitive), while the latter employ root-specific prepositions such as at, over,
and others in (28)/(29a–c) (see also Coon & Royer, Chapter 7, on the interaction
between roots and functional structure in two Mayan languages). When the root
of torment is coerced to allow a change of state event reading, as in (29d),
the ZN realizes its arguments with structural case, although this construction is
slightly degraded by comparison to the stative root-derived one in (29c), which
highlights its unusualness. Moreover, following the cross-linguistic generaliza-
tion in (21), we do not expect an inchoative reading of ZNs in the absence of a
verbal categorizer.
252  ̆

10.5 Conclusion and discussion

Chomsky’s (1970) pivotal distinction between gerunds and derived nominals

as outputs of different components of grammar has had an enormous impact
on the linguistic thinking of the last fifty years. Moreover, his observation that
some nominalizations exhibit a ‘mixed’ behavior led linguists to acknowledge
the need for a coherent theory of grammar that successfully accounts for the
extremes but also for the categories in between, a research program that is still
pursued at least by the linguistic tradition to which this study belongs.
In this chapter, I have argued that, on a scale between purely idiosyncratic
root formations and compositional deverbal nominalizations, ZNs cannot be
placed at the low end of root categorization, by default. By looking at two verb
classes from which they can be derived, I have shown that, depending on the
lexical semantics of the root and the type of event structure that it requires,
ZNs also instantiate readings that require compositional event structure, as
proper nominalizations.
The first implication of this study is that more attention needs to be paid to
the semantics of the root in order to understand what may appear as excep-
tional in the behavior of some derived nominals, as in the case of ZNs with
argument structure. The hypothesis defended here may turn out just as
relevant for ATK nominalizations, which are also known to fail to realize
causative readings with some verbs (Sichel, 2010; Alexiadou et al., 2013).
Second, it seems that the overtness of the suffix may not play such a decisive
role in the ability of nominalizations to host event structure, as claimed before.
In Iordăchioaia (2019a), I argue that ATK psych nominals are also root-
derived and fail to include event structure, just like ZNs.
Finally, allow me to stress that this study mostly relies on corpus data, which
must be taken with caution. While the type of examples quoted have been
found in several sources, indicating that at least for some speakers the targeted
uses are possible and natural, it is not clear how general this tendency could be
among other speakers and even whether the same speakers would accept the
data in an introspection-based questionnaire of the type theoretical studies
usually rely on. Therefore, the next step in investigating the present hypothesis
would be to test comparable data in targeted questionnaires and see to what
extent the contrast between the two classes of ZNs is indeed also confirmed by
introspection judgments.
    253

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the editors, two reviewers, and especially Andrew McIntyre and Hagit
Borer, for their insightful comments and constructive feedback to a previous version of this
chapter. I am also grateful to Katie Fraser, Andrew McIntyre, Neil Myler, Chris Piñón, and
Jim Wood for their native speaker judgments. This research has been funded by the
German Research Foundation (DFG), via the project IO 91/1-1, Zero-derived nouns and
deverbal nominalization: An empirically-oriented perspective, at the University of Stuttgart.
 11
Remarks on propositional nominalization
Keir Moulton

11.1 Introduction

Remarks is famous for capitalizing on the fact that, contrary to earlier generative
views like those in Lees (1960), nominalizations should not be derived by
transformation from sentences. Considerations of meaning played a big role
then and do to this day. It is a commonplace observation that nominalization
closer to the root allows for an idiosyncratic grab-bag of meanings—a result
state, an argument role, an eventuality described by the root itself (Grimshaw,
1990; Marantz, 1997; Alexiadou, 2001; Moulton, 2014; Alexiadou, Chapter 5;
Borer, Chapter 6). Higher nominalizations give rise to more semantically pre-
dictable meanings that come closer to clause meanings. For instance, high
nominalizations like verbal gerunds resist being predicated of event descriptions
like be gradual/slow/sudden (1b) unlike gerundive nominals and -ation and Kin
Nominals (ATK nominals) (1a). In this respect such high nominalizations are
more like full-fledged clauses (1c).

g
(1) a. The/their construction of the new highway
b. *Them/their/PRO constructing the new highway was gradual/fast/
c. *That they constructed the new highway sudden.

What high nominalizations cannot do—even clausal gerunds that contain

much of the functional structure of clauses (Pires, 2006, 2007; Alexiadou,
Chapter 5)—is serve as arguments to a class of proposition-selecting predi-
cates, such as true/false (2a,b) and attitude verbs like believe, say, and know
(3a,b). This, of course, is in contrast to CPs (2c)/(3c).

g
(2) a. *The/their construction of the new highway
b. *Them/their/PRO constructing the new highway was true/false.
c. That they constructed the new highway

Keir Moulton, Remarks on propositional nominalization In: Nominalization: 50 Years on from Chomsky’s Remarks.
Edited by: Artemis Alexiadou and Hagit Borer, Oxford University Press (2020). © Keir Moulton.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198865544.003.0011
256  

f
(3) a. *the/their construction of the new highway.
We believe/say/know b. *them/their/PRO constructing the new highway.
c. that they constructed the new highway.

These facts are well-known (Vendler, 1967; Portner, 1992; Zucchi, 1993)
but remain ill-understood, although a recurring and plausible intuition for the
restrictions in (2) and (3) rests on the fact that English can only nominalize
lower regions of the clausal spine—perhaps as high as TP. Maybe it takes a
bigger chunk of structure to express the meanings that the predicates in (2)
and (3) want. In this chapter I argue that this is not the case. Rather, I suggest
that the nominal functional structure in (2) and (3) simply cannot deliver the
meanings that the embedding predicates need.
Many languages allow nominal morphology or determiners to convert ‘big’
CPs into NPs or DPs.¹ Greek is famous for allowing the determiner to to
combine with CPs headed by a complementizer, like oti in (4). Spanish also
allows a determiner to combine with a finite CP headed by the complement-
izer que (5). Languages that are morphologically richer have nominalizing
morphology that converts clausal constituents to nominals, as in Navajo where
a clause can be headed by the nominalizing morpheme -ígíí (6).

(4) [to oti lei psemata] ine fanero (Greek)

the.  tell.3 lies. be.3 obvious-
‘That she tells lies is obvious’ (Roussou, 1991: (45b))

(5) Ana lamenta [el que hayas tenido que

Ana regret the that had..2 had that
tomar esa difícil decisión tú sola].
take. that difficult decision you alone
‘Ana regrets that you have had to make that decision on your own.’
(Serrano, 2015: 24 (7))

(6) [Jáan diné nilín=ígíí] yooch’ííd át’é. (Navajo)

John Navajo 3.be=  lie 3.be
‘That John is a Navajo is a lie’ (Schauber, 1979: 243, (46))

In the case of Greek and Spanish, however, there is the possibility that we are
not looking at nominalizations of CPs but at complex NP constructions, with
some type of null noun between D and CP. If that were the case, these would
not be nominalizations in any interesting sense. Here Spanish turns out to be

¹ In what follows I set aside clausal nominalizations that correspond to relatives (see Harley,
Chapter 9, for discussion).
     257

very revealing: Picallo (2002) showed that in Spanish we can tell whether there
is a null noun intervening between the D and CP. Alongside the Spanish
example in (5), where el combines with a que-clause, there is the option of the
element lo, traditionally described as a neuter article, combining with a CP
provided there is the preposition de.

(7) [Lo de que María compró una casa] es cierto/verdad/falso.

The of that Maria bought a house is certain/true/false.
‘That Maria bought a house is certain/true/false.’

Picallo demonstrates without doubt—I detail this below—that there is indeed a

null noun in lo+de+que constructions but crucially not in the el+que constructions
in (5) (the argument hinges on the presence of de, in fact). So Spanish helps
structurally disambiguate between a ‘true’ clausal nominalization (where D selects
CP as in (5), the el+que construction) and complex NP constructions in disguise
(the lo+de+que construction as in (7)). With that as a backdrop, this chapter will
focus on the interpretation of these two types of clause-embedding DPs. As
Serrano (2014, 2015) documents, the el+que construction is very picky about the
kinds of predicates it combines with. It is quite content as an argument of emotive
factives like lamentar ‘regret’ as in (5) but not a truth/falsity predicate as in (8).

(8) #[El que María compró una casa] es cierto/verdad/falso.

The that Maria about a house is certain/true/false.
‘That Maria bought a house is certain/true/false.’

My contribution here is identifying the contrast between (7) and (8) in terms
of the ‘kinds’ of propositions the two constructions describe. We need to
recognize that ‘proposition’ is too crude a notion to distinguish among the
items of natural language that can be used as the arguments of intensional
predicates (Portner, 1992; Zimmermann, 1993; Zucchi, 1993; Moltmann,
1997; among many others). Both el+que and lo+de+que clauses are propos-
itional, in a broad sense—for instance, both appear in intensional contexts.²
I will follow Zucchi (1993) and identify nominalizations of the el+que type as
states-of-affairs (SOAs). SOAs cannot be predicated of truth/falsity nor serve
as the complements the attitudes know/believe/say. In contrast, the objects that
combine with these predicates are what Chierchia (1984) describes as the
individual correlate of a proposition, or following Moltmann (2013), attitudinal
objects. This is what lo+de+que clauses can denote. The claim I make in this

² We will also see that el+que clauses need not describe facts or appear only with factive predicates
(Serrano, 2014, 2015).
258  

chapter, which is to my knowledge a novel one, is that such individuals do not come
for free out of a nominalization operation, but require there to be some lexical
noun. In the case of Spanish, this noun can be null. The take home message is that
merely nominalizing a clause—adding functional elements like a determiner or
familiar Indo-European nominalizing morphology—will not deliver a phrase that
refers to or describes a proposition in the most canonical sense. This has conse-
quences for several theories of CP-level nominalizations, particularly those in
Chierchia (1984); Potts (2002); Takahashi (2010); and Alexiadou (Chapter 5).
In the second half of the chapter, I turn to an independent set of facts, novel to
my knowledge, concerning propositional proforms which exhibit a split similar
to that shown by the two types of Spanish clausal nominalizations. I will argue
that propositional proforms which stand in for ‘canonical’ propositions (objects
of believe for instance) take exophoric reference (‘deep anaphora’) in a much
more limited set of circumstances than previously recognized (Hankamer & Sag,
1976; Snider, 2017). In contrast, propositional proforms that serve as the
arguments of predicates that otherwise select for nominalizations can refer
exophorically freely. I argue that this is so becuase direct reference to proposi-
tions is not possible. As with clausal nominalizations, an attitudinal object must
play host for the propositional content. In the case of propositional proforms,
the attitudinal object may be an event of assertion (Hacquard, 2006).
Both propositional proforms and propositional nominalizations help clarify
what is meant when it is said that some linguistic item refers to a proposition:³
We are in fact referring to an object—an individual or eventuality—that bears
propositional content.

11.2 The problem of propositional proforms

While (1) demonstrates that ATK nominals and gerundive nominals differ in
their distribution from verbal gerunds, there is one environment where all
types of nominalization appear to behave as we would expect if they were
derived transformationally from clauses. That environment is the argument
position of a subset of proposition-selecting predicates. As Vendler (1967) first
noted, nominals here appear to give rise to the same propositional meanings as
clauses, as demonstrated by the paraphrases with finite clauses below each of
the following examples. This is true for ATK nominals (9), verbal gerunds with
possessor subjects (10), and verbal gerunds with accusative subjects (11):

³ Here I am thinking of work that describes certain clauses as ‘referential propositions’ (Haegeman
& Ürögdi, 2010; De Cuba, 2017).
     259

(9) We were informed of the Romans’ destruction of the city.

≊ We were informed that Romans destroyed this city.

(10) The authorities were aware of John’s removing the goods.

≊ The authorities were aware that John removed the goods.

(11) John was aware of them constructing the highway

≊ John was aware that they constructed the highway.

Nominalizations in such contexts also behave like their clausal counterparts

in being referentially opaque. Substitution of extensional equivalents does
not necessarily preserve truth; the following entailment does not hold
(Zucchi, 1993).

(12) a. Oedipus was informed of the arrival of Jocasta.

b. Jocasta is Oedipus’ mother.
⊭ Oedipus was informed of the arrival of his mother.

Moreover, when the nominalization is freed of definiteness—as can be the case

for clausal gerunds (Portner 1992)—then a nonfactive propositional interpret-
ation becomes easily available:

(13) a. Him arriving early was likely (and yet he was still late).
b. I am skeptical of Bo getting the job done.

There is no presupposition in (13a) that someone actually did arrive. Uttering

(13b) I do not presuppose Bo will get the job done, quite the opposite in fact.
Gerunds wth possessor subjects need not describe facts either, as Zucchi points
out. So while (14a) is a contradiction, (14b) with a Poss-ing gerund is not:

(14) a. We prevented the fact that John succumbed to the temptation by

hiding all the cookies from him.
b. We prevented his succumbing to the temptation by hiding all the
cookies from him. (Zucchi, 1993: (68)–(69))

Whether a nominalization describes a fact seems to be orthogonal to the issue

at hand. This will be a common theme in this chapter: Nominalizations, even
the very large clausal ones in Spanish, Greek, and Navajo, do not describe
facts. This is apparent already from the Navajo example in (6). If this nom-
inalization described a fact, the sentence would be anomalous since asserting
260  

that something is a lie or false would be at adds with presupposing it is a fact.

(I will provide some analogous data from Spanish and Greek in Section 11.3.)
Developing a semantics for the propositional interpretation of nominaliza-
tions has proved difficult (see Portner, 1992, Zucchi, 1993, and Frana &
Moulton, 2018, for some options). One of the challenges, previewed in
Section 11.1, is that nominals do not always get propositional readings. In
particular, nominalized complements of verbs like believe, say, and know do
not express what the clausal complement can—in fact, they are downright
ungrammatical. Even clausal gerunds are out here.

(15) a. *I said him/his taking the bus/his arrival on the bus.

b. I said that he took the bus/he arrived on the bus.

(16) a. #They knew him dancing the polka.4

b. They knew that he was dancing the polka.

(17) a. *I believed her winning.

b. I believed that she might win / I believe her to be winning.

Likewise, while clauses can be the arguments of true and false, no English
nominalization, of any size, can:

(18) a. That he left is false/true.

b. *PRO/Him/his winning (of) the race is false/true.

Truth/falsity predicates and the attitude verbs that likewise resist nominalized
complements (15)–(17) form a natural class. This is revealed by the fact that
the complements of such attitudes themselves allow modification by truth/
falsity predicates (19).

(19) John believed/said [that she won which was true/false]

The difficulty posed by propositional nominals is in letting them ‘mimic’

propositions but preventing them from serving as arguments of the attitudes
believe/say/know and true/false. I cannot provide a complete solution to this
problem, but I believe the Spanish patterns to which I turn next help diagnose
and solve one half of the problem.

⁴ This might have an acquaintance meaning for know, taking the DP him modified by a participle.
The intended reading—the one available to a clausal complement—is not available for the gerund.
     261

11.3 Spanish el+que vs. lo+de+que

Unlike English, Spanish can nominalize infinitival clauses or finite clauses

headed by the complementizer que. The nominalization comes in the form of
the language’s definite determiners. There are two types of determiner-plus-
CP constructions in Spanish. The first involves the masculine definite deter-
miner el, which can take a finite (20a) or nonfinite CP (20b) (Plann, 1981;
Picallo, 2002; Delicado Cantero, 2013; Serrano, 2014, 2015). In what follows
I focus on the finite version, hence the moniker the ‘el+que construction’.

(20) a. [El [que creas que hay fantasmas en la

that that believe.2 that there.is ghosts in the
azotea]] carece de lógica.
attic lacks of lógic.
‘That you believe that there are ghosts in the attic is illogical.’
b. Lamento mucho [el [PRO haberme visto obligado a
regret. 1 lot the to.have seen forced to
explicar todo esto]]
explain all this
‘I regret a lot to have been forced to explain this.’ (Picallo, 2002: 119 (6a,b))

The second type involves the element lo followed by the preposition de and then
the CP.⁵ The CP can be finite or an infinitival as with el+que constructions.

(21) a. Lo de que se tenga que pagar un

the of that people have that to.pay a
impuesto adicional provocará un unánime rechazo.
tax additional will.cause a unanimous revolt’
‘The (idea/proposal) that people have to pay an additional tax will
cause a unanimous revolt.’

⁵ Picallo (2002) reports that lo is traditionally classified as the neuter determiner. The -o portion
appears in other contexts where a noun is absent or silent (ia) but not when an N is present (ib)
(Bernstein, 1993):
(i) a. Busco uno rojo.
look.1-for a red.
‘I am looking for a red one.’
b. Busco un paquete rojo.
look.1-for a parcel. red.
‘I am looking for a red parcel.’
Picallo (2002) follows Bernstein (1993) in associating -o with a nominal Agr projection (Gender and
Number) dominating a null N head.
262  

b. Lo de ir a Mallorca este verano no nos convence.

the of to.go to Mallorca this summer not us convince
‘The (idea/proposal) of going to Mallorca this summer does not
convince us.’ (Picallo, 2002: 120 (9a,b))

Picallo (2002) points out that there must be a null noun in the lo+de+que
constructions but not one in the el+que constructions. This is suggested not
only by the translations in (21) that include nouns like idea and proposal, but
by the presence of de which verifies that there is in fact a null noun. We know
this because in Spanish de is required when a CP complements N:

(22) Lamento el hecho *(de) que no me saludara.

regret. 1 the fact of that not me greet.3
‘I regret the fact that he did not greet me.’(Picallo, 2002: 119, fn. 3, (ia))

But de is disallowed in the el+que construction (at least when presented out of
the blue, unlike lo+de+que constructions).

(23) Lamento el (*de) que no me saludara.

regret.1 the of that not me greet.3
‘I regret that he did not greet me.’ (Picallo, 2002: 119, fn. 3, (ib))

Picallo’s argument, then, is that while there is a null N in lo+de+que

constructions—given that de is obligatory as with overt nouns—there must
not be one in el+que constructions. The null N must be a true null element too,
not ellipsis. Spanish has NP ellipsis, and it can apply in cases like (24). Here
there is a linguistic antecedent hechos ‘fact’ for the elided N. The determiner is
el but note the presence of de (unlike in el+que constructions).

(24) Consideró varios hechos independientemente. El [e] de que

considered.3 several facts independently the of that
hubieran apoyado tal propuesta era el más conspicuo.
had.3 supported such-a proposal was the most conspicuous
‘S/he considered several facts independently. The (fact) that they had
supported such a proposal was the most conspicuous one.’
(Picallo, 2002: 120, (8a))

In contrast, no such linguistic antecedent is required for lo+de+que constructions,

suggesting that it is a null N as distinct from an elided N. So to summarize,
Picallo’s conclusion is that el+que constructions do not have a null N but lo+de
+que constructions do, and this null noun is not a result of ellipsis.
     263

Now for my contribution: lo+de+que clauses can express ‘canonical’

propositions in that they can serve as the arguments of predicates of truth
and falsity (25a) and propositional attitude verbs such a creer ‘believe’ (25b),
saber ‘to know’ (25c), and decir ‘to say’ (25d).

(25) Lo+de+que
a. [Lo de que María compró una casa] es cierto/verdad/falso.
The of that Maria bought a house is true/true/false
‘That Maria bought a house is certain/true/false.’
b. No me creo lo de que María compró una casa nueva.
Not me believe.1 the of that Maria bought a house new
‘I don’t believe that Maria bought a new house.’
c. Juan ya sabe lo de que María compró una casa nueva.
Juan already knows the of that Maria bought a house new.
‘Juan already knows that Maria bought a new house.’
d. Juan ya me dijo lo de que María compró una casa nueva.
Juan already to.me said the of that Maria bought a house new
‘Juan already said to me that Maria bought a new house.’

In contrast, el+que clauses cannot complement these predicates (26); this restric-
tion extends even to factive saber ‘know’, as Serrano (2014, 2015) documents.

(26) El+que
a. *[El que María compró una casa] es cierto/verdad/falso.
The that Maria bout a house is certain/true/false.
‘That Maria bought a house is certain/true/false.’
b. *Carol dijo el que no quedaban entradas para el cine.
Carol said the that  left tickets for the cinema
‘Carol said that there were no movie tickets for the cinema left.’
(Serrano, 2015: 24, (8a))
c. *Helena pensó el que el viaje a Japón había sido estupendo.
Helena thought the that the trip to Japan had been great.
‘Helena thought that the trip to Japan had been great.’
(Serrano, 2015: 24, (8b))
d. *Cristina sabe el que su prima ha tenido un bebé.
Cristina knows the that her cousin has had a baby.
‘Cristina knows that her cousin has had a baby.’
(Serrano, 2015: 28, (13b))
264  

This aligns with the contrast in English between nominalized and non
nonminalized arguments.⁶ In the case of el+que clauses, this is the conclusion
of Serrano (2014, 2015), who meticulously details the range of predicates that
el+que clauses can combine with. One of Serrano’s important discoveries is
that el+que clauses are not confined to denoting facts or being the argument of
factive predicates (as opposed to earlier claims in the literature (Plann, 1981)). For
instance, el+que can complement impidió ‘prevent’ just as English nominaliza-
tions can. Example (27) replicates the data point from Zucchi (1993) in (14).

(27) a. Evitamos el que cayera en la tentación escondiéndole

We.prevented the that he.fall in the temptation hiding
todas las galletas.
all the cookies.
‘We prevented him from falling into temptation by hiding all the
cookies.’
b. ??Evitamos el hecho de que cayera en la tentación
We.prevented the fact of that that he.fall in the
escondiéndole todas las galletas.
temptation hiding all the cookies.
‘We prevented the fact he fall into temptation by hiding all the
cookies.’ (Serrano, 2015: 217, (40))

Similarly in (28), the content of the el+que clause is not presupposed. In

neither the nonnegated (28a) or negated (28b) sentence is the speaker com-
mitted to it being true that Palmira learned to recognize the musical notes—in
fact, this is explicitly denied in (28b).

(28) a. Ese juego dificulta el que Palmira aprenda a

That game makes.difficult the that Palmira learn to
distinguir las notas musicales.
distinguish the notes musical.
‘That game makes it difficult for Palmira to learn to recognize the
musical notes.’

⁶ It may be most appropriate to compare el+que clauses to English clausal gerunds. All the Spanish
predicates that Serrano (2014) reports allow el+que clauses have an English counterpart that allows a
clausal gerund. This includes predicates like ser sorprendente/importante/irrelecante ‘be surprising/
important/irrelevant’, hacer ‘to make (something)’, lamentar ‘to regret’, mostrar ‘to showing some-
thing’, subrayar ‘to highlight/underline something’. Likewise, el+que clauses resist combining with
event-selecting predicates like suceder ‘to happen’ just like clausal gerunds (1). As an anonymous
reviewer points out, the infintival versions of el+que clauses (see (20b)) show structural ambiguities
reminiscent of the different projections that form English verbal vs. nominal gerunds, as discussed in
Yoon & Bonet-Farran (1991).
     265

b. Ese juego no dificulta el que Palmira

That game  makes.difficult the that Palmira
aprenda a distinguir las notas musicales, pero ella
learn to distinguish the notes musical, but she
sigue sin distinguir una sola nota.
still without distinguish a single note.
‘That game doesn’t make it difficult for Palmira to learn to recognize
the musical notes, but she continues to be unable to recognize even
one of them.’ (Serrano, 2015: 38, (33b))

The translation of these el+que clauses into English for-clauses is also a clue
that they need not denote facts. This is all to say that the inability of el+que
clauses to combine with nonfactive attitude verbs and truth/falsity predicates
as in (26) is not because such clauses must denote facts. Additionally, el+que
clauses can be interpreted opaquely, since they provide the propositional
content of the emotive factives such as lamentar ‘regret’ (see example (5)).
El+que clauses require, it would seem, an analysis similar to that given to
English propositional nominalizations described in Section 11.2. Various
proposals exist in the literature, none of which I can improve upon. As
noted, Zucchi (1993) argues for the notion of states-of-affairs (SOAs).⁷
Serrano (2015) identifies el+que clauses with situation kinds. In any event,
we need to ensure that such nominalizations are interpreted opaquely but not
allow them to behave like canonical proposition-denoting clauses. One possi-
bility is that SOAs denote possible situations, i.e. situation concepts, and so are
type 〈s,s〉, where s is the type of possible situations (compare to individual
concepts of type 〈s,e〉). They would thus be distinguished from canonical
propositions, functions from possible situations to truth values 〈s,t〉. We
would then stipulate that true/false/believe/know/say select for type 〈s,t〉 but
not 〈s,s〉. For present purposes, however, SOAs must remain a primitive
notion; I also leave to future work a compositional analysis of el+que clauses
that would deliver such meanings. What is crucial to my message is what
el+que clauses do not denote: Neither canonical propositions nor what lo
+de+que clauses denote. I turn to the these now.
I suggest that lo+de+que clauses denote what Moltmann (2013) calls attitu-
dinal objects. Moltmann illustrates attitudinal objects with complex NP like (29a)

⁷ Zucchi’s analysis was designed for English propositional nominalizations that have the distribu-
tion of el+que clauses. Portner’s (1992) analysis of propositional nominals distinguishes them from the
propositional expressions that accept true/false in terms of the ‘size’ of the situations described using
Kratzerian situation semantics (Kratzer, 1989, 2007).
266  

headed by nominalizations such as belief and claim. Like propositions, attitudinal

objects can be true or false (29b). But unlike propositions, they behave like
concrete objects because they can participate in causal relations (30).

(29) a. John’s belief/claim that Mary likes Bill.

b. John’s belief/claim is true/false/correct.

(30) a. John’s clam that Mary won the race caused astonishment.
b. ??The proposition that Mary won the race caused astonishment.
(Moltmann, 2013: 135, (31))

Relatedly, Kratzer (2006) extends similar ideas to nonderived nouns like idea,
story, and myth. These content nouns describe individuals of a certain sort—
associated with propositional content, which are here notated as xc for
‘content’. Adopting ideas from Kratzer (2006), taken up in Moulton (2009,
2015) and Elliott (2018), suppose that these nouns, like the nominalizations
that Moltmann argues are attitudinal objects, select propositions of type 〈s,t〉
as their complements, returning a property of individuals whose content is the
proposition they embed:⁸

(31) ⟦idea⟧ = λpλxcλw [idea(xc)(w) & (xc)(w) = p]

The function cont is defined in (32):

(32) (xc)(w) =
{w 0 : w 0 is compatible with the intentional content determined by xc in w}
(after Kratzer, 2013: (25))

A definite description with a content noun and a clausal argument looks like (33):

(33) ⟦the idea that Bob sang⟧ =

λw.ιxc [idea(xc)(w) & (xc)(w) = λw 0 . Bob sang in w 0 ]

⁸ Here I treat idea as relational, whereas in Kratzer (2006), Moulton (2009, 2015), and Elliott (2018),
such content nouns are treated merely as properties. On that view, the CP combines with these nouns
by intensional predicate modification. A functional head in the embedded clause (perhaps a comple-
mentizer) introduces a content function. I do not pursue that analysis here, since it makes the incorrect
prediction that the extended verbal functional projection delivers contentful individuals by itself,
without a noun. This is precisely what I am now arguing against from the Spanish contrasts.
     267

Predicates like true/false (29) and believe/say/know can combine with such
content descriptions:

(34) a. I believe that myth/claim/idea.

b. I know/said false things.

These predicates, when they select an individual type, select only contentful
individuals, not SOAs.⁹

(35) ⟦believe⟧ = λxcλyλw. Dox(y)(w)  (xc)(w)

(36) Dox(x)(w) = { w0 : w0 is compatible with what x believes in w}

This verb can combine with the DP in (33). The result will be that all the
worlds that are compatible with what the attitude holder believes are a subset
of the worlds compatible with the content of xc. The result is a standard
Hintikkan analysis of belief (Hintikka, 1969). A similar move can be made
for the other attitudes, although I must leave an in-depth analysis of true/false
for another time.
Returning to Spanish, I suggest that the null noun in lo+de+que clauses
provides a contentful individual, an attitudinal object. Assuming the deter-
miner lo is like a definite, the lo+de+que construction will refer to a (possibly
unique) contentful object. This is what allows it to combine with these
predicates. El+que clauses simply do not have such a noun, and so cannot
describe attitudinal objects. As I make clear above, I do not have a novel theory
for just what el+que clauses denote, but what I hope is instructive is that their
lack of a nominal projection prevents them from denoting attitudinal objects
via a null content noun.
The idea that a language could have a null content noun is independently
plausible because a number of languages have overt, semantically light, all-
purpose content nouns that introduce a variety of propositional complements.
Korean kes ‘thing’ is one such element that introduces a variety of clauses
(Horie, 2000; Kim, 2009), including factive (37a) and nonfactive complements
(37b).

⁹ When the verb selects a bare CP, it may simply have an alternative 〈s,t〉-taking type. In separate
work (Moulton, 2015), I argue for just the low-type taking option. Chierchia (1984) argued for the view
that all argument slots should be understood as individual type and two important works follow this
mission in certain ways (Landman, 2006; Poole, 2017).
268  

(37) a. Mary-nun [John-i sihem-ey hapkyekha-n] -kes-ul

Mary- John- exam-in pass-. -
al-ass-ta.
know--
‘Mary learned that John passed the exam.’
b. Mary-nun [John-i sihem-ey hapkyekha-l] -kes-ul
Mary- John- exam-in pass-. -
pala-n-ta.
hope--
‘Mary hopes that John will pass the exam.’ (Horie, 2000: 21 (20))

Kes-clauses can be predicated of truth and falsity (38) and can complement
believe-verbs (39), under certain conditions discussed in Shim & Ihsane (2015)
and Bogal-Allbritten & Moulton (2017):

(38) [Toli-ka cip-ul sa-ss-ta-nun kes-un] sasil-i

Toli- house- buy--- - fact-
an-i-ta.
not--
‘The claim that Toli bought a house is not a fact.’ (C.-h. Han, p.c.)

(39) Na-nun [kay-ka swukecey-lul ta ha-yass-ta-nun kes-ul]

I- he- homework- all do--- kes-
mit-e.
believe-
‘I believe that he finished his homework.’

Baker (1996) reports on a noun in Mohawk that not only serves as a general
all-purpose content noun, but incorporates into nonCP selecting verbs such as
‘like’ (41a) to build the propositional attitude ‘agree’ (41b).

(40) o-rihw-a’ : ‘matter’, ‘affair’, ‘fact’, ‘news’

‘A very general word referring to a kind of proposition’ (Baker, 1996)

(41) a. Sak rake -nuhwe’ -s

Sak MsS/1sO -like -
‘Sak likes me.’
     269

b. Sak ro- -rihw -a -nuhwé’ -u a-ha-’sere-ht-óhare-’

Sak MsO -matter -Ø -like - -MsS-car--wash-
‘Sak has agreed to wash the car.’ (Baker, 1996b: 462 (23))

More such combinations are given in (42) from Baker (1996: 462).

(42) CP-taking verb Literal gloss Free gloss

rihw-a-nuhwe’ matter-like ‘to agree to S’
rihw-a-tshuri matter-find ‘to find out that S’
rihw-a-yʌta’s matter-acquire ‘to decide to S’
rihw-isak matter-seek ‘to investigate S’

Since all-purpose, semantically light content nouns have overt form in these
languages, it is not surprising that in some languages this light noun is null.
This is the nature of the covert N in lo+de+CP clauses.¹⁰

(43) [Lo ØContent de que María compró una casa nueva] es

The N of that Maria bought a house new is
una mentira.
a lie
‘That Maria has bought a new house is a lie.’

Suppose that Spanish reflects a truth about natural language. To get a ‘canon-
ical’ proposition from a D+CP construction, there has to be a content N in
there. Greek D+CP constructions can be arguments of truth/falsity predicates,
suggesting a null noun:

(44) a. [To oti i Ji ine strogili] ine alíthia/láthos. (Greek)

The that the Earth is round is true/false.
‘That the Earth is round is true/false.’ (Angelopoulos, p.c.)
b. [To oti ine plusios] ine psema.
The that is- 3 rich is lie
‘That he is rich is a lie.’ (Pappas, p.c.)
Roussou (1991) argued against the presence of a null noun in these construc-
tions and that instead the determiner to combines directly with CP. Her

¹⁰ The element lo is sometimes decomposed into the determiner l- plus a nominal -o (see n. 5 on this
issue). It could be that -o is like Korean kes, an overt pronoun that stands in for a variety of semantic
types, including content-carrying individuals.
270  

objections mostly hold for one particular implementation of a null noun

approach, that of Warburton-Philippaki & Papafili (1988). They suggest that
to+oti clauses contain a silent, or perhaps elided, version of the noun ghegho-
nos ‘fact’. Roussou correctly objects that this would not extend to other D+CP
constructions, like those headed by the particle na rather than oti (45a), since
na-clauses cannot complement gheghonos (45b).

(45) a. to na ehis ipomoni ine proson

the  have.2 patience. be.3 advantage.
‘That you have patience is an advantage.’
b. *to gheghonos na ehis ipomoni . . .
the fact  have.2 patience. . . .
‘*The fact to have patience . . . ’ (Roussou, 1991: (11a), (12))

Roussou’s argument is neutralized, however, if the null content noun is not

literally a noun meaning fact (see also Hartman, 2012), something we must
recognize anyway given the examples in (44). Rather, the null content noun is
a very general content noun, more like Korean kes or Mohawk rihw- than the
word fact.¹¹ Another of Roussou’s objections to a null noun concerns the fact
that only the neuter determiner to is possible in D+CP constructions not the
feminine or masculine versions, even though overt content nouns can bear
these genders (e.g. i fimi, the- rumor). What Spanish shows us is that an
all-purpose null content noun can be neuter (see fn. 5).
In general, the strong empirical prediction is that nominalized CPs that
complement predicates like true/false and believe/know/say will have some
element in them like a content nominal. In the case of Greek and Spanish, it
is a null lexical noun. In the case of Korean and Navajo (6), it is a
morphological nominalizer. It is generally the case that the nominalizers in
these languages cover a wider semantic territory than familiar English
nominalizers like -ation and -ing, and so it should not be considered
out of the range of plausibility that they can nominalize into contentful
individuals. See Kim (2009) and Bogal-Allbritten & Moulton (2017) for a
discussion and implementation in the case of Korean kes-clauses, and Bogal-
Allbritten & Moulton (2018) on Navajo. Alexiadou (Chapter 5) has
suggested that n-based nominalization cannot attach to the highest reaches
of the clauses spine. Assuming that the Navajo and Korean nominalizers are

¹¹ It is also possible that na-clauses under D do not involve a noun but oti-clauses do, which would
mirror the split between lo+de+que and el+que in Spanish.
     271

n and not D (see Kim, 2009, and Bogal-Allbritten & Moulton, 2017) then
they constitute a counter example since both types of nominals can describe
attitudinal objects—i.e. be arguments of true/false or believe-type predicates.
A brief note is in order concerning some proposals in the literature on
nominalized propositions. Chierchia (1984) posits a type-shifting operation
 that, among other things, can shift propositions into their individual
correlates. This could indeed be the function of the null content noun in
Spanish, but we would need to control its syntactic distribution—i.e. to appear-
ing only in places where nouns (and Korean and Navajo nominalizations) can
appear and not be a freely-applying type-shifter associated with just any kind of
syntactic nominalization, like an el+que clause. Other authors have suggested
that nominalized propositions ‘denote the plural individual composed of the
worlds in the input proposition’ (Potts, 2002: 58). Takahashi (2010: fn. 14)
suggests that a covert determiner in English can combine directly with a CP and
in doing so deliver a plurality of worlds which can be fed to attitude verbs like
believe. The Spanish facts cast doubt on this approach. If it were generally
possible, we would expect el+que clauses—which are D+CP constructions—to
have the distribution of canonical proposition-denoting expressions.
Taking stock, we have argued that el+que clauses refer to SOAs whereas lo
+de+que clauses refer to individuals with propositional content. The outstand-
ing task is to prevent predicates like true/false and believe/say/know from
combining with el+que clauses. Just calling them SOAs or situation concepts,
without giving a thorough semantics, is not enough. Building on a set of
empirical considerations distinct from those discussed here, Djärv (2019)
has recently proposed that there is a fundamental split among clause-
embedding predicates. Some, like the emotive factives, describe relations
between attitude holders and individual situations (these would be Zucchi’s,
1993, SOAs). Other predicates relate to content-bearing individuals in virtue
of containing as part of their lexical semantics the  function, as with the
denotation given for believe in (35). The implication, then, must be that the
situations described by el+que clauses are just incompatible with the 
function— for whatever reason just cannot recover propositional content
from such situations. If something like this can be defended, then we would be
closer to explaining—not just stipulating—the distribution of el+que clauses
and perhaps even the English propositional nominalization we began with. In
Section 11.4 I explore this idea using propositional anaphora as a guide
(Hankamer & Sag, 1976; Asher, 1993). We will see a similar split in terms of
reference to propositional entities. The observation will be that only certain
kinds of individuals and events can deliver content in the way required by
verbs like believe.
272  

11.4 Propositional proforms do not refer to propositions

Since Hankamer & Sag (1976), it has generally been accepted that propos-
itional proforms such as this, that, and it can be either ‘surface’ or ‘deep’
anaphors. As surface anaphors, they can anaphorically refer to propositions
introduced by linguistic antecedents as in (46).

(46) a: Julie just said that Fred resigned.

b: Yeah, I had suspected that/this/it. that/this/it = that Fred resigned

Propositional proforms, it is claimed, can also be ‘deep anaphors’, taking

exophroic reference deictically to non linguistic, pragmatically controled prop-
ositional referents. An example of this in (47) is from Hankamer & Sag (1976);
the example in (48) is from Snider (2017):

(47) Hankamer [observing Sag successfully ripping a phone book in half]:

I don’t believe it. (Hankamer & Sag, 1976: (32))

(48) [Mom walks into the living room, and sees her three children standing
around the broken remains of a lamp.]
[Mom:] Who broke the lamp?
[Two of the children look at Dewey.]
[Dewey:] That’s not true! (Snider, 2017: (89))

It turns out, however, the ability of propositional proforms to take exophoric

reference is more constrained than previously recognized. Imagine the follow-
ing scenario. It is mid-October in Montréal and it is snowing. I, however, have
been inside a windowless lab all day, and do not know this. I know that you
have been outside recently and hence are sure to know the weather. On exiting
the building together, I see the snow and say the following, where this is
intended for that it is snowing:

(49) a. You didn’t tell me this.

b. I am surprised by this
c. I didn’t expect this.
d. This is crazy.
e. This was unlikely given the heat yesterday.
     273

There is something much odder about the following:

(50) a. #You didn’t say this before.

b. #I didn’t think this.
c. #I believed this already.
d. #Had you claimed this before, I’d have thought you were crazy!

These intuitions are surprising, since previous descriptions of the facts tell us
that when a proposition like ‘that it is snowing’ is salient enough in the
discourse context, exophoric reference to it is possible. But the salience of a
proposition or situation is constant across these examples and yet there’s a
difference. With a linguistic antecedent as in (51), the contrast is neutralized;
the utterances in (50) are acceptable. (In these cases that is sometimes a little
better than this—see Snider, 2017, for similar observations; this is interesting,
I think, but does not deter from the point at hand.)

(51) [You:] Look, it’s snowing!

Me: (i) You didn’t say this/that before.
(ii) ?I didn’t think this/that.
(iii) I believed this/that already.
(iv) Had you claimed this/that before, I’d ‘a thought you were
crazy!

So these predicates can take DP propositional proforms, just not those with
apparently exophoric reference.
One clue to the contrast in (49) and (50) is the fact that the predicates in
(49) can all take DP arguments that describe (possible) situations—employing
nouns like outcome, possibility, fact, situation as in (52). The predicates in (50)
cannot (53):

(52) a. You didn’t tell me this fact before.

b. I am surprised by this outcome.
c. I didn’t expect this loveliness.
d. This situation is crazy.
e. This possibility was unlikely given the heat yesterday.

(53) a. *You didn’t say this fact before.

b. *I didn’t think this outcome.
c. *I believed this possibility already.
d. *When you claimed this situation, I thought you were crazy!
274  

The contrast between say and tell is instructive. Both can take DP propos-
itional proforms, but only tell allows exophoric reference. And this is correl-
ated with the fact that tell semantically selects for concrete situations,
expressible by this fact, whereas say does not. But it is important for me to
stress here (as I did earlier), this cannot be primarily about factivity; as (49e)
and (52e) show, propositional anaphora can refer to things otherwise describ-
able by the noun possibility (Asher, 1993). We can all agree that a possibility is
not a fact. Sure, the situation needs to hold in the world of evaluation for
exophoric reference as in (49e), but that does not limit propositional proforms
to occurring only under factive predicates.
The examples above also demonstrate that the verb believe does not, in the
basic case, allow exophoric propositional reference (50c). But in the form of
can’t believe, as with Hankamer’s original example, it is possible: I can’t believe
this/it! The phrase can’t believe is quite different from vanilla believe. It can
combine with situation-denoting expressions better than plain believe can.

(54) [Watching a trashy television show:]

a. #I believe this garbage!
b. I can’t believe this garbage!

(55) [Lamenting the fact that Trump won:]

a. #I believe this outcome/situation. (I expected it all along.)
b. I can’t believe this outcome/situation. (I never expected it.)

The lesson here is that we should not compare can’t believe to believe. They are
just different verbs, and the former patterns with predicates like surprising,
crazy, expect as in (49) independently of propositional anaphora.¹²
The larger lesson is that exophoric reference to the kinds of propositions
that believe/know/say select is severely limited, in contrast to the propositions
that surprise, crazy, and expect select. The different kinds of propositions are
tracked by the nominal phrases that they allow. This is reminiscent of the
distribution of el+que vs. lo de que: The former describe possible situations,

¹² An anonymous reviewer suggests that positive believe can, with a certain emphasis, take situation
denoting nouns (ia). As expected, the reviewer’s judgment is that an exophorically-referring propos-
itional proform is possible here too (ib).
(i) a. I can well believe this outcome. (I expected it all along.)
b. (Context: I’m watching a football match, and see an exciting young player score a stunning
goal:) I can well believe it! He’s such a talent.
The important thing is the correlation between allowing a DP that refers to a situation (this outcome)
and allowing a propositional proform.
     275

intuitively SOAs. It seems easy to refer exophorically with that/this/it to actual

situations. As for the kinds of propositions that believe/know/say select, it is
apparently not enough to refer to an exemplifying situation to get at the
proposition it exemplifies for purposes of these predicates.¹³
As far as I know, the existing proposals for propositional anaphora will not
capture these contrasts. They all assume that propositions can exist as discourse
referents, even if they are made salient nonlinguistically. Suppose, rather, that
propositional proforms never denote in type 〈s,t〉 but can refer only to particu-
lars, like situations. For predicates like believe/know/say a propositional proform
that refers to a situation is just not going to cut it, just as el+que clauses are not
suitable arguments for these predicates in Spanish.
We are left then with explaining Snider’s (2017) example in (48), which
suggests that proforms that are predicated of true/false can take exophoric
reference. What makes Snider’s example felicitous is the gesture made by
Dewey’s siblings—their demonstration that Dewey is guilty is their look
toward Dewey. Without that demonstration, the propositional proform is
not acceptable, as Snider points out.

(56) [Mom walks into the living room, and sees her three children standing
around the broken remains of a lamp.]
Mom: Who broke the lamp?
Dewey: #That’s not true!

The demonstrations made by Dewey’s siblings in (48) may not be utterances,

but they establish something close to a discourse move. Note the following:

(57) By looking at Dewey, the two children suggest/indicate/claim that

Dewey broke the lamp.

Perhaps we conceptualize these kinds of nonlinguistic demonstrations as

discourse moves—we can talk about them as claims. Claims and suggestions
are events that have content. And it is these particulars that a proform can
refer to: an eventuality with propositional content. At the extreme case, these
are demonstrations like Dewey’s siblings’ accusatory looks. In the simplest
case, these eventualities are linguistic events like the assertion in (51): ‘Look it’s
snowing!’ Hacquard (2006) argues that the content function (like that

¹³ Here I am informally evoking the notion of a situation exemplifying a proposition, as in Kratzer

(1989, 2007).
276  

embedded in the verb believe in (35)) can recover content from events of
assertion. So the individual-denoting object of believe need not just be an
individual like a story or myth but an individual eventuality with propositional
content (e.g. believe his loud claim). Propositional proforms that combine with
believe/true/false must then denote attitudinal objects.

11.5 Conclusion

The Spanish nominalization facts and the propositional proform data point to
the same conclusion. When we refer to the kinds of things that predicates like
believe and true/false select, we are referring to a particular kind of attitudinal
object: an individual or event with content. We are not referring to a propos-
ition, whatever that might even mean. Reference to a contentful event or
individual probably does not come for free from nominalizers in Indo-
European languages, although it might in Navajo and Korean. Rather, it
must be provided by a content noun, which can be null in Spanish lo+de
+que constructions and maybe also in Greek. ATK nominals, gerundives, and
el+que constructions do not describe such individuals or events—the clausal
spine simply does not provide such meanings—and so they cannot combine
with the same range of predicates. They can only describe (possible) situations
which I have identified as SOAs, following Zucchi (1993).
Going forward, the strategy for looking at clause-level nominalizations or
clause-selecting determiners should include a larger battery of tests for the ‘kind’
of propositions they denote. And we should be careful about talking about
reference to propositions. To me, at least, it is still not clear what that really
entails, both for clauses with determiners on them or propositional proforms.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Elizabeth Bogal-Allbritten, Ilaria Frana, and Junko Shimoyama;
working with them on related topics has inspired the direction of this work. They are not
responsible for what I say here, whether it is wrong or simply trivial. For discussion and
help with Spanish, I thank Luis Alonso-Ovalle, María Biezma, Cristina Cuervo, and Paula
Menéndez-Benito. I would like to thank Nikos Angelopoulos and Panos Pappas for some
Greek examples and their judgments. None of these people are responsible for any errors in
this contribution. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewer and the volume
editors. This work is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada Insight Grant #435-2015-0454 held by Junko Shimoyama and the author.
 12
Where are thematic roles?
Building the micro-syntax of implicit arguments
in nominalizations
Tom Roeper

12.1 Introduction

The modern challenge in linguistics is to grasp how concepts and principles

cross interface boundaries. For instance, thematic roles have been largely
imagined in terms of syntactic projections, but with an acknowledgment
that they are directly reflected in some kinds of derivational morphology
(-er, -ee, -able) along with projections of semantic notions like Event (-tion,
-ment). How does one module, built upon on separate primitives, project into
another? So we ask both: How does the thematic module get projected in the
syntax (e.g. Agent can go to Subject) and how is it also projected into the
lexicon in derivations (like adding Agent -er)? A nominalization itself can be
passive:

(1) the city’s destruction by the enemy.

But what happens if there is a passive inside the nominalization?

(2) the city’s preparedness

Is it the -ed or the nominalizer -ness that allows the possessive to carry the
THEME? The strongest view, which we defend as well, is that the lexicon itself
is essentially a part of syntax and therefore projects the same kind of syntactic
structure with the same operations. Their interaction nonetheless raises pre-
cise technical questions.

Tom Roeper, Where are thematic roles? Building the micro-syntax of implicit arguments in nominalization In: Nominalization:
50 Years on from Chomsky’s Remarks. Edited by: Artemis Alexiadou and Hagit Borer, Oxford University Press (2020).
© Tom Roeper. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198865544.003.0012
278  

12.1.1 Minimal interfaces

One plausible expectation for a theory of interfaces is that points of contact

between modules will themselves be minimal.¹ For instance, lexical items carry
thematic roles and instantiate them in the syntax (realized, bound, or satur-
ated) in a number of mutually exclusive ways, but with unusual diversity.²
Observationally, a verb can project an Agent in a number of separate places:

(3) V [cook [AGENT, THEME]]

=> Subject: John [AG] cooks food [TH]
=> by-phrase: the food was cooked by John [AG]
=> implicit argument: the food was cooked [AG entailed]
=> Nominalization: the cook [AG]
=> morphology: a cooker of strange food
=> Nominalized Possessive: the enemy’s destruction of the city

If they all project from a single lexical verbal entree ([cook]V), then the
notion that they are mutually exclusive is natural but still it needs to be stated
as it is in the traditional Theta-criterion.³ It is important to note that one could
build a system where double representation carries more information, but we
can see that it clearly fails to be grammatical:

(4) a. *the discoverer of America by Columbus

b. [compare: the discoverer of America who was Columbus]

The Agent is linked to the verb by -er and then further identified by the PP
(Columbus). The UNgrammaticality of (4a) provides a strong acquisition
constraint, and indeed no cases like *‘the winner by Bill’ are reported from
children. Therefore, some form of mutual exclusivity presupposition (a ver-
sion of the Theta-criterion) enables a child to avoid UG-excluded options,
although they might be informationally advantageous. Our arguments below
reveal other, much subtler blocking effects in lexical items.

¹ In Roeper (2014) a constraint: Minimal Modular Contact is articulated as a pivotal concept to

explain interface relations in the acquisition process. The same concept can apply to the syntax/lexicon
interface.
² We assume that parallel rules of semantic composition are needed, but we will not address them
here (see Harley, Chapter 9).
³ θ-criterion: Each argument bears one and only one θ-role, and each θ-role is assigned to one and
only one argument (Chomsky, 1981: 35).
     ? 279

We shall argue that impersonal passives of intransitives (5), found in many

languages, but not English, must be added to the list in (3) and it adds a
significant new dimension to what a theory of implicit arguments must capture:

(5) a. Es wurde die ganze Nacht getanzt (German)

(it was danced all night) = everyone danced

How does the passive apply to a nontransitive verb and where is the Agent
projected? We will argue that the verb werden is a Main Verb and carries its
own thematic role (5a) which becomes inaccessible in a nominalization (5c):

(5) b. it was danced all night =>

c. *die getanztheit der Nacht (*= the dancedness of the night)

The Theta-criterion simply fails to address phenomena where syntactic and

morphological properties are interwoven as in (2) or the absence of nominal-
izations as in (5c).

12.1.2 Goal: build on the Theta-criterion

Our approach retains the original view that thematic roles are carried by the
verb and projected onto argument structure and reflect Event structure. The
Numeration, drawn from the lexicon, undergoes initial composition via Merge
in terms of these thematic roles and arguments and then it is externalized in a
syntactic structure where further compositional principles are followed (e.g.
see Harley, Chapter 9). At the opposite end, we will argue that Discourse
composition is also entailed. Ultimately then we need a theory in which
thematic projection can be extended to have the syntax, lexicon, and discourse
within the scope of economic interface principles. First, we will lay out the full
diversity of thematic projections in nominalizations and then make sugges-
tions about how movement operations can affect them.

12.2 A sketch of structures

The domain of nominalizations has grown ever more complex. Van Hout
& Roeper (1998) argued that nominalizations can occur at the TP-, VP-, and
V-levels with varying potential for morphology and aspectual modification.
280  

(6)
DP

Poss NP

TP => +ing. + Aspectual PP.

VP => +er. + No aspectual marker.

V => +bare nominals. + Agent projection [John’s glance / glance by John]

Alexiadou (Chapter 5) provides extensive arguments for a ‘mixed’ model like

this in which verbal and nominal projections are interwoven putting Greek
and other languages in focus. Borer (Chapter 6) adds arguments demonstrat-
ing (as in Roeper, 1987; and Sichel, 2009) that nominalizations have a subject
PRO,⁴ contra counterarguments over the years (see Section 12.4, fn.16), and
she shows that aspectual adjuncts also entail the presence of arguments.
Harley (Chapter 9) extends these arguments including representations of
semantic or Event interpretations. Iordăchioaia (Chapter 10) provides exten-
sive discussion of the presence of argument structure in bare or zero-derived
nouns. Our analysis assumes, extends, or slightly modifies all of these. We will
take another step: We explore how one class of zero-derived nominals (ZN)
with prefixes (like outflow) show the presence of argument configurations at
the bare V-level that mirrors exactly the disposition of arguments at the
sentential level. The principle behind this morphological/syntactic symmetry
remains to be fully stated.⁵
We shall not fully solve the challenge of how this central syntax/lexicon
interface mapping should be represented. We will instead articulate the depth
of the question by our focus both on the lowest level, thematic roles for bare
nouns (ZN) (glance) and the highest Discourse level where implicit arguments

⁴ Borer (Chapter 6) provides a number of important semantic distinctions in the interpretation of

what she labels Silent External Arguments (SEA) which could all fall under a notion of PRO, but
possibly not if it is tightly linked to Pro-arb, for instance, interpreted as universal. This interesting
challenge pertains to how far node labels reflect semantic features, which we will not address here. We
continue the traditional assumption that PRO is an empty NP whose content is determined by
syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic factors, including discourse, which we explore below.
⁵ The concept is adumbrated in Baker’s (1997) formulation of UTAH (uniform theta-assignment
hypothesis).
     ? 281

for impersonal passives and small clauses must be connected, as in German: es

wurde nackt getanzt (it was danced [PRO naked]). In the process we will argue
for lexical internal movement operations and Unlabeled morphological oper-
ations following Bauke & Roeper (2014, 2016).

12.2.1 Levels and mixed derivations

We assume a V-level for ZN nominals (jump, glance, hope, attempt) and a VP

level that allows Agent and object (singer of operas, jumper of fences),⁶ but
excludes Aspectual PP’s (7a):

(7) a. *the runner to the store

b. the running to the store

Then there is a higher level nominalization (-ing) at TP which can include

Aspect (7b).
The intricacy of syntax/lexicon connections becomes stark when morpho-
logical projections occur prior to nominalization. We find that VP level
modification is possible for -ed:

(8) preparedness

but the higher TP projection does not allow -ness after -ing:

(9) *preparingness/*his constant preparingness of lectures

although it is possible to say:

(10) his preparing of the lecture for hours

Thus one structure (-ing) both includes an aspectual PP and excludes a

nominalization, while the other (-er) includes a nominalization and excludes

⁶ Roy & Soare (Chapter 13) provide an extensive typology of -er nominals, many of which are not
derived from verbs. There are of course cases like: Detroiter, New Yorker, bummer, downer, footballer
which are all idiomatic. Our focus is upon productive -er AGENTS, which apply to virtually every
transitive verb: avoider, evader, disturber are all examples that reflect on-line productivity. Although
there are interesting semantic classes involved, the core rule appears to be purely syntactic in our
estimation.
282  

aspectual PP.⁷ So we find not only ‘mixed’ thematic projections which

underscores the claims of Alexiadou, Borer, Harley, and others in this volume,
but subtle semantic consequences as well, in keeping with other forms of
semantic variation discussed by Moulton (Chapter 11) and Roy & Soare
(Chapter 13).

12.2.2 Acquisition implication

The proliferation of UG options are, in turn, prime challenges for acquisition

since critical morphologically complex examples like preparedness, or further
modified ones undecidedness, unexpectedness, are notably rare in the input.
Therefore, these options should flow directly from acquisition decisions about
the syntactic tree structure that particular grammars have. For instance, cases
like -ung in German, which may seem to be nominalizations of progressive
forms like -ing in English, do not allow aspectual modification where English
does, while -en nominalizations which also cover progressive meaning, do
allow them.⁸ We expect the child to have a syntactic structure which delimits

⁷ Bauke & Roeper (2014) report these plural forms of gerundive nominalizations which again
exclude the aspectual PP’s. Google examples show they occur but never with temporal PP’s (*PP):
a. The screenings of movies (*in three days)
b. The killings of journalists (*in an hour)
c. The firings of guns
d. the snatchings of cell phones
e. the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
f. the trouncings of Germany at major tournaments
They argue that -ing itself must be projectable both verbally within the VP and alternatively at a
higher DP level allowing pluralization and blocking aspect. Borer (Chapter 6) also shows how PP
without an argument is blocked.
⁸ Bauke & Roeper (2014)
-en allows adjuncts
a. das Mähen des Rasens mit einer Sense
the mow-en() the lawn- with a scythe
‘the mowing of the lawn with a scythe’
b. das Rasenmähen mit einer Sense
the lawn-mow-en() with a scythe
‘the lawn-mowing with a scythe’
c. *die Spaltung des Holzes mit der Axt
the splitt-ung the wood- with an axe
d. *die Holzspaltung in zwei Tagen
the wood-splitt-ung in two days
e. *die Holzspaltung für zwei Tage
the wood-splitt-ung for two days
     ? 283

these morphological options without specific input of morphological

evidence—another example of the Poverty of the Stimulus argument.⁹

12.2.3 Thematic role syntax in nominalizations

Our approach here focuses on one small part of the verbal substructure of
nominalizations: a proposal for a node that corresponds to little v inside
nominalizations (Chomsky, 1995; Kratzer, 1996; Hale & Keyser, 2002). It is
largely accepted since Chomsky (1970) that nominalizations carry essentially
the same syntactic structure as declaratives.¹⁰ The surface of nominalizations,
however, has many special properties including missing subjects, possessives
bearing theta-roles—order properties which should, if this parallelism holds,
conform to properties of modern minimalism.

12.2.4 By-phrases

It is well known that by-phrases are blocked in unaccusatives and middles

(Keyser & Roeper, 1984):

(11) a. *the ship sank by the navy

b. *bureaucrats bribe easily by anyone

Here, arguably, the subject position blocks the AGENT projection because
the object has been moved into it. In (11a) the Agent is altogether deleted,
plausibly by a Voice shift to the inchoative that has no Agent, while in (11b) it
is the projection onto Subject that is blocked and the thematic role may still be
on the verb (or possibly a ‘cognitive agent’ remains present in the broader
meaning). Unlike in passives, Mutual exclusivity blocks a by-phrase in (11b).
A typical example of where by-phrases survive lexical derivation comes from
nominalizations which can inherit thematic roles, to use the term advanced by
Randall (1982), even after passive applies. The passive -ed and -able carry an

⁹ This is not an instant process. Randall (1982) shows that children will misinterpret a sentence like
a writer with a candybar to mean write with a candybar. And spontaneous examples like ‘there’s a bike-
rider with no hands’ also indicate that children can mistakenly attach morphology to larger phrases,
which occurs as well in the adult grammar with possessives in the man on the corner’s hat.
¹⁰ See Borer (2005a,b, 2012) and van Hout & Roeper (1998) and references therein, which lay out in
detail the evidence and arguments.
284  

implicit Agent that is maintained by the nominalizer -ness (or -ity) or even
further morphological marking by un-:

(12) a. the well-preparedness of the lecture by the professor was evident

the learnability of grammar by children is important
the well-establishedness of his claims by the media was uncontroversial
the well-researchedness of the project by the newspaper was never in
question
the conclusion’s undoubtedness by anyone
b. Further complex cases: unexpectedness, unsuspectedness,
undoubtability

These reveal again that the passive projection is inside a further morpho-
logical derivation.¹¹

12.2.5 Spec, POSS projections

Crucially—one core argument of this chapter—in addition to its semantic inter-

pretation, syntactic consequences of passive are maintained as well, namely the
AGENT cannot be projected into the Spec,-NP POSSessive, whereas the object
can:

(13) *the professor’s well-preparedness of the lecture

*the child’s learnability of grammar

(14) the lecture’s well-preparedness by the professor

the grammar’s learnability (by children)
the gene’s heritability by children
John’s excludedness (by the team)
his belovedness (by everyone)
?the conclusion’s undoubtedness by anyone

While (14) may be questionable for some speakers, (15) shows that the same
subject-blocking is radically ungrammatical if a passive -ed is inside the
nominalization:

¹¹ Syntactically external uses are possible using a kind of pseudo-lexical item creation with dashes, as
in his-always-being-lateness, whose grammatical properties deserve careful attention.
     ? 285

(15) **the team’s excludedness of John

**everyone’s belovedness of him
**anyone’s undoubtedness of the conclusion
**the children’s heritability of the gene

Chomsky (1970) originally argued that nominalizations not only main-

tained the original thematic structure of verbs, but allowed the same syntactic
operations of object-preposing and by-Agents:

(16) a. the enemy’s destruction of the city

b. the city’s destruction by the enemy

It was often said that the free use of by-phrases and the double options for
subject (pre- and postnominal the destruction of the city/the city’s destruction)
meant that the nominalization itself was inherently passive or neutral in Voice.
The much sharper question behind (15) was not recognized: What happens
if the morphology of the nominalization contains a passivizing element (-ed,
-able) as in singability, or an adjective gets further morphology as in reportedly
(still a passive subject in: John was reportedly dead). Once again, quite strik-
ingly, subject only allows object-Themes, not Agents, just like in syntax:

(17) *John is singable/*John’s singability

the song is singable/the song’s singability
*Bill was learned/*Bill’s learnability
the grammar was learned/the grammar’s learnability

Therefore it is how thematic roles work within these constructions which

begins to show how external syntax and syntax within lexical items interact
and reflect a single structure. Note as well the power of the Agent to control a
purpose clause remains:

(18) Control Potential:

a. the well-preparedness of a lecture to dazzle the students was typical.
b. the desirability of a gun to shoot the enemy was unavoidable.

It leads to this question: How exactly does Burzio’s (1981) formulation of

‘dethematization of the subject position’ get transferred to the POSS of
nominalizations? We offer one syntactic mechanism, generally based on
Hiraiwa (2005), who argues for a Supercategorial representation that captures
286  

CP or DP within it, by a simpler categorial alternation. Hiraiwa argues that DP

and Sentence forms can be built from the same structures with delayed
Labeling as Distributed Morphology suggests:

(19) CP/DP

{NP POSS} VP/NP

V
Voice

Little v
<=====AG

In whatever way Voice carries out its argument distribution, it can apply
equally when -ed/-able are in VP, AP, or DP. Thus, we can posit a structure in
which the CP/DP labeling decision automatically determines that the Specifier
will carry an AGENT whether it is a Sentence or a DP. Further examples
should be brought to bear in a deeper explanation. We suspect a deeper
‘leading idea’ about interface principles still needs formulation to capture
these consequences.

12.3 Zero nominalizations (ZN), clitic

projections, and control

Consider now Agents with bare nominalizations (ZN) (8a). Notably, all of the
structures which allow Agent can also carry out implicit Agent control just like
nominalizations (8b,c,d) which we have already introduced, although not
morphologically marked:
     ? 287

(20) a. an angry look by John (PRO) to keep his children quiet was no surprise.
b. the electability of Biden (PRO) to stop Trump is critical.
c. the well-preparedness of the house to surprise Mom was terrific.
d. the exportability of goods to avoid taxes was unfortunate.

Consequently the AGENT carried in the -able phrase must be projected

through the Adjective -able, then the Nominal -ity to a position where it can
still c-command the infinitival PRO which then allows control:

(21) [POSS (PRO) [N -ity. [A -able [V export]]]

<======= <=== <==== AGENT

Distributed Morphology offers a basis for category inducement, but a full

technical account awaits a richer model of the syntax/lexicon interface.

12.3.1 Particle verb nominalizations and

the micro-structure of ZNs

A far subtler AGENT projection exists in nominalizations of verbs with

particles. Note these contrasts between preposed and postposed particles
(see Roeper, 1999; and Bauke & Roeper, 2014):

(22) a. the breakout of jail/outbreak of disease

b. the turndown (by Mary)/downturn (*by Mary)
c. the lookout/outlook
d. the payback/backpay

While (23a) allows Agents, (22b) blocks them:

(23) a. breakout by prisoners

b. *outbreak by prisoners

In fact, English allows hundreds of cases of both prefix and suffix types (see
Roeper, 1999, for many more examples):

(24) Suffix:
lookout, knockout, walkout, lockout, cookout, workout, burnout, fade-
out, dropout, blowout, handout, strikeout, carryout, takeout, break-in,
sit-in, walk-in, walk-up, break-up, lockup, workup, stopover, pushover,
holdover, sleepover, through-put
288  

(25) Prefix:
outcome, outcry, outcast, output, upsurge, uptake, upshift, upscale,
upset, upturn, uplift input, income, inroad

While there are some idiomatic meanings here, a close look shows sharp
contrasts: with (26) always allowing an Agent reading, but (27) blocking it. By
contrast, now note that unprefixed bare ZN cases allow Agents:¹²

(26) a. a look by John

b. a glance by Mary
c. a reply by Fred
d. a comment by John

Comparable prefixed nouns block them:

(27) a. *the outlook by John

b. *the downturn by Mary
c. *the downfall by the king
d. *the uplift by Mary

And minimal pairs exist as noted:

(28) a. a turndown by Mary

b. *a downturn by Mary
c. the breakout by prisoners
d. *the outbreak by prisoners

A comparable meaning for (27) can be obtained through double POSSessives

(of N’s) but without a fixed thematic role, and effectively a Result Nominal
meaning (29):

(29) the outlook of Mary’s/the downfall of the king’s

¹² In general, bare nominals have argument structure, although with individual variation in projec-
tions to possessive and objects:
a. Object-control: John lost support [object = John]
b. Subject control: John lost interest [subject = John]
Object control: John lost the audience’s interest [object = John]
c. Subject and Object present: John’s hope of victory
John’s defeat of Bill
d. blocked passive: *victory’s hope by John
e. acceptable passive: Bill’s defeat by John
     ? 289

The postnominal element can be agentive for suffixes, but not for prefixes.
Other meaning shifts show the same bias.

(30) a. the backpay of employees = employees as recipients

b. the payback of employees = employees as Agent

The preposed particle systematically has the effect of blocking an Agent

reading, while the bare nouns allow them.

12.3.2 Unlabeled nodes

One consequence of such a mixed lexical-syntactic theory is that it needs to allow

derivational steps that have Unlabeled nodes. These are needed to account for the
apparent capacity of productive prefixes to apply in unexpected ways. We do not
allow re- to apply to nouns, even if the meanings are completely natural:

(31) *rehusband,*re-winner, *re-standee, *a re-trip

but it can apply to preposed particles which are nouns and not verbs:

(32) the outflow/*to outflow

re-outflow, re-inflow, re-downturn, re-downfall, re-outbreak of cholera13

It must be that re- applies to something different from a Common Noun like
husband. Bauke & Roeper (2016) argue that, in effect, out- can be further
prefixed before the derived form receives a Noun label by further raising from
the internal VP to an N-node:

(33) [NP [V re [out [V flow]]]

out = Unlabeled

Intuitively, the inner verb, to which the re- should attach, is still syntactically
visible.
How can we build lexical structures that capture precisely these contrasts?
We will argue that a system of pro- and en-clitics can carry thematic roles that
are not Maximal Projections and that should have a special status in a theory

¹³ Google: ‘Inflow, outflow and re-inflow . . . ’.

290  

of Labeling algorithms, but which resemble classic verbs that assign thematic
roles to a Subject-Verb-Object structure.

12.3.3 Background and representation

The origin of nouns like the outflow is naturally seen to be the transformed
verbal form (34) which can in turn can be seen as an instance of incorporation
found in other compound adjectives (35):

(34) [Flow out]V => [[outflow trace]V]N

<=====

(35) a. read well => well-read

b. schooled at home => home-schooled

Keyser & Roeper (1992) called the particle position ‘abstract clitic’ (verbP
=> Verb clitic) because it was difficult to label a node which ranged across
mutually exclusive particles, nouns, and adjectives (see Bauke, 2014, for a
revised formulation). While a particular verb may take a particle, dative, an
adjective, or a bare noun (36), they exclude each other (37), which is the
syntactic core of the argument that they compete for the same position:

(36) a. play ball

b. play up your part
c. play me a game
d. play dumb

(37) a. *give up him the ball

b. *play dumb up
c. *play him dumb

Of course, in many languages there are enclitics on verbs that saturate

argument structure. Now we can ask: Can the same kind of relation exist in
a pro-clitic position? What position does out- move to?
We have provided examples (27)–(30) that reveal that preposed particles
block AGENT readings. In addition, we can show the Agent-block with novel
examples of leftward movement (see Roeper, 1999):
     ? 291

(38) Scene: most of the those who showed up at the fair were elderly
a. The upshows were mostly Or b. The showups were mostly
elderly. elderly.

Informants are unanimous: (38b) is better than (38a) because in (38b) the
elderly are possible Agents required by the verb show up. If the up- moves to
the proclitic position, it blocks the AGENT.

12.3.4 Lexical projections

If we allow clitic positions, below V, parallel to the syntactic subject/object VP

subcategorizations, each capable of carrying thematic role argument projec-
tions, we can represent the positions and movement as follows ((39a) => (39b)):

(39) a.
N

Little v V

glance cl

The lower V works in this way with Proclitic and Enclitic Lexical Projections:

(39) b.
VP

Little v V
(out)

flow Clitic
{Adj (dumb)
Generic Noun (ball)
Dative obj (me)
Part (out)}
292  

In effect, now we argue that the little v projection which has been proposed
by Chomsky and Kratzer as the source of transitivity, carrying AGENT, can
invisibly project AGENT inside the lexical projection of verbs as well.¹⁴ If the
Default projection is an AGENT, then just like the verb, it projects Agents into
subject position, which therefore is blocked by particle movement.

(40) DP

Spec D

a NP

VP

Little v V

[AG] look clitic

<===== out

Thus there is a nonMaximal projection available to both pre- and post-

verbal projections which can saturate arguments. After the particle moves, the
verb (out)flow will then raise to the N position and operate as a Noun. We take
this to be direct support from a novel source for the little v hypothesis. The
movement of a particle is exactly parallel to a passive or middle movement of
an object to subject position. And, crucially, it has a parallel impact on
argument structure: the AGENT role is now blocked, as the Mutual
Exclusivity of the Theta-criterion predicts. Thus, the clitic positions are like

¹⁴ See Bruening (2013) on by-phrases as well.

     ? 293

mini-subcategorizations. Whatever principle underlies this deep parallelism

has not yet come fully into view but it will play a role in the logic of interface
architecture.
The -able nominalization, once again, operates on the same structure, but
with -able shifting the object projection from a verbal subcategorization to the
Possessive subject position of the nominalization: the man’s electability = the
electability of the man [man = an object in both positions]. In the prenominal
position, it now blocks an AGENT projection. The postverbal option also
provides the input for incorporation of Heads into compounds, as we discuss
in Section 12.4 in terms of Labeling.

12.3.5 By-phrase

Implicit argument control has been extensively researched, but not with bare
nouns carrying no special morphology:¹⁵

(41) a. The look by Mary upset John.

b. A glance by the teacher was noticed by everyone.

This contrasts sharply with nominals with preposed particles:

(42) a. *the outlook by Mary upset John.

(compare: the outlook of Mary’s upset John.)
b. *the outbreak by the child upset everyone.
c. the outbreak of disease / the disease’s outbreak upset everyone.

Instead of an Agent reading we find an unaccusative occurs (42c). If the

little v represents a Voice Node which can choose unaccusativity, then we can
build a system in which the movement of the out- to a preverbal position
satisfies a Voice feature, and blocks AGENT, exactly as it does in the ship sank
(*by a sailor) or bureaucrats bribe easily (*by anyone).
A bare noun can also have an adjunct small clause which is controled by the
hidden AG, which controls the small clause (SC) in the usual way:

¹⁵ We will not develop a technical representation but the analysis here should be compatible with
Collins’s (2005) argument for by-phrases as represented as an argument.
294  

(43) AG1 look [PRO1 angry]SC:

a. a look angry can disappoint the crowd.
b. a flight alone is less fun.
c. a dance together would be nice.

12.3.6 Blocked control

If there is an AGENT position [empty clitic = e], it should be fillable by a

hidden clitic-PRO when empty. Now a prediction follows: The bare ZN should
allow implicit argument control of infinitives, and it does (44):

(44) a. a fierce look to deter any predator

b. a comment to disarm discussion
c. a lie to get into Harvard (Agent gets into Harvard, not the lie)

However, by contrast, we find that the preposed case does not allow control
(45a) nor does an ordinary noun (45b):

(45) a. *an outlook to thrill the crowd

(compare: a look to thrill the crowd)
b. *a hat to surprise people

This follows again if out- is blocking the Agent reading. Note that a
compositional source with a higher adjective unrelated to the verb is still
quite possible engaging the implication of a person:

(46) a. an angry outlook can get you in trouble.

The absence of the AGENT by-phrase does not prevent a possessive form
from achieving a very similar, but not identical meaning where Mary possesses
an outlook:

(46) b. the outlook of Mary’s upset John

c. Mary’s outlook upset John

These closely related grammaticality effects are exactly what we should expect
of a lexical system with the structural precision which reflects the syntactic
structures they carry.
     ? 295

These results parallel previous work on control and subject positions with
nominalizations, which has shown that the subject AGENT position needs to be
occupied by an implicit AGENT-PRO, as this contrast reveals (Roeper, 1987):

(47) a. the consumption of drugs to go to sleep

[the PRO-AG consumption of drugs ‘[PRO to go to sleep]]
b. *drug’s consumption to go to sleep

It has sometimes been suggested that the entire nominalization, not the
AGENT is the controler, but this cannot work because it would deliver the
ungrammatical sentence:¹⁶

(48) *the consumption of drugs went to sleep

In addition, the implicit AGENT in passive -ability nominalizations can

control:

(49) a. the electability of Biden to defeat Trump

b. *Biden’s electability to defeat Trump

and, as in passives, the subject position of an -ability nominal cannot be an

AGENT:

(50) *our electability of Biden to defeat Trump

Other factors about quantifier-scope in nominalizations follow suit as

Kamiya, Roeper, & van Hout (2013) have shown:

(51) a. the election of nobody was expected

b. narrow scope: nobody was elected
c. wide scope: for each person elected, it was not expected.

Example (51c) corresponds to the presence of a wide scope quantifier in

subject position:

(52) nobody’s election was expected.

¹⁶ We comment on other Discourse level approaches to implicit argument control in Section 12.4.
296  

The -ability form covertly passivizes the Possessive allowing, predictably,

only the wide-scope reading:

(53) the electability of nobody was expected.

[only distributed individual nobody reading is available]

In sum, all the syntactic properties of passive are evident in nominalizations.

12.3.7 Further prediction for -er

First, if the projection saturates the argument then we can predict that it will
block -er projections as well, which it does:¹⁷

(54) a. *outbreaker
b. *down-turner
c. incoming/*incomer
d. outgoing/*outgoer

In addition, if the particle in the clitic position is not a Maximal Projection,

then it will not undergo Topicalization operations, whereas full PP’s will:

(55) a. over to his family, Bill ran

b. *over Bill ran
c. at the dance, John showed up
d. *up showed John

That is, the available landing site for the particle is within the verbal projec-
tion, not the syntactic one and therefore we can predict exactly this contrast
where (56b) would require a full MP to move, as this contrast reveals:

(56) a. the downfall of the king

b. *down the king fell

¹⁷ There are exceptions usually with some narrower meaning: onlooker, bystander.
     ? 297

12.3.8 Labeling option

While the parameters of Labeling algorithms remain theoretically unarticulated,

we can observe data that fit our claim that Unlabeled nodes are necessary:

(57) a. eat meat => meat-eater

b. quick-thinking, fast-moving
c. dumb-acting
d. up-standing

These incorporated elements all represent different categories. While the

incorporated element meat could be labeled with an N, for the incorporation it
is not necessary. If the incorporation rule is stated on the clitic element
without naming a category, that is the First Sister (following Roeper &
Siegel, 1978), then the rule is a case of move-alpha without reference to a
category Label, but perhaps with some other method to indicate a constituent
boundary. In general, if we follow the logic of derivational morphology, we
would not want the word to be labeled until higher structure calls for it to be.
In that respect choosing not to label the preposed particle fits into a larger
tradition as well, but we shall not explore it further here.
Now we are seeking an Unlabeled node as a means to explain another range
of facts, namely, the capacity for re- to apply to words like outflow. If the re-
rule is stated negatively, namely, it may not attach to a Noun phrase or
Adjective phrase, or a CP, then it would produce the right results.
In sum, our approach captures implicit arguments in a fashion that is
closely linked to the projection of verbs and argues for clitic-like projections
that accompany the verb, particularly evident in nominalizations.
It is worth noting that this approach receives independent support from
detailed work by Legate (2014) in her study of Acehenese, a Malayo-
Polynesian language spoken in Sumatra, Indonesia, a language totally unre-
lated to those under study here. We will not explore the details, but observe her
conclusion which matches ours:

(58) ‘The prefix realizes the features of the Voice head that introduces the
external argument.’

Altogether our model begins to separate the lexical Argument-theta projections

of the verb from the conditions for projecting Maximal Projections which enter
298  

into syntactic operations, while the larger pattern of subject, object, and control
behavior remains consistent across the syntax and the lexicon.

12.4 Absence of impersonal passive nominalization

However, as we have already observed, a further fact runs in the opposite

direction: there is a sharp block on the nominalization of an important kind of
implicit Agent. It comes from the existence of impersonal passives of intransi-
tive verbs, found in many languages, but not English. It is formed precisely
from intransitive verbs that do not have an object to passivize, but from which
an AGENT relation emerges:

(59) People danced all night => (*English) it was danced all night.
=> (ok: German) Es wurde die ganze Nacht getanzt
[it became the whole night danced]

where an expletive occupies the subject position and a generic Agent is

generated, recently explored in detailed work by Pitteroff & Schäfer (2019).
Now we encounter the failure of exactly what succeeded above: Impersonal
passives do not allow nominalization (my German informants report) (60a–c),
unlike (60e) which is derived from a transitive:

(60) a. **die getanztheit der Nacht

b. [*the dancedness of the night] (English)
c. ** die Gesungenheit des Treffens
d. [*the sungness of the meeting] (English)
e. die Auserwähltheit der Politiker [the chosenness of politicians]18

Even the translation into English seems wildly incomprehensible, in con-

trast to nominalizations of typical transitives such as excludedness. Why is the
nominalization (46a) utterly impossible in German?
One goal of this chapter is to shift attention to these facts because they constitute
a striking challenge to theories of implicit arguments (see Bhatt & Pancheva, 2018,
for a summary). Where do these implicit agents come from and exactly where are
they projected? We advance a speculation (Section 12.4.2), but not a firm conclu-
sion, based on nascent work on Discourse structure.

¹⁸ Thanks to L. Bauke.
     ? 299

Our analysis works for the data that we have reported, but it does not have
any method to explain the fact that impersonal passives of intransitives totally
disallow nominalizations (46b–d):

(61)
a. Die Auserwähltheit von dem Professor [chosenness of the professor]
b. Es wurde den ganzen Abend getanzt => *Die Getanztheit des Abends
[*the dancedness of the evening]
c. Es wurde den ganzen Abend gesprochen => *die Gesprochenheit des Abends
[the spokenness of the evening]
d. Es wurde den ganzen Abend gelacht => *die Gelachtheit des Abends
[*the laughedness of the evening]

In addition, we should note that implicit arguments of impersonal passives

can control in German (and the reading arises easily in English despite
ungrammaticality):

(62) Es wurde die ganze Nacht getanzt, um die Schulgruppe zu unterstützen.

[it was danced all night to support the school group]

It is noteworthy here that plausibility is not required for grammatical cases.

(63) the well-preparedness of the meal only to lose his car bothered John

Example (63) is grammatical even if it remains incomprehensible. Plausibility,

however, as we claim below in Section 12.4.2, is a part of the larger analysis,
when our analysis moves beyond sentences.
If a little v is buried in passives, which are represented inside nominaliza-
tions, including a projection into the POSS Specifier, then they should be
accessible to all nominalizations. This would predict that impersonal passives
should be represented on the verbal structure in the nominalization in the
same way, but the nominalization data indicates a complete incapacity to
accommodate an impersonal passive.

12.4.1 TP and the implicit argument agenda

We will ultimately sketch an approach that incorporates discourse, but our

first goal is to simply alter the agenda of work on implicit arguments, and show
300  

why a larger framework is necessary. Our primary suggestion here is that the
project of explaining how implicit arguments variously function may force a
basic bifurcation where we find ourselves needing to include larger pragmatic
dimensions.
Approaches to the passive have included many where the TENSE phrase
plays an important role in distributing arguments (Alexiadou et al., 2013;
Wegner, 2019). Van Hout & Roeper (1998) have argued for the relevance of
TP for nominalizations involving progressive -ing, but not for other affixes like
-tion, -ness, -ity. It is natural to argue that nominalizations exclude TP because
they involve an abstraction away from time. If the presence of a mini-verb
which is invoked by -ed is sufficient to engage the Agent, it provides an
explanation for why they are possible for some nominalizations, but not all.
If we now argue that the TP and its binding of Phi-features provides an
alternative locus for an implicit Agent in impersonal passives, then we have
a possible basis for explaining why nominalizations disallow them.
When the Agent of the impersonal passive is generated in the TP—which
Wegner’s (2019) view advocates—then arguing that the TP is above the
position where nominalization occurs could exactly predict its impossibility.
We regard this position as natural and probable. Moreover, if AGENT is
linked directly to the -ed morphology in nonimpersonal passives, as Baker,
Johnson, & Roberts (1989) originally proposed, we have one possibility for
explaining the acceptability of transitive passive -ed nominalization.
Another range of facts, however, must be drawn into the analysis, namely,
control of secondary predication, which opens a new possible avenue of
explanation.

12.4.2 Logophoricity

The Logophoric approach to impersonal passives (see Landau, 2015; Pitteroff &
Schäfer, 2019) allows a default instantiation of Phi-features on TP that would
permit the spontaneous emergence of an Agent for intransitives that normally
cannot undergo passives, by saying Unspecified Phi-features are filled prag-
matically. However, Pitteroff & Schäfer provide extensive evidence of a
connection to the predicative interpretation of small clauses with implicit
arguments, a form of secondary predication:

(64) a. the game was played naked.

b. Das Spiel wurde nackt gespielt.
     ? 301

The original examples in Roeper (1987) were cases like this:

(65) a. the game was played barefoot.

b. the game was played nude.
c. the game was played angry.
d. the game was played drunk.19

First it was suggested by some that these are really adverbs, but there is
sharp evidence against this claim:

(66) a. the game was played drunk but not drunkenly.

It is clear that drunk modifies the implicit agent, but not the manner of playing,
for which the opposite can be simultaneously asserted. Some claimed that if (65c)
is grammatical, then it still does not allow complements (66b). That is,

(66) b. ?the game was played angry at the umpires.

Example (66b) is not ungrammatical for this speaker or many others for
whom it is fine. (See Pitteroff & Schäfer for more discussion with the same
conclusion).²⁰ Now we need to know why such variability should occur.
Pitteroff & Schäfer (2019) in a careful study of secondary predication
provide evidence of extensive variation across speakers and systematic vari-
ation across languages, engaging over a hundred speakers in evaluating many
examples on a Likert scale. In particular they observed, looking at the predi-
cates: naked, drunk, angry, together—radical variation for both individuals and
types, asked to grade acceptability (from 1 to 7) with the higher numbers more
acceptable:

¹⁹ Although we have not explored the matter carefully, impersonal passives are also excluded in
German as small clauses:
a. *Der Abend wurde getanzt genossen.
[the evening was danced enjoyed]
and it should not occur as a simple adjective as well:
b. *der getanzte Abend [the danced evening]
²⁰ Another example was offered (Landau, 2015) which was claimed to be ungrammatical:
a. the game was played shoeless.
The example seems to be derivative from played barefoot which most people accept, but perhaps
fewer for shoeless, although it is perfectly grammatical for this speaker. One can note that ‘barefoot’ is
slightly closer to an adverb (barefootedly?) which might be a hidden reason for the substitution. This
fits the contextual and speaker variability identified by Pitteroff & Schafer.
302  

(67) a. the letter was written drunk [4,4,6,7,7 => average 5.6]
b. the room was left angry [1,1,1,4,1 => average 1.6]
c. the door was opened naked [1,2,2,4,2 => average 2.2]

Many other impersonal passives provide comparable variation. All speakers

allow some secondary predication, but a sharp split arises for those who allow
impersonal intransitive passives ‘the languages licensing implicit predicative
control are the languages licensing “strict” impersonal passives (unergative
passives where no vP-internal DP/PP/CP must appear)’.²¹ Why should that be?
The upshot of this discussion is that the critical result here is the surprising
variability among speakers in accepting secondary predication. We need an explan-
ation that renders variability here understandable, rather than attribute variation to
ever-finer dialect differentiation. Pitteroff & Schäfer (2019) allude to the fact that
contextual ‘relevance’ appears to be pertinent to the judgments.²² Chomsky et al.
(2017) also suggests that sentence level adjuncts may need to be explained in terms
of Discourse relations.²³ In the same vein, A. Williams (2015) argues that a general
notion of ‘Responsibility’ allows control across Discourse as in:

(68) The enemy was hated. To sink their ships was important.24

The claim is that general cognition operating across discourse accounts for
such connections, and therefore that there is an alternative method to explain
all of implicit argument control, essentially without an intricate syntactic
representation. But the data here show—especially the unacceptability of
impersonal passive nominalizations—that we need to have a precise represen-
tation of implicit arguments to capture the facts. Otherwise the cognitively
plausible but grammatically excluded *the danced night should be acceptable.
It is not sufficient to posit Pro-arb and allow general cognitions to specify or not

²¹ Bauke & Roeper (2019) in fact have shown that L2 speakers of English will transfer the impersonal
passive to English even when an alternate non-intransitive passive is possible.
²² We will not discuss the approaches which involve interpreting the expletive as entailing a hidden
PRO because we suspect the Discourse approach, which we can only sketch, is more promising.
²³ An alternative, developed in Ott (2016a, b,2017), denies the reality of structurally complex
peripheries by analyzing dislocated elements, unlike fronted or extraposed XPs, as ‘structurally
independent elliptical expressions that are interpretively related to their host clauses by principles of
discourse organization and anaphora’ (Ott, 2016b).
We also independently arrived at the conclusion that a system like what is proposed by Keshet
(2008) is needed to account for binding relations between sentences in discourse that replicate those
found in sentence-grammar is needed to capture anaphoric connections with implicit arguments for
small clauses (based on Roeper, 2018): Discourse C-command where children allow anaphoric
connections between sentences are ruled out for adults. In other words, people can treat independent
sentences as if they were ‘adjuncts’ open to certain seemingly sentential processes, and vice-versa.
²⁴ See also Landau (2015) and earlier work for arguments against some forms of syntactic control.
     ? 303

what the subject is as we do in Shakespeare’s ‘to be or not to be, that is the

question.’ Is it a question for Hamlet alone, or for all of us?
We suggest that the phenomenon of relevance or ‘connectedness’ should be
invoked for secondary predication broadly as an explanation for variation
within languages and across them. But how can that be done while preserving
precise syntactic representations? Keshet (2008) has proposed that one can
build a Discourse tree in which c-command applies to account for binding in
the famous telescope contexts, but with a pinpointed position for the impact of
specific forms of relevance. It applies to the well-known example:

(69) Each graduate1 met the dean on the stage. He1 took his diploma and sat
down.

Here is Keshet’s Discourse representation with an Event node that carries

an if-then relation, which in turn allows each candidate to bind he (70):

(70)

QPi

Each candidate ∃e

IP
THEN IP
tiwalked to the stage
Heireceived hisidiploma

Keshet points out that if the narrative connection is not plausible, then the
binding fails:

(71) #Each student in the syntax class was accused of cheating on the exam,
and he has a Ph.D. in astrophysics.

Although we have opened the door to broad inference, we have designated a

narrow point for it to apply. We can now argue that if adjunct small clauses
can be seen as a part of a discourse to which plausible connectedness applies,
then we can explain why there is variation even among English speakers, who
might find ??the game was played cheerful to be less acceptable. If a suitable
context exists, we predict improved intuitions of grammaticality:
304  

(72) Discourse: the team was upset. The coach brought popsicles that the
team ate. Then the game was played very cheerful.

(73) the game was played

Small clause

(then) SC

pro cheerful

Here the prior context creates a happiness dimension which makes the predi-
cated adjective much more comprehensible.
We still need to explain the fact that the impersonal passive triggers the
application of this discourse structure more naturally than the verb-based
implicit agent. We can offer this speculation that exploits the fact that German
werden ‘become’ is not a typical auxiliary, but rather a Main Verb. As such we
can pursue a similar discourse binding representation. (AG₁):

(74) VP

v V

AG1 werden. CP

C IP

infl VP

v V

AG1 tanzen
     ? 305

Now we can argue that a binding relation between the AGENTS of two
verbs could play a role in triggering the impersonal intransitive passive which
would be a third bound element in a chain. Larger perspectives need to be
brought to bear to build a full convincing theory.²⁵
One possibility comes from Charneval (2019). She argues that some features
of binding in French must be explained by a silent logophoric Operator
generated high in the tree which is sensitive to perspectival variation.
Perspectival variation is often involved in subtle aspects of pragmatics and it
shows both language variation (Speas & Tenny, 2003), and an acquisition path
(Devilliers, Nordmeyer, & Roeper, 2018). Therefore, a natural connection
between impersonal passives and secondary predicates seen as Discourse
entities may be possible if there is a perspectival element involved. We leave
this open issue as a possible direction for further research.

12.4.3 Minimize pragmatic influence

Why do all grammars not allow impersonal intransitive passives? If we assume a

teleology in grammar that motivates acquisition steps, then a natural goal is to:

(75) Minimize pragmatic influence

The acquisition process itself shows a step-by-step evolution of syntactic

mechanisms that replace pragmatic reasoning. Consequently (75) maximizes
the influence of a mechanical grammar with limited domains for inference.
This leads to a learnability approach which favors sentence grammar over
discourse reasoning. From that perspective, we can imagine that a small clause
can have either (i) an adjunct status, subject to c-command, and automatic
interpretation, or (ii) a discourse status which invites the inferential skills

²⁵ Van Hout & Roeper (1999) show that middles also disallow nominalizations:
a. bureaucrats bribe easily =/=> *bureaucrats bribery easily
This does not have an obvious discourse explanation. However, it does carry modal semantics which in
turn may be linked to a higher IP node to which no nominalization morpheme can apply:
b. *the bureaucrats bribeness easily.
In contrast, if -able applies to the VP, then bribeable can occur, which in turn allows -ity:
c. bureaucrats easy bribeability,
carrying a structure of this form:
d. [N- ity [A. -able [V bribe]]]
306  

needed to make sense of novel discourses. Keshet’s approach connects the two
with a provision for plausibility effects. Because ‘plausibility’ varies with how
we build narratives, individual variation of the sort Pitteroff & Schäfer (2019)
detail, is to be expected.

12.5 Conclusions

Our theoretical goal at the outset was to imagine how various dimensions of
grammar project across interface boundaries. In this instance, how does a
theory of argument structure in syntax project into the lexicon? We developed
nominalizations in terms of verbal projections as a way to dig deeper into
interfaces and structure-building in the lexicon.
Our basic assumption reaching back to work on compounds in the 1970s is
that there is a continuous relation between the lexicon and syntax. We argued,
in effect, that arguments linked to Maximal Projections are syntactic entities.
In the lexicon, the same relations can be captured by Heads which in some
instances can be Unlabeled while other lexical operations occur. The projec-
tion of arguments and thematic roles onto clitic positions immediately dom-
inated by the verb should be a logical subset of how arguments are projected in
syntax. All of our evidence supports the view of a continuous connection
between the lexicon and syntax.
In particular, we argued that bare nominalizations (a look, a glance, a
comment) carry argument structure capable of motivating syntactic binding
like control. And we showed that argument projections into the POSSessive
of nominalizations showed predictable sensitivity to passive morphemes (-ed,
-able) buried inside nominalizations. They allow only an object projection in
nominalized Possessives precisely as they do in verbal structures. This entails
a critical expansion of the theory of theta-role projection: it must allow
projection of an AGENT either to Subject in little v, or Subject in TP, or
Subject in Possessives. If acquisition is efficient, these alternatives should all
follow automatically from UG, such that these consequences do not have to
be separately acquired. Stating the principle that captures this uniformity
across the syntax and lexicon interface remains an important challenge in
grasping the fundamental architecture of UG, in keeping with what I call
strict interfaces.
Then we pivoted to argue that impersonal passives that appear in a subset of
languages call for both special syntax and a special vision of an interface with
     ? 307

Discourse structure in order to articulate a connection between impersonal

intransitive passives and secondary predication.
This analysis as a whole supports a view of innate UG specific ‘strict’
interfaces that themselves show no language particular variation.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to L. Bauke, R. Bhatt, H. Borer, K. Johnson, and an anonymous reviewer for

comments and judgments.
 13
Agent and other function nominals
in a neo-constructionist approach
to nominalizations
Isabelle Roy and Elena Soare

13.1 Introduction

Across languages, we note the existence of productive means to derive nom-

inals denoting participants in an event (individuals as Agents, Causers,
Holders, and Instruments) and that are, descriptively at least, related to an
existing verb in the language. One common derivation is through -er suffix-
ation (English driver, teacher, French -eur: chercheur ‘researcher’, plongeur
‘diver’, Romanian -tor: conducător ‘driver’, învățător ‘teacher’, among other
languages). Other cases, found in some Romance languages, involve derivation
with -ant and -é/-i/-u suffixes, historically related to present and past parti-
ciples (French enseignant ‘teacher’ (lit. teaching), assistant ‘assistant’ (lit. assist-
ing), marié ‘groom’ (lit. married), blessé ‘wounded person’ (lit. wounded)).
Whether such nominals are syntactically derived from a verbal structure has
been and continues to be the subject of much debate.
Departing from early work in generative grammar which assumed that all
deverbal nominals were nominalizations derived from sentences (Lees, 1960),
in Remarks on Nominalization Chomsky argues that while -ing gerunds in
English (e.g. John’s refusing the offer) are derived from complex verbal
structures, other nominals, like refusal or growth, are not. Nominals that are
not derived in the syntax are, by assumption, formed in the Lexicon. The
hypothesis that (some) nominals (and putatively other formations as well) are
built by lexical rules rather than syntactic rules was a crucial contribution
made by Remarks. But while Remarks paved the way to lexicalism, it also made
possible the syntactic approach to word formation (see Marantz, 1997, for a
discussion). Following this seminal paper, two traditions thus developed,

Isabelle Roy and Elena Soare, Agent and other function nominals in a neo-constructionist approach to nominalizations
In: Nominalization: 50 Years on from Chomsky’s Remarks. Edited by: Artemis Alexiadou and Hagit Borer,
Oxford University Press (2020). © Isabelle Roy and Elena Soare. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198865544.003.0013
310     

which posit a strict division of labor between syntax and the Lexicon: a
syntactic tradition, locating word formation in the syntax (Marantz, 1997;
Harley & Noyer, 1998; Alexiadou, 2001; Borer 2005a,b; among others), and a
lexicalist tradition (Aronoff, 1976; Booij, 1988; Ackema & Neeleman, 2004;
among others), confining word formation to the Lexicon.
In the syntactic tradition, also recently referred to as the neo-constructionist
approach (Borer, 2003, in particular), all levels of projection in the internal
structure of derived forms have a direct contribution to their interpretation.
According to this view of the syntax-semantics interface, syntactically derived
deverbal nominalizations may inherit properties from an internal (verbal
and/or aspectual) structure, both syntactically (i.e. argument structure, hence-
forth AS) and semantically (i.e. event structure) (Grimshaw, 1990; Marantz,
1997; Alexiadou, 2001; Borer 2003, 2005a, 2013; among others). Some nom-
inalizations may involve a complex internal structure, associated with AS and
event properties (i.e. Argument Structure Nominals (Borer, 2005a)—henceforth
ASNs, also referred to as Complex Event Nominals in Grimshaw (1990); e.g. the
examination of the patients by the doctor). Other nominalizations lack such
properties (i.e. Referential Nominals, henceforth RNs, e.g. the examination
was on the table) and are putatively derived directly from roots.
While an analysis in terms of complex verbal/aspectual structure is well
supported for deverbal nominals denoting events (ASNs, gerunds), the ques-
tion whether it is also motivated for nouns denoting Agents, or more generally
participants and entities performing a role or a function (including
Instruments) (henceforth referred to as function nominals), has been a subject
of some debate among neo-constructionists.
Morphologically, some of these nouns seem, on the surface at least, to be
derived from verbs (director, driver, descendant), but some are putatively
derived from nouns (violinist, florist, lawyer), and some do not seem to be
morphologically derived at all (king, client, friend). The first question is, thus, to
what extent do function nominals form a homogeneous class? In relation to this
question, what are the morpho-syntactic properties of this class or classes? Are
Agent and other function nominals simplex or complex forms? And are they,
or at least some of them, syntactically derived from a full verbal structure?
Two distinct views have been defended in the literature. In the first view,
function nominals form a homogeneous class, and consequently share the
same (absence of) internal structure correlating with the same interpretational
possibilities. This view is put forward in Remarks (in a lexicalist perspective)
and later by Borer (2013, in a neo-constructionist perspective). We will refer to
it as the homogeneity hypothesis. In the second view, function nominals form a
      311

heterogeneous class, some being derived syntactically from a verbal structure

and some not. This view is defended by Van Hout & Roeper (1998); Alexiadou
& Schäfer (2008, 2010); Roy & Soare (2014); and also to some extent McIntyre
(2014). We will refer to it as the heterogeneity hypothesis.
Building in part on previous work from Roy & Soare (2012, 2013, 2014,
2015), this chapter will defend a form of the heterogeneity hypothesis.
Function nominals belong to different classes depending on whether they
are morphologically complex or simplex, whether they are derived from a
true verbal structure, and depending on the type of suffix they involve.
Considering data from French and Romanian, we will argue for two distinct
patterns of nominalization, namely an eventive pattern and a noneventive
pattern. Eventive nominals are necessarily complex, and involve a verbal
structure. Non-eventive nominals may be morphologically simplex or com-
plex, but they do not derive from a verbal structure. These two patterns, we
will argue, are distributed differently across French, Romanian, and English.
In the next two sections, we will present the existing arguments for the
homogeneity hypothesis (Section 13.2) and the heterogeneity hypothesis
(Section 13.3). Section 13.4 addresses further arguments and supporting
evidence for the existence of a syntactically derived class of complex -er
nominals. Section 13.5 provides a comparison between Agent -er nominals
and other function nominals, and shows that morphological derivation mat-
ters and has direct consequences on the interpretation. Section 13.6 provides
some concluding remarks on the typology of function nominals across
languages.

13.2 Homogeneity hypothesis

Remarks on Nominalization is one of the earliest works to explore the possible

relationship between derived nominals and the verb and to address function
nominals in this context. In Chomsky’s view, all function nominals belong to a
single class, and this class is not derived in syntax. -Er nominals (e.g. the
owner of the house), which may seem remarkable because they relate to a
possible verb (own), are not different from any other function nominals like
dentist, secretary, vice-chancellor, which do not involve an associated verb
(Chomsky, 1970: 32). And in fact, as Chomsky points out, some -er nominals
may not be straightforwardly associated with a verb: the author of the book
(cf. *to auth- a book). Chomsky further notes that function nominals can
commonly be constructed with an of-PP, but that this does not imply an
312     

underlying relation with a verbal structure either. The presence of an of-PP is

not sufficient to signal the presence of an AS (cf. the general secretary of the
party, the assistant vice-chancellor of the university). This issue is a pervasive
one cross-linguistically. In French, for instance, de-phrases can express argu-
mental Genitives as well as a variety of semantic notions that are unrelated to
AS (possession, origin, matter, . . . ). We will come back to this issue in
Section 13.4.2.
Chomsky also refutes a putative argument in favor of a syntactic derivation
of function nominals, namely the ambiguity of adjectival modification (e.g.
good, which can have an intersective and a nonintersective reading, cf. Larson,
1998). He points out that this ambiguity equally characterizes phrases like the
good owner but also the good dentist (good as a dentist vs. good as a person),
and the good assistant vice-chancellor. As such, adjectival modification with
good does not distinguish between syntactically built and simplex function
nominals either. We will come back to adjectival modification at length in
Sections 13.4.1 and 13.5.1–3 for these distinct nominal classes.
Note that the original skepticism expressed in Remarks arises in the context
of early generative grammar, where transformational rules were proposed to
account for all nominals related to a verb. The question whether -er nominals
should be transformationally derived from a verb (or a reduced clause), like it
was claimed to be the case for gerundive -ing nominals in English, had not
been addressed specifically, however. One of the aims of Remarks was to limit
the strength of such an approach.
Nevertheless, a similar skepticism remains in Borer (2013). As in Remarks,
Agent and other function nominals are treated as a homogeneous class which
is not syntactically derived from a verbal structure. All function nominals are
derived directly from a root (including the possibility of a ‘verbalized’ root in
e.g. complement-iz-er). Borer presents several additional arguments against
deriving -er nominals (as opposed to, e.g., gerunds) from a verbal/aspectual
structure (Borer, 2013: 606). First, -er nominals do not allow a subject argu-
ment with intransitives, cf. *the sinker of the ship, putatively derived from the
ship sunk, as compared to the sinking of the ship (where the intransitive
reading is available). Another fact noted by Borer relates to some of the
diagnostics for CENs proposed by Grimshaw (1990). Specifically, Borer
shows that -er nominals cannot take in/for-PPs and purpose clauses (cf. *the
breaker of the door in seven minutes in order to retrieve the luggage), two
diagnostics claimed to identify ASNs. Third, indirect and locative comple-
ments are also barred in -er nominals, as opposed to ASNs and gerunds
(cf. *the dancer in the road, *the talker to animals). Accordingly, -er nominals
      313

cannot inherit an AS or an event structure comparable to that of gerunds.¹ We

interpret Borer’s position as implying that there is no fundamental distinction
between Agent -er nominals and other function nominals in that none are
derived from a verbal structure: Absence of AS properties and event properties
equally characterizes derived -er nominals and other function nominals like
secretary in English. As will become apparent in Section 13.4, a similar
conclusion cannot be held for French and Romanian.

13.3 Heterogeneity hypothesis

Following Remarks’ original insight, another group of works has emerged,

which treat function nominals as a heterogeneous class, and claim that some,
in particular -er nominals, may exhibit event and AS properties.
Rappaport Hovav & Levin (1992) first pointed out a notable interpretational
difference between phrasal vs. compound -er nominals in English. Phrasal
nominals entail that an event has taken place, whereas compound nominals do
not. Consider for instance, a saver of lives, who must have saved at least one
life, and compare it with a lifesaver, who has not necessarily saved any lives.
While the former implies an underlying event, the latter does not.²
Furthermore, whereas compound nominals can be interpreted as Agents or
Instruments (e.g. apple picker, carrot peeler), the phrasal forms can only refer
to Agents (cf. picker of apples, peeler of carrots). This suggests that the
morphological build-up of these nominals (phrasal vs. compound) has clear
consequences on their interpretation, and more specifically on the presence of
an underlying event (see also Roy et al., 2016).
In a strong syntax-semantics interface, where events and AS are introduced
by dedicated projections, these facts have been interpreted as showing that
(a subclass of) -er nominals are derived from a complex verbal structure, the
nature of which varies across different analyses. In Van Hout & Roeper
(1998), event -er nominals (saver of lives) are derived from a verbal structure
involving several aspectual layers (EventP, AspP, and TP) responsible for AS,
event entailment and manner, purpose and instrumental modifiers; while

¹ Baker & Vinokurova (2009) provide arguments along a similar line for an impoverished structure
for Agent nominals in Sakha.
² McIntyre (2014) notices the existence of compounds such as prize winner which entail that a
related event of winning a prize has taken place, suggesting that event entailment may also be a
property that lexically distinguishes between different classes of compounds. See Section 13.6 for more
discussion.
314     

noneventive nominals lack such structure. Implicitly, a distinction is drawn

between phrasal deverbal -er nominals (1) and all other function nominals,
either morphologically complex or simplex.

(1) [NP N -ing/-ation/-er [TP T [AspP Asp [EventP Event [VP]]]]]

(adapted from Van Hout & Roeper, 1998)

McIntyre (2014) also argues for a class of eventive -er Ns which are sensitive
to the AS of the base verb and entail an event. However, McIntyre disagrees
with Van Hout & Roeper, and, in that respect, with most syntactic approaches,
in claiming that eventive -er Ns do not involve a full verbal-aspectual structure,
but rather a mere V. Eventive properties are linked to the projection of a
(nominal) Voice, absent in noneventive -er Ns. In this respect, heterogeneity is
thus postulated, and we can presume nonderived nominals to fall into the
noneventive category.
Alexiadou & Schäfer (2008, 2010), in a more drastic move, proposed that
all -er nominals involve an underlying event associated with a verbal structure.
Two classes of -er Ns are distinguished, namely episodic and dispositional
nominals, based on the flavor of Aspect. Episodic nominals involve Asp-
Episodic, and correspond to phrasal nominals (2a). Dispositional nominals,
involve Asp-Dispositional; they comprise both dispositional Agents (lifesaver,
driver) and Instruments (stapler, blender) (2b), and include the compound
pattern. This analysis implies that a verbal structure is required both for the
episodic and dispositional meanings. Implicitly, a distinction is therefore
drawn between -er nominals on the one hand, and simplex (and denominal)
forms on the other.

(2) a. Episodic -er nominals

[nP -er [AspP Asp-EPIS [VoiceP <x> [vP <e> [RootP ]]]]]
b. Dispositional -er nominals
[nP -er [AspP Asp-DISPO [VoiceP <x> [vP <e> [RootP ]]]]]

In Roy & Soare (2013, 2014, 2015), we have argued for a finer-grained
typology that distinguishes not two but three classes of -er nominals, on
the basis of French data mainly. Like Alexiadou & Schäfer (2008, 2010),
we defended a contrast between episodic and dispositional -er nominals.
However, contrary to Alexiadou & Schäfer, and along the lines of
Rappaport Hovav & Levin’s original insight, we also argued that
      315

Instruments form a separate class that is to be distinguished from (episodic

and dispositional) Agents, since they do not involve any underlying event. All
and only Agent -er nominals are derived syntactically from a verbal/aspectual
structure (3a); while Instruments are not (3b). Episodic and dispositional
Agent nominals are distinguished by the type of quantification over the
event they involve: existential vs. generic, respectively. This distinction correl-
ates with specificity or nonspecificity of the internal argument; see Roy &
Soare (2014: 16) for details.

(3) a. Eventive -er nominals (adapted from Roy & Soare, 2014)3
[NP N [AspEvP -er [AspEv ev ] [AspQP DPobject [AspQ ] [C=V √Root ]]]]
b. Noneventive -er nominals
[NP N -er [C=N √Root ]]

What the views presented above have in common is that they recognize the
special status of (Agent) -er nominals as opposed to other function nominals.
They recognize event properties for Agent -er nominals and associate such
semantic properties with syntactic ones, namely projection of arguments.
Structurally, they are derived from a verbal (and/or aspectual) structure; and
when assigned a complex derivation are treated on a par with ASNs, rather
than gerunds.

13.4 More on the syntactic arguments for a class

of AS Agent -er nominals

13.4.1 Testing the internal event and AS

In some languages, Agent nominals are clearly complex, morphologically

transparent, and have AS properties; cf. for instance Coon & Royer
(Chapter 7). In languages like French or English, however, -er nominals are
often ambiguous (agent/instrument, eventive/noneventive), thus creating a
need for specific tests. In Roy & Soare (2014), we have developed syntactic
arguments supporting the view that Agent -eur nominals in French are ASNs.

³ Roy & Soare (2014) follow Borer (2005a, 2013) in assuming that both the external argument and
the internal argument (when realized) are introduced by dedicated aspectual projections, AspEvP and
AspQP respectively. AspEv is responsible for introducing both the external argument and the event
variable ev. Roots are, by assumption, devoid of category. They are contextually categorized as V in the
presence of aspectual projections, and as N in the presence of nominal projections.
316     

Table 13.1 ASNs vs. RNs: Grimshaw’s (1990) tests

ASNs RNs

i. event reading no event reading

ii. obligatory arguments no arguments
iii. compatible with aspectual modifiers like in no aspectual modifiers
three hours
iv. constant, frequent with the singular no constant, frequent in the singular
v. by-phrase is an argument by-phrase is an adjunct

In what follows, we will further address the syntactic tests supporting this
conclusion, and show how they apply, beyond English and French, to another
language as well, namely Romanian.
The tests developed by Grimshaw (1990), and summarized in Table 13.1,
have been argued massively to distinguish between ASNs (e.g. the destruction
of the city by the enemy) and RNs (e.g. a form, an exam) (see Chapter 1). We
have shown in Roy & Soare (2014) that only some of these tests apply to Agent
ASNs, for the simple reason that -er, as opposed to event-denoting ASNs,
nominalize an argument, i.e., an individual that realizes a participant in the
event, rather than the event itself.
For obvious reasons, by-phrases (test v) cannot show up in -er nominals,
which already contain the external argument, namely the one which is nom-
inalized. Likewise, unaccusative construals are ruled out in -er nominals (as
opposed to gerunds), as they do not contain an Agent (e.g. the sinker of the
boat; Borer, 2013: 606); and other intransitive construals do not allow the
Agent to be realized as an of-phrase (e.g. the jumper (*of the boy); Borer, 2013).
The compatibility with aspectual modifiers (test iii), often invoked as a
crucial difference between -er nominals and event-denoting ASNs, has been
discussed at length in Roy & Soare (2013, 2014). These modifiers cannot
combine with -er nominals, cf. (4), because Agent -er nominals denote indi-
viduals and not the event per se. We have proposed that aspectual modifiers are
adjoined externally after nominalization, i.e., outside NP. Their incompatibility
with Agent -er nominals is semantic in nature and derives from a semantic
mismatch between the individual-denoting NP and the modifier, a predicate of
event, following the rule of Predicate Modification (Heim & Kratzer, 1998).⁴

⁴ An aspectual in/for PP can sometimes attach inside the NP in French -eur nominals, but in that
case and for reasons that need to be better understood the nominal denotes something akin to a kind:
les coureurs en moins de 25 secondes (lit. the runners in less than 25 seconds) ‘sub 25 seconds runners’.
Interestingly such internal aspectual modification depends on the presence of a verbal base; cf. les rois/
dentistes #pendant 5 ans (lit. the kings/dentists #for 5 years). See Roy & Soare (2013).
      317

(4) le lecteur du livre #en/#pendant 5 minutes

the reader of.the book #in/#for 5 minutes

In turn, the other three tests (i/ii/iv) can apply to Agent -er nominals. The
eventive interpretation (test i) has been noted since Rappaport Hovav & Levin
(1992), who first mentioned event entailments for phrasal -er nominals in
English (see Section 13.3). The event entailment is also there for Agent -eur
nominals in French and distinguishes them from Instrument -eur nominals
(Roy & Soare, 2014).
Turning to obligatory AS (test ii), we have shown in the same work, that
Agent -eur nominals must express their internal argument. The realization of
AS with Agent -eur nominals (5a) contrasts both with Instruments -eur
nominals (5b) and with other function nominals (5c). In (5b–c) de-PP is either
simply ungrammatical, or it expresses a possessive and is nonargumental—as
we will see in Section 13.4.2, these two types of de-PPs, which are homoph-
onous in French, are clearly distinguishable in Romanian, one being a Genitive
and the other a full PP

(5)
a. un défenseur *(de causes perdues / de la réforme
a defend-er of causes lost of the reform
‘an advocate for lost causes / for the reform’ (ASNs)
b. l’aspirateur (*de la poussière); le photocopieur (*de
the suck-ator of the dust the copy-er of
l’article) (Instruments)
the.paper
‘the vacuum-cleaner of the dust’ ‘the copy machine of the paper’
c. le jardinier (*de ce parc); le camionneur (*du chargement) (others)5
‘the gardener of this park’ ‘the truck-driver (lit. truck-er) of the load’
le client (#de ce magasin); le docteur (#de ces enfants)
‘the client of this shop’ ‘the doctor of these children’

As in the case of event-denoting ASNs, AS is obligatory in the context of the

appropriate event-related adjectival modification (test iv), and the correlation
between AS and adjectival modification is maintained, both for episodic and
dispositional nominals, in (6a) and (6b):

⁵ Nonverb-derived nominalizations and nonderived nominals are further discussed in Section 13.5.
318     

(6) a. Ce fréquent consommateur *(de drogues douces) va

this frequent consumer of soft drugs will
mal finir.
badly end
‘This frequent consumer of soft drugs will end badly.’
b. Ce gros vendeur *(de voitures) nous a fait une offre.
this big seller of cars to.us has made an offer.
‘This big car seller made us an offer.’

The adjectival modification test (test iv) applies to -eur nominals, with two
types of modifiers: frequency adjectives (FAs) (as in Grimshaw, 1990) and big-
type adjectives (BAs). However, the test should be approached with caution
in the context of Agent -eur nominals because we need to make sure that we
are testing the internal event, as defined by Larson (1998) and Gehrke &
McNally (2015), and putatively contributed by the verbal base, and not any
other kind of event originating, for instance, at the sentential level. For that
reason, it is also crucial to test nominals in argument position (e.g. I bought a
big grinder) rather than in predicative position (e.g. This is a big grinder).
Predicative uses render an eventive reading accessible, while it is not available in
argument position. Compare, for instance, I bought a big grinder (#:‘a tiny
machine that grinds much’) vs. This is a big grinder (ok: ‘a tiny machine
that grinds much’). Nonverbal predication contributes its own eventuality
(Roy, 2013), different from the eventuality putatively contributed by the
derived nominal. Hence any discussion of function nominals should focus
on argumental nouns exclusively.
The contrast between the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ adjectival modification is
exemplified in (7). In (7a) occasional/frequent expresses the meaning of an
adverb scoping over the verb inside the derived nominal, and is thus
‘internal’; while in (7b) occasional receives an external interpretation (not
available for frequent, in this example): The adjective plays the role of a
sentential adverb, not related to the nominal sailor, and, hence, not related to
an internal event of sailing:

(7) a. This claim has been made by an occasional/frequent sailor.

meaning: ‘this claim was made by a sailor who sails occasionally/
frequently’.
b. An occasional sailor strolled by.
meaning: ‘occasionally, some sailor strolled by’.
      319

FAs/BAs in French systematically admit the ‘internal’ interpretation, and

discriminate between a class of Agent -eur nominals with internal event
properties and a class of noneventive -eur Instruments. Episodic Agent -eur
nominals allow both BAs and FAs (8), dispositional -eur nominals allow BAs
only⁶ (9), whereas Instruments allow none (10):

Eventive -eur nominals:

(8) episodic Agent
a. Un consommateur fréquent de plusieurs drogues douces
a consumer frequent of several drugs soft
a témoigné au procès.
has testified at.the trial
‘A frequent user of several soft drugs testified in court.’
b. Un gros consommateur de plusieurs drogues douces
a big consumer of several drugs soft
a témoigné au procès.
has testified at.the trial
‘A big user of several soft drugs testified in court.’

(9) dispositional Agent

a. *Nous avons interviewé un fréquent vendeur de voitures.
we have interviewed a frequent seller of cars
b. Nous avons interviewé un gros vendeur de voitures.
we have interviewed a big seller of cars
‘We’ve interviewed a car salesman who sells a lot of cars.’

Noneventive -eur nominals:

(10) Instruments
a. *Un broyeur fréquent nous serait utile.
a grinder frequent to.us would.be.3 useful
intended meaning: ‘A frequent grinder would be useful to us.’

⁶ The incompatibility of FAs with dispositional -eur nominals relates to quantification over the
internal event. Dispositional nominals cannot express a frequency (cf. genericity). Nevertheless, as
argued in Roy & Soare (2014), compatibility with BAs under the internal eventive reading (as in 9b),
and the obligatory realization of argument structure is a sufficient indication that dispositional -eur
nominals are eventive, as opposed to Instruments. BAs are necessary here to complete Grimshaw’s
original test iv.
320     

b. Un gros broyeur nous serait utile.

a big grinder to.us would.be.3 useful
meaning: #: ‘A grinder that grinds much would be useful to us.’
ok: ‘A large grinder would be useful to us.’

Instruments clearly differ from dispositional Ns as they exhibit no eventive

properties whatsoever. This correlates neatly with the absence of AS with
Instruments (cf. (5b) repeated below in (11))

(11) L’aspirateur (*de la poussière) / le photocopieur (*de l’article)

the.suck-ator of the dust the copy-er of the.paper
n’a pas bien fonctionné.
not.has Neg well functioned
‘The vacuum-cleaner (*of the dust) / copy machine (*of the paper)
didn’t function properly.’

According to these two criteria (internal adjectival modification and presence

of AS), two subclasses have to be distinguished: eventive -eur nominals
(Agents) and noneventive -eur nominals (Instruments). The question is now
whether this result replicates in languages other than French.
Interestingly, the internal adjectival modification tests function exactly the
same way in Romanian. We find a class of Agent denoting event -tor nominals
which accept FA and/or BA modifiers, contrasting with a class of -tor
Instruments which do not accept any internal event-related adjectival
modification.⁷

Eventive -tor nominals:

(12) episodic Agent
a. Acest consumator frecvent de droguri
this consumer frequent of drugs
halucinogene a intrat în comă.
hallucinogen has entered in coma
‘This frequent consumer of hallucinogen drugs went into a coma.’

⁷ In the only study of -tor nominals in Romanian that we know of, Marchis (2008) has claimed,
along the lines of Alexiadou & Schäfer (2008), that instruments have eventive properties and include a
verbal structure. The tests, however (e.g. un calculator rapid ‘a fast computer’) are not based on internal
eventive modification in nonpredicative positions, and therefore are, in our opinion, inconclusive.
      321

b. Un mare consumator de droguri

a big consumer of drugs
halucinogene a intrat în comă.
hallucinogen has entered in coma
‘A big consumer of hallucinogen drugs went into a coma.’

(13) dispositional Agent

a. *Un prezentator frecvent de emisiuni tv a apărut
a present-er frequent of shows tv has showed
pe acest nou canal.
on this new channel
intended meaning: ‘A frequent host of tv shows shows up on this new
channel.’
b. Un mare prezentator de emisiuni tv a apărut pe
a big present-er of shows tv has showed on
acest nou canal.
this new channel
‘A tv-show host who hosts a lot of tv shows showed up on this new
channel.’

Noneventive -tor nominals:

(14) Instruments
a. *Un transmițător frecvent de mesaje s-a stricat
a transmitter frequent of messages se-has broken
intended meaning: ‘A frequent transmitter of messages is broken.’
b. Un mare transmițător de mesaje s-a stricat
a big transmitter of messages se-has broken
meaning: *: ‘A message transmitter which transmits a lot is broken.’
ok: ‘A large message transmitter is broken.’

The convergence of French and Romanian strongly supports the existence of a

class of eventive Agent ASNs in -eur/-tor (either episodic or dispositional), as
opposed to a class of noneventive Instruments. Building upon the analysis
previously developed in Roy & Soare (2014), we propose the following repre-
sentations for both French and Romanian:

(15) Eventive -eur/-tor nominals

i. episodic
∃ [NP N [AspEvP -eur/-tor [AspEv ev ] [AspQP DPspecific [AspQ ] [C=V √Root ]]]]
322     

ii. dispositional
 [NP N [AspEvP -eur/-tor [AspEv ev] [AspQP DPnonspecific [AspQ] [C=V√Root ]]]]
Noneventive -eur/-tor nominals
[NP N -eur/-tor [C=N √Root]]

AS in Romanian, however, requires further discussion; regarding, in particu-

lar, Genitive Case assignment.

13.4.2 Romanian Genitive

Contrary to French and English which allow de/of-PPs across the board,
Romanian exhibits a clear distinction between a true argumental Genitive
and de-PPs which are modifiers. We first find that both Agent and Instrument
-tor nominals can take Genitive DPs. However, there is a crucial difference
between the two. With Agent -tor nominals the meaning of the Genitive is
restricted to that of an argument of the underlying verb, as opposed to, e.g., a
possessive (16); whereas Instruments can never take argumental Genitives
(17). With Instruments, the only interpretation of the Genitive is that of a
possessive, available in (17a) but not in (17b). Possessive Genitives are not
related to internal AS properties; and cf. (5b) and (11) in French):

(16) Aducătorul acestei scrisori va primi o recompensă.

bring-er-the this. letter. will receive a reward
‘The bringer of this letter will receive a reward.’
(= ‘the person who brought the letter’)
(≠ ‘the bringer who belongs to this letter’)

(17) a. Copiatorul catedrei s-a stricat.

copy-er-the department-the. se-has broken
‘The copy machine of the department is broken.’
(= ‘the copy machine that belongs to the department)
(≠ ‘the copy machine that copied the department’)
b. Copiatorul (*acestui articol) s-a stricat.
copy-er-the this. article se-has broken
‘The copy machine of this paper is broken.’
      323

Instrument -tor nominals, in turn, take de-PP modifiers (18), something that
episodic Agent -tor nominals never allow (19):

(18) Un transmițător de semnale s-a stricat.

a transmitter of signals se-has broken
‘A transmitter of signals is broken.’

(19) *Vindecătorul de acest bolnav lucrează cu hipnoza.

healer-the of this sick works with hypnosis
‘The healer of this sick person works with hypnosis.’

The same contrast in the distribution of the argumental Genitive cannot be

shown with dispositional Agent -tor nominals for reasons that are independ-
ent of the realization of AS. In Romanian, Genitive requires a determiner and
thus cannot appear on bare DPs (20a), (21a). Since dispositional Agent
nominals are intrinsically constructed with nonspecific DP complements (cf.
Roy & Soare, 2014, for French), and nonspecific DPs are bare in Romanian,
dispositional Agent -tor nominals can never take Genitives (21a). This is,
however, not particular to argumental Genitives, but is visible across the
board, including with possessive ones, cf. (20a,b).

(20) a. *proprietarul case a pus-o în vânzare

owner-the house./. has put-it on sell
b. proprietarul acestei case a pus-o în vânzare
owner-the this. house.. has put-it on sell
‘The owner of this house offered it for sell.’

Instead of the Genitive (21a), nonspecific arguments of dispositional Agent

-tor nominals must be realized as de-PPs (21b):

(21) a. *un vânzător case a propus o vizită

a seller house./. has proposed a visit
b. un vânzător de case/casă a propus o vizită
a seller of house. /. has proposed a visit
‘A seller of houses proposed a visit.’

Nevertheless, and just like in French (6), an ASN structure is supported even
in the case of dispositional -tor nominals by the correlation between AS
realization and BA modification:
324     

(22) un mare vânzător *(de case) a propus o vizită

a big seller (of house.) has proposed a visit
‘A big seller proposed a visit.’

13.4.3 More on AS: oblique and locative PPs

Further evidence for AS properties of Agent -eur/-tor nominals, as opposed to

Instruments, comes from the possibility to realize oblique complements
expressing, for instance, indirect objects, and locatives, in both French (23)
and Romanian (24).

(23) a. les pêcheurs sous la glace;8 un porteur de message aux enfants

the fishers under the ice a bearer of message to.the children
‘under-the-ice fishers’ ‘a message-bearer to the children’
b. *les aspirateurs dans les angles; *un sécateur à la racine;
the suck-ators in the corners a prun-er at the root
‘the vacuum-cleaners in the corners’ ‘pruning shears at the root’
*un transmetteur aux radio-amateurs;
a transmitter to.the radio-amateurs
‘a transmitter to radio-amateurs’

(24) a. un ghicitor în stele; un purtător de mesaje către autorități

a guess.er in stars a bearer of messages to authorities
‘a reader in the stars’ ‘a bearer of messages to authorities’
b. *un transmițător la ascultători; *un secator la rădăcină;
a transmitter to hearers a prun.er at root
*un aspirator în colțuri
a suck-ator in corners

We conclude that AS properties are clearly restricted to Agent -eur/-tor

nominals, and thus to eventive nominals. Despite the restriction on nonspe-
cific DPs, Genitive in Romanian Agent -tor nominals signals argumenthood.
By analogy, and building upon the overall similarities between Romanian and
French, we assume that de-PPs found with eventive (Agent) -eur nominals in
French are arguments as well, while they are modifiers when they appear with
noneventive (Instrument) nominals.

⁸ Example due to Kerleroux (2007).

      325

As argued in Roy & Soare (2014), but also in Alexiadou & Schäfer (2008,
2010) and others, -er nominals can be integrated in a larger view of deverbal
nominals in a syntactic approach to complex word formation that distin-
guishes nouns derived from roots and ASNs derived from full verbal phrases.
Thus, we contribute to a view in which the correlation between event reading
and AS (as commonly assumed for event-denoting deverbal nominals since
Grimshaw, 1990) is uniformly maintained. Eventive -er nominals are syntac-
tically derived from a full verbal/aspectual structure, while noneventive -er
nominals are root-derived.
The requirement for an internal verbal structure (assumed to be the source
for eventive and AS properties), and consequently for a verbal base, remains,
however, to be fully demonstrated. Specifically, what remains to be addressed,
is the issue of heterogeneity in morphological complexity (bases and suffixes)
across function nominals. This question is addressed in Section 13.5.

13.5 Derivation and morphology

Are eventive properties specific to (Agent denoting) -eur/-tor nominals among

function nominals? Are such eventive properties associated with the presence
of a verbal structure as claimed? How is this related to morphological deriv-
ation? To answer these questions, we need to compare Agent denoting
-eur/-tor nominals with the following three subclasses of function nominals:

Subclass (i) simplex nominal forms, that are not derived at all:
French: secrétaire ‘secretary’, capitaine ‘captain’, avocat ‘lawyer’
Romanian: secretar ‘secretary’, doctor ‘doctor’, căpitan ‘captain’, şofer ‘driver’
including relational nouns, which have an argumental structure:
French: ami ‘friend’, mère ‘mother’, voisin ‘neighbor’
Romanian: prieten ‘friend’, mamă ‘mother’, vecin ‘neighbor’
Subclass (ii) nominals that are morphologically derived, but not from a
verbal base
French: -iste: dentiste ‘dentist’, étalagiste (lit. window-ist) ‘window dresser’,
-ier: pompier ‘fireman’, voiturier (lit. car-ier) ‘valet parking’
Romanian: -ist, -giu, -ier: dentist ‘dentist’, camionagiu ‘truck-driver’,
pompier ‘fire-fighter’
including -eur/-tor denominal nouns:
French: camionneur (lit. truck-er) ‘truck-driver’, basketteur (lit. basket-
er) ‘basket ball player’, chroniqueur (lit. chronicle-er) ‘columnist’,
326     

Romanian: controlor (lit. control-er) ‘controler’, senator ‘senator’, aviator

(lit. plane-er) ‘aviator’
Subclass (iii) deverbal nominals with other suffixes
French: -ant: habitant ‘inhabitant’, votant ‘voter’, enseignant ‘teacher’,
soignant ‘carer’
-é/-i/-u: marié (lit. married) ‘groom’, blessé (lit. wounded)
‘wounded person’, pendu (lit. hanged) ‘hanged person’, insoumis
(lit. unsubmitted) ‘rebel’
Romanian: -tor vs. -aș: ucigător/ucigaș ‘killer’

To the best of our knowledge, such comparison, although part of the program
initiated by Remarks, has not been undertaken in any systematic manner for
French or Romanian.

13.5.1 Simplex nominals

Contrast between subclass (i) function nominals like secrétaire ‘secretary’,

capitaine ‘captain’, parent ‘parent’, and Agent -eur nominals like conducteur
‘driver’, accompagnateur ‘chaperon’, confirms that eventive properties require
a complex form to begin with. All simplex nominals (leaving aside putative
etymological complexity) reject FA/BA internal modifications, in French (25)
as well as in Romanian (26):

(25) a. Un (*fréquent/*gros) capitaine de bateau de guerre

a frequent/ big captain of ship of war
a abandonné le combat.
has abandoned the fight
b. Une (*fréquente/*grosse) mère d’élève nous a fait des aveux.
a frequent/ big mother of a pupil has admitted guilt

(26) a. *Un frecvent/mare căpitan de vapor rămâne la bord.

a frequent/ big captain of ship stays on board
b. *Un frecvent/mare părinte de copii înțelege problema.
a frequent/ big parent of children understands problem-the

The same restriction holds for underived -eur nominals in French (e.g.
borrowings like docteur ‘doctor’, auteur ‘author’) and Romanian (e.g. șofer
      327

‘driver’, spectator ‘spectator’) which cannot be analyzed as complex forms

either. We agree here with Remarks, that simplex words like auteur ‘author’
or docteur ‘doctor’ are not derived syntactically and do not relate to an existing
verb (*auter ‘to auth’, *docter ‘to doct’). They contrast, however, with derived
Agent -eur nominals:

(27) a. Un (*fréquent/*gros) docteur est apparu à la télé.

a frequent/ big doctor is appeared on the tv
‘A frequent/ big doctor appeared on a tv show.’
b. Un (fréquent/gros) guérisseur de maladies bizarres
a frequent/ big heal-er of diseases strange
est apparu à la télé.
is appeared on the tv
‘A frequent/big healer of strange diseases appeared on a tv show.’

(28) a. Un (*frecvent/*mare) doctor de boli incurabile a

a frequent/ big doctor of diseases incurable has
apărut pe acest canal.
shown on this channel
‘A frequent/big doctor of incurable diseases has shown up on this
channel.’
b. Un (frecvent/ mare) vindecător de boli incurabile a
a frequent/big healer of diseases incurable has
apărut pe acest canal.
shown on this channel
‘A frequent/big healer of incurable diseases has shown up on this
channel.’

Moreover, whereas deverbal Agent -eur/-tor nominals take true arguments

(Genitive-only in Romanian, cf. Section 13.4.2), simplex function nominals
take de-PP modifiers. In turn, this confirms that AS properties are necessarily
related to a complex derived form as well:

(29) a. Conducătorul *(acestui tren) s-a declarat în grevă.

conductor-the this. train se-has declared in strike
‘The conductor of this train declared to be on strike.’
b. Șeful (de tren) s-a declarat în grevă.
chief-the of train se-has declared in strike
‘The chief of the train declared to be on strike.’
328     

As expected, when available, Genitives with simplex forms, including

underived -tor nominals, can only denote a possessive (30):

(30) prietenul copiilor;

friend-the child-the.. ‘the children’s friend’
doctorul copiilor
doctor-the child-the.. ‘the children’s doctor’
(meaning: ‘doctor that is attributed to the children’)

In sum, the possibility of eventive and AS properties is correlated with a

complex, morphological derivation both in French and in Romanian.

13.5.2 Internal make-up: verbal base

Comparing now Agent -eur/-tor nominals with subclass (ii) function nom-
inals, which are morphologically derived, but not from a verbal base, we find
that eventive properties and AS properties require derivation from a verbal
base. Function nominals derived on a nominal base systematically lack AS, cf.
(31) and (32) for French and Romanian, respectively:

(31) a. *Le camionneur de ce chargement est en grève.

the truck-er (i.e. ‘truck-driver’) of this shipping-load is on strike
b. *Le chroniqueur de la réforme du
the chronicle-er (i.e. ‘columnist’) of the reform of-the
gouvernement ment.
government is lying
c. *le fleuriste du bouquet; *l’artiste de ce tableau;
the florist of.the bouquet the.artist of that painting
*le pompier de l’incendie
the fireman of the.fire
d. *le criminel de la vieille dame (vs. le tueur de la vieille dame)
the criminal of the old lady (vs. the killer of the old lady)

a. *Cenzorul acestui articol a tăiat un paragraf.

(32)
censor-the this. article has cut a paragraph
b. *Controlorul acestui bilet a detectat o fraudă.
control-er-the this. ticket has detected a fraud
      329

c. *artistul acestui tablou; *grădinarul acestui parc;

artist-the this. painting gardener-the this. park
*pompierul incendiului
fireman-the fire.the.

Oblique arguments that can sometimes be found with Agent -eur/-tor nom-
inals (cf. Section 13.4.2), are simply not possible in function nominals with no
verbal base—compare (33) with (23) for French, and (34) with (24) for
Romanian.

(33) *les dentistes au cabinet; *le camionneur

the dentists at.the office the truck.er (i.e. ‘truck-driver’)
à travers la France;
through the France

(34) *cosmonautul pe lună; *doctorul la spital;

cosmonaut-the on moon doctor-the at hospital
*camionagiul pe autostradă
truck-er-the on highway

Similarly, the absence of a verbal base renders eventive adjectival modification

impossible in denominal function nouns. This is expected given the correlation
between AS properties and eventive properties; and the relation between such
properties and the presence of a verbal base:⁹

(35) Ce (*fréquent/ *grand) camionneur/ fleuriste/ pompier/

this frequent big truck-er/ florist/ fireman/
jardinier est en grève.
gardener is on strike

Acest (*frecvent/ *mare) controlor/ grădinar/ pompier e în vacanță.

(36)
this frequent big controler/ gardener/ fireman is on vacation

Denominal nouns clearly support the correlation between eventive and AS

properties and their shared dependence upon a verbal base.

⁹ Instrument nominals which include a ‘verbalizing’ suffix (e.g. -ize/-ify, catalisateur, humidificateur,
in French or catalizator, umidificator in Romanian) do not exhibit eventive nor AS properties. These
may be based on a verbalized root (cf. Borer, 2013) without involving a true verbal-aspectual structure.
See also Roy & Soare (2014, fn. 9).
330     

13.5.3 More on the internal make-up of individual-denoting

eventive nominals

We finally address a comparison between Agent -eur/-tor nominals and other

individual-denoting deverbal nominals as grouped together in subclass (iii). In
Roy & Soare (2012, 2015), we have addressed two types of nominalizations,
namely -ant nominals, historically related to a present participle form (e.g.
enseignant (lit. teach-ing) ‘teacher’) and -é/-i/-u nominals, historically related
to a perfect/passive participle form (e.g. blessé (lit. wound-ed) ‘a wounded
person’). We have argued that some of them, at least, may exhibit AS-
properties and eventive properties. The contrast between animate and inani-
mate (e.g. instruments, products) nouns, already discussed in the case of -eur
nominals, also exists with -ant nominals. Only animate -ant nominals exhibit
eventive properties, visible with FA/BA modification.

(37) les fréquents/gros publiants vs. *un fréquent/gros assouplissant

the frequent/ big publish.ing a frequent/big soften.ing
‘the frequent/big publishing fellows’ ‘a frequent/big softener’

However, and unlike -eur nominals, -ant nominals do not nominalize an

external argument. They do not allow modifiers like deliberate, obstinate,
which identify agentivity:

(38) l’agresseur (délibéré) vs. l’attaquant (*délibéré)

the.agressor deliberate the-attack-ing (i.e. ‘attacker’) deliberate
de la vieille dame
of the old lady

What these nominals nominalize, in fact, is the subject of a stative predication.

They are derived from a predicative participial clause and are interpreted as
‘someone who has the property of V’. We refer the reader to Roy & Soare
(2012) for a full discussion.
Turning to -é/-i/-u nominals, they are deverbal nominalizations of internal
arguments. They denote the participant which corresponds to the internal
argument (Patient/Theme).

(39) a. Un invité fréquent du président a fait scandale.

an invited frequent of.the president has made scandal
‘A frequent guest of the president made a scandal.’
      331

b. Un détenu occasionnel de la prison s’est évadé.

a detained occasional of the prison se-is escaped
‘An occasional prisoner at the Detention Center has escaped.’

As in the case of -eur and -ant nominals, we note a clear contrast between
animate and inanimate -é/-i/-u nominals: The latter do not accept internal
adjectival modification:

(40) un grand blessé/ brûlé

a big wounded/ burned
‘a person who suffers a serious wound/burn’

(41) un (*fréquent/gros) soufflé/ arrondi

a frequent/big blow-ed (‘soufflé’)/round-ed (‘angle/corner’)

Interestingly, animate -é/-i/-u nominals are only interpreted as episodic, a fact

also noted by Barker (1998) for English -ee nominals (absentee, employee,
refugee). The episodic interpretation of -ee nominals is explained by Barker by
their being semantically linked to an episodic event. In Roy & Soare’s (2012)
account of -é/-i/-u nominals in French, this is a consequence of the nominal-
ization of the internal argument, which is by default specific.
Romanian offers another, but limited, example of deverbal derivation with
varying suffixes forming function nominals with distinct properties. In (42),
ucigător, derived with -tor, exhibits eventive and AS properties, while, ucigaș,
although derived from the same verb, does not.

(42) a. ucigătorul *(animalelor)

killer.the (animal-the..)
b. un ucigaș în serie/ (*al animalelor)
a killer in series (of animal-the..)
‘a serial killer’

Another nominal, namely criminal (43), which is a borrowing in Romanian,

also contrasts, as expected, with the corresponding -tor nominal in (42) in not
allowing eventive nor AS properties—and cf. the French example in (31d).

(43) *criminalul celor trei fete

criminal-the the.GEN three girls
332     

In conclusion, and as predicted in a neo-constructionist approach, different

(verbal) syntactic structures may nominalize differently, leading to the
observed contrasts between -eur/-tor nominals and, e.g. French -ant nominals
and -é/-i/-u nominals.
French and Romanian strongly support our claim that eventivity and AS
properties correlate and are dependent upon complex morphological deriv-
ation from a verbal base, in function nominals as it is the case elsewhere for
event-denoting ASNs.

13.6 Typology of Agent and other function nominals:

concluding remarks

Two patterns of function nominals are available across the board: one that
exhibits eventive and AS properties and one that does not. Although we have
suggested that the eventive/non-eventive patterns are equally available, it is
also true that they are distributed differently across the three languages
considered here.
French is certainly the language in which the eventive pattern is the most
common. In this language, -eur is rather productive and shows full evidence
for AS. Consider the grammaticality of the following examples, some already
discussed above:

(44) a. le lecteur du livre aux enfants

the reader of.the book to.the children
b. les chanteurs de l’hymne à la fête nationale
the singers of the.anthem at the holiday national
c. le réparateur du chauffe-eau dans la cuisine
the repairer of-the water-heater in the kitchen
d. le démolisseur de votre argument
the wrecker of your argument
e. ce briseur de coeur
this breaker of heart

These examples are clearly episodic, i.e., they relate to specific events of
reading, singing, repairing, and so on; and they require full argument struc-
ture, as already discussed.
      333

In Romanian, the eventive pattern is also largely productive, and is, simi-
larly, clearly visible with episodic Agent -tor ASNs and their systematic
compatibility with argumental Genitives:

(45) a. organizatorul acestui colocviu

organizer-the this. conference
‘the organizer of this conference’
b. conducătorul acestui autovehicul
driver-the this. vehicle
‘the driver of this vehicle’
c. purtătorul acestor mesaje către autorități
bearer-the this.. messages to authorities
‘the bearer of these messages’
d. cititorul acestei povești
reader-the this. story
‘the reader of this story’

Romanian Agent -tor ASNs, however, may appear at times more constrained
than in French. In particular, few attested cases of French Agent -eur ASNs are
not grammatical in the language: Consider, e.g. ??cititorul de povești copiilor
‘the reader of stories to the children.’. It is highly plausible that such cases
are degraded for reasons of case. They involve a Dative oblique complement,
and Dative oblique complements seem more constrained in -tor nominals
than in event-denoting ASNs (compare, for instance, with the supine in cititul
de povești copiilor ‘the reading of stories children.the.’). We leave the
precise reasons for this restriction aside for further research.
We also note the absence of productive -ant formations in Romanian,
beyond borrowings, e.g. manifestant ‘demonstrator’, opozant ‘opponent’, rezi-
dent ‘resident’. This might relate to the absence of a present participle in this
language, which has, as opposed to French, a true gerund. It seems reasonable
to consider morphology as the main source of variation here between French
and Romanian—in the fact, for instance, that Romanian, as opposed to
French, has morphological case, and a supine and no present participle.
Turning to English, we would like to suggest that morphology is also
responsible for the restrictions on the distribution of the eventive pattern.
We would like to suggest that the relative rarity of the eventive pattern in
English comes from a large (if not exclusive) preference in this language for
the compound pattern over the phrasal one.
334     

(46) a. *the sitter of my cats vs. my cat-sitter

b. *this breaker of hearts vs. this heartbreaker
c. *the breaker of racial barriers vs. ?racial barriers breaker

Synthetic compounds are noneventive (Borer, 2013). This is shown not by the
absence of event entailment (Rappaport Hovav & Levin, 1992; and see
McIntyre, 2014, on the existence of event-entailing compounds, e.g. prize
winner, beer drinker, fn. 2), but more specifically by their incompatibility
with event modifiers, e.g. *My frequent cat-sitter charges 10$ per hour, and
also *This frequent beer drinker had fun at the party, *The big prize winner was
congratulated by his teammates.
Even though episodic Agent -er nominals are rather marginal (46), a few
examples are nevertheless attested (47). These nominals are phrasal, must
include AS and are interpreted as eventive (i.e., the person who reads the book,
the person who leads this group, the person who organized this meeting, the
person who smuggled the drugs).

(47) the reader of the book; the leader of this group; the organizer of the
meeting;
california smuggler of erectile dysfunction drugs gets prison (internet)

Interestingly, oblique complements and locatives seem restricted in English in

a way somewhat reminiscent of Romanian (e.g. the reader of the book (*to the
children); the talker (*to animals); the dancers (*in the dark)).
Eventive nominals contrast nicely with noneventive ones, i.e., denominals,
instruments, and nonderived forms:

(48) *the dentist of the patient; *the pianist of the sonata; *the ventilator/fan
of the air.

Such contrasts clearly indicate that the two patterns are available in English as
well, and that although the facts are not the same, the correlations retain.
Putting the results in this chapter in the more general perspective of
syntactic deverbal word formation, we find a continuum of eventivity from
-ing nominals to -ation to -er (and -ant where available), with only subsets of
properties that these nominals have in common, as detailed in Section 13.4.1.
A distinction between eventive—complex derived function nominals—and
      335

noneventive—root-derived function nominals—is grounded across the

languages studied here. A theory of nominalization can straightforwardly
integrate Agent and other function nominals once we draw the appropriate
distinction between the two patterns, in line with the program initiated by
Remarks.
 14
Polish psych nominals revisited
Bożena Rozwadowska

14.1 Introduction

For a long time in current linguistic theorizing one of the intriguing problems
has been the question whether psych verbs (often referred to as experiencer
verbs) and their nominalizations differ from those of other predicates, in parti-
cular from action nominals. Since the publication of Chomsky’s Remarks on
Nominalization the literature on derived nominals has featured different views
and with time the explanations of various puzzles connected with psych verbs and
psych nominalizations have shifted from purely syntactic approaches in terms
of constraints on movement, via thematic constraints of various forms to con-
structivist accounts often correlated with event structures of predicates. Here the
focus is on Polish psych nominals from the perspective of the most recent
approaches that link the argument structure of derived nominals to the type
and complexity of the eventuality they describe as well as to the type of partici-
pants. The constraints on the expression of participants and the interpretation of
psych nominals may shed some light on the current debate concerning the nature
of psych eventualities and verify recent claims that deverbal nominals are sensitive
to subevent composition of complex eventualities that those nominals describe,
including the difference between eventive and stative nominals.
At the same time, as Alexiadou (Chapter 5) and Borer (Chapter 6) re-iterate,
the literature on derived nominals acknowledges that derived nouns are
derived from acategorial roots and can include some but not necessarily all
the verbal layers found within verbal clauses. Following the empirical conclu-
sions found in cross-linguistic literature, Alexiadou emphasizes that nomin-
alizations come in different sizes both within and across languages. This
chapter falls within this cross-linguistic endeavor and demonstrates that
Polish psych nominals provide yet another piece of evidence for varying
sizes of the verbal structure embedded also in psych nominals. So far, it has
been widely recognized that psych nominals denote states (see Grimshaw,

Bożena Rozwadowska, Polish psych nominals revisited In: Nominalization: 50 Years on from Chomsky’s Remarks.
Edited by: Artemis Alexiadou and Hagit Borer, Oxford University Press (2020). © Bozė na Rozwadowska.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198865544.003.0014
338 ż 

1990; Pesetsky, 1995; Alexiadou, 2011a; Fábregas & Marín, 2012; Melloni,
2017; Iordăchioaia, 2019a; inter alia). In this chapter, I argue that in addition
to stative psych nominals, Polish systematically has eventive nominalizations
with a rich verbal structure that describe the inceptive psychological events,
i.e., boundary events which denote the beginning of the psychological state, in
the absence of process nominals in the psych domain.
I analyze a whole variety of Polish psych nominalizations as compared to
nonpsych eventualities to verify whether psych nominals are ASNs (Argument
Structure Nominals) in the sense of Borer (2014). Related to this is another
important question as to the presence of causation and change of state in
psych eventualities, both in the verbal and the nominal domains. With respect
to causation, constraints on deverbal nominalizations are subject to cross-
linguistic debates (see Grimshaw, 1990; Pesetsky, 1995; Harley & Noyer,
2000a; Alexiadou & Rathert, 2010a, b; Borer, 2013; inter alia). Pesetsky
(1995) argues that there is a ban on causative psych nominals. This constraint
has been re-formulated in the literature in various ways (Harley & Noyer,
2000a; Sichel, 2010). Alexiadou & Iordăchioaia (2014a) argue that in Greek
and Romanian causative psych nominalizations do exist and that they are
related to the causative/anticausative alternation. They suggest that causative
psych nominals in those languages are derived from the ES (Experiencer
Subject) anticausative alternants of EO (Experiencer Object) psych verbs.
In this chapter, I explore the pattern of Polish psych nominalizations,
focusing on the alternating EO/ES verbs, to contribute to the debate on the
(non)existence of causative psych nominals. Polish EO verbs systematically
have a reflexive ES variant (arguably anticausative, a claim which will be
challenged) both in the perfective and in the imperfective, and they systemat-
ically nominalize, preserving aspectual distinctions. The constraints on argu-
ment realization in nominalizations are often argued to be closely related to
the event structure. In view of an ongoing debate on the presence/absence of
the causative subevent in the event structure of EO psych predicates, I look at
Polish psych nominals to find out what kinds of events they express, whether
those nominals qualify as causative and what nominalizations can tell us about
the event makeup of EO and ES psych predicates. In short, in this chapter
I argue that there are eventive inceptive psych nominals with a rich verbal
structure embedded in them, but at the same time they are not causative.
The chapter is organized as follows. In Section 14.2 I provide a brief
overview of the distribution of arguments in psych nominals. Section 14.3
provides a general introduction to the variety of derived nominals in Polish.
Section 14.4 contains the crucial data from the domain of Polish psych
     339

nominals. In Section 14.5 I present Alexiadou & Iordăchioaia’s (2014a) argu-

mentation for the existence of psych causative nominals in Greek and
Romanian. In Section 14.6 I attempt to provide a syntactic representation of
Polish psych nominals within the most recent trends assuming the layered
internal structure in nominals. Section 14.7 concludes.

14.2 The constraint on participants in psych nominals

As is well known cross-linguistically, in nominals related to psych verbs, both

to EO verbs and ES verbs, it is the experiencer which must be realized in the
position that otherwise accommodates agents or possessors. This constraint is
illustrated for English in (1):

(1) a. John’s enjoyment of the movie

b. *the movie’s enjoyment by John
c. *the book’s amusement of the children
d. the children’s amusement (at/with the book)
e. the amusement of the children

Single argument nominals related to transitive psych verbs or mental state

verbs do not permit the expression of the nonexperiencer as the sole argument,
as in (2).

(2) a. *history’s knowledge

b. *the parents’ respect (where the NP the parents is the object of respect)
c. *Mary’s hatred (where Mary is the object of hatred)

Instead, in such single argument nominals it is the experiencer which must be

expressed, which is illustrated for English in (3):

(3) a. John’s fear/hatred

b. John’s embarrassment/amazement

Note also that with ES nominalizations the experiencer cannot be expressed in

the by-phrase in nominals, as illustrated in (4):

(4) a. *fear of flying by many people

b. *dislike of flying by many people
340 ż 

In Polish we observe similar constraints related to psych nominals, even

though the structure of the Polish NP is slightly different. The pattern for ES
verbs and their nominalizations is illustrated in (5), whereas (6) presents an
example of an EO verb and its nominalization.

(5) a. Jan podziwia Marię.

John. admires Mary.
‘John admires Mary.’
b. podziw Jana dla Marii
admiration. John. for Mary.
‘John’s admiration for Mary’
c. twój podziw dla Marii
your admiration. for Mary.
d. *podziw Marii przez Jana/ przez ciebie
admiration. Mary. by John./ by you.
‘*Mary’s admiration by John.’

(6) a. Dzieci zdumiewają rodziców (swoją inteligencją).

Children. amaze parents. (their intelligence.)
‘Children amaze parents (with their intelligence).’
b. zdumienie rodziców inteligencją dzieci
amazement. parents. intelligence. children.
‘parents’ amazement at the children’
c. twoje zdumienie inteligencją dzieci
your amazement. intelligence. children.
‘Your amazement with the children’s intelligence.’
d. *zdumienie dzieci rodziców
amazement. children. parents.
‘*The children’s amazement of the parents.’

In Polish, as in English, the possessor, expressed by the postnominal genitive

as in (5b) and (6b) or by the prenominal possessive pronoun as in (5c) and
(6c), must accommodate the experiencer in both ES and EO nominalizations,
and does not allow the expression of the target/stimulus/subject matter/cause.¹

¹ I am using all these labels, because such a variety of terms appears in the literature. This varied
terminology in itself shows that the thematic status of the nonexperiencer participant in EO verbs is far
from obvious.
     341

This is an important observation in view of the fact that in the dominant

literature the puzzle of psychological predicates is usually associated with EO
verbs only, whereas ES verbs and their nominals are often ignored as unprob-
lematic and well behaved. Recently, Iordăchioaia (2019a), recognizing the
distributional facts reviewed above, takes the position that nominalizations
related to EO verbs are in fact ES nominalizations, because the structure such
as (7a) is related to the structure (7b), quoted after Lakoff (1970) as an ES
structure, rather than to the EO structure in (7c). This is similar to the pattern
in (8), where the nominalization in (8a) is related to the ES structure in (8b),
not to the EO structure in (8c).

(7) a. my amusement/surprise at what he did (SE)

b. I was amused/surprised at what he did. (SE)
c. What he did amused/surprised me. (EO)

(8) a. my enjoyment of movies. (SE)

b. I enjoy movies. (SE)
c. Movies are enjoyable to me. (EO)

Iordăchioaia (2019a, Chapter 10) notes that the constraints on psych nomin-
alizations are independent of the presence of the suffix and that English
ZNs (zero nominals) are particularly frequent for both ES and EO verbs
(e.g. ES love, hate, dread, mourn, grudge, regret, like, dislike; and EO worry,
daze, surprise, anger, concern, baffle, insult, hurt, trouble, torment). The
examples found in the English TenTen15 corpus quoted from Iordăchioaia
(2019a) in (9) demonstrate that ZNs realize the experiencer as a possessor
and the stimulus as a PP. This shows that ZNs behave similarly to derived
nominals. Iordăchioaia (2019a) takes it as evidence supporting root deriv-
ation of both.

(9) a. Peggy’s love for our community

b. women’s dread of childbirth
c. Mary’s surprise at the news
d. the main character’s torment over losing her standing in the LDS
church

Interestingly, Siloni & Preminger (2009: 368) take the nominals headed by the
noun interest in Hebrew, French, and Hungarian as ES nominals, noting at
342 ż 

the same time that their verbal counterparts in French appear with the se
morpheme.²

14.3 Polish derived nominals

Before I turn to the analysis of Polish psych nominals, I provide a brief

overview of the variety of derived nominals in Polish in general. Following
Puzynina (1969), traditional grammar descriptions divide Polish verb-noun
transpositions into substantiva deverbalia (Sdev), i.e., deverbal nouns, and
substantiva verbalia (Sv), i.e., verbal nouns. Both have the external distribution
of NPs and are headed by nominal heads, but Svs embed a richer verbal
structure. Sdev are similar to English derived nominals with argument struc-
ture of the destruction type: Grimshaw’s (1990) CENs (Complex Event
Nominals), Borer’s (2014) ASNs, or ATK, i.e., -ation and Kin nominals.
They are derived by means of some nominalizing suffixes or can be suffix-
less. Svs, formed with the suffix -nie/-cie, also qualify as CENs, but on top of
the argument structure inherited from the verb, they also possess many other
unexpected verbal properties (discussed in detail in Rozwadowska, 1995,
2000). Namely, -nie/-cie nominals systematically preserve aspectual contrast
between the perfective and the imperfective readings, may be negated and may
include reflexive clitics (SE-reflexives according to the widely assumed typ-
ology). Still, they combine with a complement in the genitive case (in contrast
to the accusative case assigned by the verb). They are virtually categorial, i.e.,
they can be formed from almost every verb with a few exceptions. In short,
Polish features two types of CENs, both of which can also have Grimshaw’s
result or object reading. The pattern is illustrated in (10) for an example verb
(za)prezentować (‘to present’). In (10a,d) there are examples of Sdev derived
by means of the suffix -acja (corresponding to ATK nominals, in particular to
the English suffix -ation), whereas in (10b,c,e,f) are nominals derived by the
productive nominalizing suffix -nie/-cie. This nominalizer attaches both to
the prefix-less imperfective verb stems, as in (10b) or to the prefixed perfective
verb stems as in (10c,e,f).

² On the other hand, Siloni & Preminger (2009: 381) treat Hebrew equivalents of verbs such as
impress, sadden, puzzle, amaze as EO verbs and note that they do not form event nominals. It is thus
not clear what the criterion of the division into ES and EO nominals is in their analysis, since cross-
linguistically interest is a prototypical EO verb. The implication seems to be that state nominals, despite
their relation to EO verbs, are treated as ES nominals, whereas event nominals related to EO verbs are
treated as EO nominals.
     343

(10) a. Prezent-acja *(systemu) przez studentów/ przez ciebie

present-ation. system. by students./ by you.
trwała dwie godziny/ zajęła dwie godziny.
lasted two hours/ took two hours
‘The presentation of the system by the students/by you lasted/took
two hours.’
b. Prezentowa-nie *(systemu) przez studentów trwało 2 godziny.
present-nie. system. by students. lasted 2 hours
‘The presenting of the system by the students lasted two hours.’
c. Za-prezentowa-nie *(systemu) przez studentów zajęło
za-present-nie. system. by students. lasted
2 godziny.
2 hours
‘The presenting of the system by the students took two hours.’
d. Prezent-acje studentów/ Twoje prezent-acje
present-ations. students./ your present-ations.
były niezwykle interesujące.
were extremely interesting
‘The students’ presentations / Your presentations were very
interesting.’
e. Nie-za-prezent-owa-nie *(systemu) przez studentów
-za-present-owa-nie. system. by students.
miało wpływ na ocenę.
had influence on grade
‘Not presenting the system by the students affected the grade.’
f. Za-prezentowa-nie się od najlepszej strony
za-present-owa-nie.  from best side
pomoże ci w znalezieniu nowej pracy.
will help you. in finding new job
‘Presenting yourself from the best side will help you in finding a new
job.’

Another detail relevant for the distribution of satellites within an NP is the

distinction between the so called objective and subjective genitive. They
are distinct for personal pronouns, where the objective postnominal genitive
is different from the possessive pronoun. In the case of full NPs, both genitive
complements and possessors are realized as postnominal genitives. Thus,
344 ż 

the examples (10a,b,c,e) contain the genitive complement systemu, whereas in

(10d) the noun studentów is a genitive possessor, which can be verified by
replacing the noun with a possessive pronoun. In nominals derived from
transitive verbs the internal argument is expressed as the postnominal genitive
(not the possessor), whereas the external argument is expressed in the PP
headed by the agentive preposition przez (‘by’). In result/object nominals, the
satellite is expressed as the possessor (either a prenominal possessive pronoun
or a postnominal possessive genitive). Moreover, in nominals derived from all
types of intransitive verbs, the sole argument (agent, or theme, or any other
type) is expressed as a possessor. Note also that in the majority of cases, Polish
Sdevs related to action verbs are aspectually ambiguous (see 10a), i.e., they can
occur in contexts compatible with both the ‘completed’ (telic) and the ‘dura-
tive’ (atelic/process) readings (Puzynina, 1969; Rozwadowska, 2000). The
variety of Polish nominals presented above ties well with cross-linguistic
evidence that the size of verbal projections embedded under the nominalizing
head is diversified and richer than the binary division into ASNs and Result
Nominals (see Alexiadou & Rathert, 2010b, for various cross-linguistic
contributions).

14.4 Polish psych nominals

Given the above background, let us now look at Polish nominals related to
psych verbs and their possible interpretations. I will start with EO verbs, which
systematically alternate with ES reflexive variants. Their nominalizations
provide a good testing ground for various proposals concerning the event
structure of psych verbs suggested in the literature. Assuming with others (e.g.
Pesetsky, 1995; Arad, 1998a,b, 1999; Biały, 2005) that among EO verbs there
are two subclasses, namely stative and eventive verbs, some of which are
polysemous and allow both interpretations, let us start with the stative
group. Stative EO verbs are illustrated in (11):

(11) a. Matematyka/Maria interesuje Marka.

Maths./ Mary. interests.. Mark.
‘Maths interests Mark.’
b. Marek interesuje się *(matematyką)/*(Marią).
Mark. interests..  *(maths.)/ *(Mary.)
‘Mark is interested in maths/in Mary.’
     345

c. Muzyka klasyczna fascynuje Anię.

music classical. fascinates.. Ann.
‘Classical music fascinates Ann.’
d. Ania fascynuje się *(muzyką klasyczną).
Ann. fascinates..  *(music. classical.)
‘Ann is fascinated with classical music.’

The perfective variants of (11) are presented in (12). I call them inceptive
events, since they denote the onset of the state, and have temporal entailments
opposite to COS (change of state) verbs, as extensively argued in
Rozwadowska (2012, to appear).³

(12) a. Matematyka/Maria za-interesowała Marka.

maths/Mary. za-interest.. Mark.
‘Maths started to interest Mark.’
b. Marek za-interesował się *(matematyką)/ *(Marią).
Mark. interest..  *(maths.)/ *(Mary.)
‘Mark got interested in maths/in Mary.’
c. Muzyka klasyczna za-fascynowała Anię.
music. classical. za-fascinate.. Ann.
‘Classical music started to fascinate Ann.’
d. Ania za-fascynowała się *(muzyką klasyczną).
Ania. za-fascinate..  *(music. classical.)
‘Mark got fascinated with classical music.’

The reflexive ES cognates of stative EO verbs take an obligatory complement

marked by the instrumental case. In Rozwadowska & Bondaruk (2019), we
argue that the reflexive ES alternants of the EO verbs are not an instance of
the causative/anticausative alternation, because the expression of the target/
stimulus is different from the expression of the cause in the nonpsych

³ For similar verbs in Spanish, Marín & McNally (2011) use the label ‘inchoative states’. They argue
that Spanish reflexive psychological verbs (SRPVs) are different from COS verbs in being left-bounded.
Polish psych verbs qualify as left-boundary eventualities as well. The term ‘inceptive’ is less ambigous,
but to be consistent with the ‘received’ terminology, I will refer to left boundary eventualities as
‘inceptive/inchoative’ throughout this chapter.
346 ż 

causative/anticausative alternation. In the latter case it is not the instrumental

case marked NP/DP but a specialized PP (here the od-phrase), as in (13):

(13) a. Podmuch wiatru złamał gałąź.

gust. wind. break.. branch.
‘The gust of wind broke the branch.’
b. Gałąź złamała się (od podmuchu wiatru).
branch. break..  from gust wind.
‘The branch broke from the gust of wind.’
c. Gałąź złamała się (*podmuchem wiatru).
branch. break..  gust. wind.
‘The branch broke (*from the gust of wind).’

Interestingly, there are two types of psych nominals related to EO verbs, one
without the reflexive clitic, and the other one with the reflexive, as illustrated in
(14). Thus, in Polish, in contrast to other languages (see Fábregas et al., 2012;
Alexiadou & Iordăchioaia, 2014a; Melloni, 2017) the reflexive morphology is
inherited in nominalizations.⁴ In (14) there is a sample of examples containing
additional contextual elements which serve as diagnostics for the available
interpretations.

(14) a. Za-interesowa-nie Janka *(historią) ujawniło

za-interest-nie. John. history. became visible
się już po pierwszym wykładzie.
 already after first. lecture.
‘John’s interest in history became visible already after the first
lecture.’
b. #Za-interesowa-nie Janka *(historią) zdarzyło
za-interest-nie. John. history. happen..
się/ miało miejsce wczoraj.
/ take place.. yesterday
‘#John’s interest in history happened yesterday.’
c. Za-interesowa-nie się klientów *(tą ofertą) 5 minut
za-interest-nie.  customers. this offer. 5 minutes

⁴ Siloni & Preminger (2009) and Medova (2009), following Hron (2005), note that Czech allows
reflexive and reciprocal event nominals as well. This fact presents a challenge to the Lexicon-Syntax
parameter advanced in Siloni & Preminger’s approach.
     347

po jej ogłoszeniu nie było zaskoczeniem.

after its announcement  was surprise.
‘*The customers’ getting interested in this offer 5 minutes after its
announcement was not a surprise.’
d. #interesowa-nie klientów (tą ofertą) przez
interest-nie. customers. this. offer. for
5 minut
5 minutes
‘#interesting of customers with this offer for 5 minutes.’

All the above nominals (with the perfectivizing prefix and without it, with the
reflexive clitic and without it) require a complement in the instrumental case,
as in the corresponding verbal structures (see (11)–(12)), which is different
from the marker of the causer in the causative alternation with COS verbs (see
(13)). This suggests that there are no causative nominals related to stative EO
verbs. This is not surprising, since stative EO verbs do not participate in the
psych causative alternation in the first place (similarly to Romanian and Greek
stative experiencer verbs, cf. Alexiadou & Iordăchioaia, 2014a). The distribu-
tion of nominal satellites in terms of their morphological marking is identical
to the distribution of arguments in verbal structures with the experiencer in
the subject position (cf. (11b,d), (12b,d)), which is compatible with the pattern
presented in Iordăchioaia (2019a) for English psych nominals. Iordăchioaia
(2019a) argues that the psych nominals which fail to realize nonagentive
causers (cf. English example in (1c)) are derived from the root and not from
the verbal structure, in contrast to the ones that realize agents, which are built
on the agentive verb structures. Her claim is that the realization of the two
arguments must follow the configuration of the root, in which the experiencer
is the higher argument, while the subject matter or target of emotion is realized
by a root-specific preposition (in my understanding it could also be a specific
case marker). Such nominalizations are thus treated as ES nominals.
Iordăchioaia concludes that ‘true’ psych nominals do not include any event
structure. Psych roots are dyadic state predicates (in contrast to the roots of
COS verbs, which on her account are monadic) and take two arguments—the
experiencer and the stimulus. The net result of this reasoning is that for psych
verbs, the categorizing vP has no meaning contribution and will not be visible
in the nominalization, leading to stative nominals built from the root. The two
arguments of the root may be realized, but they follow the hierarchy of the root
predicate, in which the experiencer is the holder of the emotion and the
348 ż 

stimulus is realized as a specific PP. The occasional agentive readings are the
result of coercion under strong contextual conditions, where the original
experiencer argument (the holder of the state) in mapped onto a patient in a
COS event.
Iordăchioaia’s account captures the fact that the experiencer is always
realized as the possessor and the stimulus/target as some sort of complement.
It is also compatible with the generalization that psych nominals have the state
interpretation cross-linguistically. However, it misses the observation that
psych nominals are identical with their verbal counterparts in the comple-
mentation patterns, independently of whether they are ZNs or ATK nominals.
Moreover, the nonagentive inceptive/inchoative readings of Polish nominals
with the reflexive clitic constitute a challenge for this root-based approach,
which admits only stative psych nominals. At this point, we can already see
that in Polish there are two types of psych nominals related to stative EO verbs:
stative and inceptive/inchoative. Although, as mentioned earlier, the latter
cannot be treated as psych causative nominalizations, they are eventive never-
theless. Additionally, they share quite a lot of properties with verbal structures
beyond mere argument distribution. Moreover, the pattern illustrated above
for psych nominals related to stative EO verbs obtains also for eventive EO
verbs and their nominalizations, which is illustrated in (15) with the least
controversial eventive EO verb (z)denerowować (‘annoy’). Deliberately, the
examples below are selected in such a way as to make them as similar as
possible to the examples in (10) and (14). The only difference is that with
eventive EO verbs the instrumental NP/DP is optional.

(15) a. Z-denerwowa-nie Janka (zachowaniem Marii)

z-annoy-nie. John. behavior. Mary.
ujawniło się podczas ich wspólnej podróży.
became visible  during their joint travel
‘John’s annoyance with Mary’s behavior became visible during their
joint travel.’
b. #Z-denerwowa-nie Janka (zachowaniem Marii)
z-annoy-nie. John. behavior. Mary.
zdarzyło się/ miało miejsce wczoraj.
happen..  took place yesterday
‘#John’s annoyance with Mary’s behavior happened / took place
yesterday.’
     349

c. Z-denerwowa-nie się klientów tą ofertą 5

z-annoy-nie.  customers. this. offer. 5
minutes po jej ogłoszeniu było dużym zaskoczeniem.
minut after its announcement was big. surprise.
‘The customers’ getting annoyed with this offer 5 minutes
after its announcement was a big surprise.’
d. *denerwowa-nie rodziców zachowaniem dzieci
interest-nie. parents. behavior. children.
przez 5 minutes
for 5 minutes
‘*annoying the parents with the children’s behavior for 5 minutes.’

To summarize the data in (14) and (15), both interesować ‘to interest’ and
denerwować ‘to annoy’ give rise to similar nominals, the only difference being
that the nominals related to stative EO verbs take the target/stimulus obliga-
torily, like the corresponding verbs, whereas nominals corresponding to EO
verbs that belong to the eventive subclass take the instrumental satellite
optionally, also like their verbal counterparts. This is in contrast to nominals
of anticausative alternants of COS verbs in (16):

(16) a. Z-łama-nie się gałęzi (od podmuchu wiatru).

z-break-nie.  branch. (from gust. wind.)
‘The breaking of the branch (from the gust of wind).’
b. Z-łama-nie się gałęzi (*podmuchem wiatru).
z-break-nie.  branch. ( gust. wind.)
‘The breaking of the branch (*with the gust of wind).’

Note also that the nominalizations of COS verbs without the reflexive clitic
disallow the od-phrase (accommodating the causer participant). Instead, they
co-occur with the przez ‘by’ phrase accommodating the agent and marginally
the causer, as illustrated in (17):

(17) złamanie gałęzi przez ogrodnika/ ?przez

z-break-nie. branches. by gardener/ by
podmuch wiatru
gust wind.
‘the breaking of branches by the gardener / by the gust of wind’
350 ż 

So far, we have seen that, in contrast to Romanian and Greek, there is no

difference in nominalization patterns between stative and eventive psych
verbs. None of them marks the target/stimulus in the same way as the causer
is marked in the nonpsych causative/anticausative alternation. Moreover, in
contrast to other languages (except Czech), the anticausative morphology
(here the reflexive clitic) is inherited by the nominal. For those other languages
which also mark the transitive/intransitive alternations morphologically in
verbs, but where this marking is absent in derived nominals, there is a debate
which form of the verb (or root) is the source of psych nominals. Therefore,
quite often merely on the basis of the distribution of nominal satellites as
compared to related verbs, it is concluded that psych nominals are related to
concrete verbal forms. For example, Alexiadou & Iordăchioaia (2014a) argue
that there are causative psych nominals in Greek and Romanian, related to ES
anticausative alternants of eventive EO verbs, because they combine with
causers in the same way as ES verbal alternants of those verbs. For similar
reasons, as noted by Fábregas et al. (2012), Picallo (1991, 1999) argues that
psych nominals in Catalan are derived from reflexive psych verbs (se verbs).
Fábregas et al. (2012) in turn, contra Picallo, claim that psych nominals are
derived from verb stems (not from their reflexive alternants) and are stative,
because psych roots are stative, as are psych nominals. In this way they defend
the Aspectual Preservation Hypothesis between verbs and their nominaliza-
tions. Polish is different from all these languages, because the reflexive morph-
ology is retained in nominalizations and carries the eventive interpretation. In
Polish -nie/-cie nominals the two interpretations are overtly distinguished. The
reflexive psych nominals have the eventive interpretation, while the nonre-
flexive ones have the stative interpretation, as illustrated in (15). Still, in
contrast to action nominals, there is a gap in the nominalization pattern,
because the imperfective nominals without the reflexive clitic are absent. If
they were available, they would correspond to the process reading of transitive
activity verbs (arguably causative, see Pesetsky, 1995).
To complete the picture, let us look at psych nominals which are formed by
means of other suffixes (different from -nie/-cie) or which are ZNs. Let us
take the verb fascynować ‘to fascinate’ introduced in (11c,d). The nominal
fascynacja ‘fascination’ has the interpretation similar to the nominal zafas-
cynowanie.⁵ Compare the following examples in (18a) and (18b):

⁵ The nominalization pattern for the verb fascynować is exactly the same as for the verb interesować
presented in (14).
     351

(18) a. Fascyn-acja młodzieży *(muzyką klasyczną) ujawniła

fascin-ation youth. music. classical. became visible
się dopiero po roku regularnego jej słuchania.
 only after year regular. its. listening.
‘Young people’s fascination with classical music became visible
only after a year of regular listening to it.’
b. #Fascyn-acja młodzieży *(muzyką klasyczną) zdarzyła
fascin-ation youth. music. classical. happened
się/ miała miejsce dopiero po roku jej słuchania.
/ took place only after year its. listening.
‘#Young people’s fascination with classical music happened only after
a year of listening to it.’

It follows from the above examples that both the derived nominal (Sdev)
fascynacja and the prefixed -nie/-cie nominal (Sv) zafascynowanie have the
stative interpretation, because they are compatible with the predicate ujawnić
się (‘to become visible/known’), but are incompatible with the predicates such
as zdarzyć się (‘happen’) or mieć miejsce (‘take place’) that diagnose events and
their location in time and space. As expected, since only the -nie/-cie nominals
can contain the reflexive clitic, the derived nominal fascynacja cannot replace
the eventive reflexive nominal zafascynowanie się in (19a), which denotes an
onset to a state. (19b) is not acceptable.

(19) a. Za-fascynowa-nie się młodzieży *(kulturą starożytną)

za-fascinate-nie.  youth. culture. ancient.
nastąpiło już po pierwszym wykładzie.
occurred already after first lecture
‘Young people’s getting fascinated with ancient culture occurred
already after the first lecture.’
b. #Fascyn-acja młodzieży *(kulturą starożytną) nastąpiła
fascin-ation youth. culture. ancient. occurred
już po pierwszym wykładzie.
already after first lecture
‘#Young people’s fascination with ancient culture occurred already
after the first lecture.’

From example (19) it follows that psych Sdev are unambiguous and denote
states, not events. In contrast, psych nominals with the reflexive clitic
352 ż 

(similarly as derived action nominals with the reflexive clitic) are unambigu-
ously eventive, not stative. The eventive nature of those nominals and the
rich verbal structure embedded under the nominal head are further con-
firmed by the interaction with sentential/verbal negation.⁶ The negative
element nie- is an exponent of sentenial (verbal) negation in Polish, as
illustrated in (20):

(20) a. Janek za-fascynował Marysię swoją inteligencją.

John. za-fascinate.. Mary. self’s. intelligence.
‘John fascinated Mary with his intelligence.’
b. Janek nie za-fascynował żadnego mężczyzny
John.  za-fascinate.. none. man.
swoją inteligencją.
self ’s. intelligence.
‘John did not fascinate any man with his intelligence.’
c. *Janek za-fascynował żadnego mężczyznę swoją
John. za-fascinate.. none. man. self ’s.
inteligencją.
intelligence.
‘*John fascinated any man with his intelligence.’

As seen in (20), the exponent of verbal negation is the negative particle nie
‘not’, preceding the verb, which may co-occur with the word żaden ‘none’.
Example (20c) shows that this word is a negative polarity item, as it is
incompatible with the declarative nonnegative sentence. Let us look now at
the co-occurrence of nie with nominals, including also nominals with the word
żaden, illustrated in (21).

(21) a. Nie-za-fascynowa-nie się studentów składnią

-za-fascinate-nie.  students. syntax.
generatywną nikogo nie zdziwiło.
generative. nobody.  surprise..
‘Students’ not getting fascinated with generative syntax did not
surprise anybody.’

⁶ I am grateful to Joanna Błaszczak (p.c.) for drawing my attention to the usefulness of the sentential
negation test involving the negative polarity item żaden (‘none’).
     353

b. *Nie-za-fascynowa-nie studentów składnią generatywną

-za-fascinate-nie. students. syntax. generative.
nikogo nie zdziwiło.
nobody.  surprise..
‘*Students’ nonfascination with generative syntax did not surprise
anybody.’
c. *Nie-fascyn-acja studentów składnią generatywną
-fascin-ation students. syntax. generative.
nikogo nie zdziwiła.
nobody.  surprise..
‘*Students’ nonfascination with generative syntax did not surprise
anybody.’
d. Nie-za-interesowa-nie się Janka żadną dziewczyną
-za-interest-nie  John. none. girl.
zaniepokoiło jego rodziców.
worry.. his parents.
‘John’s not getting interested in any girl worried his parents.’
e. *Nie-za-interesowa-nie Janka żadną dziewczyną
-za-interest-nie John. none. girl.
zaniepokoiło jego rodziców.
worry.. his parents.
‘*John’s noninterest in any girl worried his parents.’

Example (21b) shows that the stative psych nominal zafascynowanie does not
tolerate the negative particle nie. (21c) demonstrates that the stative nominal
fascynacja cannot be negated with this negative particle either. The examples
in (21a) and (21d,e) confirm the conclusion that negation is possible only in
reflexively marked psych nominals. Additionally, example (21d) confirms that
the negative polarity item żaden diagnosing verbal negation is possible in
reflexively marked nominals. Thus, it can be concluded that in the domain
of psych nominals only reflexively marked nominals have a rich verbal
structure embedded in it. Note also that in nonpsych (action) nominals
derived with the suffix -nie/-cie from transitive verbs sentential negation is
possible (22a), whereas it is not possible with other nonpsych derived nom-
inals (22b):⁷

⁷ Example (21e) becomes acceptable only on the interpretation related to the agentive verb
zainteresować kogoś czymś (‘to interest somebody with something’), which takes three arguments: the
agent, the experiencer, and the subject matter, as in Profesor zainteresował Janka matematyką (‘The
354 ż 

(22) a. Nie-zaproponowa-nie żadnego sensownego rozwiązania

-suggest-nie. none. reasonable. solution.
sporu przez władze uczelni doprowadziło
dispute. by authorities. university. lead..
do strajku nauczycieli.
to strike. teachers.
‘Not suggesting any reasonable solution to the debate by the univer-
sity authorities led to the strike of the teachers.’
b. *twoja/*Piotra nieumiejętność rozwiązania żadnego
your/Peter. inability solution. none.
sporu
dispute.
‘*your/Peter’s inability to solve any dispute’
c. twoja/Piotra nieumiejętność rozwiązania sporu
your/Peter. inability solution. dispute.
‘your/Peter’s inability to solve any dispute’

Clearly, example (22a) is an instance of sentential (verbal) negation, whereas

example (22b) illustrates lexical negation. Omission of the negative polarity
item makes the nominal in (22b) acceptable, as shown in (22c).
The above discussion shows that there is a clear difference between action
-nie/-cie nominals and psych -nie/-cie nominals. Action -nie/-cie nominals
embed a rich verbal structure, while nonreflexive psych nominals do not. This
correlates with the fact that the former describe an event, and have an external
agent argument in the syntactic structure they embed, whereas the latter
describe a state without such structure. The presence of the reflexive clitic
makes psych nominals eventive and structurally richer, for which syntactic
evidence has been provided. Also evident is the fact that in Polish only two
types of psych nominals are available: stative and inceptive/inchoative. None
of them shows any indication of the presence of the causative meaning.
With all these facts, let us consider what they tell us about the syntax and
event structure of psych nominals. We can conclude that state psych nominals,
independently of whether they are derived by the suffix -nie/-cie or by another
word formation process (including ZNs), are compatible with what
Iordăchioaia (2019a) or Fábregas et al. (2012) propose for psych nominals in

professor made/got John interested in mathematics’ ). This reading is not relevant for our discussion. In
fact it only confirms the conclusion that action nominals are different from psych nominals, since the
verb zainteresować becomes an agentive action verb on this interpretation.
     355

other languages. These nominals always denote states and always require the
experiencer, as if it were the only participant of the psych eventuality. In
addition to state psych nominals, in Polish there are also inceptive/inchoative
reflexively marked psych nominals. In search for their syntactic representa-
tion, let us recall the approach to psych nominals developed for Greek and
Romanian by Alexiadou & Iordăchioaia (2014a).

14.5 Psych causative nominalizations

Alexiadou & Iordăchioaia (2014a) claim that most EO verbs that take non-
agentive causers in Greek and Romanian also build nominalizations that can
realize nonagentive causers (see (23) and (24)).

(23) enervarea Mariei de către Ion/ de la joc (Romanian)

annoy. the Maria. by John/ from game
‘John’s annoying Maria/Maria’s getting annoyed with the game’

(24) i enohlisi tis Marias apo to Jani/ me ta nea (Greek)

the bothering the Maria. by the John/ with the news
‘John’s annoying Maria/Maria’s getting annoyed with the game’

As indicated by the prepositions, (23) and (24) may have both agentive and
causative readings with de către/apo ‘by’ and de la ‘from’ / me ‘with’ respect-
ively. However, the nonagentive causer seems to only be allowed with nom-
inalizations from EO verbs that have an ES counterpart. In other words, the
nominalizations that realize nonagentive causers in (23) and (24) must be
derived from the ES verb form, i.e., they nominalize the anticausative psych
verb, because the preposition that introduces the nonagentive causer is the
same as with anticausative verbs. Alexiadou & Iordăchioaia (2014a) take the
presence of a causative preposition to be suggestive of the causative nature of
these verbs. According to them, Greek and Romanian shed more light into the
realization of nonagentive causers in psych verbs, as they employ prepositions
to mark nonagentive causers in eventive readings that are different from those
that they use in stative readings to mark the target or subject matter roles
documented in Pesetsky (1995). This difference can only be observed with ES
verb forms, since in the EO version, as Pesetsky notices, these theta roles are all
realized as subjects. The few psych verbs that have a stative ES variant,
however, use a different preposition to realize the target/subject matter
356 ż 

arguments that surface as a subject in the EO version (see (25) and (26)). The
verbs interest in Greek and gladden in Romanian are stative on both EO and
ES uses.

(25) a. Ta fita endiaferun to Jani

the plants interest the John
‘Plants interest John.’
b. O Janis endiaferthike ja/*me ta fita
the John interested. for/*with the plants
‘John was interested in plants.’

(26) a. Succesul Mariei îl bucură pe Ion.

success the Maria. him gladdens  John
‘Mary’s success makes John glad.’
b. Ion se bucură de (*la) succesul Mariei.
John RF gladdens of (at) success Maria.
‘John is glad at Maria’s success.’

Greek systematically uses the preposition ja ‘for’ to mark the subject matter
argument with the ES verb, while Romanian employs a few such prepositions
(depending on the verb) including de ‘of ’, which differs from the complex
preposition de la ‘from’, which is used for nonagentive causers. A nonagentive
causer PP is completely ruled out in (25b) and (26b), which Alexiadou &
Iordăchioaia (2014a) relate to the fact that these verbs are unambiguously
stative (like other stative ES verbs). Moreover, the nominalizations of stative
ES verbs reject nonagentive causer PPs, too:

(27) to endiaferon tu Jani ja ta fita/ *me ta fita

the interest the John for the plants/ with the plants
‘John’s interest for plants’

(28) bucuria lui față de/ *de la succesul Mariei

joy his towards/ from success Maria.
‘His joy towards Maria’s success’

Alexiadou & Iordăchioaia (2014a) conclude that Greek and Romanian me / de

la prepositions mark nonagentive causers in COS verbs. Thus, the eventive ES
verb form is just as causative as the corresponding eventive EO form. This
     357

concerns only the eventive reading of alternating EO/SE verbs. Because of the
realization of nonagentive causer PPs, the conclusion is that in Greek and
Romanian there is a psych causative alternation, and that EO verbs behave like
COS verbs. Alexiadou & Iordăchioaia (2014a) have shown that Greek and
Romanian can realize nonagentive causers in psych nominalizations, despite
previous predictions that psych nominalizations might lack causative force
cross-linguistically (Landau, 2010c). This is under the assumption that antic-
ausatives also involve causation (Doron, 2003, 2011; Chierchia, 2004; Levin &
Rappaport, 2005; Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou, & Schäfer, 2006). The predic-
tion is thus that every language whose EO psych verbs alternate (or which has
inchoative ES verbs) should be able to derive causative psych nominals, just
like Greek and Romanian. The relevant representations are presented in (29).

(29) a. [VoiceP [vP [RootP]]) agentive: de către / apo ‘by’

b. [vP [RootP]] anticausative: de la ‘from’ / me ‘with’

The input to causative psych nominals is the structure in (29b), which realizes
nonagentive causer PPs and disallows agents. This solution cannot be adopted
for Polish without modifications, because the ES reflexive alternants of Polish
EO verbs do not seem to be analogous to anticausatives of COS verbs.

14.6 In search for a solution

The obvious conclusion from the foregoing discussion is that Polish psych
nominals come with verbal layers of various sizes. Therefore, the most rea-
sonable analysis would be in terms of what Alexiadou (2019) calls n-based
nominalizations, i.e., there is a nominalizer that embeds a set of verbal
functional layers.⁸ These nominalizations come with a mixed internal struc-
ture. For all types of EO verbs in Polish, whether eventive or stative, the
corresponding nonreflexive nominals have only the stative interpretation
and realize the experiencer as the possessor. At first sight, the solution
proposed by Iordăchioaia (2019a) to the effect that psych nominals are root-
derived might seem to be appropriate for Polish nonreflexive psych nominals,

⁸ For similar phenomena in Czech involving the reflexive marker in nominals, Saloni & Preminger
(2009) adopt Hron’s (2005) claim that these nominals in Czech are formed by syntactic reflexivization/
reciprocalization of two-place nominals, and not by nominalization of reflexive/reciprocal verbs. Such
an account does not seem to be right, at least for Polish, in view of the shared patterns and correlations
discussed in this chapter.
358 ż 

which always denote states. However, in adopting such an approach, we

encounter serious problems. First, we lose the generalization that psych
nominals corresponding to EO verbs always have an existing verbal counter-
part, exactly like ASNs corresponding to nonpsych verbs and discussed at
length in Borer (2014). Second, their target/stimulus satellites have the same
morphological realization as with the corresponding ES reflexive alternants or
as with their adjectival passive structures (see Bondaruk & Rozwadowska,
2019a). Finally, these state psych nominals contain the perfectivizing prefix,
which also suggests that some verbal aspectual projection should be embedded
under the nominalizer. Still, state psych nominals are clearly less verbal than
the eventive reflexive psych nominals. Therefore, the size of the verbal layers
should be bigger in the reflexive psych nominals. I believe that the most
promising direction to accommodate the facts presented above is to follow
the idea that reflexive markers represent the so called expletive Voice.
One such solution is offered in Alexiadou et al. (2015), who point out that
across languages both anticausatives derived from transitive verbs and natur-
ally reflexive verbs are marked with SE-reflexives. The typology of Voice
developed by them includes anticausatives and naturally reflexive verbs. The
account developed in Alexiadou et al. (2015: 97–143) assumes that marked
anticausatives involve a nonthematic Voice-projection, expletive Voice, which
does not add any semantics to the verbal phrase it combines with. It differs
thereby from thematic Voice, which introduces an external argument variable
for the event expressed by the verb phrase. Alexiadou et al., following Schäfer
(2008), argue that SE-reflexives and only SE-reflexives qualify as legitimate A-
expletives. Among them they distinguish between semantically reflexive verbs
and reflexively marked anticausatives as in (30).

(30) a. [TP T [VoiceP DP Voice [vP v REFL]]] (semantically reflexive verb)

b. [TP T [VoiceP REFL Voice [vP v DP]]]
(reflexively marked anticausative)

In a similar vein, Marelj & Reuland (2016) analyze reflexive ES verbs in a

number of languages, including Dutch, Serbo-Croatian, and Italian and they
also argue that the SE-type reflexive found with ES verbs is a kind of expletive
which has no other role than to check the residual accusative case. For Marelj &
Reuland (2016: 206), the nonargumental SE-reflexive, placed in Spec, K(ase)P,
is merged with the verb, whereby it checks the verb’s accusative case feature.
Bondaruk & Rozwadowska (2019b) argue that się found with Polish reflexive
ES verbs is not an argument, and that these verbs are unergative. Since Polish
     359

ES verbs are neither anticausative/unaccusative nor semantically reflexive,

following Marelj & Reuland (2016), Bondaruk & Rozwadowska consider it to
be an expletive blocking the assignment of the accusative case by the verb.
These two approaches to expletive reflexives seem to be mutually compatible,
although they differ in execution. For our considerations here, I will follow the
spirit of Alexiadou et al. (2015) and propose the structures as in tree (a) for the
eventive nominal in (31a) and the structure in tree (b) for the stative nominal in
(31b).⁹ The expletive się is a filler of the expletive Voice head.

(31) a. Janka/twoje za-fascynowa-nie się składnią

John’s/your za-fascinate-nie.  syntax.
‘John’s/your getting fascinated with syntax.’
b. Janka/twoje za-interesowa-nie składnią
John’s/your za-fascinate-nie. syntax.
‘John’s/your fascination with syntax.’
(a) nP (b) nP

DP nP DP nP
Janka/twoje Janka/twoje

n Voice P n AspP
(za)fascynowa-nie (za)fascynowa-nie

DP Voice P za-fascynowa vP

Voice{ Ø,Ø} AspP v √

(za)fascynowa-się

za-fascynowa vP √ DP
fascynowa składnią
fascinate syntax
v √

√ DP
fascynowa składnią
fascinate syntax
In (31a) there is a structure where the expletive Voice head is filled with the
Polish reflexive marker się, whereas (31b) is a proposed structure for stative
nonreflexive psych nominals. The representation in (31a) is modeled on

⁹ For ease of exposition I am choosing here simple examples, both with the experiencer expressed
prenominally. The possibiity to realize the lexical possessor phrase postnominally does not affect the
main argument of this chapter.
360 ż 

(30). As argued in Bondaruk & Rozwadowska (2019b), Polish reflexive ES

verbs are neither anticausative nor semantically reflexive, but still they are
unergative. Therefore, the proposed structure for the embedded verbal
projections is similar to (30a) rather than (30b). The structure in (31a) can
be supplemented with more verbal projections on top of Voice P, in par-
ticular the NegP (negation phrase), responsible for negation. AspP (aspect
phrase) is introduced to accommodate the prefix which is a perfectivizer.
Structure in (31b) is intended to represent Polish stative psych nominals.
Even though stative psych nominals in other languages have been analyzed
as root-derived, in Polish there are at least two reasons for analyzing them as
computed in syntax: argument realization and the presence of the perfecti-
vizing prefix. Note also that these structures are valid both for psych verbs
which have been classified as strongly stative and for those that can be
eventive. The difference lies in the obligatoriness vs. optionality of the
target/stimulus argument. The configurations that are proposed here need
verification in future research.
It is also important to note that v-level introduced in (31b) does not carry
any event implications. It is just a verbalizer. When combined with stative
roots, it does not carry an event variable. On the other hand, the use of the
mechanism of expletive Voice (as a type of Voice, but different from
thematic Voice which introduces the external argument of agentive verbs)
allows us to capture the eventivity of the ES verbs and their nominalizations.
Note that what these two types of Voice share is eventivity. The difference
lies in the internal event composition. With thematic Voice the external
argument is introduced which carries event implication and complex event
structure consisting of the causing subevent and the result state. In contrast,
the absence of process nominals in the psych domain seems to support the
view that there is no causing subevent in the psych eventuality and no result
phrase. Instead psych eventualities consist of the inceptive left boundary
event followed by the state. Both are attested systematically in Polish. So, as a
final result of this discussion what they can tell us about the event compos-
ition of EO verbs is that the event structure of those predicates consists of
the left boundary inceptive event and the state following it, without the
process part.
     361

14.7 Conclusions

The analysis of Polish psych nominals leads to the following conclusions,

which contribute to the cross-linguistic debate about the event structure of
psych predicates and the constraints on derived nominals. I have looked at the
-nie/-cie nominals, focusing on nominals related to the most puzzling class of
EO predicates. The -nie/-cie nominals in the action domain allow a variety of
interpretations. Still, despite this potential, only stative interpretation and
inceptive/inchoative interpretation are possible within the psych domain.
I have argued, following Rozwadowska & Bondaruk (2019), that the EO/SE
alternation despite the reflexive morphology typical of the causative/anti-
causative alternation is not an instance of the psych causative alternation.
Accordingly, the nominals related to the ES reflexive psych verbs are not
causative psych nominals, although they are eventive. Thus, the evidence
from Polish psych nominals suggests that eventivity is not necessarily correl-
ated with causativity. Moreover, it seems to be the case that psych nominals in
Polish denote states or inceptive events, rather than causative events. Thus,
Pesetsky’s (1995) claim that there are no causative psych nominals seems to be
confirmed by the Polish data. This is easy to verify because the contrasts in
Polish nominals are overt. At the same time, it seems that EO verbs are not
lexically causative. Psych roots are stative (as argued by Fábregas et al., 2012,
and by Iordăchioaia, 2019a). Apparent causation is triggered by the appear-
ance of the stimulus in the subject position in verbal structures. In view of this,
further research is needed to verify if indeed the realization of the stimulus
argument in the causative phrase is sufficient evidence for its status as a causer
in languages such as Romanian or Greek. Because of space limitations I have
not discussed other ES verbs and their nominalizations, which are claimed to
be stative cross-linguistically (and root derived). Moreover, in view of the
difference between inceptive/inchoative and anticausative verbal and nominal
alternations, a need arises to tease apart that difference as well. Polish provides
evidence that these two interpretations are distinct not only semantically but
also syntactically.

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by grant 2014/15/B/HS2/00588 from the National Science Centre,
Poland. I am most grateful to the editors and the reviewer for invaluable detailed and
inspiring comments, which helped me improve the final shape of this chapter. All mistakes
and inadequacies remain my own responsibility.
 15
Nominalizations, case domains, and
restructuring in two Amazonian languages
Andrés Pablo Salanova and Adam Tallman

One of the most influential points made by Remarks on Nominalization

concerns the parallelism between nominal and verbal projections, an idea
that opened the way to the development of X̄-theory and to much subsequent
work on the decomposition of lexical categories.
The importance of this point is lost on many linguists that work with
languages of lowland South America and elsewhere, where the parallel
between the projections headed by nouns and those headed by verbs is often
a given. Though rarely addressed explicitly in the literature, researchers
working in the Amazon would not bat an eyelash at the identity between
clausal and nominal categories of case and agreement, for instance: Systems
where nominal possessors are expressed in the same way as ergative subjects,
or where they are expressed in the same way as the absolutive arguments of at
least some verbs, are in this area of the world, if not outright the norm, at least
as widespread as cases where they are completely distinct.
We illustrate the identity in the inflection of nouns and verbs with the two
langauges that are examined in this chapter.¹
In Mẽbêngôkre (Jê), person indices indicating the possessor of inalienable
nouns are the same as those used for objects of most verbs and for subjects of
stative and nonfinite verbs. The morphological case corresponding to these
indices (as well as the morphologically unmarked case of nouns appearing
in the same function) could equally correctly be called absolutive or genitive.

¹ Following standard practice for these languages and others in the region, we treat bound person
indices as pronouns rather than as agreement. When we discuss case categories we are talking as much
about the form of these indices as about any overt case marking on independent noun phrases.

Andrés Pablo Salanova and Adam Tallman, Nominalizations, case domains, and restructuring in two Amazonian languages
In: Nominalization: 50 Years on from Chomsky’s Remarks. Edited by: Artemis Alexiadou and Hagit Borer,
Oxford University Press (2020). © Andrés Pablo Salanova and Adam Tallman.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198865544.003.0015
364 ́     

In the glosses, we leave it unmarked (as opposed to the explicit marking of

, , and other cases):

(1) i-kamy
1-brother
‘My brother.’

(2) ga i-pumũ
2 1-see.
‘You see me.’

In Chácobo, subjects of transitive verbs are expressed by means of the same

case category that is used to indicate possession within a noun phrase:

(3) yoʂa= 0 tsi kiá tʃaȿo tsaya=kɨ

woman= 5  deer see=
‘The woman saw the deer.’

(4) yoȿa= 0 tʃaȿo

woman= deer
‘the woman’s deer’

The absence of a strong morphological differentiation between nouns and

verbs as far as marking of some dependents goes does not mean that the
languages do not differentiate clearly between nouns and verbs, however. In
Mẽbêngôkre, for instance, the difference between nominal and verbal lexemes
hinges on the presence, in the paradigm of the latter, of two distinct forms, one
finite and the other nonfinite (actually, as we will see later, nominal), that are
associated with two different alignment patterns. In Chácobo, different clause-
typing morphemes are used according to whether the predicate is verbal or
nonverbal.
In fact, Chácobo and Mẽbêngôkre use nominalization to a far greater extent
than what is known from the languages of Europe. Event nominalizations are
used whenever verbal clauses are subordinated. This includes many structures
that don’t involve subordination in other languages, such as manner
modification.
In Mẽbêngôkre, for instance, a verbal predicate subordinated to a predicate
of direct perception appears in its nominal form; in such a form, its first
 ,  ,   365

argument is expressed by means of a genitive or absolutive person index, while

its ergative argument is expressed by an oblique case, much in the way the rare
external argument of a nominal predicate would (see (6)):

(5) djãm nẽ ga [kubẽ kute ibê djudjê oàkĩnh] pumũ?

  2 barbarian 3 1 bow steal. see.
‘Did you see the white guy walking away with my bow?’

(6) djãm nẽ ga [kubẽ kum rop pyma] pumũ

  2 barbarian 3 dog fear() see.
‘Did you see the white guy (being) afraid of dogs?’

In this chapter, we examine two constructions that involve embedding a

nominalizations under another predicate for aspectual effect. Though the
identity in inflection between nominal and verbal predicates makes it difficult
to untangle such complex constructions, embedding of nominalized clauses
may be seen in the unusual alignment patterns that arise in them. We claim
that category-changing morphology has a crucial role in creating separate
case-assignment domains.
The structure of this chapter is as follows. In Section 15.1 we introduce the
main empirical phenomenon examined here as it has been dealt with by
previously published literature. Section 15.2 offers a description of the relevant
facts in Mẽbêngôkre, a Northern Jê language spoken in central Brazil, and
sketches an analysis of the construction and of the nominals that appear in it.
Section 15.3 offers a description of similar facts in Chácobo, a Panoan lan-
guage spoken in northern Bolivia. Section 15.4 proposes a general analysis of
constructions with two case domains, and reflects on the relevance of nomin-
alization for the delimitation of case domains.

15.1 Complex constructions and case domains

A number of theories of case rely on the idea that case is assigned in specific
structural domains. This is no doubt most obvious in dependent-case theories
where two noun phrases compete for case within a single domain, such
as Marantz (1991); Bittner & Hale (1996); Baker (2015); among others. It is
366 ́     

also implicit in more traditional theories of case involving some formalization

of Burzio’s generalization (Burzio, 1986), in the sense that the possibility of
accusative case assignment by a verb, which is assigned locally to a comple-
ment, is dependent on there being a thematic relation between the verb and
another argument, which is hence also local to the assigner (mutatis mutandis
for ergative constructions). In the functional-typological literature, the notion
of a case-assigning domain is evoked implicitly when it is argued that case
marking serves to differentiate participants within a clause (Payne, 1997: 140;
Kibrik, 2012: 212; Comrie, 2013; inter alia). When we talk about a case
domain, we mean something equivalent to a clause in the sense just sketched,
and will use the two terms interchangeably. However, in certain circumstances
a prima facie simple clause will actually contain more than one case domain.
For concreteness, we sketch of a theory of case involving competition for
case within a clause loosely based on Marantz (1991).
In the simplest case, one has a clause with a transitive verb, where the case
domain (CD), which ex hypothesi corresponds to the clause, contains the
verb’s two arguments.

(7) [NP V NP]CD

The presence of two argument chains in the same case domain triggers the
assignment of a ‘dependent case’. That is, one of the two arguments will
receive a case which is only assigned when there is another argument chain
present in the same domain. Two options, specified as a feature of the head of
the domain, exist for dependent case assignment: Dependent case can be
assigned to the ‘lower’ argument (with P grammatical role), yielding what is
normally called nominative-accusative alignment (i.e. accusative is the
dependent case, as it only appears when there is more than one argument in
the clause), or dependent case can be assigned to the ‘higher’ argument (with
A grammatical role), yielding what is called ergative-absolutive alignment
(i.e. ergative is the dependent case). Nominative and absolutive cases, to the
extent that they are overtly expressed at all, are elsewhere cases (not necessarily
the same as the default case) that are assigned after the assignment of
dependent case.
Across nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive languages, but
primarily in the latter, dependent case theories need to contend with
 ,  ,   367

constructions where dependent case does not surface, even in the presence of a
co-argument. This situation can be seen in the following Basque examples,
taken from Laka (2006), which are an instance of a more general situation
observed by Coon & Preminger (2017) regarding aspect-based splits:

(8) a. Emakume-a-k ogi-a jaten du.

woman-- bread- eating has
‘The woman eats the bread.’
b. Emakume-a ogi-a jaten ari da.
woman- bread- eating  is
‘The woman is eating the bread.’

(9) a. Emakume-a hurbiltzen da.

woman- approach is
‘The woman gets closer.’
b. Emakume-a hurbiltzen ari da.
woman- approach  is
‘The woman is getting closer.’

Dependent case (ergative) shows up on the subject in the aspectually

unmarked construction (8a) whenever another noun phrase argument is
present in the clause. Absolutive case is unmarked. Another pattern, specific
to progressive aspect, is one where both arguments have unmarked (absolu-
tive) case. In (8b), the way each individual argument is marked does not
depend on the presence of another argument in the clause, as can be seen by
comparing that transitive sentence to the intransitive (9b).
We begin our exposition of what we consider a typical analysis of such splits
by considering Laka’s (2006) analysis of Basque progressives. Ergative align-
ment in the aspectually unmarked construction is straightforwardly dealt with
by a domain-based theory of case: the A argument is assigned dependent
ergative case in an ergative clause because it is in a domain that contains
another NP, as shown schematically in (10).

(10) One domain, dependent ergative is assigned to A argument:

[NPA-erg V NPP]CD
368 ́     

In Basque, it is possible to assume that marked case is assigned to the higher

argument in all case domains, i.e., alignment is always ergative in simple
clauses.
For progressives, Laka follows Hualde & Ortiz de Urbina (1987) in claiming
that ‘ari [ . . . ] is a main verb with its own auxiliary which may take a
nominalized clause as its complement’ (Laka, 2006: 174; and Hualde & Ortiz
de Urbina, 1987: 428). This allows her to claim that ‘[t]he contrast [between
(8a) and (8b)] results from the fact that the ari progressive involves a biclausal
syntactic structure [ . . . ]’ (Hualde & Ortiz de Urbina, 1987: 428). This gives a
structure as in (11) to the sentences above. In our terms, (8b) is partitioned
into two case domains, as in (11b):

(11) a. [[emakumeak]DP [[ogiajaten]VP du]]IP

b. [[emakumeai]DP [[[[proi ogia jate-]VP –n]PP air]VP da]]IP

The claim that the split is caused by a difference in structure would be

circular if no evidence independent of the case marking itself were brought to
bear in establishing the domains. Thus, Laka (2006) provides the following
arguments for the existence of such a biclausal structure in Basque (some
arguments ultimately come from Hualde & Ortiz de Urbina, 1987):

1. ari is a verb meaning ‘be engaged’; this can be seen in its morphology
and in that it can be nominalized with -tze and can receive aspectual
suffixes -ko , -tzen , and -tu .
2. Constructions with ari always co-occur with the intransitive auxiliary,
irrespectively of the transitivity of the lexical verb with which it is
combining. In the unmarked aspect, the auxiliary agrees in transitivity
with the main verb.
3. ari selects a PP headed by -n; this is seen not only in the morphology, but
also in the fact that the complement of -n can be a noun; furthermore, -n
may be replaced by other Ps without resulting in ungrammaticality.
4. In western dialects, the verb ari may be replaced by two other verbs ibili
and egon (both unaccusative and both taking a locative complement),
with similar meaning.

In sum, the morphology is strongly suggestive of a biclausal analysis.

However, not all of the syntactic facts point in that direction. There are
some reasons to believe that the structure of (8b) does not involve two
 ,  ,   369

syntactic domains (or, in Laka’s terms, is not biclausal); the following counter
arguments are mentioned by Laka:

1. When subject wh-movement occurs, there is inversion of verb + auxil-

iary to second position. In progressive constructions, it is possible to
move just ari + da (supporting a biclausal approach) or V + ari + da
(supporting a restructuring approach).
2. With certain verbs that have dative subjects or objects, auxiliaries will
agree with both the higher absolutive argument and the dative argument
(see Hualde & Ortiz de Urbina, 1987, (8d’,f ’)).
3. In some eastern varieties, progressive constructions with ari have erga-
tive rather than double absolutive alignment.

Laka’s answer is to propose that restructuring occurs in those dialects where

ergative-absolutive alignment arises, but argues against the other two phe-
nomena being reasons to be forced to accept a monoclausal structure. We do
not need to go into the merits of the proposal for Basque here. What we are
interested in is the question that such argumentation raises, which is central in
this chapter, namely the extent to which case domains can be defined inde-
pendently of the case phenomena that they are called upon to explain. If they
are not defined independently, then the analyses based on them are circular
and amount to a redescription of the facts, being at best a good schema to
describe the etymology or historical evolution of a construction that is syn-
chronically no more complex than other clause types (see, e.g., Gildea, 2008).
But even if there is independent evidence for the domains that are relevant for
case, one must ask the question of how much convergent evidence is needed in
order to claim that a given construction has two distinct structural domains.
We return to this question in the last section of this chapter, after considering
the evidence for biclausality in two constructions in Mẽbêngôkre and
Chácobo.

15.2 Complex constructions in Mẽbêngôkre

Mẽbêngôkre is a Jê language spoken by approximately 10,000 people in central

Brazil. Mẽbêngôkre has clauses with both ergative and accusative alignment, as
well as clauses with a nominative-absolutive alignment. The language is not
alone in the family in having these alignments (cf. Gildea & de Castro Alves,
2010, where nominative-absolutive is analyzed as one of the basic monoclausal
370 ́     

patterns, contrary to what we do here). Embedded clauses other than quoted

speech are always headed by nonfinite (or nominal) forms of the verb, and are
always ergative, while in independent clauses one may find all three types of
alignment. The following examples illustrate these various surface patterns in
independent clauses: (12) show ergative-absolutive, (13) show nominative-
accusative, while (14) show nominative-absolutive.

(12) a. A O.V
ije krẽn kêt
1 3.eat.. 
‘I haven’t eaten it.’
b. S-V
i-tẽm kêt
1-go. 
‘I don’t go.’

(13) a. A O-V
ba ku-krẽ
1 3-eat..
‘I (’m going to) eat it.’
b. S
ba tẽ
1 go.
‘I (’m going to) go.’

(14) a. A O.V
ba krẽn o=nhỹ
1 3.eat.. OBL=sit..
‘I’m eating it.’
b. S S-V
ba i-tor o=dja
1 1-dance. =stand..
‘I’m dancing.’

Nominative-absolutive alignment is associated with the progressive con-

struction, initially described by Reis Silva (1996), and reexamined in Salanova
(2008). In this construction, while the person marker on the verb is always
absolutive, there is a further nominative pronoun which either stands for the
external argument or redundantly cooccurs with an absolutive index if the
 ,  ,   371

latter indexes an intransitive subject (nominative is unmarked on nonpro-

nominal NPs). That is, while in (14a) the index on the verb and the nominative
subject index two different arguments, in (14b) the reference of the two person
indices is the same.
The morphosyntax of this construction resembles the Basque progressive
construction in many ways:

1. The lexical main verb is in a nonfinite or nominal form, glossed here as

; the nominal character of the nonfinite form is argued for in Salanova
(2007).
2. This form is subordinated to the auxiliary by means of an adposition, o,
glossed as  and used variously as an instrumental (with transitive
verbs) or as the marker for applicative themes.
3. The auxiliary is in its finite form, glossed here as .

The differences that the construction in Mẽbêngôkre has with its equivalent
in Basque are not directly relevant to the definition of case domains, but we
note them here:

1. Auxiliaries in Mẽbêngôkre are chosen from a small set, and encode

posture (sit, stand, etc.).
2. Absolutive is distinct from nominative: It is in fact the same as genitive,
as was mentioned at the beginning of the chapter; the reason for this is
that the two case domains in Mẽbêngôkre have distinct elsewhere cases,
contrary to what happens in Basque. The construction can nevertheless
be considered as parallel to the Basque progressive because neither of the
cases are dependent: Both are the case that is assigned in a domain where
no other argument chain is present.
3. Differently from Basque, intransitive subjects are not empty in the lower
clause: an absolutive person prefix, coindexed with the nominative
subject of the matrix clause, is obligatory on subordinate verbs.
4. Finally, an ergative pronoun may be redundantly present next to the
nominative subject of a transitive clause even in the progressive con-
struction. This is a general property of ergative in this language.

We sketch a formal representation of (14a), on which we will attempt to

represent the various properties that we identify in the construction.
372 ́     

(15)
VFP
thematic relation

SubjNOM VʹF

bai …
VʹF
HIGHER CASE DOMAIN
PP VF

LOWER CASE DOMAIN nhỹ

VNP P
control
o
SubjERG VʹN

ijei ObjGEN VN

∅ ˜
kren

Arguments in favor of this structure are numerous.

The postural verbs used in the Mẽbêngôkre progressive construction are
chosen from a small but possibly extensible class that includes at least the
following: nõ/nhikwã (lie sg./pl.), dja/ ku’ê (stand sg./pl.), nhỹ/krĩ (sit sg./pl.),
wajêt/jarij (hang sg./pl.), tẽ/mõ (go sg./pl.). Though the determination of
postural verb is somewhat conventionalized for many verbs, some choice is
possible, and this choice is based exclusively on the position of the subject
while carrying out the action.² Minimal pairs for intransitive and transitive
verbs may be seen in (16) and (17), respectively.

(16) a. a-bãm nẽ õt o=nõ

2-father  3.sleep. =lie..
‘Your father is sleeping (on a bed or mat).’
b. a-bãm nẽ õt o=wajêt
2-father  3.sleep. =hang..
‘Your father is sleeping (on a hammock).’

² One could insist that the determination of the postural verb according to the lexical requires a
selectional relation. This is not a problem: a thematic relation may be said to exist between the postural
verb and the lexical verb. The adposition o would be transparent to thematic relations in this case.
 ,  ,   373

(17) a. ba pi’ôk jarẽnh o=nhỹ

1 book say. =sit..
‘I’m reading (sitting down; i.e. studying).’
b. ba pi’ôk jarẽnh o=dja
1 book say. =stand..
‘I’m reading (standing up; i.e. lecturing).’

A further index of a selectional relation between postural verbs and subjects

may be seen in number alternations. A few verbs in Mẽbêngôkre come in
mostly suppletive pairs that are chosen based on the number of one of the
arguments or on iterativity or durativity of the action. Postural verbs are
among the verbs that reflect the number contrast. In progressive construc-
tions, the subject of the action is the only relevant argument for determining
the choice of postural verb based on number (cf. (18)). In cases where the verb
is chosen based on iterativity or durativity rather than on number of one of the
participants, number reflects the iterativity of the overarching situation, in
which the subject is repeatedly engaged. This may be seen in (19):

(18) a. mẽ’õnire nẽ mry bôr o=dja

woman.one  meat roast.. =stand..
‘A woman is/was roasting meat.’
b. mẽnire nẽ mẽ mry bôr o=ku’ê
woman   meat roast.. =3.stand.
‘Women are/were roasting meat.’

(19) a. i-bãm nẽ ujarẽnh o=nhỹ

1-father  3..say. =sit..
‘My father is / was telling a story / stories.’
b. i-bãm nẽ ujarẽnh o=krĩ
1-father  3..say. =3.sit.
‘My father was sitting for a long time / sits frequently to tell stories / a
story.’

In short, the evidence strongly suggests that the subject of the clause is also
the postural verb’s logical subject. One further morphosyntactic fact confirms
this. Postural verbs are intransitive, and, like other intransitive verbs, do not
inflect for person in their finite forms, as the person indices in finite verbs are
for the P argument. In nonfinite forms, required in subordination, in negation
374 ́     

and a few other contexts, the postural verbs inflect for the person of the
subject, like any intransitive verb, irrespective of the transitivity of the lexical
verb:

(20) a. ba pi’ôk jarẽnh o=nhỹ

1 book say. =sit..
‘I’m reading.’
b. ba pi’ôk jarẽnh o=i-nhỹr kêt
1 book say. =1.sit.. 
‘I’m not reading.’

Contrary to the nominative subject, the absolutive noun phrase is an

argument of the embedded lexical verb, which is in a nominal form.
Diagnostics similar to those applied to the auxiliary can be applied to the
lexical verb to show that there is a selectional relation between it and the
absolutive argument. Beyond the identity between this argument and the S or
P argument of a verb in a nonprogressive construction, number on the lexical
verb scopes over it, as the following examples show:

(21) a. ba tep kur o=nhỹ

1 fish eat.. =sit..
‘I’m eating (many) fish.’
b. ba tep krẽn o=nhỹ
1 fish eat.. =sit..
‘I’m eating (one) fish.’

To conclude, there is strong evidence that points to considering that the

Mẽbêngôkre progressive (‘nominative-absolutive’) construction is one where
the S or P is an argument of the lexical verb, while the A or S is an argument of
the postural verb or ‘auxiliary’, an S argument being indeed an argument
of both. This is suggestive of a control construction.³ A morphological quirk of
Mẽbêngôkre forces a controled ergative subject to be zero, while a controled
absolutive subject appears as a genitive person prefix on the lexical verb.
Are there any pieces of evidence that point to a reanalysis, or at least to
the embedded clause being something other than a normal nominalization?
There are two places to look: (i) test the nominalized embedded clause for the

³ For arguments that the Mẽbêngôkre locative construction also involves control, see Beauchamp
(2017).
 ,  ,   375

properties that are associated to objects (i.e. compare its external properties to
those of undisputed nominal objects), (ii) verify whether the nominalized
embedded clause has the same constructional possibilities as nominalizations
elsewhere. One could also look for the traditional evidence of restructuring
(apparent cross-clausal agreement, case assignment, or movement phenom-
ena). By our discussion so far in this section, however, it should be apparent
that the latter type of evidence is not found in Mẽbêngôkre.
Salanova (2015) examines the properties of objects as opposed to adjuncts
in detail. If we apply the diagnostics from that paper, we find that there are a
number of differences between the embedded nominalized clauses in the
progressive construction and simple nominal objects. First of all, nominal
objects can be moved to the first position of the clause for contrast, stranding
the adposition; Nominalized embedded clauses cannot without a change in
meaning (see (23)):

(22) a. ba kẽn o=nhỹ

1 stone =sit..
‘I’m sitting with a stone.’
b. kẽn nẽ ba o=nhỹ
stone  1 =sit..
‘I’m sitting with a stone.’

(23) a. ba tep krẽn o=nhỹ

1 fish eat.. =sit..
‘I’m eating fish.’
b. (ije) tep krẽn nẽ ba o=nhỹ
1 fish eat..  1 =sit..
‘I’m sitting with the fish eaten (by me).’

Furthermore, while the subject of nominalized transitive clauses, if unex-

pressed, is interpreted as a generic agent, the subject of nominalized clauses in
the progressive construction is necessarily referential, even if controled by the
subject of the higher clause. Compare the complement clauses in (24) with
(25), where no possibility of having a generic subject exists:

(24) a. Ba [a-bãm kute tep djonhwỳr] pumũ.

1 2-father 3 fish pierce. see.
‘I saw your father fishing (with arrow)’, ‘I saw the fish your father
caught with an arrow.’
376 ́     

b. Ba [tep djonhwỳr] pumũ.

1 fish pierce. see.
‘I saw (people) fishing with arrows’, ‘I saw a fish caught with an
arrow.’

(25) Ba tep djonhwỳr o=dja.

1 fish pierce. =stand..
‘I’m fishing with arrows.’

In a sense, this diagnostic complements (23): If the nominalized clause is

moved to the beginning of the clause, a generic subject interpretation becomes
possible (see (23b)); however, the progressive meaning is lost.
To sum up, in Mẽbêngôkre the morphology tells us, apparently even more
clearly than in Basque, that a particular construction with unusual alignment
is synchronically complex. Some syntactic facts seem to argue against this,
however, though it is not clear whether those facts diagnose complexity of
structure. What is seen in (23) most likely has to do with the fact that the first
position of the clause is reserved for referential expressions, as it is a topic
position. What is seen in (25), on the other hand, only tells us that there is
obligatory control in the progressive construction; it is not currently clear
whether obligatory control should be used as a diagnostic for restructuring
into a single domain.
We postpone evaluating the weight of the various arguments surrounding
the interpretation of the Mẽbêngôkre progressive construction until we have
considered the somewhat more ambiguous case of Chácobo.

15.3 Complex constructions in Chácobo

Chácobo is a Panoan language spoken by approximately 1,500 people in

northern Bolivia. Simple clauses in Chácobo display ergative alignment with
full noun phrases, where ergative is marked as final high pitch, and accusative
alignment with pronouns, where accusative is marked with a suffix. This is
illustrated in the following examples:

(26) a. mi paβí=kɨ
2. dance=.
‘You were dancing / You danced.’
 ,  ,   377

b. tʃaʂo paβí=kɨ
deer. dance=.
‘The deer was dancing / danced.’
c. tʃaʂo=0 mi-a tsáya=kɨ
deer= 2- see=.
‘The deer saw you / was watching you.’

Verbal predicate constructions in Chácobo are characterized by having a

verbal root and a clause-type morpheme. In examples (26a–c) the clause-type
morpheme is kɨ ‘declarative, past’. All clause-type markers encode clause-type
(declarative, imperative, interrogative, reportative), while some also encode
tense (e.g. past, nonpast, future). Order in verbal predicate constructions is
fairly free, but the subject cannot follow the clause-type morpheme.⁴
Clauses where the predicate is nonverbal (henceforth ‘nonverbal predicate
[NVP] constructions’) are clearly distinct in Chácobo. Like verbal predicate
constructions, NVPs are marked with a clause-type morpheme. The clause-
type morphemes of NVPs are not the same as those from verbal predicate
constructions, although there is some overlap in form and function. In con-
trast to verbal predicate constructions, the canonical order of NVPs is rigidly
predicate-subject, with the clause-type morpheme occuring between the predi-
cate and the subject. Furthermore, noun phrases do not receive ergative case in
NVPs, and pronouns never appear in the unmarked nominative case, but
rather appear with case markers that are nearly homophonous to the accusa-
tive forms used in verbal predicate constructions:⁵

(27) a. tʃaʂo ʂo mi-a

deer . 2-
‘You are a deer.’
b. tʃaʂo ki mi-a
deer . 2-
‘You will be a deer.’

Certain properties of NVPs can be seen in an intermediate construction,

exemplified in (28), which displays predicate-subject order and no ergative

⁴ If the subject comes between V and the clause-type marker, an auxiliary may appear, as in (32).
⁵ We gloss the marker on pronouns in NVPs , following the argument in Tallman (2018) that
the {-a} is inserted there in order to satisfy bisyllabic minimality.
378 ́     

case marking on full noun phrases. We refer to this construction here as the
V-C-Subj construction.

(28) tʃaʂo tsaya =ki honi

deer. see =. man.
‘The man sees the deer.’

Given the rigid predicate-subject order also found in NVPs, it would be

natural to suppose that the verb in the V-C-Subj construction is a type of
nonverbal predicate, despite the absence of clearly nominalizing morphology.
The case facts in this construction are also suggestive in that direction: an
analysis of V-C-Subj constructions where they are assimilated with NVPs is
compatible with the idea that two domains exist in the construction, in a way
that we will make explicit below.
The most plausible biclausal analysis one could apply to V-C-Subj con-
structions is one where the verbal predicate appears embedded inside a
nonverbal predicate construction. The structure we propose for a sentence
such as (28) would be (29), where we consider the clause marker to be a
predicative element that heads the NVP. The label X given to the head of the
lower domain is a placeholder, and nothing hinges on it at present. Note that
we are also agnostic as to the mechanism that coindexes the overt subject of
the predicative phrase with the unexpressed subject of the XP; presumably the
element X turns precisely that argument into the predicate’s referential
argument.

(29) PredP
higher case domain
Predʹ Subj
lower case domain honii
XP Pred

=ki
PROi Xʹ

VP X

t∫aʂo tsaya

This analysis solves the problem of neutral case assignment by making the
A subject the subject of an NVP construction, and having the subordinated
 ,  ,   379

clause define a separate domain for case assignment. Since NVPs are copular
constructions that do not assign ergative case, the subject of this construction
stays in the neutral absolutive. In contrast to the analysis presented for
Mẽbêngôkre, we propose that Chácobo has no main verb in the V-C-Subj
construction, only a subordinate verb. Analyzing the dependent-absolutive
construction as an NVP entails as much.
Before moving on to the syntactic arguments in favor of such an analysis, we
consider whether, like in Mẽbêngôkre, the morphology presents prima facie
reasons for us to believe that the idea that V-C-Subj constructions are complex
is on the right path. The evidence is suggestive but inconclusive.
The clause-type markers across the verbal predicate, nonverbal predicate,
and V-C-Subj constructions overlap in form and function, but they are not the
same. An overview of the clause-type markers across the three constructions is
presented in Table 15.1.
There are between two and three pairs of clause-type markers that provide
evidence that the V-C-Subj construction should be treated as a type of
NVP. The partial identity in the reporative forms (kiá and Ɂi kiá) can be
considered evidence of identity between V-C-Subj constructions and NVPs, as
Ɂi can be shown from other constructions to be a subordinator. The pair Ɂi ní
and ní of interrogative forms is evidence for the same reason, even if Ɂi does not
occur consistently across all clause-type markers in the V-C-Subj construction.
On the other hand there are also three clause-type markers that are identical
in form and nearly identical in meaning across the verbal predicate construc-
tion and the V-C-Subj construction: kɨ ‘declarative, past, anterior’, ní ‘inter-
rogative, remote past’, and Ɂá ‘declarative, past, anterior’. It is nevertheless
relevant that an aspectual (‘anterior’) rather than temporal reading is associ-
ated with these markers in the V-C-Subj construction.

Table 15.1 Clause-type markers across different clause-types

Verbal predicate V-C-Subj Nonverbal predicate

Declarative kɨ ‘declarative, past’ kɨ ‘declarative, anterior’

ki ‘declarative, non past’ ki ‘declarative, future’
ʂo ‘declarative,
present’
Interrogative ní ‘interrogative, ní ‘interrogative, remote past’ ní ‘interrogative’
remote past’ Ɂá ‘interrogative, anterior’
Ɂá ‘interrogative, past’ Ɂi ní ‘interrogative, non past’ (ní ‘interrogative’)
Imperative wɨ ‘imperative’
Reportative Ɂi kiá ‘reportative’ kiá ‘reportative’
380 ́     

The fact that apparently identical clause-type markers have very different
interpretations depending on whether they occur in verbal predicate construc-
tions or V-C-Subj constructions has been discussed in Tallman (2018) and
Tallman & Stout (2016). Here we provide a brief synopsis.
In verbal predicate constructions, the marker kɨ encodes past tense in the
sense that it relates utterance time to topic time. In its default interpretation it
advances narrative time, although it cannot be considered perfective because it
does not always have this function (Tallman, 2018; Tallman & Stout, 2018).
These properties of kɨ are shown in the following examples.

(30) a. hatsi ɨ-a=rí pi=kɨ

then 1-= eat=.
‘Then, I ate as well.’
b. pi=Ɂá hɨnɨ nami-na=Ɂá=ka ɨ
eat=. chicha thick-.=.= 1
bótɨ=kɨ
descend=.
‘After I ate, I lowered the chicha that had thickened.’
c. ha-tó=bɨta=ʂó ɨ-a=rí náka náka=kɨ
3-== 1-=too chew~chew=.
tsɨmo=kana ha =kɨ
darken=go.. 3 =.
‘With them I was chewing (on the yuca) as well, while it got darker.’

However, in V-C-Subj construction kɨ can only have an anterior or relative

past interpretation. It cannot advance narrative time. The examples in (31),
taken from a narrative, illustrates this:

(31) a. bɨpana=0 panɨ =kirí i=ní=kɨ

large_house= wall = be==.
‘He (the vampire) was beside the wall of the large house.’
b. . . . nii nobá=na=ki yabo-ko=kɨ kiá ʂatʃi
stop/stand 1.== tie-=.  grass
‘He was standing, the stock of grass already tied around his arm [lit.,
our body part].’

Details on all the semantic differences between kɨ and Ɂá in verbal predicate

constructions as opposed to V-C-Subj constructions can be found in Tallman
 ,  ,   381

(2018: 715–845). A full analysis of these semantic differences and how they
relate to the constructions in which they appear is beyond the scope of this
chapter. Note, however, that if due to their semantic differences we analyze kɨ
and Ɂá as pairs of homophonous but semantically distinct morphemes, then
the morphological evidence points less ambiguously to identifying the V-C-
Subj construction with the NVP.
To summarize, rather than clearly supporting a biclausal analysis, the form
of clause-type markers suggest that the V-C-Subj construction occupies some
intermediate status between verbal clauses and NVPs. There is suggestive
syntactic and semantic evidence that points to a biclausal analysis of the
former, however, which we will go through now.
The first argument comes from fronting. Chácobo has a VP-fronting
construction where the NP object plus the verb stem front to a focused
position (see Tallman, 2018: 322–7, for discussion). Prima facie both V-C-
Subj and the verbal predicate constructions should allow the VP to front: Both
involve a VP, and there is no clear functional or pragmatic reason for V-C-
Subj constructions to behave any differently from verbal predicates. However,
only the verbal predicate construction allows VP-fronting:⁶

(32) a. yoʂa= 0 tsi kiá tʃaʂo tsaya=kɨ

woman= 5  deer see=.
‘The woman saw the deer.’
b. [tʃaʂo tsaya] tsi kiá yoʂa= 0 wa=kɨ
[deer see] 5  woman= =.
‘The woman saw the deer / ~ As for the seeing of the deer, the woman
did it.’

(33) * tʃaʂo tsaya tsi kiá =kɨ yoʂa

deer see 5  = woman
Intended: ‘it is said that the woman has been seen by the deer’

The landing position for fronted constituents is in the matrix clause, as is

signaled by the position of the tense morpheme (tsi ‘position 5’). VP-fronting,
being clause bound, cannot place the VP outside this clitic. Even if the tense
clitic seeks to be in second position, it cannot break up the subordinate clause

⁶ Note that the morphemes tsi and kiá are Wackernagel clitics which always occur following the first
constituent (NP or VP) (Tallman, 2018).
382 ́     

to appear after the subordinated VP. This explains the ungrammaticality

of (33).
An alternative analysis where V-C-Subj constructions are posited to have
the same structure as regular verbal clauses would not be able to capture this
restriction on VP-fronting other than by stipulation.
A second argument for a biclausal analysis of V-C-Subj constructions
comes from the observation that there is tighter constituency between a verb
and its complement, as attested by the lack of object-subject permutation in
such constructions.
In Chácobo verbal predicate constructions with ergative alignment, the
subject and object can be variably ordered with respect to each other, allowing
SOV, OSV, OVS orders (SVO is possible but somewhat marked and less
common). Examples of SOV and OVS are provided in (32) above. An example
of OSV can be seen in (34):

(34) tʃaʂo tsi kiá yoʂa=0 tsaya=kɨ

deer 5  woman= see=.
‘The woman saw the deer.’

However, in V-C-Subj constructions, not only is the subject obligatorily

after the clause-type marker, but in addition the object and subject cannot be
freely permuted. The construction displays a fixed OVS order. VOS is com-
pletely banned and VSO requires an utterance pause and is most felicitously
translated into two sentences. These facts are illustrated in (35).

(35) a. * tsaya=ki tʃaʂo yoʂa

see=. deer woman
Intended: ‘The woman sees the deer.’
b. #tsaya=ki yoʂa . . . tʃaʂo
see=. woman deer
Intended: ‘The woman has seen it . . . The deer.’

The impossibility of the subject intervening between the object and the verb
in V-C-Subj constructions, as opposed to the free order in standard verbal
predicate constructions, receives a straightforward explanation if verb and
object are contained in a separate domain that cannot be interrupted by the
subject.
A third argument for a biclausal structure comes from the syntax and
semantics of the reportative marker. The reportative marker can occur in
 ,  ,   383

the verbal predicates, nonverbal predicates, and V-C-Subj constructions. Its

position and scope in these three types of clause reveals that V-C-Subj
constructions align with NVPs.
In verbal predicate constructions the reportative must occur before the
obligatory clause-type rank morpheme. For instance, the sentence in (36) is
a verbal predicate construction; the reportative marker occurs before the verb
and the clause-type morpheme.

(36) hatsi kiá yobɨka=0 romɨ pí=kɨ

and  shaman= tobacco eat=.
‘[It is said that] then the shaman chewed on the tobacco.’

A minimally contrastive V-C-Subj construction would be as in (37), where

the subject noun phrase is moved to a position after the clause-type/rank
morpheme and does not have ergative case.

(37) a. * hatsi kiá romɨ pí=kɨ yóbɨka

and  tobacco eat= shaman
Intended: ‘[It is said that] the shaman has chewed the tobacco.’
b. * hatsi kiá romɨ pí=ki yóbɨka
and  tobacco eat=. shaman
Intended: ‘[It is said that] the shaman is chewing tobacco.’

However, such sentences are ungrammatical unless the reportative also

moves to a position to the right of the clause-type morpheme, right before
the subject. This is illustrated in (38).

(38) a. hatsi romɨ pí=kɨ kiá yóbɨka

and tobacco eat=  shaman
‘[It is said that] the shaman has chewed the tobacco.’
b. hatsi romɨ pí=Ɂi kiá yóbɨka
and tobacco eat=  shaman
‘[It is said that] the shaman is chewing tobacco.’

One way of understanding the distributional restriction on reportatives

would be to postulate that the candidate low domain of the V-C-Subj con-
struction cannot be modified by the reportative. This would follow from
the analysis presented in (29), as it is common for embedded clauses to
384 ́     

have restrictions on modal or evidential modification. Reportatives are thus

associated to the main predicate across clause-types in Chácobo. In the V-C-
Subj constructions, in particular, the reportatives must occur in the candidate
high domain as markers in the nonverbal predicate construction.
A distributional fact about reportative markers in NVP constructions cor-
roborates this interpretation. In nonverbal predicate constructions, reportative
marker kiá is in contrastive distribution with other clause-type markers (see
Tallman, 2018: ch. 4, for details). This is illustrated in (39).

(39) a. kaɁɨ=ʂɨni tsi ʂo yobɨka

know= 5 . shaman
‘The shaman is/was wise.’
b. kaɁɨ=ʂɨni tsi kiá yobɨka
know= 5  shaman
‘It is said that the shaman is wise.’

Notice that the typical order of the reportative in relation to the subject is
identical to its order in the V-C-Subj construction. Understanding the V-C-
Subj construction as an NVP construction naturally accounts for this fact.
A fourth argument comes from the exponence of subject plurality.
Like in Mẽbêngôkre, even though the construction in question is biclausal,
it is nevertheless impossible for two coreferential subjects to occur in the low
domain and the high domain, as illustrated in (40).

(40) a. ha/yoʂa= 0 tʃaʂo tsaya=kɨ

3/woman= deer see=.
‘She / The woman saw the deer.’
b. * haii tʃaʂo tsaya=ki yoʂaii
3 deer see=. woman
‘The woman sees the deer.’

Though an overt subject cannot precede the verb in V-C-Subj constructions

in the candidate low domain, there are exponents of subject plural marking
which can occur in the candidate low domain that suggest that it is a separate
domain from the high domain with regard to number marking. First, note that
in Chácobo the third person plural subject pronoun ha . . . =kan displays
extended exponence. One part of the pronoun occurs prior to the verb and
the other part occurs between the verb root and the clause-type morpheme.
This is illustrated in (41). The first part of the pronoun is optional.
 ,  ,   385

(41) (ha) tsaɁo=ká(n)=kɨ

3 sit==.
‘They sat down.’

This cannot be regarded as number agreement because it is ungrammatical

for kán to appear when an overt NP is in place. This is illustrated in (42).

(42) a. * hóni=bo tsaɁo=ká(n)=kɨ

man= sit==.
‘The men sat down while going.’
b. honi=bo tsaɁo=kɨ
man= sit=.
‘They men sat down while going.’

While kán cannot occur with an overt preverbal subject in the verbal
predicate construction, the kán must occur when the subject is plural in the
V-C-Subj construction. Thus, the distribution of kán in the V-C-Subj con-
struction is the mirror image of its distribution in verbal predicate construc-
tions; compare (42) with (43):

(43) a. tsaɁo=ká(n)=kɨ hóni=bo

sit==. man=
‘The men sat down while going.’
b. * tsaɁo=kɨ hóni=bo
sit=. man=
Intended: ‘The men have sat down while going.’

It should also be noted that the distribution of kán in V-C-Subj construc-

tions is identical to its distribution in nonverbal predicate constructions, as
shown by the following examples:

(44) a. tɨtɨka=bo =ka(n) ʂo/kiá/ní honi=bo

long= = // man=
‘The men are long/tall. / It is said that the men are tall. / Are the men
tall?’
b. ʂobo katʃa rɨa-mɨ=tí=kan=kiá isko ʂokɨ=bo
house outside fill-=== gorse=
‘The gorses filled the outside of the house.’
386 ́     

Another exponent of plural marking is verb root suppletion. In Chácobo,

verb roots undergo suppletion when they have a plural pronominal subject.
The pattern they follow is identical to the one that describes the contribution
of kan described above. A full NP cannot co-occur with the plural allomorph
in a regular verbal clause, as may be seen in (45c). However, in the V-C-Subj
construction, the plural form of the verb has to appear, as (46) shows.

(45) a. honi=bo ka=kɨ

man= go./=.
‘The men went.’
b. ha bo=ka(n)=kɨ
3 go./==.
‘They went.’
c. * honi=bo bo(=kan)=kɨ
man= go./==.
‘The men went.’

(46) a. * ka=kɨ honi=bo

go=. man=
‘The men went.’
b. bo=kan=kɨ honi=bo
go==. man=
‘The men went.’

In conclusion, the exponents of plurality function as if there was no overt

NP subject in the candidate low domain of the V-C-Subj construction. If the
V-C-Subj construction was monoclausal we would not expect the marking of
plurality to operate differently than it does in the normal verbal predicate
construction. However, the distribution of the plural pronominal element in
the V-C-Subj construction is the same as in the NVP, which is predicted by the
analysis sketched in this section.

15.4 When is there reanalysis?

In both Mẽbêngôkre progressives and Chácobo V-C-Subj constructions, a

number of diagnostics support the idea that two distinct domains exist, with
effects on case assignment and in a number of other operations. We have
 ,  ,   387

postulated that in both cases what is responsible for the separation of the
clause into domains is a nominalizing element, whether overt (as in
Mẽbêngôkre and Basque) or covert (as in Chácobo). We propose the following
reference structure, uniting both the Chácobo V-C-Subj construction and the
Mẽbêngôkre progressive:

(47) VP

higher case domain Vʹ Subji

nP V
lower case domain
√P n

Subji √ʹ

Obj √

The primary elements represented in this structure are the following:

1. The ‘main verb’ is a categoriless root, with its arguments, one of which is
covert. The association of arguments to roots is a simplifying assump-
tion whose motivation we cannot discuss for reasons of space.
2. The root’s projection merges with a n category head (or possibly an
underspecified category head, standing for n and a).
3. The subject is actually subject of a higher predicate, represented as V. It
is coindexed with the covert subject of the ‘main verb’, but in neither
case discussed here does it form a movement chain with it.

The basic properties of the two constructions follow almost trivially from
this representation: The absence of dependent case is a consequence of the
separation of two domains by n, and the facts surrounding constituency and
the distribution of pronouns in Chácobo are unproblematically represented in
the structure.
The differences between the constructions are of course numerous, but they
do not affect the account:

1. In the Mẽbêngôkre progressive there is a thematic relation between

V and the higher subject, while in Chácobo V is simply a copula.
388 ́     

2. The morphology of n is overt in Mẽbêngôkre, but not in Chácobo.

3. While in Mẽbêngôkre the nP is licensed by means of a P, in Chácobo it is
directly licensed by the copula.
4. Specifiers are left-branching in Mẽbêngôkre, and thus subjects are initial.

A number of traits of the constructions that seemed to contradict the basic

analysis do not force us to change this account:

1. The fact that in Mẽbêngôkre the nP cannot be fronted like other objects
while retaining its meaning is a consequence of the obligatory control
construction in which it sits: The only way in which the covert subject
can be coindexed with the overt matrix clause subject is by being c-
commanded by it; this constraint also applies to other constructions that
involve coindexing between an overt matrix subject and a covert subject
of a nominalized clause.
2. That not all the clause-type markers are the same between the Chácobo
V-C-Subj construction and nonverbal predicates most likely has to do
with semantic rather than categorial selection between the clause-type
markers and the predicate: Though nominal, V-C-Subj constructions do
not always encode stative notions, like other nonverbal predicates. It is
to be expected that temporal and aspectual markers be sensitive to that
difference.

To conclude our exposition, we need to address three interrelated questions:

(i) what is the relationship between nominalization and case domains, (ii)
when can restructuring be said to have transformed a construction with two
domains into a simple clause, and (iii) can diagnostics establish this in a
manner that avoids circularity.
Despite the many parallels between n and v in Mẽbêngôkre, there are a
number of differences which we can generalize to both of the constructions
focalized in this chapter. In addition to not tolerating merging with tense, n
has the property of heading a phrase from which phrasal movement is
impossible: n is not only a phase, but a phase without an escape hatch. This
property of n is responsible for the fact that the two arguments in the
constructions that we have examined here are in distinct case domains: The
subject, associated with the higher domain, cannot form a chain with the
thematic position inside the root phrase.
We consider that restructuring consists precisely in changing this structure
in (47) into one that allows a single chain to be formed between the two
 ,  ,   389

domains, either by emptying out V to become an Aux (and simultaneously

shifting n into a nonfinite v), or by incorporating n into the selecting V (e.g., as
Hale & Keyser, 1993, propose for unergative verbs). Both of these processes
should have as an automatic consequence the fusing of the two domains into a
single one, and reverting to the alignment found in simple clauses. The trees in
(48) represent these two restructured constructions.

(48) VP VP

V’ Subj Vʹ Subj
nP ni+V
nP V→Aux
√P ti
... √P n → υnfin
...

The types of diagnostics that would serve as good tests for the occurence of
this reanalysis follow from these structures:

1. Morphological incorporation between the lower and higher predicate,

and functioning of these as a unit (e.g. in inversion).
2. Agreement across domains.
3. Loss of any thematic interaction between the higher predicate and the
subject.
4. Acquisition of verbal features by the lower predicate.

Interestingly, if diagnostics such as these are applied to Basque as described

by Hualde & Ortiz de Urbina (1987), they suggest that reanalysis has in fact
taken place in that case. It is not surprising that in many varieties of Basque the
progressive construction behaves as a single domain for case assignment. In
the presence of clear evidence for reanalysis, taking double-nominative align-
ment as the sole diagnostic for the partition of the clause into domains is
circular, however. The Mẽbêngôkre and Chácobo constructions examined
here, on the other hand, don’t pass any of the diagnostics for restructuring.
We conclude that there is no reason to conclude that restructuring has taken
place in either of them.
390 ́     

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank their Mẽbêngôkre and Chácobo consultants as well as the
editors of the volume, Andrey Nikulin, and an anonymous reviewer for extremely helpful
comments. Work on this chapter was supported by Insight Grant number 435-2018-1173
from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (PI Andrés
Salanova).
 16
Prepositional prefixing and allosemy in
nominalizations
Jim Wood

In Icelandic, some verbs allow or even require a preposition to attach to them

as a prefix. This is illustrated in (1), where prefixing is optional.

(1) Ϸeir (að-)laga meðferðina að sjúklingnum.

they (to-)adapt treatment.the. to patient.the.
‘They adapt the treatment to the patient.’

Some verbs do not allow prefixing when they stay verbs but require prefixing
when they are nominalized (cf. Kvaran, 2005: 152–3; Bjarnadóttir, 2005:
119–20).¹ This is illustrated with hlynna ‘tend to’ in (2).²

(2) a. Prefixing impossible on verb

Guðrún (*að-)hlynnti að sjúklingnum.
Guðrún (*to-)tended to patient.the.
‘Guðrún tended to the patient.’
b. Prefixing obligatory on deverbal noun
*(að-)hlynn-ing Guðrúnar að sjúklingnum
*(to-)tend- Guðrún. to patient.the.
‘Guðrún’s tending to the patient’

A common analysis of P-prefixing cross-linguistically claims that such prefixes

originate in the complement of the verb, and attach to the verb by movement
(e.g. Svenonius, 2004; Biskup, 2007; Acedo-Matellán, 2010; Myler, 2011, 2013;

¹ The same thing happens with deverbal adjectivization, but I do not discuss this in this chapter.
² Icelandic has various nominalization affixes, including -ing, -un, -sla, -ð, and -a, which can be
considered equivalent for the purposes of this chapter.

Jim Wood, Prepositional prefixing and allosemy in nominalizations In: Nominalization: 50 Years on from Chomsky’s Remarks.
Edited by: Artemis Alexiadou and Hagit Borer, Oxford University Press (2020). © Jim Wood.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198865544.003.0016
392  

Biskup & Putnam, 2012; Wood, 2015). In this chapter, I will suggest that
another approach is possible, and in some cases, necessary: The preposition
may adjoin directly to the complex head, without ever heading a phrase (cf.
McIntyre, 2018).
More broadly, I discuss how Icelandic prepositional prefixing supports
three main points. First, prepositions play a dual role in constructing verb
meaning—they may have meanings of their own, but they may also condition
special meanings of the verbal root. Second, the patterns of prefixation we find
support claim that deverbal nouns, even in the Complex Event Nominal
(CEN) reading, can be built by combining heads together directly, without
any phrasal material below the nP level. This is in contrast to what I call the
‘Phrasal Layering’ analysis, where what is nominalized is a full verb phrase,
perhaps with a VoiceP or other extended vP layers.³ The two analyses for (2b)
are shown in (3) and (4).

(3) Complex Head Analysis (4) Phrasal Layering Analysis

nP nP

n (VoiceP)
n PP
að . . . (Voice) vP
P n ‘to’
að v PP
‘to’ v n

√ HLYN v √ HLYN v P ...

‘tend’ ‘tend’ að
‘to’

Third, adjunction and complementation define distinct domains for the con-
ditioning of idiosyncratic meaning, and both are available for the syntactic
assembly of words and phrases. The crucial pattern is that a preposition
heading a PP complement can condition a special meaning on a verb without
having to be a prefix, but in a nominalization of that verb, this same meaning
requires that the preposition is prefixed to the derived noun.

³ See, for example, Borer (1997, 2012, 2013, 2014, Chapter 6), Roeper & van Hout (1999, 2009), Fu
et al. (2001), Alexiadou (2001, 2017d, Chapter 5), Roßdeutscher & Kamp (2010), Bruening (2012),
Pross (2019), Ahdout & Kastner (Chapter 4); Iordăchioaia (Chapter 10); see Coon & Royer (Chapter 7)
for a root-based analysis of derived nominals in Ch’ol and Chuj.
     393

16.1 Background

16.1.1 The basic patterns

The empirical focus of this chapter is on several patterns of what happens when
a P-selecting verb is nominalized, illustrated in (5)–(7). Notice that for each of
these cases, prefixing is not possible for the non-nominalized verb itself.

(5) Pattern 1 (Prefixing and Doubling)

a. að {*um}-ræða {um} ϸetta
to {*about}-discuss {about} this
‘to discuss this’
b. um-ræð-a um ϸetta
about-discuss- about this
‘discussion about this’

(6) Pattern 2 (Prefixing Only, No Doubling)

a. að {*við}-gera {við} bílinn
to {*with}-do {with} car.the
‘to repair the car’
b. við-ger-ð {á bílnum / bílsins / *við bílinn}
with-do- {on car.the. / car.the. / *with car.the}
‘repair of the car’

(7) Pattern 3 (No Prefixing, PP only)

a. að {*um}-hug-sa um ϸetta
to think- about this
‘to think about this’
b. hug-s-un Guðrúnar um ϸetta
think-- Guðrún. about this
‘Guðrún’s thinking about this’

In the first pattern, the P selected by the verb gets prefixed to the nominaliza-
tion, and may be repeated as the head of a PP to introduce the argument. In
the second pattern, the P selected by the verb gets prefixed to the nominal-
ization, but the argument it would have introduced is introduced by some
other means (usually one of the more general strategies for themes, an á-PP or
a genitive). In the third pattern, there is no prefixing, and the noun selects the
same P that the verb does.
394  

The basic intuition guiding the general proposal is that these patterns reflect
the ‘dual role’ of prepositions for verb meaning. On the one hand, prepositions
may have their own semantics (so ‘to’ means something different from ‘at’
or ‘from’), or not (so some prepositions may serve a purely formal purpose).
On the other hand, prepositions may condition allosemy on the root. For
example, pick means something different in pick on someone ‘tease
someone’ and pick someone ‘choose someone’. I will propose that in nomin-
alizations, a prefixed P serves the latter function, whereas a P heading a PP
complement serves the former function. I will derive this pattern by proposing
that prefixed prepositions adjoin to the derived, complex n head, and that this
adjunction creates a locality domain for special meaning different from com-
plementation (cf. Harðarson, 2016). When the preposition is in the comple-
ment of the derived nominal, it is too far away from the root to condition
special meaning. This explanation entails that deverbal nominals can be built
as complex heads directly, without any phrasal structure, as proposed by
Wood (2020). As we will see, it is unclear how this could be derived in an
analysis where what is nominalized is a full verb phrase, since the locality
between the root and the preposition would be identical for all cases on such
an analysis.

16.1.2 Borer’s Generalization and the CEN reading

I assume that the presence of a verbalizing v head in a noun is diagnosed either

by its overt phonological realization (as in (7b)), or by the availability of a CEN
interpretation (see Chapter 1). It is thus important to observe that all three
patterns are possible with a CEN reading, as briefly illustrated in (8) and (9)
for patterns 1 and 2, respectively (see (45b) for pattern 3). In these examples,
we see telicity PPs ((8a) and (9a)), eventive modifiers ((8b) and (9a)), an
agentive modifier (the instrument phrase in (9b)), and an external argument
interpretation of the genitive (all examples).

(8) a. að-hlynn-ing Guðrúnar að sjúklingnum í 10 ár

to-tend- Guðrún. to patient.the for 10 years
‘Guðrún’s tending to the patient for 10 years’
b. endurtekin á-bend-ing nemandans á skekkjurnar
repeated on-point- student.the. on errors.the.
‘the student’s repeated pointing out of the errors’
     395

(9) a. {stöðug / endurtekin} við-vör-un Guðrúnar á

{constant / repeated} with-warn- Guðrún. on
hættunni (í tíu ár)
danger.the. (for ten years)
‘Guðrún’s {constant/repeated} warning of the danger (for ten years)’
b. við-ger-ð Guðrúnar á bílnum mínum með
with-do- Guðrún. on car.the. my with
sleggju
sledge.hammer
‘Guðrún’s repairing of my car with a sledge hammer’

It is the CEN reading that Phrasal Layering analyses generally derive by

nominalizing a full (extended) vP. One fundamental reason for this has to
do with what I call ‘Borer’s Generalization’ in Wood (2020). Although the
observation is not originally due to Borer (see e.g. Alexiadou & Grimshaw,
2008, for discussion), Borer (see especially Borer, 2014) has emphasized the
generalization that CENs are always built off of an existing, morphologically
related verb with the same meaning. She points out that categorized verbs
often lack argument structure and complex event meaning (e.g. in Result
Nominals), so the connection between eventive meaning and argument struc-
ture must stem from functional layers in the extended verb phrase. Borer’s
generalization is derived if the CEN reading can only be derived in a verb
phrase, and CENs are built by nominalizing verb phrases.
In Wood (2020), I raise a variety of problems for the Phrasal Layering
analysis as applied to Icelandic CENs, and argue that Borer’s Generalization
follows from the presence of a little v with a particular alloseme, even if it is
contained in a complex head and never projects a vP. That is, once we
recognize that one and the same syntactic little v is compatible with several
semantic denotations via allosemy, we no longer require vP-internal func-
tional heads to explain why verbs only sometimes occur with arguments and
complex event meaning. As we will see, this analysis allows for an explanation
of why selected prepositions sometimes prefix only to the nominal, and even
then, are only sometimes doubled/repeated in the PP complement.⁴
But equally important is the fact that on the CEN reading, the derived noun
still appears to inherit its meaning and argument structure from the

⁴ See Wood (2020) for more detailed discussion of how the modifiers diagnosing CENs are sensitive
to the allosemy of v rather than the presence of a vP; in short, diagnostics that are sensitive to an event
variable introduced by v are expected to be grammatical with derived nominals in the CEN reading,
whereas diagnostics that are sensitive to the presence of a syntactic vP are predicted to be ungram-
matical with derived nominals.
396  

underlying verb; that is, Borer’s Generalization holds of the P-prefix derived
nominals discussed in this chapter, even when an idiosyncratic meaning of the
root is conditioned by the presence of the preposition. Consider, for example,
the noun við-ger-ð ‘repair’. Here, við conditions a special meaning of the root;
however, this is the same special meaning that exists in the verb phrase (gera
við ‘repair’) where við is not a prefix, but heads its own PP. Thus, the noun
viðgerð in the CEN reading seems to inherit its meaning from the verb phrase.

16.1.3 Allosemy

An important idea underlying the proposal in this chapter is that the meanings
of lexical items are underdetermined in the absence of syntactic structure,
something referred to as allosemy. Allosemy is like allomorphy, only in the
semantics: The meaning of a terminal node is determined post-syntactically.

(10) Morphology form1 form2 form3 Allomorphy

Syntax F

Semantics MEANING1 MEANING2 MEANING3 Allosemy

This can apply to roots or functional heads. In the present chapter, the
focus will mostly be on roots and prepositions.⁵ However, it is clear that the
meaning contribution of little v is influenced by both the preposition and
the root.
Like allomorphy, allosemy can be conditioned by surrounding elements.
Harley (2014: 244), for example, describes the various interpretations of the
English word throw as a set of post-syntactic interface instructions.

(11) PF Instructions LF Instructions

√ 77$/θrow/ √ 77$ ‘vomit’ / [v[[__]√ [up]P]]vP
$ ‘a light blanket’ / [n[__]√]
{ . . . other meanings in other contexts . . . }
$ ‘throw’ / elsewhere

⁵ For allosemy of functional heads, see Wood (2012, 2015, 2016); Marantz (2013); Myler (2014,
2016); Kastner (2016, 2017); Wood & Marantz (2017); Nie (submitted); and Oseki (submitted); among
others.
     397

There is an important question of what the locality constraints on such

conditioning are, a question that will drive much of the discussion below.

16.1.4 Icelandic nominalizations

To follow the discussion below, it is worth reviewing the basic patterns of

nominalization in Icelandic. First, note that the direct object theme in the verb
phrase can be expressed by a genitive DP or by an á-PP in the nominalization
(Jóhannsdóttir, 1995), where the object of á is assigned dative case. (In other
uses, such as when it is selected by particular verbs, á in Icelandic may assign
accusative case.)

(12) a. Ϸau eyðileggja borgir.

they. destroy cities.
‘They destroy cities.’
b. eyðilegg-ing borgarinnar
destroy- city.the.
‘the destruction of the city’
c. eyðilegg-ing-in á borginni
destroy--the on city.the.
‘the destruction of the city’

The genitive DP generally follows the head noun. Note that when an á-PP is
used, the noun often takes a definite suffix. When a genitive DP is used, the
noun usually cannot take a definite suffix, although it may still be considered
definite. (Some dialects do allow a definite suffix in this environment.) This
works exactly as ordinary possessive genitives work:

(13) bók stelpu-nnar (14) * bók-in stelpu-nnar

book girl-the. book-the girl-the.
‘the girl’s book’ ‘the girl’s book’

16.2 Proposal: structural constraints on allosemy

The basic picture that I propose is one where adjunction to a complex head
and complementation to a complex head create different locality domains for
398  

the conditioning of special meaning. First, I will present the basic claim
schematically. Consider the verb structures in (15):

(15) a. P in Complex Head b. P in Complement

v vP

P v v PP

√ ROOT v √ ROOT v P ...

In (15a), P is adjoined to the complex v head, whereas in (15b), P heads a PP

complement of the complex v head. In both of the structures in (15), P can
condition special meaning on the root—whether it is adjoined to the complex
v head or heads the complement PP.⁶ Now consider the derived nominal
structures in (16).

(16) a. P in Complex Head b. P in Complement

n nP

P n n PP

v n v n P ...

√ root v √ root v
X

In (16), P can condition special meaning on the root only when it is in the
complex head, not when it heads the complement PP.⁷ Let us try to flesh out
why this is, by turning to our assumptions about special meaning.
First, we assume that the complement of a verb must be able to affect the
meaning of the verb root. This seems to be a basic empirical fact that any
theory must be able to reckon with. Second, we assume that special meaning is
subject to some kind of phase locality (Marantz, 2013), and that n and v are

⁶ A reviewer asks if more than one element can condition allosemy at the same time, and Anton Karl
Ingason asks if adjunction to a complex head is recursive. In principle, the answer to both questions is
yes, although there may be stricter conditions on the locality of allosemy beyond phase-locality, an
issue which I cannot explore here.
⁷ As currently formulated, a truly denominal or de-adjectival verb should not be able to get a special
meaning conditioned by a PP complement; I have not examined this prediction closely.
     399

phase heads. As for the nature of the phase locality, Embick (2010) argues that
a morphological dependency may cross no more than one phase head, and
I assume that allosemy should work the same way. The question now is what it
means for a dependency to ‘cross’ a phase head (or two), and why adjunction
should be different from complementation.
We can make sense of the latter question if we assume that adjunction
creates segments of a category, and that, following Kayne (1994: 16), segments
do not enter into c-command relations.

(17) X c-commands Y iff X and Y are categories and X excludes Y and every
category that dominates X dominates Y. (Kayne, 1994: 16)

Given this, the crucial difference between (16a) and (16b) is that n c-commands
P in (16b) but not in (16a).

(18) a. C-command relations in (16a) b. C-command relations in (16b)

pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
P »  » v » n  » v » n » P
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
 » v » P

If we assume that locality is defined by c-command, there are two phase heads
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
intervening between  and P in (16b), so allosemy is not possible. In
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
(16a) and (15b), only one (at most) phase head intervenes between 
and P, so allosemy is possible. Adjoining P to n means that n does not
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
c-command P, and thus does not intervene between P and the .
The empirical consequences of this proposal are as follows. First, when
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
P and  must be visible to each other for conditioning root meaning,
prefixing will be obligatory in nominalization. If (19a) is not an option, (19b)
will be required.

(19) a. n b. n

v n P n

P v v n

√ root v √ root v

Second, (16b) will only be possible when P makes its own semantic contribu-
tion, and does not condition special meaning on the root. Third, doubling will
arise when P makes its own semantic contribution and conditions special
meaning on the root. This involves separate uses of the same P.
400  

(20) nP

n PP
P ...
P n
v n

√ root v
I now turn to a brief discussion of prefixing to verbs, in order to set the stage
for the argument for taking P to adjoin to the n head directly.

16.3 Prefixing to verbs

I first note that Icelandic does not freely or productively prefix prepositions to
verbs. Moreover, prepositional prefixing is not ‘separable’ in the Germanic
sense; once something is a prefix, it stays with the verb. It is a very common
phenomenon, but it is also very ‘lexicalized’—whether it happens depends on
the particular verb and preposition in a rather unpredictable manner.
I suggest two basic structures for prefixing of prepositions to verbs, which
are shown in (21). Drawing inspiration from the analysis of Greek synthetic
compounds in Iordăchioaia et al. (2017), I assume that (21a) predicts the
existence of an independent verb (without the prefix), whereas (21b) does
not. In both cases, P may condition a special interpretation of the root.

(21) a. v b. v

P v v
P √ root
√ root v

pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
I assume that the availability of (21a–b) for a given -P pair is essentially
idiosyncratic and listed. What is important here is that if either of these two
structures exist in the language, then we expect the prefixed verb to be well
formed whether it is part of a deverbal noun/adjective or not. So when the verb
is not possible, it must be the case that the prepositional prefix attaches higher,
such as to the n level.
     401

In principle, a large number of prepositions—maybe all simplex ones—can

be prefixed at least sometimes. Some examples are presented in (22) below.

(22) Verb Prefix Deverbal Only

a. að ‘to/at’ að-vara ‘warn’ að-dáun ‘admiration’

b. af ‘from’ af-henda ‘deliver’ af-lestur ‘reading’
c. á ‘on’ á-kveða ‘decide’ á-bending ‘indication’
d. eftir ‘after’ eftir-láta ‘leave behind’ eftir-vænting ‘expectation’
e. frá ‘from’ frá-biðja ‘reject’ frá-saga ‘story’
f. fyrir ‘for’ fyrir-bjóða ‘forbid’ fyrir-lestur ‘lecture’
g. upp ‘up’ upp-fylla ‘fulfull’ upp-lestur ‘recital’
h. um ‘about’ um-orða ‘paraphrase’ um-fjöllun ‘discussion’
i. úr ‘out of ’ úr-elda ‘decommission’ úr-felling ‘omission’
j. við ‘with’ við-hafa ‘use’ við-ræða ‘conversation’
k. yfir ‘over’ yfir-drífa ‘exaggerate’ yfir-drottnun ‘dominancy’

I now turn to the patterns we find in nominals derived from verbs that take PP
complements.

16.4 Prefixing to derived nominals

16.4.1 Pattern 1: Prefixing and doubling

In the first pattern, the noun derived from a P-selecting verb must prefix P to
the noun. The preposition may then be doubled to express the argument of the
original PP. Consider the verb benda, which has a compositional meaning
‘point at’ (physical gesture) and a more idiosyncratic meaning ‘indicate/point
out’.

(23) a. Ϸað er dónalegt að benda á ókunnugt fólk.

it is rude to point on unknown people.
‘It is rude to point at strangers.’8
b. Nemandinn benti á skekkjuna.
student.the. pointed on mistake.the.
‘The student pointed out the mistake.’

⁸ This example is taken from the online dictionary at https://snara.is.

402  

The physical gesture meaning can occur with or without á, but the non gesture
meaning requires á. In (24), without the preposition, the meaning can only
refer to the gesture.

(24) Ekki benda!

not point
‘Don’t point!’
= ‘Don’t make the pointing gesture’
≠ ‘Don’t make observations’

The preposition cannot be prefixed to the verb, whether we repeat it

or not.

(25) * Nemandinn á-benti (á) skekkjuna.

student.the. on-pointed (on) mistake.the.
‘The student pointed out the mistake.’

According to the view adopted here, this means that neither of the structures
in (21) can be contained in the derived nominal structure.
When the verb is nominalized, the nongesture meaning requires the prep-
osition to prefix to the nominal.

(26) * Bend-ing-in á skekkjuna kom sér vel

point--the on mistake.the. came  well
fyrir kennarann.
for teacher.the

(27) Á-bend-ing-in á skekkjuna kom sér vel

on-point--the on mistake.the. came  well
fyrir kennarann.
for teacher.the
‘The pointing out of the mistake was good for the teacher.’
(Jóhannsdóttir, 1995: 71)

I propose the structure in (28) for the noun phrase in (27):

     403

(28) nP

n PP

á skekkjuna
P n
‘on the mistake’
á
‘on’ v n
-ing
√ bend v
‘point’

The prefixing conditions the appropriate meaning of the root. Without the
prefix, the noun bending exists, but it refers only to a gesture. As shown in
the above examples and represented in the structure in (28), the prefixed
preposition can also be repeated. But in effect, this is not really doubling;
when prepositional selection seems to be inherited in a complement PP,
that is only because the P is contributing some meaning of its own. This
leads us to expect that in some cases, we will simply see distinct prepositions.
And in fact, Einar Freyr Sigurðsson (p.c.) points out to me that for him,
while (27b) is possible, another option is (29), with the distinct preposition
um ‘about’.

(29) á-bend-ing-in um skekkjuna

on-point--the about mistake.the.
‘the pointing out of the mistake’
This makes sense: if á ‘on’ is prefixed, then it is not strictly necessary in the PP
for the purposes of constructing verb meaning. Nevertheless, the prefixing of á
‘on’ is necessary, and um ‘about’ cannot serve this function.

(30) * {bend-ing / um-bend-ing} um skekkjuna

{point- / about-point-} about mistake.the

What this shows is that um can serve the secondary, semantic role of
introducing the argument, but it is not involved in conditioning root
meaning.
404  

For a related version of this doubling pattern, consider the verbs in (31):

(31) a. Ϸeir laga sig *(að) breytingunum.

they adapt . *(to) changes.the.
‘They adapt to the changes.’
b. Ϸeir að-laga sig (að) breytingunum.
they to-adapt . (to) changes.the.
‘They adapt to the changes.’

In this case, we see that the P must be overtly realized somewhere, but it need
not be prefixed to the verb. If it is not prefixed, it is obligatorily overt as the
head of a separate PP. If it is prefixed, it may or may not also be realized overtly
as the head of a separate PP. Now consider what happens if it is nominalized,
as illustrated in (32).

(32) a. að-lög-un *(að) breytingunum

to-adapt- *(to) changes.the.
‘adaptation to the changes’
b. *lög-un (að) breytingunum
to-adapt- (to) changes.the.
c. *lög-un breytinganna
to-adapt- changes.the.

Here, in the nominal—unlike the verb—we see that prefixing and doubling is
obligatory: The only acceptable structure is the one with the prefix and the
overt PP head. Why might this be? Consider the structure of the verb phrase
without prefixing:

(33) vP

v PP

√ lag v
að breytingunum
‘adapt’
‘to the changes’

In this structure, the preposition að determines/conditions the meaning of the

pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
root  and contributes its own meaning. Without að, the root  can
still form a verb, but with the meaning ‘fix/repair’.
     405

(34) Hjólið er bilað, geturðu lagað ϸað fyrir mig?

bike.the is broken can.you fix it. for me
‘The bike is broken, can you fix it for me?’9

Likewise, the nominal lögun, without prefixing, is possible (most commonly

meaning ‘form/shape’), but it cannot mean ‘adapt’. Consider what the struc-
ture would look like, according to the present proposal.

(35) *nP

n PP
v n
-un að breytingunum
√ lag v ‘to the changes’
‘adapt’
X

In this structure, the preposition is too far away from the root to condition the
‘adapt’ meaning. In contrast, adjunction—either to v as in (36) or to n as in
(37)—brings it close enough.¹⁰

(36) nP (37) nP

n PP
n PP
v n að breytingunum
-un P n að breytingunum
‘to the changes’
að ‘to the changes’
P v
að ‘to’ v n
-un
‘to’ √lag v
‘adapt’ √lag v
‘adapt’

Once again, the preposition can be doubled in the PP because að, in addition
to conditioning special meaning, has clear directional meaning of its own. This
doubling is not necessary in (33), because one instance of að can do both
things: The interpretation of the root can be sensitive to its presence, and it can
contribute its own directional meaning. In this case, the directional meaning is

⁹ This example is taken from the online dictionary at https://snara.is.

¹⁰ Since v is an option, (36) may seem the most likely option. However, since prefixing to v is not
obligatory, (37) is just as possible, and it is also possible that the word is arbitrarily ambiguous between
the two structures.
406  

important enough to the overall meaning that the argument of P cannot be

expressed without the preposition.

(38) *að-lög-un breytinganna

to-adapt- changes.the.

16.4.2 Pattern 2: Prefixing only

In the second pattern, we also see cases where the nominal forces prefixation, but
doubling does not occur. In these cases, the preposition’s sole (semantic) purpose
is to condition the interpretation of the root. Consider the examples in (39):

(39) a. Guðrún gerði við bílinn.

Guðrún did with car.the.
‘Guðrún repaired the car.’
b. * Guðrún við-gerði (við) bílinn.
Guðrún with-did with car.the.
: ‘Guðrún repaired the car.’

Here the verb gera ‘do’, when combined with the preposition við ‘with’, means
‘repair/fix’. This meaning is only available with the preposition, and the
preposition cannot be prefixed to the verb. As in Pattern 1, however, in the
nominalization, prefixation of the preposition is obligatory for this meaning to
obtain.

(40) a. *ger-ð {á bílnum / bílsins / við bílinn}

do- {on car.the. / car.the. / with car.the}
: ‘repair of the car’11
b. Við-ger-ð {á bílnum / bílsins / *við bílinn}
with-do- {on car.the. / car.the. / *with car.the}
tók langan tíma.
took long time
‘Repair of the car took a long time.’

It is important to note that while the relationship between the root and the
preposition is noncompositional in a sense, it is not a noncompositionality
specific to the noun. The same noncompositional meaning applies to the verb

¹¹ This string may be grammatical with other readings.

     407

phrase, the only difference being that the preposition is not prefixed to the
verb, but rather heads the complement PP. The noun, however, still inherits all
of its meaning from the verb and, as can be seen from the above examples,
forms a CEN.
Unlike in Pattern 1, however, the preposition may not be repeated. Instead, its
argument can be expressed in one of the ‘default’ nominalization ways, such as
with semantically vacuous á-PP or with a genitive DP (for some speakers).¹²
According to the present proposal, this is because við does not contribute
anything semantically in gera við ‘fix’; rather, it conditions the meaning of the
verb(al root). As before, the nominal gerð is well formed with other meanings,
such as ‘make (of a car)’, ‘design’, ‘structure’, ‘version’, ‘act’.
To emphasize the main point, the head of a complement PP is close enough to
the root in the vP structure to have this meaning effect, but not in the nominal.

(41) a. P may condition root meaning b. P may not condition root meaning
vP *nP

v PP n PP
√ ger v við bílinn v n
‘do’ við bílinn
‘with the car’ -ð
‘with the car’
√ ger v
‘do’

Adjunction of P to n, as shown in (42), brings P close enough to the root to

condition special meaning.

(42) P may condition root meaning

nP

n PP

á bílnum
P n ‘ofthe car’
við
‘with’ v n
-ð
√ ger v
‘do’

¹² Not all speakers accept the genitive here, but most of the speakers I have asked do, and attested
examples can be found.
408  

Two more examples of this pattern involve the verbs dást að ‘admire (to)’
and annast um ‘take care of ’, which are nominalized as aðdáun and umönnun,
respectively.¹³ For both, P must be prefixed to the noun, but cannot be
repeated in the complement of the derived noun.

(43) a. Guðrún (*að-)dáðist (að) Maríu.

Guðrún (*to-)admired (to) Mary
‘Guðrún admired Mary.’
b. að-dá-un Guðrúnar {á / *að} Maríu
to-admire- Guðrún. {on / *to} Mary
‘Guðrún’s admiration of Mary.’
c. * dá-un Guðrúnar {á / að} Maríu
admire- Guðrún. {on / to} Mary

(44) a. Hún {*um-}ann-aðist (um) barnið.

she {*of-}take.care- (of) child.the
‘She took care of the child.’
b. um-önn-un-in {á barninu / *um barnið}
of-take.care--the {on child.the. / *of child.the.}
‘the taking care of the child’
c. * önn-un-in {á barninu / um barnið}
take.care--the {on child.the. / of child.the.}
d. um-önn-un barnsins
of-take.care- child.the.
‘the taking care of the child’
e. * önn-un barnsins
take.care- child.the.

16.4.3 Pattern 3: Nominal selects the same PP

In the final pattern that we see, the derived noun selects the same preposition
that the verb it is based on selects, but there is no prefixing at all. In such cases,

¹³ Note that most speakers prefer to leave the preposition um out with the verb annast, and some find
um better with a verb phrase like annast um málið ‘take care of the issue’. Some report a possible meaning
difference, where the event is more of an activity when the preposition is present. One possibility is that
the preposition is actually always present syntactically, but sometimes null, as proposed for certain other
transitive -st verbs by Wood (2015: 285–90); see especially the discussion of the - verbs forðast
‘avoid’, undirgangast ‘undertake’, umgangast ‘associate with’ and áfellast ‘blame’ (Wood, 2015: 289). The
judgments of the nominal form umönnun are consistent across speakers.
     409

the preposition only contributes meaning of its own, and does not condition
any special meaning on the root. We see an example of this pattern with the
verb hugsa ‘think’ in (45).

(45) a. Guðrún hug-sa-ði um ϸetta.

Guðrún think-- about this
‘Guðrún thought about this.’
b. hug-s-un Guðrúnar um ϸetta (í tvo tíma)
think-- Guðrún. about this (for two hours)
(truflaði vin hennar)
(bothered friend her)
‘Guðrún’s thinking about this (for two hours) (bothered her friend)’

The verb hugsa ‘think’ may select a PP headed by um ‘about’, like ræða
‘discuss’ above. But unlike ræða ‘discuss’, when hugsa ‘think’ is nominalized,
the preposition is not prefixed to the derived noun.¹⁴ The reason is that the
preposition, in this context, is not needed to condition any special meaning on
the verb. The meaning of the preposition um ‘about’ in this use, is quite
general, found with many verbs and nouns, in uses corresponding fairly well
to the English preposition ‘about’. Moreover, hugsa ‘think’ can occur without
the preposition and happily retain its basic meaning.

(46) Guðrún er ennþá að hug-sa.

Guðrún is still to think-
‘Guðrún is still thinking.’

Similar observations can be made about other examples. The verb færast
‘move’ may select a directional preposition like í ‘into’, with a predictable
meaning. When nominalized, this preposition may head the complement of
the derived nominal without prefixing to it.

(47) a. Ákveðniliðir færast í frumlagssæti.

determiner.phrases move into subject.position
‘Determiner phrases move into subject position.’
b. fær-sla ákveðniliða í frumlagssæti
move- determiner.phrases. into subject.position
‘the movement of determiner phrases into subject position’

¹⁴ We will see in the discussion surrounding (52) that prefixing um ‘about’ is in fact not ungram-
matical, but it results in a different meaning.
410  

As above, the verb has no special meaning that depends on the preposition.
The same holds for traðka ‘trample’ with locative á ‘on’.

(48) a. Þeir tröð-ku-ðu á vilja þingsins.

they trample-- on will parliament.the.
‘They trampled on the will of the parliament.’
b. Tröð-k-un á vilja þingsins er óþolandi.
trample-- on will parliament.the. is intolerable
‘Trampling on the will of the parliament is intolerable.’
c. tröð-k-un almennings á vilja ϸingsins
trample-- public. on will parliament.the.
‘the public’s trampling on the will of the parliament’
d. * tröð-k-un vilja ϸingsins
trample-- will parliament.the.
: ‘the trampling on the will of the parliament’

Consider also the case of the verb langa ‘want’. It may select a PP object
headed by í ‘in’. When it is nominalized, this preposition is retained, along
with the same basic meaning of the verb, without any prefixing.

(49) a. Guðrúnu langar í vín.

Guðrún. wants in wine
‘Guðrún wants wine.’
b. löng-un hennar í vín
want- her. in wine
‘her desire for wine’

From an English perspective, this may seem different from the cases above,
with the use of í ‘in’ seeming more idiosyncratic. However, it is less surprising
within the general system of Icelandic. First of all, note that just like um
‘about’, the í ‘in’ is not necessary for the basic meaning of the verb.

(50) Guðrúnu langar að fara.

Guðrún. wants to leave
‘Guðrún wants to leave.’

This supports the present explanation for why prefixing is not needed: The
verb root does not need to ‘see’ the preposition to get its meaning. Moreover, í
     411

‘in’ is used much more generally in Icelandic than in English to introduce

(generally unaffected) themes.

(51) a. að sparka í vegginn b. að pota í einhvern

to kick in wall.the to poke in someone
‘to kick the wall’ ‘to poke someone’
c. að hringja í einhvern d. að ná í myndirnar
to call in someone to get in pictures.the
‘to call someone’ ‘to get the pictures’
(Hilmisdóttir, 2007: 103)

Thus, the preposition í ‘in’ is not getting a special use or meaning conditioned
by the verbal root of langa ‘want’; its use reflects a more general use that is
found in the language.
As mentioned in fn. 14, prefixing is not necessarily ungrammatical with
nominals of this sort. The preposition um ‘about’ can be prefixed to hugsun
‘thinking’, but then it gets a different meaning. Instead of general thinking, it
refers to ‘pondering’—really thinking, reflecting, taking one’s time, etc. The
preposition um generally cannot be prefixed to the verb, however.¹⁵

(52) a. * Guðrún um-hug-sa-ði (um) ϸetta.

Guðrún about-think-- (about) this
: ‘Guðrún pondered (about) this.’
b. um-hug-s-un Guðrúnar um ϸetta
about-think-- Guðrún. about this
‘Guðrún’s pondering about this’

This reading is possible with a nonnominalized verb phrase að hugsa sig um,
literally ‘to think . about’, which means ‘to ponder’. Here, um is a particle
which does not prefix to the verb, and the direct object is a reflexive pronoun.
For examples which do not have an established special meaning, speakers’
reactions to the prefixing for derived nouns where it is unnecessary are
revealing. Consider first færsla ‘movement’, which as we saw in (47) does
not need a prefix. When asked whether prefixing was nevertheless possible,

¹⁵ Sigríður Sæunn Sigurðardóttir has reported encountering examples like (52a), and finds herself
‘nearly ready to accept them’. All other speakers I have asked reject this, however. Another, for present
purposes irrelevant use of um- as a prefix may be possible, where umhugsa þetta would mean ‘rethink
this’. This use of um- is fairly productive, and means something like ‘do again in a different way’. Its
distribution has not been studied, as far as I know, and I also do not know how widely accepted its use
with hugsa ‘think’ is. Halldór Sigurðsson, for example, rejects this usage, although he accepts it with
umorða ‘rephrase’ and umskrifa ‘rewrite (in a different way)’.
412  

speakers gave a variety of reactions. Some simply rejected it outright. Others

said it was weird, but not necessarily impossible. One speaker said they felt like
it meant something ‘more specific’, but could not say exactly what. Another
said one ‘could make it mean something new’ if one needed to. Yet another,
after rejecting it, said it would be ‘a separate noun’ and suggested that maybe it
would be better in a separate context.

(53) (?? í)-fær-sla ákveðniliða í frumlagssæti

(?? in)-move- determiner.phrases. into subject.position
‘the movement of determiner phrases into subject position’

Essentially the same range of reactions was found for prefixing of á ‘on’ to
tröðkun ‘trampling’ and í ‘in’ to löngun ‘wanting/desire’. In fact, í-löngun is
attested and can be found in the online dictionary at http://snara.is. The
speakers I consulted found it unusual, however, some rejecting it, others
saying it was strange but grammatical, etc. This is in sharp contrast to the
reactions speakers gave to examples where prefixing is needed to condition
special meaning. There, speakers judged examples without the prefix, such as
(54a) (repeated from (40a)), as sharply unacceptable.

(54) a. * ger-ð {á bílnum / bílsins / við bílinn}

do- {on car.the. / car.the. / with car.the}
: ‘repair of the car’16
b. Við-ger-ð {á bílnum / bílsins / *við bílinn}
with-do- {on car.the. / car.the. / *with car.the}
tók langan tíma.
took long time
‘Repair of the car took a long time.’

This general picture makes sense from the present perspective. From a
purely syntactic standpoint, prepositional prefixing is a general option in the
language: P may adjoin to n (or v or a, for that matter), and create another n.
However, the interpretation of this operation involves the negotiation of root
meaning. To put it plainly, there has to be a reason to do it: if there is no
established (or computable) root semantics depending on the relation between
P and the root, the result will seem strange, superfluous, and even totally
unacceptable. This is essentially the same sort of issue revolving around any
root-derived word. If a given root adjoins to n, to form a noun, the speaker and

¹⁶ This string may be grammatical with other readings.

     413

the speech community must negotiate what this root + n combination will
mean. According to the present proposal, prepositional prefixing is a way of
fixing/establishing root meaning, so it is subject to the same kinds of condi-
tions, despite being a generally available syntactic option.¹⁷
In contrast, speakers reject the absence of prefixing when it is necessary
because there, the system does not generate the appropriate form-meaning
pair. Even if speakers can easily figure out what *gerð við ϸetta ‘repair of this’
or *brögð við ϸessu ‘reaction to this’ should mean, the forms are ungrammat-
ical. This is because the prepositions are too far away from the root to
condition the appropriate meaning, so the intended meaning is not built.

16.4.4 Mixed patterns: doubling optional

I have argued that apparent ‘doubling’ of a preposition indicates that the

preposition has two functions. First, it expresses its own meaning, which is
realized by heading a PP complement. Second, it conditions special root
meaning, which is realized as prefixing of P to the derived noun. It may
seem surprising, then, that in some cases, the preposition is only optionally
repeated. With hlynna ‘tend’, for example, the preposition may be repeated or
the relevant argument can be expressed as a genitive.

(55) að {*að}-hlynna {að} sjúklingnum

to {*to}-tend {to} patient.the
‘to tend to the patient’
a. *(að-)hlynning að sjúklingnum
*(to-)tend- to patient.the.
‘tending to the patient’
b. *(að-)hlynn-ing sjúklingsins
*(to-)tend- patient.the.
‘tending to the patient’

¹⁷ See, for example, the discussion of thief versus stealer in Embick & Marantz (2008). Embick &
Marantz (2008) argue that the existence of thief does not directly block the formation of root-derived
stealer. If there is any interaction, it may be at the level of use, not grammar: syntactically,
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
[n  n-er] is grammatical. However, speakers may have never needed to create such a root
nominalization. In fact, I strongly suspect that if one surveyed a variety of English speakers (who have
not studied the linguistic literature on the issue) on the acceptability of stealer, the range of reactions
would be highly similar to the reactions described above for ‘unnecessary’ prefixing (some rejecting,
some saying ‘weird but possible’, some trying give it a special meaning). See also Embick (2016) on
‘polymorphy’ and competition at the level of use.
414  

But if the argument can be expressed as a genitive in (54b), what meaning

could the preposition be contributing in (54a)?
I suggest that that the answer lies in the range of meanings available to the
genitive, along with the rather vague (but still meaningful) contribution of the
preposition. In short, the two structures arrive at the same or at least substan-
tially overlapping meanings in different ways. Therefore, we find apparent
semantic overlap for certain nominals, but not others. First, consider the
possibility that there may be subtle semantic distinctions that are hard to
pin down. Consider the pair in English:

(56) a. tend the patient

b. tend to the patient

Speakers tend to report that there is some meaning difference between these
two, but it is difficult to say exactly what that is.
It is well known that the genitive can express a range of relations between
two nouns. In this instance, the genitive can express a meaning that comes
‘close enough’ to the relation expressed by the preposition as to resemble
optionality.

(57) a. Meaning 1 (Genitive)

‘tending activities defined/measured by, or revolving around the
patient’
b. Meaning 2 (að PP)
‘tending activities directed toward the patient’

The situation is reminiscent of the dative alternation, where there is a meaning

difference but substantial overlap in the result, resulting in well-known pairs
like the following:

(58) a. send the letter to {them/France}

b. send {them/#France} the letter

If this is on the right track, we might expect to find particular examples where
the genitive has meanings that the PP cannot, and/or vice-versa. In fact, there
are subtle contrasts that point to a nonequivalence of the genitive and the
PP. Consider the attested example in (58a), and what happens if the genitive is
changed to a PP.
     415

(59) a. mistök hefðu verið gerð við að-hlynn-ingu hans

mistakes had been made with to-tend- him.
‘mistakes had been made with his care/treatment/tending’18
b. #? mistök hefðu verið gerð við að-hlynn-ingu að honum
mistakes had been made with to-tend- to him
‘mistakes had been made with tending to him’
A scenario that is compatible with (58a) would be one where the doctors
correctly administer a course of treatment, but later determine that that course
was a mistake as a whole. For example, they decide on a particular surgery
followed by a particular course of medication. They later decide that this
course of treatment had been a mistake; they should have chosen a different
kind of surgery or a different course of medication. In (58b), however, this
scenario is much less likely. In (58b), a more appropriate scenario would be
one where the overall course of treatment is not a mistake, but the doctors
made a mistake in the process of administering it. For example, they chose the
correct surgery, but made a mistake in performing it, or they chose the right
medication, but accidentally administered something else. That is, the PP
example more saliently brings out the activities directed toward the patient,
whereas the genitive emphasizes the event as a whole. In most circumstances,
those two readings will overlap enough that they may seem to be equivalent.
Now compare this with a case where the genitive is not possible:

(60) Þeir {að}-laga sig {að} breytingunum.

they {to-}adapt . {to} changes.the.
‘They adapt to the changes.’
a. að-lög-un að breytingunum
to-adapt- to changes.the.
‘adaptation to the changes’
b. * að-lög-un breytinganna
to-adapt- changes.the.
Evidently, the meaning of the genitive is not able to construct an overlap of the
sort seen above. Here, we do not have adapting activities defined, measured by,
or revolving around the changes. Rather, the directional meaning is a core part
of the change-of-state meaning of the verb, and must be expressed with the PP.

¹⁸ Example from the corpus at http://malheildir.arnastofnun.is/.

416  

Finally, there are some cases of speaker variation. Recall from Section 16.4.1
that ábending ‘pointing out’ allows á ‘on’ or um ‘about’ to head a PP comple-
ment. The present proposal would lead us to suspect that these prepositions
are doing subtly distinct things, semantically. Interestingly, the genitive is also
possible for some speakers, but not others.

(61) % á-bend-ing skekkjunnar

on-point- mistake.the.

Jóhannsdóttir (1995: 71) marks (61) as ungrammatical, but Halldór

Sigurðsson (p.c.) finds (27) ‘awkward, but maybe just stylistically’, but not
clearly better than (61). I have since found other speakers who accept or reject
(61). The emergence of this kind of variation is now expected, since con-
straints on the use of genitive stem from rather subtle aspects of (de)verbal
meaning, which can vary from speaker to speaker, an underspecified set of
genitive meanings, which can vary in their salience and availability, and
potentially vague/overlapping contributions of the preposition.
Despite the uncertainty and variation in some cases, there are clear patterns
as well. Both the patterns and the exceptions to them clarify what factors
underlie doubling and its absence. They support the view that what underlies
all of this is the semantic relationship between the verb root and its argument,
the role that prepositions may play in mediating that relationship, and the role
that prepositions may play in determining the verb root’s meaning.
Ultimately, I argue that the locality of these relationships points to a complex
head analysis of deverbal nouns rather than an analysis where a full verb
phrase, containing its arguments, is nominalized.

16.5 Conclusion

This chapter has focused on how Icelandic prepositional prefixing supports

three main points. First, prepositions play a dual role in constructing verb
meaning. Second, the patterns of prefixation support the complex head theory
of deverbal nouns. Third, we should distinguish adjunction from complemen-
tation for the purposes of locality.
As for the first point, specific cases can be hard to distinguish in practice,
but there is a clear sense that prepositions (i) may or may not have meaning of
their own, and (ii) may or may not condition special meaning on the verb root.
We have seen how these distinctions come out in the denominal prefixing
     417

patterns. In deverbal nouns, prefixing is connected to special verb meaning,

whereas heading a PP is connected with independent P meaning.
This brings us to the second point. The range of patterns in denominal
prefixing would be hard to understand if deverbal nominals were built on top
of verb phrases. The locality between the root and the preposition would be the
same in all cases.

(62) nP

n (VoiceP)

(Voice) vP

v PP

√ root v P …

When prefixing occurs only on nouns, a movement account would require

skipping the verb (possibly violating the Head Movement Constraint), or
moving to the verb only when the verb moves further. Even with such
stipulations, such movement should not have any effect on the lexical mean-
ing, contrary to fact.¹⁹ Finally, it is not clear why such movement would
sometimes but not always involve doubling—again in a way that is connected
to lexical meaning. In contrast, the complex head analysis explains why such
patterns arise in the first place, and how they connect to lexical semantics.
Finally, if we accept that prefixing really is to the noun, and not the verb, it is
clear that we have to distinguish that structure from the complementation
structure. The general intuition pursued here is that complex head formation
allows P to attach to a noun without the n head intervening between it and the
root. It seems that the relation between terminals within a complex head is
closer than the relation of those terminals to the complement—but the
complement must be visible at least sometimes (e.g. when there is only one
category-determining head). I suggest that this may give us a handle on
synthetic compounds of idioms like blow the whistle, whistle-blowers, ??blow-
ers of whistles, or break the ice, ice-breaker, *breaker of ice. If we form synthetic
compounds by adjoining the nonhead to the head n directly, it may allow the

¹⁹ Such movement could, however, be expected to have focus-like effects, like what is found with
verb doubling in predicate clefts, as pointed out to me by Enoch Aboh (p.c.).
418  

nonhead and the root to see each other in a way that it not possible in the
phrasal counterpart.

(63) a. vP b. nP

v DP n PP
the whistle
√ blow v v n of whistles
-er
√ blow v
X

c. n

n n

√ whistle n v n
-er
√ blow v

This latter point underscores the point that even when we are not building
words on top of phrases, we are still doing it in the syntax, with systematic
syntactic principles, which cut across the classic word/phrase distinction.

Acknowledgments

Unless otherwise specified, the data in this chapter come from my own elicitation fieldwork
with Icelandic speakers, as part of a larger project on nominalizations. I have discussed
examples related to this project with Anton Karl Ingason, Atli Snær Ásmundsson,
Ásgrímur Angantýsson, Bolli Magnússon, Dagbjört Guðmundsdóttir, Einar Freyr
Sigurðsson, Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson, Eva Hrund Sigurjónsdóttir, Gísli Rúnar Harðarson,
Halla Hauksdóttir, Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson, Hinrik Hafsteinsson, Iris Edda
Nowenstein, Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson, Karitas Bjarkadóttir, Kristín Bjarnadóttir, Kristín
Björg Björnsdóttir, Lilja Björk Stefánsdóttir, Oddur Snorrason, Sigríður Sigurjónsdóttir,
Sigríður Sæunn Sigurðardóttir, Sigríður Mjöll Björnsdóttir, Þórhallur Eyþórsson, and
Þorbjörg Þorvaldsdóttir. I cannot begin to express my gratitude to you all for taking the
time to discuss this material with me, and sharing your judgments! Each elicited example in
this chapter has been discussed with at least four native speakers. Thanks also to the
participants at MarantzFest 2019, the Princeton Symposium on Syntactic Theory in 2019,
and the Syntax Reading Group at Yale.
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 Language Index

Note: Bold type is used to indicate significant discussion.

Archi 43–52 Japanese 96, 103–4

Jingpo 104
Catalan 68
Chácobo 364–5, 376–86 Korean 196, 267, 270–1
Ch’ol 140–5, 147–54, 157–68
Chuj 140–64, 167–8 Mayan 139–41, 167–8
see also Ch’ol, Chuj
Dutch 33–7, 129 Mẽbengokre 364–5, 369–76

English 91–2, 109, 241–50, Navajo 256

313–4, 414
Polish 181, 338–57, 361
French 128, 315–22, 325–34
Romanian 317, 320, 322–5
German 37–42, 92–5, 98–100, 298–9
Greek 98, 103–4, 269, 355–7 Spanish 95–100
Gujarati 49–52
Turkish 96
Hebrew 53–84
Hiaki 205–13, 219, 227–9 Udmurt 173–184

Icelandic 391–2, 397 Yaqui, see Hiaki

 Index
Note: Bold type is used to indicate significant discussion.
affixation height 14–5
agreement 17, 29–51, 140–1, 190–1
nominal, see concord
possessive 177, 184–9, 194–5
syntax of agreement 17, 30
allosemy 396–9
Argument Structure Nominals 111–4
adjectival 119–24
architecture 126–31
short 114–8, 131–6
long 124
verbal 122–4
see also Complex Event Nominals,
derived nominals, deverbal nominals,
event nominals, nominalization, zero
nominals
ASN, see Argument Structure Nominals
bare nominalization, see zero nominals
CEN, see Complex Event Nominals
change of state verbs 241–50
Chomsky’s (1970) ‘Remarks on
Nominalization’ 25–8, 84, 309
clausal nominalizations 213, 261–71
Complex Event Nominals 11, 54–7, 141–9,
394–6
see also Argument Structure Nominals,
derived nominals, deverbal nominals,
event nominals, nominalization, zero
nominals
concord 31–3, 37–42
verbal domain 42–3, 187–91
single domain 43–9
multiple domains 49–52
discourse structure 302–6
double nominative 365
double unmarked, see double nominative
derivation 62, 134–7, 234–9, 325–32
derived nominals 10–4, 112, 143, 342–4
prefixing 401–16
see also deverbal nominals
deverbal nominals 16, 173–4, 242–3
compositional 234–6
ergativity 140, 145–6
event nominals 212–9
see also Argument Structure Nominals,
Complex Event Nominals
event structure 249–52
experiencer verbs, see psych verbs
functional heads 164–7, 219–25, 396
function nominals 332–5
complex 328–32
(non-)eventive 314–5, 319–22, 330–2
simplex 326–8
gerunds 91–3, 115–8, 174–8, 309–10, 312
Grimshaw’s (1990) Typology of derived
nominals’ 10–4, 56, 68, 111–2
heterogeneity hypothesis 313–315
homogeneity hypothesis 311–3
Layering, see Phrasal Layering Analysis
Lebeaux Effect 114–8, 133
Lexicalism 233
morpheme 36, 108, 141–6, 158–67, 170–1,
215–6, 377, 383
morphological marking 43, 57–62, 284, 347
morphosyntax 112, 226–7, 371
nominalization 90, 100
D-based 103
case-domain 386–9

n-based 100–5, 109, 357–9
syntactic 136–7, 159, 412–3, 416–8
variation 91–9
nominalization pattern 54–62, 350
participal relative clauses 183–4
passive 53, 57–69, 72–3
impersonal 279, 298–305
in nominals 119–125
see also Voice
phase heads 102, 234, 399
Phrasal Layering Analysis 392, 395
Phrase Structure Grammar 26–7
polysemy 170–3, 201–2
prefixing 391–4
projections 281, 296, 306
clitic-like 286–7
lexical 291–3
Maximal 292, 296, 297
thematic 280, 283–4
propositional nominals 257–63,
265–72
propositional proforms 272–75
psych verbs 247–52, 344–57
relative nominals 171–4, 183–9, 205–12
argumentless 217–8
result nominals 155–7, 178–9, 226
see also R-nominals
 449
roots 149–51
result 236–7
semantic requirement 159–64
R-nominals 11
see also result nominals
SASN, see Argument Structure
Nominals
syntactic categories 28
syntactic word formation 112, 234–8
templatic morphology 57–8
verbal agreement, see agreement
verbalization 105–8
Voice 64–68
impersonal passive 129–31
non-active 68–75
see also Passive
word formation, see syntactic word
formation
X-bar theory 27–8, 203, 230
zero derived nominals, see zero
nominals
zero nominals 237–52, 286–98
ZN, see zero derived nominals
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OXFORD STUDIES IN THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS
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1 The Syntax of Silence
Sluicing, Islands, and the Theory of Ellipsis
by Jason Merchant
2 Questions and Answers in Embedded Contexts
by Utpal Lahiri
3 Phonetics, Phonology, and Cognition
edited by Jacques Durand and Bernard Laks
4 At the Syntax-Pragmatics Interface
Concept Formation and Verbal
Underspecification in Dynamic Syntax
by Lutz Marten
5 The Unaccusativity Puzzle
Explorations of the Syntax-Lexicon Interface
edited by Artemis Alexiadou,
Elena Anagnostopoulou, and Martin Everaert
6 Beyond Morphology
Interface Conditions on Word Formation
by Peter Ackema and Ad Neeleman
7 The Logic of Conventional Implicatures
by Christopher Potts
8 Paradigms of Phonological Theory
edited by Laura Downing, T. Alan Hall,
and Renate Raffelsiefen
9 The Verbal Complex in Romance
by Paola Monachesi
10 The Syntax of Aspect
Deriving Thematic and Aspectual Interpretation
Edited by Nomi Erteschik-Shir
and Tova Rapoport
11 Aspects of the Theory of Clitics
by Stephen Anderson
12 Canonical Forms in Prosodic Morphology
by Laura J. Downing
13 Aspect and Reference Time
by Olga Borik
14 Direct Compositionality
edited by Chris Barker and Pauline Jacobson
15 A Natural History of Infixation
by Alan C. L. Yu
16 Phi-Theory
Phi-Features Across Interfaces and Modules
edited by Daniel Harbour, David Adger,
and Susana Béjar
17 French Dislocation
Interpretation, Syntax, Acquisition
by Cécile De Cat
18 Inflectional Identity
edited by Asaf Bachrach and Andrew Nevins
19 Lexical Plurals
by Paolo Acquaviva
20 Adjectives and Adverbs
Syntax, Semantics, and Discourse
Edited by Louise McNally
and Christopher Kennedy
21 InterPhases
Phase-Theoretic Investigations of
Linguistic Interfaces
edited by Kleanthes Grohmann
22 Negation in Gapping
by Sophie Repp
23 A Derivational Syntax for
Information Structure
by Luis López
24 Quantification, Definiteness,
and Nominalization
edited by Anastasia Giannakidou
and Monika Rathert
25 The Syntax of Sentential Stress
by Arsalan Kahnemuyipour
26 Tense, Aspect, and Indexicality
by James Higginbotham
27 Lexical Semantics, Syntax,
and Event Structure
edited by Malka Rappaport Hovav,
Edit Doron, and Ivy Sichel
28 About the Speaker
Towards a Syntax of Indexicality
by Alessandra Giorgi
29 The Sound Patterns of Syntax
edited by Nomi Erteschik-Shir and Lisa Rochman
30 The Complementizer Phase
edited by Phoevos Panagiotidis
31 Interfaces in Linguistics
New Research Perspectives
edited by Raffaella Folli and Christiane Ulbrich
32 Negative Indefinites
by Doris Penka
33 Events, Phrases, and Questions
by Robert Truswell
34 Dissolving Binding Theory
by Johan Rooryck and Guido Vanden Wyngaerd
35 The Logic of Pronominal Resumption
by Ash Asudeh
36 Modals and Conditionals
by Angelika Kratzer
37 The Theta System
Argument Structure at the Interface
edited by Martin Everaert, Marijana Marelj,
and Tal Siloni
38 Sluicing
Cross-Linguistic Perspectives
edited by Jason Merchant and Andrew Simpson
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39 Telicity, Change, and State 57 The Interaction of Focus, Givenness,

A Cross-Categorial View of Event Structure and Prosody
edited by Violeta Demonte A Study of Italian Clause Structure
and Louise McNally by Vieri Samek-Lodovici
40 Ways of Structure Building 58 The Morphosyntax of Gender
edited by Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria by Ruth Kramer
and Vidal Valmala
59 The Morphosyntax of Imperatives
41 The Morphology and Phonology by Daniela Isac
of Exponence
edited by Jochen Trommer 60 Sentence and Discourse
edited by Jacqueline Guéron
42 Count and Mass Across Languages
61 Optimality-Theoretic Syntax, Semantics,
edited by Diane Massam
and Pragmatics
43 Genericity From Uni- to Bidirectional Optimization
edited by Alda Mari, Claire Beyssade, edited by Géraldine Legendre,
and Fabio Del Prete Michael T. Putnam, Henriëtte de Swart,
and Erin Zaroukian
44 Strategies of Quantification
edited by Kook-Hee Gil, Steve Harlow, 62 The Morphosyntax of Transitions
and George Tsoulas A Case Study in Latin and Other Languages
by Víctor Acedo-Matellán
45 Nonverbal Predication
Copular Sentences at the Syntax-Semantics 63 Modality Across Syntactic Categories
Interface edited by Ana Arregui, María Luisa Rivero,
by Isabelle Roy and Andrés Salanova
46 Diagnosing Syntax 64 The Verbal Domain
edited by Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng edited by Roberta D’Alessandro, Irene Franco,
and Norbert Corver and Ángel J. Gallego
47 Pseudogapping and Ellipsis 65 Concealed Questions
by Kirsten Gengel by Ilaria Frana
48 Syntax and its Limits 66 Parts of a Whole
edited by Raffaella Folli, Christina Sevdali, Distributivity as a Bridge between Aspect
and Robert Truswell and Measurement
by Lucas Champollion
49 Phrase Structure and Argument Structure
A Case Study of the Syntax-Semantics Interface 67 Semantics and Morphosyntactic Variation
by Terje Lohndal Qualities and the Grammar of Property
Concepts
50 Edges in Syntax
by Itamar Francez
Scrambling and Cyclic Linearization and Andrew Koontz-Garboden
by Heejeong Ko
68 The Structure of Words at the Interfaces
51 The Syntax of Roots and the Roots edited by Heather Newell, Máire Noonan,
of Syntax Glyne Piggott, and Lisa deMenaTravis
edited by Artemis Alexiadou, Hagit Borer,
and Florian Schäfer 69 Pragmatic Aspects of Scalar Modifiers
The Semantics-Pragmatics Interface
52 Causation in Grammatical Structures
by Osamu Sawada
edited by Bridget Copley and
Fabienne Martin 70 Encoding Events
Functional Structure and Variation
53 Continuations and Natural Language
by Xuhui Hu
by Chris Barker and Chung-chieh Shan
71 Gender and Noun Classification
54 The Semantics of Evaluativity
edited by Éric Mathieu, Myriam Dali,
by Jessica Rett and Gita Zareikar
55 External Arguments in Transitivity 72 The Grammar of Expressivity
Alternations
by Daniel Gutzmann
A Layering Approach
by Alexiadou Artemis, Elena Anagnostopoulou, 73 The Grammar of Copulas Across
and Florian Schäfer Language
edited by María J. Arche, Antonio Fábregas,
56 Control and Restructuring and Rafael Marín
by Thomas Grano
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74 The Roots of Verbal Meaning Stratal Optimality Theory

by John Beavers and by Ricardo Bermúdez Otero
Andrew Koontz-Garboden
Phonology in Phonetics
75 Contrast and Representations in Syntax by Abigail Cohn
edited by Bronwyn M. Bjorkman
and Daniel Currie Hall Quantity Superlatives and
Proportional Quantification
76 Nominalization
50 Years on from Chomsky’s Remarks by Dobrovie Carmen-Sorin
and Ion Giurgea
edited by Artemis Alexiadou and Hagit Borer
Generality and Exception
by Ivan Garcia-Alvarez
The Derivational Timing of Ellipsis
edited by Güliz Günes
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The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces Computing Optimality
edited by Gillian Ramchand and Charles Reiss by Jason Riggle
Gradience in Split Intransitivity
by Antonella Sorace
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The Place of Case in Grammar Syntactic Reconstruction in Minimalism
edited by Elena Anagnostopoulou, by Dominique Sportiche
Dionysios Mertyris, and Christina Sevdali The Syntax of Perspectival Anaphora
Phi Syntax by Sandhya Sundaresan
A Theory of Agreement Negation and Negative Dependencies
by Susana Béjar by Hedde Zeijlstra