Nominalizations

Nominalized verb phrases have been identified as a possible source of passive and impersonal constructions by Langacker & Munro (1975), Langacker (1976), and Givón (1981), with exemplification drawn almost exclusively from Uto-Aztecan languages, but have received relatively less attention than other sources (reflexive markers, generalized subject constructions, 3rd person plural constructions, inactive auxiliaries + passive participles, etc.). The aim of this article is to review the available evidence concerning passive and impersonal constructions derived from nominalized VPs, with a view to establishing whether they are cross-linguistically recurrent, and robust as a type. Such a review reveals that there are overall a few instances of passive/impersonal construc-tions that are likely to derive from nominalized VPs. In many of the other cases in which a nominalized VP has been hypothesized to be the source of a given voice construction there is no conclusive evidence for reconstruct-ing such a source, and in some cases even an alternative source can be posited. Even in this unfavourable situa-tion, however, a tentative scenario of how nominalized VPs might evolve into voice constructions may be sketched, in order to do justice to the few cases in which such a development appears to have taken place. The onset stage of this development, in particular, capitalizes on the possibility nominalized VPs offer to manipulate the argument structure of the verb by keeping the initiator of the event off the stage.

This paper discusses three approaches to the semantics of event nominalizations and adverbial modification: the  Davidsonian account, the Kimian account, and the truthmaker account. It argues that a combination of all three accounts is needed for the semantics of the full range of event, trope, and state nominalizations in English.

We take our central subject matter in this book to be a direct account of the syntax of psych nominalizations in two related languages, English and German. We explore the hypothesis that there is a close parallelism between the psych verbal and nominal domain. We outline a typology of psych verbs which serves as an organizing principle for the discussion of the typology of psych nominals in English and German.

In Akan, nouns can be formed from both lexical and non-lexical categories. This paper deals with the formation of nouns from noun phrases. It looks at the derivational processes involved as well as the parts of the construction that remain as part of the derived noun. The paper argues that the derived noun, as noted by Mensah (2003), is an economic way of conveying the full meaning of the structure from which the noun was derived. To this extent, only those elements of the phrase that are central to the expression of the meaning of the construction will remain as part of the derived noun.

In this paper we propose a syntactic analysis of dative DPs in ditransitive constructions in Russian, answering three questions: (I) what semantic roles the indirect object realizes; (II) how it is syntactically ordered with respect to the direct object realizing the theme argument, and (III) how the first two issues are related to the morphological encoding of the indirect object, as a PP or as a morphologically case-marked DP. Addressing first question (II) we show that two kinds of syntactic hierarchies between the two internal arguments of a ditransitive configuration coexist, and that there are two sorts of datives that are hierarchically higher than the theme: those that can reconstruct and those that cannot. We then establish an interpretative correlation between these two types of dative DP, showing that the former is locational and the latter is not, providing the answer to question (I) and elucidating what underlies the morphological similarity, question (III). The interpretative and syntactic differences between scrambled and base generated high datives lead us to claim that in Russian, dative ditransitives have two distinct underlying structures that are not derivationally related. A scalar approach to event structure enables us to pinpoint the interpretative correlate of each type of dative (locational vs. non-locational) and provides a conceptual argument in favor of a non-synonymy non-derivational approach we pursue here: a path scale encoding event schema cannot be transformed into a different scale based event schema due to movement of the dative DP. Finally, the scalar approach allows us to identify the lexical correlates of a possessive interpretation of the high dative vs. a more beneficiary-like interpretation. Extent scales allow the former whereas property and path scales facilitate the other.

Cet article traite des noms désadjectivaux comptables, appelés 'noms d'occurrences', à partir d'un ensemble de données recueillies dans le frWaC. Nous montrons que ces noms ont des valeurs différentes de celles de leurs contreparties massives, qui dénotent majoritairement des propriétés. Les noms d'occurrences ont des lectures variées, et peuvent renvoyer ou non à un argument de l'adjectif correspondant ; leur valeur est conditionnée par la classe sémantique de l'adjectif de base. Nous suggérons également que l'opposition propriété / occurrence dans le domaine des désadjectivaux est parallèle au contraste événement / résultat pour les déverbaux.

In this paper we will analyze the behavior of relational adjectives in Spanish, revisiting the analysis made in Fábregas (2007, forthcoming) under the light of Radical Minimalism (Krivochen, 2011 a, b, c). We will take a look at the Relational Semantic Structure (RSS) of the category Adjective, following the lines of Mateu (2000 et. seq.), and then analyze their syntactic instantiation and derivation to build fully-fledged DPs.

Keywords: Radical Minimalism, roots, procedural nodes, relational adjectives, syntax-semantics interface.

Astonishing complexities of South American languages have been puzzling linguists for a long time now. One reason for this is the overall lack of linguistic data that has been impeding a detailed understanding of distinctive grammatical structures in the languages from this part of the world. One of understudied linguistic domains in South American linguistics is nominalizations. Nominalization has been much discussed for Tibeto-Burman languages (Genetti, 2011; Noonan, 1997); yet there is not much literature on nominalizations in Amazonia. This paper aims to provide a description of the forms, types, and functions of nominalizations in Murui (Witoto), a previously little described language from the Colombian part of northwest Amazonia.

The article focuses on complement clauses of nominalizations (deverbal
and deadjectival nouns) in Russian. It is proposed that several parameters,
such as semantic role, the opposition of proper argument vs. modifier, the
opposition of complex event vs. result nominals are necessary to account for
the distribution of nouns that take vs. do not take complement clauses, and
neither of them accounts for the whole distribution. In the end I propose a
new parameter, namely, the opposition of situation proper vs. occurrence
that, perhaps, can cover the widest range of nouns and their properties.

The article focuses on case marking of the arguments of deverbal nouns (action and agent nouns) in Lithuanian, with particular attention paid to argument alternation. As nominalizations derived from verbs taking nominative, accusative and genitive have already been studied, I mainly analyse nominalizations from verbs taking dative, instrumental and locative NPs, as well as PPs. Action nouns in Lithuanian retain more verbal features than agent nouns. Though action nouns tend to retain their oblique arguments, the choice of the argument with action nouns can depend on productivity, word order, semantic role and the animacy of the argument, while the alternation with agent nouns can depend on the form of the NP/PP and on the frequency of the word.

We investigate the distribution of verbal and nominal layers in Romance and Germanic nominalizations. Specifically, we examine pairs of 'verbal' vs. 'nominal' nominalizations in two Romance (Spanish & Romanian) and two Germanic (English & German) languages. Our study proposes a large spectrum of nominal and verbal properties. While these are differently instantiated among languages, the variation we find cannot be attributed to a Germanic vs. Romance parameter; instead, we find micro-variation constrained by the compatibility between the general building blocks of verbal and nominal categories. Besides the vP-layers responsible for argument structure and Aktionsart and the DP-layer responsible for the nominal external syntax, we make a case for further functional verbal and nominal layers in nominalizations: Asp(ect)P, Class(ifier)P, and Num(ber)P. These projections are in complementary distribution in some languages and co-occur in others. 1 We thank the audience of the congress Variation and change in Romance and Germanic noun phrase at the University of Amsterdam, two anonymous reviewers and the editors of this volume for comments and suggestions. Our research has been supported by a DFG (German Research Foundation) grant to the project B1, The formation and interpretation of derived nominals, as part of the Collaborative Research Center 732, Incremental specification in context, at the University of Stuttgart.

This paper provides a constructionist account of Akan constructions of the form àhòɔ ̀ déń 'strength' and àsòɔ ̀ déń 'disobedience' which had been previously analysed as compounds. Through the analysis of previously cited examples in the relevant literature and additional examples collected purposively from written sources, it is shown that the constructions exhibit a constellation of formal and semantic/pragmatic properties that get masked in a straightforward compounding analysis. Also posited is a constructional idiom whose formal structure is motivated by a typical syntactic construction (predicate adjective construction) and a prefixation schema, through the process of template unification. Thus, some of the properties of this construction are motivated by already existing constructions, even though their properties may not be entirely predictable from those other constructions, confirming that language is a network. It is shown that the construction has limited productivity because of some stringent restrictions on possible constituents. Finally, a broad semantic classification of the constructions is provided and some properties of the major classes discussed.

Muabɔsɛm
Krataa yi yɛ kɔnstrakhyen kwan so mpɛnsɛnpɛnsɛnmu wɔ Akan nsɛmfua bi te sɛ ahoɔden ne asoɔden a afoforɔ kyerɛ sɛ ɛyɛ mbɔho nsɛmfua no. Yɛpɛnsɛnpɛnsɛn mfatoho a ɛwɔ nkrataa a y'atwerɛ afa nsɛmfua a ɛtete saa yi ho nyinaa na yɛgyina so kyerɛ sɛ nsɛmfua yi wɔ semanteks/pragmateks su bi a, sɛ yɛsusu sɛ wɔyɛ mbɔho nsɛmfua a, ɛntumi ɛnna adi. Wɔ krataa yi mu no, yɛde nhyehyɛpono kyerɛ sɛdeɛ saa nsɛmfua yi teɛ ankasa ɛdefa wɔn nhyehyɛeɛ ne sɛdeɛ wɔne nsɛmfua afoforɔ di ahyia wɔ kasamu anaa kasamufa mu. Eyi kyerɛ sɛ nhyehyɛe
bi a ɛwɔ hɔ dada na ɛma saa nsɛmfua yi wɔn su no bi, sɛ mpo saa nhyehyɛe a ɛwɔ hɔ dada no ntumi nkyerɛ nsɛmfua yi su nyinaa. Eyi ɛkyerɛ bio sɛ kasaa ayɛ te sɛ ntentan a ɛkyerɛ abusuabɔ a ɛda nsɛmfua ntam. Krataa yi da no adi sɛ nsɛmfua yi nnɔɔso esiane su a yɛhwehwɛ sɛ ɛbɛda adi wɔ saa nsɛmfua yi mu nti. Awieɛ no, yɛgyina nsunsuanso a afiri mpɛnsɛnpɛnsɛnmu yi mu aba no so ɛkyekyɛ nsɛmfua yi mu na yɛkyerɛ kuo akɛseɛ no su.

Les récits de voyage de Claude d'Abbeville et d'Yves d'Évreux, relatant la tentative française d'implantation coloniale et missionnaire au Brésil, au cours des années 1613-1614, nous permettent d'étudier la mise en place d'un rapport colonial de domination symbolique par la pratique de la dénomination. En nous intéressant plus particulièrement à l'usage colonial d'attribuer de nouveaux noms propres, nous voudrions montrer ici à partir de ces textes en quoi cette pratique constitue une violence symbolique exercée envers les Indiens, comment elle nie leur droit à disposer de leur terre et d'eux-mêmes. Mais les récits de Claude d'Abbeville et d'Yves d'Évreux montrent aussi, presque malgré eux, comment l'espace symbolique du langage peut être en retour investi par les Indiens pour subvertir le « discours du maître » inhérent à l'onomastique européenne colonisatrice.

Mots clés : noms propres, récits de voyage, colonisation, évangélisation, toponymie, anthroponymie, ethnonymie

Des noms comme symphonie, sonate, roman, livre ont longtemps dérouté les linguistes. Ce n'est pas surprenant. En effet les entités qu'ils dénotent semblent avoir deux modes d'existence contradictoires, un mode d'existence « intellectuel » ou « spirituel » pointé par la langue dans une phrase comme (5) et un mode d'existence « sensible » pointé en (6), selon le type de prédicat verbal:

This paper offers a principled account for the nominalizations of dispositional evaluative adjectives. On the descriptive side, the paper shows that (i) in addition to the largely studied deverbal nominalizations, certain deadjectival nominalizations can also refer to events; (ii) the types of adjectives that enable eventive denotation are of a specific sort, namely, those deriving from Disposi-tional Evaluative Adjectives (e.g., imprudent). At the theoretical level, this paper argues that (i) dispositional deadjectival nominalizations introduce an event description not in a head but in a specifier position, as their subject of predication; (ii) in order for a word to have functional structure of the sort associated to verbs, an event description is not enough: functional projections must form a head-sequence with the event-descriptive heads; without this configuration, the merge of a fully-fledged verbal functional structure is blocked, which explains the limitations regarding temporal modification; (iii) The event present in the dispositional deadjectival nominalizations is a partial event description consisting of a head referring to the Process subevent.

The case of an aphasic patient whose spontaneous speech contains very few lexical verbs is reported. Instead of sentences with lexical verbs, the patient produces many (grammatical) copular constructions. He also substitutes lexical verbs with the copula. Although this results in ungrammatical utterances, by doing so, a resemblance of sentence structure and a degree of grammaticality of his utterances are preserved. Although the patient is more impaired in naming action than object pictures, it is unlikely that lexical retrieval diYculties are solely responsible for the paucity of lexical verbs in his speech. A series of tests revealed a profound deWcit in producing tense marking inXections and in understanding their signiWcance. We argue that the unavailability of tense features is the primary reason for the lack of lexical verbs in his speech. An alternative possibility, that the tense deWcit interacts with the verb retrieval deWcit, is also discussed. The patient has a complex lesion and language proWle, with features associated with both Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia. However, since the study focuses on his verb and tense deWcits and the grammaticality of his utterances, issues that are often discussed in relation to agrammatic Broca's aphasia, the literature that is relevant to these topics and to Broca's aphasia is reviewed, despite the diVerent diagnostic proWle of the patient. 

This paper examines the structural properties underlying the distribution and interpretation of two types of deverbal nouns in Spanish: miento nominals (e.g. hundimiento 'the sinking') and do/da nominals (e.g. secado 'the drying'); the first may combine with unaccusatives and verbs that enter the causative alternation, targeting the anticausative reading. By contrast, the latter type may select unergatives and the so-called incremental theme verbs, yielding a causative reading. Based on empirical evidence, I argue that the distributional and interpretive differences observed follow from the fact that these nominalizers are sensitive to different syntactic configurations in the event domain: building on Ramchand's decompositional analysis, I propose that the event structure of do/da nominals identifies a sequence [init i , proc i ], where subjects are interpreted as thematic Actors , and I show how this correlates with the absence of miento and the impossibility of reflexive readings (e.g. lavado 'the washing *of oneself /*by itself ').

Nominalizations are well-known features of scientific writing. Scholars have been intrigued by their form and by their functions. While these features have been widely studied, the cognitive side of nominalizations in scientific texts still needs further attention. Nominalizations contribute to the advancement of discourse and at the same time add abstraction to the processes they convey and make them become more reified in the eyes of the reader. They are not mere verbal transformations as they change completely the cognitive configuration of the process they express. With examples retrieved from the astronomy subcorpus (CETA, 2012) of the Coruña Corpus the aim is to study nominalizations in the interface between cognition and language. The ultimate goal is to complement all the theoretical-descriptive studies on the topic by approaching the cognitive dimension and build a bridge for studies on the production and understanding of English scientific register.

Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Vol.6. No.2 June 2015                         
                                                                                                                                                                  Pp. 401 – 413




Nominalization and the Discourse of Disempowerment in Human Rights Education



Abdelhak BZIOUI
Ministry of National Education, Morocco




Abstract
This paper aims at throwing light upon the possible impact of over-nominalized classroom discourse on human rights education (HRE) for social empowerment. A key human rights principle as accountability is impaired when whole man-engendered processes are nominalized; that is, deagentialized and reduced to rootless things, events, or states of being. What gives this study a rationale is that when objectified and decontextualized, processes are distanced from their agents in a startling mismatch to the core objectives of HRE which primarily endeavors to empower children by bringing the world closer to them and by teaching them how to take informed action in it for the well-being of its citizens. The study uses classroom observation for data collection and critical discourse analysis for data analysis. Nominalized language by the teacher or textbook instructions tends to breed similarly nominalized responses by the learners. However, non-nominalized language by the teacher or the textbook helps curb the nominalization tendency in the learners. As a result,  this would train them to produce agency-sensitive discourse that in turn would affect the way they perceive the network of roles, rights and responsibilities around them; that is, the set-up of responsibility and causality in the world. The findings suggest that de-nominalizing classroom discourse can help bridge the gap between words and deeds. In this breath, de-nominalization might help with the aim of changing the world through the word as Freire and Macedo (1987) advocate; a first step towards HRE for social empowerment.
Key words: agency, empowerment,  HRE,  nominalization

The case of an aphasic patient whose spontaneous speech contains very few lexical verbs is reported. Instead of sentences with lexical verbs, the patient produces many (grammatical) copular constructions. He also substitutes lexical verbs with the copula. Although this results in ungrammatical utterances, by doing so, a resemblance of sentence structure and a degree of grammaticality of his utterances are preserved. Although the patient is more impaired in naming action than object pictures, it is unlikely that lexical retrieval diYculties are solely responsible for the paucity of lexical verbs in his speech. A series of tests revealed a profound deWcit in producing tense marking inXections and in understanding their signiWcance. We argue that the unavailability of tense features is the primary reason for the lack of lexical verbs in his speech. An alternative possibility, that the tense deWcit interacts with the verb retrieval deWcit, is also discussed. The patient has a complex lesion and language proWle, with features associated with both Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia. However, since the study focuses on his verb and tense deWcits and the grammaticality of his utterances, issues that are often discussed in relation to agrammatic Broca's aphasia, the literature that is relevant to these topics and to Broca's aphasia is reviewed, despite the diVerent diagnostic proWle of the patient. 

The case of an aphasic patient whose spontaneous speech contains very few lexical verbs is reported. Instead of sentences with lexical verbs, the patient produces many (grammatical) copular constructions. He also substitutes lexical verbs with the copula. Although this results in ungrammatical utterances, by doing so, a resemblance of sentence structure and a degree of grammaticality of his utterances are preserved. Although the patient is more impaired in naming action than object pictures, it is unlikely that lexical retrieval diYculties are solely responsible for the paucity of lexical verbs in his speech. A series of tests revealed a profound deWcit in producing tense marking inXections and in understanding their signiWcance. We argue that the unavailability of tense features is the primary reason for the lack of lexical verbs in his speech. An alternative possibility, that the tense deWcit interacts with the verb retrieval deWcit, is also discussed. The patient has a complex lesion and language proWle, with features associated with both Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia. However, since the study focuses on his verb and tense deWcits and the grammaticality of his utterances, issues that are often discussed in relation to agrammatic Broca's aphasia, the literature that is relevant to these topics and to Broca's aphasia is reviewed, despite the diVerent diagnostic proWle of the patient. 

This paper examines the historical status of tense-aspect suffixes in the Kathmandu Valley and Eastern branches of Newar. By comparing across branches and triangulating with Classical Newar, the paper demonstrates that the innovative past anterior and present tense markers in Eastern Newar were derived from nominalizers. The future tense marker -i, which is found in both branches of the family, also had nominalizing functions, as did the precursors of every suffix now used in finite context in Kathmandu Newar. This suggests that the current finite morphology in the Kathmandu Valley varieties was entirely derived from nominalizers as the original system of verb agreement was lost. The mechanism for this process would have been non-embedded nominalization, a common syntactic pattern in Tibeto-Burman.

The paper (Baker & Gondo 2020) studies several issues in Dan morphosyntax: the formal differences between verbs, nouns and adjectives; two types of possessive constructions (with alienable and inalienable head nouns) and their syntactic structures; the derivation of nouns from verbs and adjectives; low and high nominalization; and possessive constructions with deverbal and deadjectival nouns. As it turns out, Baker & Gondo's analyses are incorrect in some major points: the key formal differences between verbs, adjectives and nouns have been left unnoticed due to disregard for Dan tonal morphology, and for the same reason, the tonal marking of the high nominalization has also been ignored. Baker & Gondo's syntactic analysis of the possessive construction with alienable nouns as analogous to the Saxon genitive (king's house) cannot be accepted; in fact, it can be compared with the genitive construction seen in English the house of the king. Possessive constructions with deverbal and deadjectival nouns are not as radically opposed as one may think after reading Baker & Gondo's paper; in fact, a noun derived from an intransitive verb can sometimes appear as an alienable noun with respect to its theme, and, conversely, a deadjectival noun can appear as a relational noun with respect to the modified noun.

Artikuluan erakusten da -era, -keta, -pen bezalako atzizkien bitartez eratorritako euskarazko nominalizazioek ere Alexiadouk (2001) aipatzen dituen ezaugarri batzuk dauzkatela (e.g. irakurketa ebentiboaren ezakusatibitate eta pasibotasuna, genitibodun argumentuen beharra) baina, ostera, oso gertaera egitura urria dutela (adberbiorik eza, posposizio-sintagmek -ko hartu beharra); ondorioz, nominalizazio eratorrien irakurketa ebentiboa oso mugatua da euskaraz. Aitzitik, -t(z)e buru duten perpaus nominalizatuek perpaus arruntean sumatzen diren aditz proiekzio guztiak dauzkate eta, batez ere, irakurketa ebentiboa permititzen dute. Horrek azalduko luke hiztun batzuendako zergatik diren arrotzak edo Martekoak zenbait nominalizazio eredu: antzeko egiturak dauzkaten zenbait hizkuntzak (i.e. ingelesak, gaztelaniak) ez bezala, euskarak erraz jo dezakeelako perpaus nominalizatuetara.

Based on Italian data, this paper focuses on the aspect-related properties of nominalizations of psychological predicates that realize the Experiencer argument as the direct object (Object Experiencer, OE). In particular, it deals with the possibility (or impossibility) of preserving the agentive/eventive semantics, available to a subset of OE verbs, in the nominal domain.