D and N are different nominalizers

Glossa a journal of general linguistics Iordăchioaia, Gianina. 2020. D and N are different nominalizers. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 5(1): 53. 1–25. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.1111 RESEARCH D and N are different nominalizers Gianina Iordăchioaia University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, DE In this paper I argue for a split between NP and DP by showing that it accounts for crucial distinctions in the behavior of nominalizations. The NP-DP split is challenged not only by competing frameworks or theories that argue, for instance, that NPs and not DPs are selected. Another challenge comes from derivational theories that reject the existence of possibly covert lexical categorizers such as N and posit instead overt functional categorizers like Classifier and especially D for nominalizations. In this latter trend, it is the NP (not the DP) whose existence is questioned. This paper argues in favor of the lexical categorizer N and for D as a necessary but exceptional nominalizer. Keywords: nominalization; lexical and functional categorizers; English; Spanish; Romanian 1 Introduction Nominalization is among the first phenomena for which a DP functional projection was posited in the ’80s (Abney 1987), next to possessor agreement in Hungarian (Szabolcsi 1983) and other crosslinguistic facts in nominal syntax (Hellan 1985). Notably, Abney’s use of the DP in his account of nominalization had a decisive contribution to the success of the DP-hypothesis and its further consequences for linguistic theory. This paper follows the tradition of Abney (1987) and offers evidence for the NP-DP hypothesis on the basis of deverbal nominalizations in English, Spanish, and Romanian, as well as some additional insights from German and Polish. All the nominalizations that I consider inherit argument structure from their base verbs, realizing at least the internal argument. For a verbal construction as in (1a), in English we can build what I will call the verbal gerund in (1b), which realizes the object with accusative case and the subject with the possessive, the nominal gerund (or Chomsky’s 1970 mixed nominalization) in (1c), which differs from the verbal gerund in realizing the object with a prepositional of-genitive, and what Chomsky (1970) calls a derived nominal in (1d), which employs a nominalizing suffix different from -ing. Other suffixes that appear in derived nominals are -ance (annoyance), -(at)ion (destruction, realization), -ment (amusement) or zero (the climb).1 (1) 1 a. b. c. d. John refused the offer. John’s refusing the offer John’s refusing of the offer John’s refusal of the offer verbal gerund nominal gerund derived nominal Chomsky (1970) also employs derived nominals with further suffixes like -ness (eagerness), -th (growth), but these will not concern us here, because either they are not deverbal, or do not typically realize nominals with argument structure. Art. 53, page 2 of 25 Iordăchioaia: D and N are different nominalizers I will argue that a proper treatment of nominalization requires both an NP and a DP projection in the nominal syntax, which are responsible for two different nominalization types with contrastive properties. I will build on some of the ideas in Abney (1987), but my focus will be on the restricted use of determiners in some nominalizations, which was noticed as early as in Lees (1960) and further mentioned in Lakoff (1970), Chomsky (1970) and many others, but has not received a satisfactory analysis yet. As illustrated in (2) (Zucchi 1993: 21), the verbal gerund differs from the nominal gerund and derived nominals in rejecting determiners, in spite of its compatibility with the possessive in (1b). I will call the nominalizations compatible with all lexical determiners full nominalizations and those that show restrictions defective, for reasons that will become clear in Section 3. Since I am considering only nominalizations that realize argument structure, my full nominalizations correspond to the complex event nominals in Grimshaw (1990) and argument structure nominals in Borer (2013). (2) a. b. the/a/that performing/performance of the song John’s/*the/*a/*that performing the song In Iordăchioaia (2014) I show that the same contrast holds for nominalizations in Romanian, Spanish, and German, as illustrated in (3) for the nominal and verbal infinitive nominalization in Spanish. The Spanish nominal infinitive patterns with the English nominal gerund and derived nominals in realizing its argument with a genitive (see de las fuentes in (3a)), and the verbal infinitive resembles the English verbal gerund in realizing the internal argument with accusative case (Plann 1981; Migual 1996). Further crosslinguistic comparisons will be discussed in Section 3. (3) a. b. Spanish nominal infinitive nominalization el/ese/aquel/un murmurar de las fuentes the/this/that/a murmur.inf of the fountains ‘the/this/that/a murmuring of the fountains’ Spanish verbal infinitive nominalization el/*ese/*aquel/*un haber él escrito esa novela the/this/that/a have.inf he written that novel.acc ‘his having written that novel’ An important difference between English and these other languages is that defective nominalizations in the latter are compatible with the definite determiner as in (3b), while in English they employ the possessive instead (see (1b) vs. (2b)). The contrast in (3) essentially shows us that the determiner in defective nominalizations has a different nature from that in full nominalizations, even when it is realized by the same lexical item. Building on Iordăchioaia (2014), I will take the contrast in the status of D to be directly related to the presence of unrestricted nominal internal syntax in full nominalizations and the lack thereof in defective ones. In the syntax-based model of Distributed Morphology (DM) I will analyze the former as nominalizations by a lexical head N (or n in DM) and the latter as missing a lexical categorizer and being instead nominalized by D. While this idea is reminiscent of Abney (1987), my account contributes new important insights for both the study of nominalization and the NP-DP debate. First, on the basis of comparative evidence from English, Spanish, Romanian, and Polish, I argue for a welldefined syntactic domain, the TP, which N/n cannot nominalize — only D can — and show how a theory of Agree as in Pesetsky & Torrego (2007) accounts for the use of lexical determiners in the different types of nominalization. This anaylsis offers a refinement Iordăchioaia: D and N are different nominalizers Art. 53, page 3 of 25 of the theory of mixed categories proposed in Borsley & Kornfilt (2000) and Kornfilt & Whitman (2011). Second, I provide new evidence that the English verbal gerund represents a nominalization of a TP by possessive D. I show how this account is superior to previous ones, and especially the more recent one in Panagiotidis (2014), which posits a special functional categorizer for ve (...truncated)