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  • Nominalization in English:Semantic Restrictions on Argument Realization
  • Anastasia Smirnova

One prevalent assumption in the literature on nominalization is that the interpretation of external arguments in the prenominal position is governed by encyclopedic knowledge (see Marantz 1997, Harley and Noyer 2000). Thus, in the enemy’s destruction of the city, “the possessor can be interpreted as an agent/causer, based on our encyclopaedic knowledge about destroy” (Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou, and Schäfer 2009:46). Since the possessive position (Spec,DP) is compatible with a range of semantic roles, it also supports the PATIENT interpretation of the internal argument, when it appears prenominally, as in the city’s destruction.

If the interpretation of the prenominal possessive is restricted by our knowledge about the world, then it is a puzzle why the prenominal argument of destruction in (1) must be a patient, while the prenominal argument of invasion in (2) can be either an agent or a patient. The same contrast holds for imprisonment in (3) and examination in (4).

  1. (1).

    1. a. the enemy’s destruction     (*AGENT / PATIENT)

    2. b. the city’s destruction

  2. (2).

    1. a. the enemy’s invasion     (AGENT / PATIENT)

    2. b. the city’s invasion

  3. (3). the guard’s imprisonment     (*AGENT / PATIENT)

  4. (4). the doctor’s examination     (AGENT / PATIENT)

In what follows, I show that this question has not received a satisfactory explanation. I then propose that the mapping of arguments [End Page 568] in nominals is akin to argument alternations in the verbal domain (Levin 1993) and that the observed differences between (1) and (2) should be explained by the lexical semantic properties of the head nouns.

1 Argument Realization in Nominals: An Overview

Anderson (1977), focusing on the distribution of internal arguments, proposes that they can be mapped into the prenominal position if they are affected: “changed, moved, altered in status or created” (1977: 15). This analysis predicts that the internal arguments of destruction and invasion can appear prenominally ((1b) and (2b)), but it does not explain why invasion allows its prenominal argument to be interpreted agentively, while destruction does not (e.g., (1a) vs. (2a)). The same criticism applies to the analysis by Doron and Rappaport Hovav (1991) that recasts the affectedness constraint in terms of event structure.

In the literature on nominalization from the 1980s, it was assumed that the deverbal nominal inherits the argument structure of the verb and thus must realize its internal argument (see Chomsky 1981, Zubizarreta 1982, Lebeaux 1986, Roeper 1987). If the internal argument is unexpressed, as in (1a), the construction is ungrammatical under the agentive interpretation. This analysis implies that nominals such as invasion in (2a) are somehow different. This idea became a foundational assumption in Grimshaw 1990, where it is proposed that nominals that realize the internal argument (see (1b) and (2b)) and nominals that do not (see (2a)) belong to two different types, argument structure (AS) nominals and result (R) nominals, respectively. The two classes are associated with different clusters of properties. For example, ASnominals have an eventive interpretation and are mass nouns that cannot pluralize, while R-nominals refer to a result state of an action and are count nouns (see Grimshaw 1990 for the full list of diagnostics).

Subsequent research has shown that the relation between argument realization and the properties identified by Grimshaw (1990) is not as straightforward as was previously thought. Roeper (1993), Borer (2003), Newmeyer (2009), and Alexiadou (2011) have challenged the assumption that eventive interpretation predicts the argument realization pattern. For example, Roeper (1993:204) points out that the objects of undergo and need in (5) and (6) refer to events, a hallmark of ASnominals, yet they show different patterns of argument realization: the nominals in (6) are grammatical without expressed internal arguments.

  1. (5).

    1. a. *Thebes underwent the enemy’s destruction.

    2. b. *The town underwent the state’s establishment.

    3. c. *The disease underwent the doctor’s eradication. (Roeper 1993:202, (58a,b,h))

  2. (6).

    1. a. Bill underwent the school’s examination.

    2. b. John underwent the FBI’s investigation.

    3. c. The child needs the court’s supervision. (Roeper 1993:203–204, (64b,c,e)) [End Page 569]

While Roeper (1993:204) treats the argument realization pattern in (6) as a lexical idiosyncrasy, I would like...

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