Structure Participants in Derived Nominals
Bożena Rozwadowska
Wrocław University
I will bring together the results and conclusions reached independently by various scholars, which, when taken together, seem to confirm the hypothesis that event structure templates are an important level of representation in the account of argument distribution in derived nominals. Following (reference to my previous work), I will demonstrate that various types of event participants differ in their role in event identification, which, in turn, determines their syntactic realization in event-nominals. Then I will argue that this is related to finer distinctions among possible event templates in the spirit of recent developments such as, e.g. Rappaport Hovav & Levin (1998, 1999) and various attempts to analyze psych predicates in terms of event structure representations (Arad 1998, 1999 Pylkkänen 2000, Biały in progress). If psych predicates are associated with well defined, specific and systematic event structure configurations (different from or similar to those that represent non-psych predicates), we expect this to be reflected accordingly in the syntax of their nominalizations. Furthermore, if psych eventualities are not uniform in this respect (as argued in the literature), those differences within psych-eventualities should also have a reflection in the syntax of derived nominals. I will investigate this issue in cross-linguistic perspective. I will argue that the projection of arguments in nominalizations is mediated by aspectual type, or in other words, event type. So, for instance, activities and states (in contrast to accomplishments) are simple events, arguably identified through one participant (one identifier per event). We could then say that intransitive activities and psych eventualities (despite two syntactic arguments in verbal projections) have only one “structure participant” (cf. RH&L) (or event identifier, as in my previous work), which is relevant for their syntactic realization in derived nominals. Thus, Experiencer is the event identifier (as is Agent in activities), and accordingly it is realized as an adnominal possessive satellite in nominals (e.g. John’s amusement (with the jokes)/*by Mary and its cross-linguistic counterparts). Developing further the ideas of Arad and Pylkkänen, we can say (following Bialy in progress) that psych eventualities are what Rappaport Hovav and Levin treat as temporally dependent co-existing sub-events with one event variable, which is identified through one structure participant only. What is interesting is the convergence between the analysis of psych eventualities conducted on the basis of various syntactic and semantic properties of verbal projections with psych predicates and the argument distribution in derived nominals investigated on independent grounds. This line of reasoning thus provides a reasonable explanation why intransitive activity predicates and seemingly transitive psych predicates nominalize in a similar way w.r.t. the distribution of their arguments. It is due to their simple non-transitive event structure with one event variable and one structure participant. By-phrase is licensed only by transitive (temporally independent) complex events, and thus we do not have it either in activities or in stative psych eventualities. As expected, the peculiar psych properties are present only on their stative interpretation. On the agentive interpretation, imposed on psych verbs with various degrees of acceptability, psych predicates behave like agentive transitive predicates. Also, the analysis of Polish derived nominals confirms recent developments in the area of the so called psych-phenomenon, in particular, the division of OE verbs into two subclasses, causative stative verbs, and causative non-stative verbs (cf. Bialy (in progress)). It seems that indeed in the area of derived nominals in Polish we observe different patterns. Example (1) contrasts with (2):
(1) a. zainteresowanie Marka Zosią /*przez Zosię
interest Mark-Gen Zosia-Instr / by Zosia
'John's interest in Zosia.'
b. zachwyt Tomka Marią / *przez Marię
admiration Tomek-Gen Mary-Instr/ by Mary
'Tomek's admiration for Mary.'
(2) a. przerażenie Marka przez złodzieja/*złodziejem
scaring Mark-Gen by thief / *thief-Instr
b. zdenerwowanie nauczycielki przez ucznia/ *uczniem
making-angry teacher-Gen by pupil / pupil-Instr
The nominals in (2) allow the by-phrase with the possible Agentive interpretation, whereas the nominals in (1) do not. This seems to confirm the proposals made for various languages that among psych predicates we can identify stative and eventive verbs. Accordingly, I will suggest that respective event structure representations are as in (3a-b):
(3) a. [x <STATE> ]
b. [ e CAUSE [BECOME [y <STATE> ] ] ], where e is an event
To conclude, I suggest that the syntactic realization of arguments of e-nominals is related to the complexity of event structure. In particular, psych nominals describing the so called causative states provide evidence for the claim that dyadic predicates are intransitive at the event structure level and with respect to argument realization in e-nominals behave like simple action events (i.e. activities). Derived nominals support event-based theories such as e.g. RH&L (1998), relating verb meanings to the internal constitution of events. Also, the analysis of Polish derived nominals confirms recent developments in the area of the so called psych-phenomenon, in particular, the division of OE verbs into two subclasses, causative stative verbs, and causative non-stative verbs (as suggested for Polish in Bialy (in progress)). At the same time, I will argue (contra Bialy) that non-stative psych predicates differ from standard accomplishments.
Selected References:
Arad, Maya (1998). VP Structure and the Syntax-Lexicon Interface. Doctoral Dissertation, University College London.
Arad, Maya (1999). What counts as a Class? The Case of Psych Verbs. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 35: 1-23. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Biały, Adam (in progress). Polish Psych Predicates at the Lexicon-Syntax Interface in Cross-linguistic Perspective. PhD dissertation. University of Wrocław.
Cornilescu, Alexandra (1999). Aspect and Nominalizations. The Case of Romanian. In Istvan Kenesei (ed.) Crossing Boundaries. John Benjamins. 211-236.
Grimshaw, Jane (1990) Argument Structure. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
Levin, Beth and Malka Rappaport Hovav (1999). Two Structures for Compositionally Derived Events. Nortwestern University and Bar Ilan University ms.
Pylkkänen, Liina (2000). On Stativity and Causation. In: Carol Tenny and James Pustejovsky (eds.) Events as Grammatical Objects. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Rappaport Hovav, Malka and Beth Levin (1998). Building Verb Meanings. In: Miriam Butt and Wilhelm Geuder (eds.) The Projection of Arguments. Lexical and Compositional Factors. Stanford: CSLI Publications.