3. Shibatani 2018 Nominalization in Crosslinguistic Perspective Mouton
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1 Masayoshi Shibatani 2 3 12 Nominalization in crosslinguistic 4 perspective 5 6 7 1 Introduction 8 9 Shibatani (2017) in the syntax volume of this handbook series offers a bold new 10 analysis of Japanese nominalization that distinguishes between lexical and gram- 11 matical nominalizations on the one hand, and between verbal-based and nominal- 12 based nominalizations on the other. While each step of the proposed analysis is 13 justified by language-internal evidence and theoretical considerations, the paper, 14 due to space limitations, does not contain a full discussion of supporting evidence 15 that can be garnered from crosslinguistic investigations into the phenomenon of 16 nominalization. The discussions below complement those of the earlier paper by 17 presenting crosslinguistic evidence in an effort to make an even stronger case for 18 the proposed new analysis of nominalization. 19 This chapter is organized as follows. First, after a brief introduction to Shibatani’s 20 theory of nominalization, morphological evidence showing close affinity between 21 lexical nominalization and grammatical nominalization is presented (section 2). 22 Section 3 examines verbal-based grammatical nominalizations and their usage 23 patterns with a focus on NP-use and modification-use, revealing the nature of so- 24 called relative clauses. Various types of relative clauses, such as internally-headed 25 relative clauses, headless relative clauses, and restrictive relative clauses all turn 26 out to be merely uses of nominalizations and have no reality as independent struc- 27 tures. Section 4 offers functional definitions for clauses, sentences, and nominaliza- 28 tions and then shows that relative clauses are neither clauses nor sentences, contrary 29 to the widely held belief in the field. There is clear evidence such as plural mor- 30 phology and classifier marking that shows grammatical nominalizations under 31 modification-use qua relative clauses are different from clauses and sentences that 32 do not share the denotation function of nouns and nominalizations. Section 5 takes 33 up a bold new analysis of genitive/possessive constructions in terms of nominal- 34 based grammatical nominalizations. In Japanese, morphological evidence for the 35 analysis of N-based nominalizations is somewhat indirect in that only NP-use of 36 V-based and N-based nominalizations shares identical morphological marking. In 37 other languages, however, the basic structures of both N-based and V-based nomina- 38 lizations themselves are morphologically marked identically in both NP-use and 39 modification-use, supporting Shibatani’s claim that so-called genitive case or posses- 40 sive forms (e.g. boku no ‘my/mine’ in Japanese, my/mine, John’s in English) are N- 41 based nominalizations whose modification-use underlies so-called possessive con- 42 structions (boku no hon ‘my book’, my book, John’s book). Section 6 summarizes the DOI 10.1515/9781614514077-013 (Unicode 9 4/1/18 16:20) WDG-New (170mmÂ240mm) DGMetaSerifScience (OpenType) pp. 343–410 1859 Pardeshi_12_Shibatani (p. 345) 346 Masayoshi Shibatani 1 discussions and concludes the paper by looking at the form-function correlations in 2 different types of nominalizations across languages (section 6.1) and by elaborating 3 on the implications of the present study, in particular on how it reveals the theoretical 4 and descriptive issues inherent in Keenan and Comrie’s (1977) analysis of relative 5 clauses (section 6.2). Before turning to these discussions, a brief introduction to Shiba- 6 tani’s theory of nominalization is provided for the benefit of those who do not have 7 access to Shibatani (2017) and his other writings, e.g. Shibatani (2009), on this topic. 8 Shibatani defines nominalization as a metonymic process that yields construc- 9 tions, including sublexical formatives, words, and phrasal units, associated with a 10 denotation comprised of substantive or entity concepts that are metonymically 11 evoked by the nominalization structures, such as events, facts, propositions, event 12 protagonists, and resultant products or other concepts closely associated with the 13 base forms. As products, nominalizations are like nouns by virtue of their associa- 14 tion with an entity-concept denotation, a property that provides a basis for the refer- 15 ential function of a noun phrase headed by these nominals.1 Verbs and verb phrases, 16 on the other hand, are associated with relational concepts (time-stable or transient 17 properties pertaining to an entity) and play a predication function in a clause by 18 ascribing a relational concept to the referent of a subject noun phrase. They differ 19 crucially from nouns and nominalizations in not denoting things and thing-like 20 concepts and thereby in being unable to play a referential function. 21 Metonymic expressions may denote a variety of entity concepts that are closely 22 associated with the concepts denoted by the original words or larger structures, and 23 it is the speech context that determines and selects the denotation most relevant to 24 the context in accordance with the Gricean Cooperative Principle, which requires 25 that speakers be contextually relevant at the time of utterance. For example, the 26 United States may metonymically denote a variety of entities closely associated with 27 the country of this name, but only a contextually relevant interpretation would be 28 intended by the speaker and would be chosen by the hearer – e.g. the sitting US 29 president in the United States decided to attack the Islamic State’s forces inside Syria, 30 or a US women’s soccer team in the United States defeated China 1–0 to advance to 31 the semifinals of the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Likewise, the lexical nominali- 32 zation half-pounder, based on the noun half-pound and used in an expression like 33 Give me a half-pounder, may denote a hamburger in a fast-food restaurant or a can 34 of tobacco in a smoke shop. While many lexical nominalizations, listed as nouns in 35 the lexicon, tend to have more uniform, fixed denotations, grammatical nominaliza- 36 tions, which are created for the nonce, do not have fixed denotations, and speech 37 context plays an important role in determining and selecting the references most 38 consistent with the context. 39 40 1 Denotation refers to the relationship between a linguistic form and concepts, both entity- and 41 relational-concepts, connected with it, while reference is the denotation-mediated relationship 42 between a nominal linguistic form and a real (or imaginary) world entity. (Unicode 9 4/1/18 16:20) WDG-New (170mmÂ240mm) DGMetaSerifScience (OpenType) pp. 343–410 1859 Pardeshi_12_Shibatani (p. 346) Nominalization in crosslinguistic perspective 347 1 For example, the Spanish grammatical nominalization [el [que Ø es blanco]NMLZ] 2 (the [NMLZR Ø is white]) ‘the one which is white’ can refer to a range of objects 3 classed as masculine, instantiating its denotation of an entity that is white. In actual 4 usage, the context and the Gricean Cooperative Principle determine the reference. 5 So, El que es blanco would be understood to be referring to a white car when uttered 6 in response to the question ¿Qué coche te gusta? “Which car do you like?” and a 7 white hat when it answers the question ¿Qué sombrero usas hoy? “Which hat do 8 you wear today?”. There is nothing like a deletion of a head noun or a pronominal 9 element involved here. The [el [que Ø es blanco] is a complete structure, a gram- 10 matical argument nominalization (see section 3.2), whose reference in discourse is 11 determined by the context, exactly like the determination of the actual reference of 12 a metonymic expression such as the United States following questions like “Who 13 decided to attack the Islamic State’s forces inside Syria?” or “Who defeated China 14 1–0 to advance to the semifinals of the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup?” or the like. 15 16 17 2 Lexical and grammatical nominalizations 18 19 As a way of motivating less studied grammatical nominalizations, Shibatani (2017) 20 discusses what he calls stem nominalization in Japanese that derives nouns (lexical 21 nominalizations) from verb stems by attaching the -Ø suffix to vowel ending stems 22 (e.g. nagare-ru [flow-PRS] ‘flows’ > nagare ‘flowing, a stream’) and the -i suffixto 23 consonant ending stems (e.g. koor-u [freeze-PRS] ‘freezes’ > koor-i ‘ice’). These lexical 24 nominalizations abound in Japanese and their forms nicely illustrate the metonymic 25 nature of nominalizations as they occur either in isolation as in these examples or, 26 more prevalently, in compound forms (e.g. nezi+mawas-i [screw+turn-NMLZR] ‘screw 27 driver’) that denote states and events (kumor-i ‘cloudy state’, hasir-i ‘running/race’), 28 event protagonists (sur-i ‘a pick pocket’ hito+goros-i [person+kill-NMLZR] ‘a killer’, 29 hi+yato-i [day+employ-NMLZR] ‘a person employed on daily basis’), instruments 30 (hasam-i ‘scissors’), resultant objects (age ‘fried tofu’), locations (watas-i ‘a landing’), 31 and others that are metonymically related to the meanings of the verb stems. 32 While these lexical nominalizations, as nouns, must be distinguished from gram- 33 matical nominalizations that are typically larger in size than words and hence are 34 not nouns, Shibatani speculates that the stem nominalization in question was once 35 a productive grammatical nominalization on the basis of what Yamada (1908) calls 36 mokuteki juntaigen “purposive grammatical nominalization”, shown in the following, 37 where the -Ø/-i suffixes are seen in the adverbial use of what appear to be gram- 38 matical nominalizations.2 39 40 41 42 2 Adverbial use of nominalizations, not discussed in this chapter is very common across languages.