Tutorial: the Syntax of Nominalizations
Tutorial: The syntax of nominalizations
Instructor: Laura Grestenberger Time: Tue, 4-6 p.m. [email protected] Location: Grays, Room 2 Spring 2013 O ce hours: F 1-3 p.m., Boylston 309
1 Course description
Nominalizers such as the ubiquitous English su x -ing have featured prominently in the debate on the division of labor between syntax and the lexicon and have variously been used as arguments against and in favor of assuming a separate module for morphology. For beginning linguists, this topic can therefore provide access to some of the current theoretical frameworks in syntactic and morphological theory that have addressed nominalizations, such as Distributed Morphology or Lexical Functional Grammar. Nominalizations are interesting because of their syntactic and semantic properties: They often seem to have the `internal' syntax of a verb, but the `external syntax of a noun. For example, in both (1) a. and b., `the city' carries the same theta-role (theme), yet it bears dierent case (acc. in a., gen. in b.):
(1) a. The Romans destroyed the city. b. The Romans' destruction of the city.
A central part of the course will be to discuss in what relation nominalizations such as destruction in (1) b. stands to verbs like destroy. Taking English cases like (1) as the starting point, this course will provide an overview of the types of nominalizations found cross-linguistically, as well as to in- troduce their syntactic properties (case and θ-role assignment, subordination etc.). Another goal is to make students aware of the cross-linguistic constants of dierent types of nominalizations and fa- miliarize them with comparing data from dierent unrelated languages, such as Chol, Sakha, and Latin. Furthermore, students will be required to read the theoretical literature concerned with the role nominalizations play in dierent approaches to syntactic theory. This will introduce them to theoretical debates in current syntactic theory, but also familiarize them with relating linguistic data to particular theoretical questions.
2 Requirements
Attendance & participation 20% Five problem sets 30% Presentation 20% Final squib 30%
1 The problem sets will be based on the readings and the linguistic data discussed in class. The papers will be made available on the course website and should be read in the order given on the syllabus. Each student is expected to give a 15-20 min. presentation of one of the articles on the reading list. The nal squib should not be longer than 3-5 pages and expound on a topic discussed in class. It can also be based on the students' own research.
3 Schedule
Week Topic Readings 1 Introduction: Nominalizations, nominals, Grimshaw 1990 ch. 1 & 2; Alexiadou argument structure 2010a 2 The lexicon/syntax debate Alexiadou 2010b; Chomsky 1970; Marantz 1997 3 Types of nominalizations I: Event nominals Alexiadou et al. 2007, pp. 495-540; Harley 2009 4 Types of nominalizations II: Agent nomi- Baker & Vinokurova 2009, Borer nals, nominal compounds 2012 5 Case in nominalizations, ergativity Alexiadou 2001, ch. 5; 6 Nominalization as subordination strategy Baker 2011, Cole & Hermon 2011
4 Readings
Alexiadou, Artemis. 2001. Functional structure in nominals: nominalizations and ergativity. Ams- terdam: John Benjamins. Alexiadou, Artemis. 2010a. Nominalizations: A Probe into the Architecture of Grammar, Part I: The Nominalization Puzzle. Language and Linguistics Compass 4/7, 496-511. Alexiadou, Artemis. 2010b. Nominalizations: A Probe into the Architecture of Grammar, Part II: The Aspectual Properties of Nominalizations, and the Lexicon vs. Syntax Debate. Language and Linguistics Compass 4/7, 512-23. Alexiadou, Artemis, Haegeman, Liliane and Melita Stavrou. 2007. Noun Phrase in the Generative Perspective. Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Chomsky, Noam. 1970. Remarks on Nominalization. In Jacobs/Rosenbaum (eds.), Readings in English Transformational Grammar, Ginn/Waltham, MA, 184-221. Cole, Peter, and Gabriella Hermon. 2011. Nominalization and case assignment in Quechua. Lingua 121/7, 1225-51. Baker, Mark. 2011. Degrees of nominalization: Clause-like constituents in Sakha. Lingua 121/7, 1164-93. Baker, Mark and Nadya Vinokurova. 2009. On agent nominalizations and why they are not like event nominalizations. Language 85/3, 517-56. Borer, Hagit. 2012. In the event of a nominal. In Everaert/Marelj/Siloni (eds.), The Theta system: Argument structure at the interface. OUP, 103-149. Grimshaw, Jane. 1990. Argument structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
2 Harley, Heidi. 2009. Syntactic event structure and nominalizations. In Giannakidou, Anastasia and Monika Rathert (eds.), Quanti cation, de niteness and nominalization. Oxford University Press, 321-44. Marantz, Alec. 1997. No escape from syntax: Don't try morphological analysis in the privacy of your own lexicon. U.Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 4/2, 201-25.
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