Argument structure and morphologically underived nouns in Spanish and English

Abstract

One of the main topics on the study of the relationship between argument structure and lexical categories is the proposal that nouns (and adjectives) structurally do not introduce arguments. This proposal is matched by some morphological facts, such as the one that observes that AS-nominals have to carry overt nominalizers. In this paper, we address some previously unexplained counterexamples to this generalization involving cases of morphological conversion relating nouns to verbs. We argue that these cases of conversion have to be divided in two groups, and that there is one class that carries verbal structure, even though the morphological make up does not reflect this directly. We argue that these cases have to be dealt with by using portmanteau exponents that synthetically lexicalize verbal projections and a syntactic nominalizer. In doing so, this article provides evidence in favour of the hypothesis that single exponents can lexicalize series of heads.

Word storage and computation

“…Thus, in this theory there is a very clear cut between irregularity (stored in the lexical entry, non-symbolic) and regularity (computed through combination of morphemes via symbolic generalisations). Finally, Nanosyntax is a Neo-constructionist framework that however falls into the mixed approaches to the extent that the exponent list contains entries for single morphemes, allowing decomposition of a complex word, but systematically also entries that correspond to a whole irregular word (Caha 2009;Dékány 2012;Fábregas 2007aFábregas , 2007bFábregas , 2009Fábregas , 2014aFábregas , 2014bLundquist 2009;Muriungi 2008;Ramchand 2008;Ramchand and Svenonius 2014;Starke 2002Starke , 2009Starke , 2014aStarke , 2014b. In contrast to DM, however, the main proposal in Nanosyntax is that exponents are not necessarily introduced in headsterminal nodesbut can actually correspond to the spell out of whole phrases.…”

Algunos problemas de los sufijos con lectura de contacto brusco

“…(18a) muestra que los nombres de evento complejo lo permiten; como se ve en (18b), los de evento simple solo lo hacen muy marginalmente, y nuestros sustantivos de contacto brusco los rechazan claramente (18c). Esto ha recibido habitualmente la explicación de que ciertas preposiciones asociadas a la proyección de argumentos solo están legitimadas en el interior de grupos verbales (Fábregas 2014), de donde se sigue -como por otro lado muestra composicionalmente la estructura morfológica-que solo (18a) contiene un autén-tico sintagma verbal. De aquí derivamos la siguiente consecuencia para nuestros nombres de contacto brusco: ALGUNOS PROBLEMAS DE LOS SUFIJOS CON LECTURA DE CONTACTO BRUSCO i) La lectura de contacto brusco no se debe a la presencia de un núcleo verbal que introduzca estructura argumental Pasemos a una segunda propiedad.…”

Morphological variation in Spanish

“…At a minimum, an operation of Insertion is required to spell out the formal features, and this is as much as a system like Nanosyntax (Starke 2002(Starke , 2009(Starke , 2014Caha 2007Caha , 2009Fábregas 2007Fábregas , 2013Fábregas , 2014Ramchand 2008;Svenonius, Ramchand, Taraldsen & Starke 2009) assumes. But the framework where Embick & Noyer (2001) incardinate their study, Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993Harley 1995;Marantz 1997Marantz , 2000Harbour 2003;Embick 2010;Bobaljik 2012) proposes a longer series of operations -fusion, fission, morphological merger...-mediating between formal features and exponents before spell out.…”