Browsing by Author "Heinold, Simone Beatrice"

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Verbal properties of deverbal nominals : an aspectual analysis of French, German and English
(2010) Heinold, Simone Beatrice; Stein, Achim (Prof. Dr.)
Deverbal nominalisations have been analysed from various viewpoints during the last 20 years. One reason for this is their status as „cross-categorical“ elements (Alexiadou 2001); the other reason for their popularity could be that they often serve to illustrate the interaction of different linguistic modules. Among the theories discussed in this work, those which try to unite syntax, morphology and semantics (in different ways and to a different degree) are in the majority (Grimshaw 1990, Borer 1994, 2001, 2005, Ehrich/Rapp 2000, Alexiadou 2001, Lieber 2004, Meinschaefer 2004, Grimshaw/Alexiadou 2008, Alexiadou et al. 2009 ). Up to now, those approaches were however not able to provide an analysis for the complex French suffix landscape, where numerous ambiguous deverbal nominalisation processes co-exist and produce a large number of doublets (Lüdtke 1978). In my opinion, one reason for the problems with the French system is that these approaches do not consider all three areas which are of importance for the understanding of event nominalisations (syntax, semantics, morphology) to the same extent. In this dissertation I introduce an approach by means of which all three areas and their representatives (verbal argument, base verb, suffix) can be brought together on an equal level. Moreover I show how nominalisations behave in different contexts and which event types they are able to develop. In order to cope with the mentioned problems, I apply the framework of aspectual composition in the sense of Verkuyl 1972: by help of the plus principle, so-called „internal“ aspect can be derived from concrete lexical, morphological and syntactic elements in the VP (Verkuyl 1972) as well as in the NP. In my thesis I have extended the approach by Verkuyl to nominal event types by adding an additional level of calculation (represented by the derivational suffix) to the compositional principle. This analysis is supported by English and German data. Moreover the introduced system is adapted to the semantically overlapping French nominalisation suffixes -age, -ment and -(t)ion, by weakening the originally strictly temporal feature [+/-ADD TO] (Verkuyl 1972) for other than eventive contexts (results, objects, instruments, etc.). Thus doublets like miaulement/miaulage, dénazification/dénazifiage, etc. (Martin 2008) can be differentiated in their interpretations, on the one hand according to aspect, on the other hand according to their surrounding context. In order to find evidence for this thesis I have extracted neologisms from French text corpora. According to Aronoff 1976, new words represent the original, not lexicalised interpretations of lexical items. After this analysis the following properties of the French event nominalisation system emerged: the French derverbal nominalisation suffixes -age, -ment and -(t)ion differ not only according to their productivity, but also according to their aspectual interpretation. For the recursively productive -ment and the productive, but morphologically restricted -(t)ion (Lüdtke 1978), the default interpretation is a terminative event. This semantic properties however interact with the meaning of the verbal base (terminative or durative Aktionsart) and the quantification of the internal verbal argument (for other viewpoints, cf. Martin 2008, Huyghe/Marín 2007, Ferret et al. 2010). This means that in my opinion the kind of aspect that we observe in nominalisations is of lexical, compositional nature and can therefore be described with what Verkuyl 1972 calls "inner" aspect. The default interpretation of the very productive -age-process in French is the one of a weakly-durative event. In contrast to other durative processes, such as English -ing and the German nominalised infinitives, other non-eventive readings can be more easily derived for -age. Moreover the interpretation of an -age-derivative as durative depends also to a certain extent on the existence of doublets from rival processes (cf. also Ferret at al. 2010 on -ée or Martin 2008 on -(t)ion). The aspectual distinction in the French derivation system seems to be enforced by the oppositions and overlaps of the great variety of deverbal processes. Another interesting issue for French is the analysis of natural contexts, in which the derivatives come up. My extracted data shows that here (even more than in the other two languages that were examined) it is not only the suffix, but also the other elements in the event NP that influence the aspectual interpretation of the entire expression: because of its own aspectual weakness, -age prefers contexts which are also durative (such as unspecified quantified internal arguments), in order to create aspectual unambiguity for the event that it expresses.