(Artemis Alexiadou) Functional Structure in Nominalizations

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TITLE "Functional Structure in Nominals: Nominalization and ergativity"
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Functional Structure in Nominals
Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (LA) provides a platform for original
monograph studies into synchronic and diachronic linguistics. Studies in LA
confront empirical and theoretical problems as these are currently discussed in
syntax, semantics, morphology, phonology, and systematic pragmatics with the
aim to establish robust empirical generalizations within a universalistic
perspective.
Series Editor
Werner Abraham
University of Groningen, Netherlands
University of California, Berkeley
University of Vienna
Advisory Editorial Board

Guglielmo Cinque, University of Venice
Gnther Grewendorf, J.W. Goethe-University, Frankfurt
Liliane Haegeman, University of Lille, France
Hubert Haider, University of Salzburg
Christer Platzack, University of Lund
Ian Roberts, University of Stuttgart
Ken Sar, Rutgers University, New Brunswick NJ
Lisa deMena Travis, McGill University
Sten Vikner, University of Stuttgart
C. Jan-Wouter Zwart, University of Groningen
Volume 42
Functional Structure in Nominals: Nominalization and ergativity
by Artemis Alexiadou
Functional Structure
in Nominals
Nominalization and ergativity
Artemis Alexiadou
University of Potsdam
John Benjamins Publishing Company

Amsterdam/Philadelphia
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Alexiadou, Artemis
Functional Structure in Nominals : Nominalization and ergativity / Artemis Alexiadou.
p. cm. (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, issn 01660829 ; v. 42)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Grammar, Comparative and general--Nominals. 2. Grammar, Comparative and
general--Ergative constructions. 3. Grammar, Comparative and general--Word formation.
4. Functionalism (Linguistics) I. Title. II. Linguistik aktuell ; Bd. 42.
P271 .A44 2001
415--dc21
isbn 90 272 2763 2 (Eur.) / 1 58811 055 9 (US) (Hb; alk. paper)
2001025181
2001 John Benjamins B.V.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microlm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. P.O.Box 36224 1020 me Amsterdam The Netherlands
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Table of contents
Acknowledgements
ix
Chapter 1
Introduction
. Some theoretical and methodological preliminaries
. Verbs and deverbal nominals in English
. Derived nominals and gerunds
. Word formation and the lexicon
. Word and category formation in DM
. An ambiguity in the nominal system
. Process versus result nominals: Grimshaws diagnostics
. The role of the event argument
. The VP analysis
. The ne structure of process nominals: a rst encounter
. Nominalization patterns across languages
. Outline
Chapter 2
The Functional Architecture of Nominalizations
. Introduction
. NPs are dominated by D
. AgrP, NumberP and GenderP
. On the A vs. A status of Spec,DP
. Some notes on the Greek DP
. Greek nominal formation
. General remarks
. Nominals derived from transitive predicates
. Nominals derived from intransitive predicates
. Nominals derived from ditransitive predicates
. Nominals derived from psychological predicates
. The verbal properties of process nominals
. DP-internal adverbs
. Morphological reexes
vi
Table of Contents
.
.
.
. Aspectual distinctions
. The structural dierences between process and result nominals
Process nominals lack tense
. Absence of phenomena related to T: EPP, ECM and raising
. Evidence for nominal tense
On the obligatory licensing of arguments within process nominals
Processes in morphological structure
Conclusion
Chapter 3
Intransitivity in Nominalization
. Event nominals are ergative constructions
. Greek event nominals
. Event nominals in English and other Germanic languages
. Event nominals in Romance
. Slavic event nominals
. Semitic event nominals
. Hungarian event nominals
. On the properties of passive nominals
. Background
. Aectedness and aspectual properties
. Referential adjectives
. No process of passivization
. The structure of process nominals revisited
. By-phrases and more on the lack of external arguments
Chapter 4
Variation in Functional Structure
. Variation in the set of verbal projections
. Presence vs. absence of C
. Presence vs. absence of Aspect
. Variation depending on the type of v/Voice (transitive vs.
intransitive)
. Variation in the set of nominal projections
. Presence vs. absence of number: licensing of adjectival
modication
. Variation depending on the type of D
. Summary
Table of Contents
Chapter 5
Nominalization and Ergativity
. The Case patterns in nominalization and ergative languages
. Unaccusativity in ergative languages
. Ergative as a lexical case
. v is decient in ergative languages
. Remarks on Case within DPs
. Genitive is a structural case
. Case as a morphological property
. Locus of genitive
. Agents, ergativity and the perfect
. Background
. The crosslinguistic distribution of the possessive agent
. Possessor subjects in the perfect
Auxiliary selection
. HAVE-BE and the perfect
. Auxiliary selection languages and only HAVE languages
. Conclusion
Chapter 6
Conclusions
References
Index
vii
Acknowledgements
This book is based on my Habilitationsschrift Post-doctoral thesis On the

Syntax of Nominalization and Possession: remarks on patterns of ergativity,
submitted to the Philosophical Faculty II of the University of Potsdam in
May 1999. It is concerned with an investigation of the phrasal architecture of
nominalizations and their relationship to other linguistic phenomena.
The book diers from the thesis both in its organization and in its content.
In particular, chapter 4 is to a great extent novel, and certain sections of the
thesis are not included here for clarity of exposition.
While working on the material in the book I have had fruitful discussions
with several people who oered helpful comments, raised interesting questions,
provided intriguing data. For all this I would like to thank Hagit Borer, Henry
Davis, Ulrike Demske, David Embick, Miriam Engelhardt, Martha McGinnis,
Eric Haeberli, Liliane Haegeman, Heidi Harley, Norbert Hornstein, Sabine
Iatridou, Graham Katz, Winfried Lechner, Renate Musan, Rolf Noyer, David
Pesetsky, Irene Rapp, Tom Roeper, Arnim von Stechow, Wolfgang Sternefeld,
Friderikos Valetopoulos, and Heike Winhardt. Very special thanks go to Alec
Marantz, Gisbert Fanselow, Melita Stavrou, and Elena Anagnostopoulou who
also provided detailed written comments. Thanks are also due to Gereon
Mller and Ursula Kleinhenz.
Parts of the material included in this study were presented at the 29th
NELS conference held at the University of Delaware in October 1998, at the
workshop on adverbs and adjunction held at the University of Tromsoe in
April 1999, at the 23rd GLOW Colloquium in Vitoria-Gasteiz in Spain in April
2000 and at various seminars at the Universities of Thessaloniki, Tbingen,
Pennsylvania and Potsdam. I thank all these audiences for their comments.
Many thanks to Werner Abraham and Kees Vaes for all their help and
guidance with the manuscript. The DFG grant AL554/1-1 is hereby gratefully
acknowledged.
Potsdam, Germany
Artemis Alexiadou
September 2000
Chapter 1
Introduction
The goal of this work is to study certain aspects of the internal structure of
nominal/determiner phrases (DPs). The body of the book is composed of
Chapters 2 to 4. These chapters contain an in depth investigation of the phrasal
architecture of nominalizations across languages and dene criteria on the basis
of which the organization of their functional structure can be determined.
Chapter 5 examines the interaction between nominalization and patterns of
ergativity, the aim being to explore the hypothesis that nominal clausal structure is analogous to ergative clausal structure.
This chapter oers an overview of the phenomena to be discussed, presents
my theoretical assumptions and sketches an outline of the approach taken in
this book.
Some theoretical and methodological preliminaries
. Verbs and deverbal nominals in English

At a supercial investigation English has dierent types of nominals with similar meaning and distribution (see Chomsky 1970, Lees 1960, Fraser 1970, and
also Marantz 1997, Harley and Noyer 1998b, Hoekstra 1999, Zucchi 1993
among others for a recent discussion). Some of these nominal constructions are
exemplied in (13):
(1) Johns criticizing the book.
(2) The barbarians destruction of the city
(3) Belushis mixing of drugs led to his demise
Gerund
Derived Nominal
Mixed Nominalization
Native speakers of English perceive the nominals in these examples as being

related to some sentential construction. Thus, for instance, the noun destruction
in (2) appears to bear the same semantic relation to the noun phrases the
barbarians and the city, as the verb destroy does in (4).
Functional structure in nominals
(4) The barbarians destroyed the city.
A more accurate inspection reveals, however, that the nominals in (13) dier
among themselves both in their distribution and in the range of interpretations they allow. I turn to a brief description of these dierences in the next
subsection.
. Derived nominals and gerunds
In English only gerund formation as in (1) is productive. According to Lees
(1960), all verbs have a corresponding gerund, but not all of them give the
corresponding derived nominal. Moreover, (1) diers from (2) in that only in
the gerundive context is the presence of an auxiliary licit:
(5) Johns having criticized the book.
Furthermore, morphological -ing axation is transparent only in gerunds.

Finally, the theme argument of derived nominals is introduced by the preposition of .
There is also an interpretive dierence between the two types of nominal
constructions. As Vendler (1967) observed, while nominals of type (1) like that
clauses and fact-NPs cannot occur with predicates such as is slow, is sudden,
takes a long time, this is not the case with nominals of type (2). This is shown
in the following examples:
(6) a. Johns performance of the song was slow.
b. Johns performance of the song was sudden.
c. Johns performance of the song took a long time.
(7) a. *Johns performing the song was slow.
b. *Johns performing the song was sudden.
c. *Johns performing the song took a long time.
Vendler claims that nominals of type (2) may denote eventualities, while
nominals of type (1) denote propositional entities.
In the literature a certain amount of consensus has emerged that gerunds
(a) are NPs and (b) directly dominate a VP node (see Abney 1987), although
the details of their syntactic analysis vary from author to author. Evidence that
English gerunds are NPs comes from the fact that they are able to appear in a
number of positions typical for NPs. For instance, they may appear as objects
of prepositions, or subjects of sentences:
Introduction
(8) a. I learned about Johns smoking stogies

b. Would Johns smoking stogies bother you?
However, it remains a matter of controversy whether the structure of derived

nominals includes a VP node or not (see Section 2).
Mixed nominalizations show properties of both groups. While their syntactic behavior is parallel to that of derived nominals, in the sense that their
direct objects are inserted by the preposition of, they are formed by -ing axation (see Chomsky 1970 and Harley and Noyer 1998b for a recent discussion).
Parsons (1990) refers to the gerunds of type (1) as verbal gerunds, while to the
ones of type (3) as nominal gerunds.
Central to the study of nominalization is the denition of the syntactic
category and the projection of the derived nominal (see for instance the overview in Lefebvre and Muysken 1988, and Siloni 1997). In general the syntactic
nature of structures showing a categorially ambiguous behavior, such as
nominalization, has not been easy to determine within most approaches formulated in the spirit of Government and Binding (GB) theory, as the distinctions
between syntactic phenomena that merely echo lexical information and those
that result from an actual syntactic operation is sometimes blurred due to miscellaneous factors. In fact, the tension between the lexicon and the syntactic
component is natural under any approach assuming a separate generative component such as the/a lexicon. In the development of GB the tension between
the lexicon and the syntax has had as a result the constant re-examination of
the division of labor between the two components. The background idea has
been the assumption that given that the grammar is a tightly organized system,
enriching one component involves widespread modications in the other components. In the next section I turn to a more detailed discussion of these issues.
. Word formation and the lexicon
Much of the work done on word formation during the early 80s was based on
the assumption that there is an independent word formation component, the
lexicon, but its interaction with the syntax is severely restricted by some version
of Lapointes (1979) Lexical Integrity Hypothesis (LIH). A recent formulation
of this principle is given in di Sciullo and Williams (1987):
(9) The Atomicity Thesis
Words are atomic at the level of phrase syntax and phrasal semantics.
The words have features or properties, but these features have no
structure and the relation of these features to the internal composition

of the word cannot be relevant in syntax.
Standardly, the way in which the LIH is enforced in many of the models is by
assuming that the word formation component is ordered prior to D-structure,
that is prior to the availability of any syntactic operations. The word formation
component and the syntax interact only in one xed point: the output of the
former is the input to the latter (cf. 10):
(10)
Lexicon
Syntax
postlexical
phonology
LF
Such views clearly state that the lexicon generates words, while the syntax
generates structures in which words are combined into phrases.
The generative aspect of the lexicon is recognized also in approaches that
allow for the burden of word formation to be divided between the lexicon and
the syntactic component. A clear example of such an approach is the discussion
between verbal (11) and adjectival (12) passives in Wasow (1977).
(11) Three poems were written by me
(12) Three poems in this book are well written
Wasow proposed that verbal passives are formed in the syntax, while adjectival
passives are formed in the lexicon. According to him, this fact correlates with
a number of dierences between the two types of passives. First of all, the lexical formation of adjectival passives is associated with idiosyncrasy in form and
meaning, e.g. the hung jury, the shaven man. Second, lexical formation cannot
interact with syntactic rules, thus no raising to object followed by passive can
take place for the adjectival passive construction, e.g. John was believed to be sick
vs. *John remained believed to be sick. Third, lexical word formation is associated with change in lexical category (verb to adjective). Hence the adjectival
passive can be modied with modiers that standardly modify adjectives, e.g.
a very driven worker. This does not hold for the verbal passive.
A similar approach has been adopted to account for the dierences
between the nominals in (1) and (2), exemplied in Section 1.1. In order to
explain the more verbal nature of gerunds, a number of researchers sided with
the view that derived nominals are the output of an operation done in the
Introduction
lexicon, while gerunds are the output of a syntactic nominalization (see Siloni
1997 for a recent discussion). On this view, the discrepancies between the two
nominal types might follow.
However, matters are not that simple. If one adopts the view that deverbal
nominals are constructed in the lexicon, then the following questions become
acute: what are the means for signaling the relations between action nominals
and their arguments as compared to the situation in verbal clauses? How are
certain verbal properties of nominalizations best to be captured, e.g. the fact
that they seem to take complements and subjects?
In recent years much work (notably inspired by Baker 1988, and Pollock
1989) can be characterized as an attempt to deny the word formation component its status as a generative component. On such views, the morphemes that
form words are scattered across the clausal architecture and are brought together via movement or lowering operations. The basic objective is to show
that word-formation phenomena adhere to syntactic constraints and interact
with syntactic rules, and hence are best characterized as syntactic phenomena.
As Baker (1988: 71) notes, the relationship between morphology and syntax is
such that it allows principles that are fundamentally morphological to determine syntactic structure in various ways. Consider (13), containing two
Chichewa sentences (from Baker 1988: 69):
(13) a.
Msangalatsi a-ku-yend-a
ndi ndodo.
entertainer sp:pres-walk:asp with stick
The entertainer walked with a stick.
b. Msangalatis a-ku-yend-er-a
ndodo.
entertainer sp:pres-walk-appl:asp stick
The entertainer walked with a stick.
The highlighted applicative morpheme in the (b) sentence is associated with

assigning a semantically transparent instrumental thematic role to the
postverbal NP. The same role is assigned to NP by a preposition in the (a) sentence. The Uniformity of Theta-assignment Hypothesis implies that this morpheme is an independent constituent in D-structure. Hence the (b) sentence
is derived by preposition incorporation. In other words, the verb and the ax
come together in the syntax. In fact the most direct eect morphology has on
syntax is to state which types of incorporation are impossible.
In the next section I take a closer look at the proposal that all word formation is syntactic. For the purposes of my discussion I concentrate on the
framework proposed in Marantz (1999) within the theoretical model referred
to as Distributed Morphology (DM), but see e.g. Schoorlemmer (1995),

van Hout and Roeper (1998), Borer (1999) for related views.
. Word and category formation in DM
In the grammar architecture assumed in DM the interaction between syntax
and morphology is direct. Vocabulary items are inserted under terminal nodes
into positions in syntactic structures. Operations such as Merger, Fusion, Fission may apply to adjust the structure, but what the morphological spell-out
rules see is eectively the output of the syntactic derivation.
(14)
Syntax
Morphology (addition of
morphemes, Merger, etc.)
Vocabulary insertion
Phonological rules
PF
LF
Following Chomsky (1998), it is assumed that Universal Grammar (UG)

provides a set of features. A subset of these is chosen by a language and packaged into the terminal nodes in the syntax. According to Embick (1997), the
types of features that are present in the syntactic terminals are those that are
relevant for semantic interpretation at LF. There is a second type of features
which are only relevant for morphological well-formedness, and these are introduced at the morphological structure (MS), i.e. at the PF branch (cf. 15).
These latter features are completely irrelevant syntactically and semantically.
Both types, however, aect morphological realization.
(15) Feature Types
Syntactic-Semantic
Tense
Aspect
Morphological
Theme vowel
Gender
Within DM several arguments have been constructed showing that a generative lexicon of the familiar type is not justied. As Marantz (1997, 1999)
discusses in detail, the modularity arguments (see the discussion on Wasow in
Introduction
Section 1.3) break down on both the phonological and the semantic branches
of the grammar. On the phonological side, the breakdown of the modularity
argument is found in cases in which objects that have to be assembled syntactically nevertheless show lexical phonology. Semantically, special meanings are
not found with simplex lexical items alone, but must be associated with objects
created in the syntax. Thus syntax is the only generative system available in the
grammar.
Specically, Marantz outlines an approach to word formation according to
which lexical elements, unspecied for syntactic category are introduced into
variable syntactic environments. Depending on the functional layers that dominate the unspecied item, this is spelled-out as a verb or a noun or an adjective.
In other words, the underlying parts of speech like verb destroy, noun destruction, are abstract roots, which are unspecied for syntactic category. Category
labels such as N, V, etc are irrelevant. These abstract roots enter into relations
with higher functional heads such as n, v, a, and give verbs, nouns, and adjectives respectively. For example, in (16), when DESTROY is placed in a verbal
environment, it becomes a verb (16b); when it is placed in a nominal environment (16c), the result is a nominalization (see also Aoun 1981, van Riemsdijk
1983 and Picallo 1991 for related ideas).
(16) a. =DESTROY
b.
c.
VP
agent v
v
nP
n
On such an approach, functional heads fully determine the category of a lexical

head (see also Alexiadou 1999b, Embick 2000a for further discussion). This
view crucially departs from Grimshaws (1991) proposal that the category of
lexical heads determines that of the functional category, thereby eliminating the
redundancy between lexical and functional categories.
The roots that appear in multiple syntactic environments are taken to belong to certain semantic classes of the type discussed in the work of Levin and
Rappaport (1995) and Levin (1993). Thus the root in (16a) denotes a change
of state, which is not internally caused and implies an external causer or an
agent. On the other hand, a root like GROW denotes a change of state that is
internally caused, i.e. does not imply the presence of an agent.
According to Marantz, correlations among phonological, syntactic and

semantic properties of word formation are accounted for the same way such
correlations among properties of phrasal formation are accounted for, i.e. in
terms of locality domains dened by syntactic heads. In fact Marantz attempts
to reconstruct the two places word formation of the type developed in
Wasows work without assuming a lexicon. The two places emerge from the
operation of the syntax, both structurally and derivationally. The uniformity
of morpho-phonology follows from having the syntax perform all the merger
operations, including those between morphemes within a word. According to
this proposal, one place to build words is in the domain of the root. This involves attachment of the morpheme to the root before attaching the functional
head that determines the syntactic category. A second place to build words is
outside the domain of a functional head that determines syntactic category, the
little vs, ns and as. Take a concrete example, the nominal dancer. This nominal receives an eventive/agentive interpretation, namely it refers to a person
that performs the activity of dancing. In this case, the root DANCE rst
combines with v, the head that contains agentivity/eventivity features (see
Section 3) and then with n.
My aim here is to further consider the functional determination hypothesis,
although the basic ideas and generalizations to be expressed are theory neutral.
This choice is due to the following reasons. First, a framework where all word
formation takes place in syntax seems superior to models adhering to an omnipotent lexicon (see also Borer 1999). Second, the redundancy between lexical
and functional categories is eliminated, i.e. categories need not carry double
specication. All category/word formation is syntactic and functional. Moreover, the intuition in any research on nominalization has been that nouns share
some of the semantic properties of the related verb. This is readily captured in
structural representations such as the ones oered in (16) above. Here the differences between nouns and verbs are located in the functional layers of the
structure, e.g. presence vs. absence of Tense. That the source of these dierences might be related to the presence vs. absence of Tense has been extensively
discussed in the typological literature (see for instance Croft 1991) and in semantic approaches (see for instance Pustejovsky 1995). This can be straightforwardly expressed within the approach to word formation developed here. In
general such a model facilitates a better understanding of the decient character
that nouns are felt to have as opposed to verbs. Furthermore, given that in
several languages the distinction between verbs and nouns is not so clear-cut,
e.g. Eskimo (see Wunderlich 1994), adopting the view that such distinctions
Introduction
exist only at a supercial level enables us to readily capture this property.

Finally, the dierences among the various types of nominals will be derived
from variation in their respective functional structure, a result consistent with
the spirit of much recent syntactic research.
Having introduced my basic assumptions, in the next section I turn to
an ambiguity in the interpretation of nominals of kind (2) that has preoccupied the recent literature and illustrate how this can be reformulated in the
framework outlined above. A detailed discussion on other types of nominal
constructions is given in Chapter 4.
. An ambiguity in the nominal system

Although nouns and verbs are semantically related, the issue of whether nouns,
like verbs, license argument structure has provoked a great deal of controversy.
For instance, Anderson (1983), Higginbotham (1983), and Dowty (1989)
among others have argued that nouns crucially dier from verbs in that the
former, unlike the latter, do not take arguments. Their reasoning runs as
follows. Given that nouns fundamentally dier from verbs in that they only
optionally take arguments, e.g. the race lasted an hour vs. Sams race lasted an
hour, nouns must lack argument structure altogether. However, in recent years,
there is a certain amount of consensus that nouns do not behave uniformly
with respect to the licensing of argument structure. Some nouns are systematically like verbs in their argument taking capacities, while others are quite dierent and in fact take no arguments at all. This distinction correlates with an
interpretational distinction between nouns expressing an event (a process) and
nouns simply naming an entity in the world or the output of an event (see
Grimshaw 1990, Lebeaux 1986, Roeper 1987, Zubizarreta 1987 and references
therein). The former take arguments, while the latter and do not do so.
Specically, Grimshaw claims that nouns denoting complex events such as
the examination of the students, like verbs, also have an argument structure,
since they denote events breaking into aspectual subparts. On the other hand,
nouns that denote simple events such as trip and race and result nouns such as
exam do not have an argument structure. Result nominals can be both derived
or non-derived. In fact for Grimshaw nouns such as examination are in fact
ambiguous between two interpretations: a complex event interpretation, in
which the noun takes arguments, and a result interpretation in which it does
not take arguments. In the latter reading the noun would be similar to nouns
(cat, dog, house) which are not derived from verbs and which also do not have
arguments. The term complex event then is interpreted as signaling that the
nominal, much like its verbal counterpart, has a complex event structure that
can be broken down into various aspectual subparts. Since argument structure
is composed from the aspectual and thematic analyses of a predicate, in the
sense that event participants are projected as syntactic arguments, any predicate
that lacks an aspectual analysis also lacks an argument structure. In this sense,
one could understand the term process nominals as referring solely to argument
supporting nominals.
The distinction between complex event and other nominals corresponds
roughly to the distinction between process and result nominals (see also Borer
1993, Zubizarreta 1987). Henceforth, I use the term result nouns to refer to
what other researchers call non-argument supporting nouns, and the terms
process and event nouns interchangeably to refer to Grimshaws complex event
class, though semantically events are distinguished from processes in that the
former are terminative, while the latter are durative (see Verkuyl 1993 for a
recent discussion). This semantic distinction does not aect the argumenttaking properties of nouns. It will become relevant for some of the facts
discussed in Chapters 2 and 3.
As will become clear in the course of the discussion, here I am not concerned with the argument supporting property in the way Grimshaw and others
following Grimshaw view it, since in principle all nouns can have complements
in my system. Rather I pay attention to how process/event/result readings are
expressed congurationally and how these interact with the licensing of argument structure. I argue that the dierence between process and result nominals
is that the former include a set of functional categories standardly associated
with verbal clauses that bring about the process/event reading, while the latter
lack such projections. That is, event properties are associated with specic functional nodes inside clauses and not with specic categories/words (see Borer
1999, van Hout and Roeper 1998 and references therein for related views).
In the next subsection, I turn to some of the criteria that distinguish between the two noun types, established in Grimshaw (1990), so that I can refer
back to them.
. Process versus result nominals: Grimshaws diagnostics
According to Grimshaw, the most salient dierences, which can be explained
in terms of absence vs. presence of argument structure, between the two types
of nouns are:
Introduction
(1) Process nominals denote an event; result nominals denote the output of an
event. In (17) below the nouns examination and exam refer to an event, which
can be located in time and to an entity in the world, respectively:
(17) a. the examination of the students at noon
b. the exam
(2) Process nouns take internal arguments obligatorily, while result nominals
never do. Thus the former can function as theta assigners (although the thetamarking is mediated by the preposition of in English), while the latter cannot.
(18) a. The examination of the papers
b. *the exam of the papers
Process
Result
(3) Process nominals can take agent-oriented modiers, while this is not possible with result nouns.
(19) a. the instructors intentional examination of the student
b. *the intentional exam is desirable
(4) Result nouns do not permit aspectual modiers, while these are allowed
with process nominals. In fact process nominals admit the same aspectual
modiers as their verbal counterparts, while result nouns do not permit such
modiers (see Vendler 1967):
(20) a. the examination of the papers in three hours
b. *the exam for three hours
c. The teacher examined the papers in only two days
Process
Result
(5) Result nouns may be modied by a, one while this is not possible with
process nominals. These can only be denite.
(21) a. an exam
b. *one examination of the papers
(6) Result nouns are count nouns, and they may pluralize, while event nouns
are mass nouns.
(22) a. one exam, two exams
b. the examination of the papers
c. *the examinations of the papers
(7) Modiers like frequent may appear with plural result nouns, and are ungrammatical within singular result nouns. On the other hand, such modiers
may only appear with singular process nominals, and never with plural process
nominals, since these cannot pluralize in the rst place.
(23) a.
b.
c.
d.
the frequent examination of the papers

*the frequent examinations of the papers
the frequent exams
*the frequent exam
(8) The prenominal genitives that appear with result nouns are possessives,
while the prenominal genitives with process nominals are agents. Note, however, that the possessive reading does not exclude an interpretation in which
the possessor was the instigator:
(24) a. (*)The instructors examination
b.
The instructors examination of the papers
(24a) is grammatical if the NP is interpreted as a possessive modier. But if

it is construed like an agentive subject, the sentence is ungrammatical. The
instructor cannot be the agent of the examination. In (24b), however, the instructor is necessarily understood as the instigator of the examination.
(9) By phrases appear in non-argumental contexts with result nouns, but
denote arguments with process nominals. This is illustrated in (25):
(25) a. a picture by a painter
b. the destruction of the city by the enemy
(10) Implicit argument control is possible with process nominals, but not with
result nominals.
(26) a. the assignment of easy problems in order to pass all the students
b. *the exam in order to pass all the students
(11) Result nouns may appear as predicates, while this is not possible for
process nominals.
(27) a. this is an exam
b. *this is an examination of the students
In the next subsection I briey review previous analyses of the dierences

discussed here.
. The role of the event argument
According to Grimshaw (1990), the dierences between process nominals and
result nominals are derived from the fact that the former have an associated
event structure, which breaks events into aspectual subparts. As a result, they
Introduction
also have an argument structure, which must be satised, hence the obligatoriness of their arguments. On the other hand, result nominals lack an aspectual
analysis, and as a result they lack an argument structure analysis. On this view,
result nominals dier from event nominals in that the latter select the event
argument (Ev), while the former select the referential argument (R), as an external argument (in the sense of Williams 1981). The selection of R leads to a
referential reading. The selection of Ev leads to an event reading. A noun gets
Ev as its external argument only if it has an event structure. No noun with R
as its external argument can ever have an event structure associated with it. In
Grimshaws system referential elements contrast with eventive elements in that
they may not have a theta-grid. In other words, it is the presence of Ev that
explains the presence of an argument structure and the aspectual properties
associated with process nouns.
The availability of an event argument is associated with the individual ax.
For instance, axes such as -ation and -ment in English are ambiguous between a result and an event reading. The ax -ing in nominals has an event
reading only. Zero derived nouns have the result reading only. Grimshaws
account crucially attributes the verbal character of these constructions to the
lexical properties of the nominals (stem-ax)., For Grimshaw then, argument structure is a property linked to both verbs and nouns. Both result and
process nominals, however, are pure nominal extended projections in her
system.
Here I point out some problems with this account. First of all, in
Grimshaws approach result nominals can never surface together with complements. However, this is contrary to fact. Consider the following Catalan
examples (from Picallo 1991):
(28) a.
la discussi de les dades va durar tot el dia

the discussion of the data lasted all day
b. la discussio de les dades es va publicar a la revista
the discussion of the data was published in the journal
Process
Result
(28a) clearly involves a process nominal, as expressions denoting events or

process can be placed in time; in (28b), on the other hand, the nominal receives
the result interpretation, as only the outcome of an event can be published.
But, the PP of the data bears the same thematic relation to both instances of
the noun in (28).
A similar contrast is illustrated in (29) and (30) (French data from Siloni
1997: 98, English from Grimshaw 1990: 99).
(29) a.
la prsentation de livres de ce journaliste est toujours rane

the presentation of books of this journalist is always rened
b. *la prsentation frequente de livres de ce journaliste..
the presentation frequent of books of this journalist
(30) a. Their conclusion that there is no relevant data.

b. The decision to leave at six.
In the French example in (29a) the noun presentation is thematically related to

the PPs of books and of this journalist. However, it can only receive the result
interpretation in this context, as is shown by the ungrammaticality of adjectival
modication that could bring about the event reading. Other nouns that behave similarly are translation, review and so on. In (30) the nouns conclusion
and decision do not bear eventive readings, and yet the clauses that follow them
can only be interpreted as complements of the respective nouns.
Finally, as will be shown in the next section, the fact that certain adverbs,
which are standardly taken to modify VPs, can appear within process nominals
remains unaccounted for in Grimshaws system.
. The VP analysis
According to some other researchers, the verb-like properties of event/process
nominals, i.e. the presence of aspectual modiers, the obligatory presence of
internal arguments etc, are attributed to the presence of a VP node within these
nominals. For instance, Lebeaux (1986) posits a VP present at LF as a result of
ax raising at LF. Hazout (1995), Borer (1993), and Fu (1994) among others
argue for an underlying VP which surfaces as the complement of a nominal
head. For these linguists, it is only the category verb that is associated with the
elementary notional type event/process. Thus, the properties observed by
Grimshaw necessarily make reference to a VP node.
More specically, Borer (1993) argues that the appearance of an argument
structure associated with event nominals results from the presence of a full VP
in these structures. It is the head of this VP that assigns thematic roles to the
arguments, not the derived nominal. Result nominals, on the other hand, do
not include a VP, and hence lack argument structure. Similarly, simple event
nominals, are not associated with a syntactic VP, and they do not have an argument structure. The fact that they refer to an event has no interesting syntactic
consequences.
Thus, the proponents of the VP analysis distinguish between a verbal
Introduction
domain, which licenses the presence of arguments, and a nominal domain that
renders the verbal head into a nominal. A version of this proposal is depicted
in (31):
(31)
DP
Spec
D
D
NP
N
N
VP
ax V NP
N hosts the nominalization ax. The verb gets associated with it by means of
head-movement that takes place in the syntax. Result nominals dier from
process nominals in that they are directly inserted under N.
The most convincing argument in favor of the view that a VP is present
inside nominalizations would be the existence of cases showing that crucial
properties standardly associated with VPs also show up with event nominals.
Two obvious such cases are: (i) adverbial modication and (ii) assignment of
accusative case. However, no adverbs and no accusative case marked objects
occur in English nominalizations (see Borer 1993):
(32) a. I made Pat collect mushrooms secretly
b. Pats collection *(of) mushrooms (*secretly) went on all afternoon
There are languages, however, in which modication of a nominal by

adverbials is possible. For instance, Hebrew and Greek permit adverbs in process nominals, but disallow them in result nominals. Consider the following
sentences (Hebrew data taken from Hazout 1995, for Greek see also Alexiadou
1997, Alexiadou and Stavrou 1998a):
(33) Harisat
ha-cava et ha-kfar be-axzariyut
destruction the-army acc the-village cruelly
The armys destroying the village cruelly
(34) a.
i katastro ton egrafon

prosektika/me prosohi
the destruction the documents-gen carefully/with care
b. *i katastro prosektika
the destruction carefully
In both the Hebrew and the Greek example, an adverb/adverbial phrase is present together with a process nominal. As the ungrammaticality of (34b) shows,
when the nominal is used under its result interpretation, signaled by the absence of the DP complement, the presence of the adverb leads to ungrammaticality. In other words, the occurrence of adverbs in these constructions is
syntactically conditioned, since the adverb cannot appear unless the rest of the
complement system accompanies it. Under the standard assumption that
adverbs modify VPs and not NPs (see Jackendo 1977), the presence of adverbs
in process nominals is unexpected.
(33) further shows that Hebrew process nominals permit objects bearing
accusative case. Greek, like English, diers from Hebrew in that it does not
allow accusative case marking on the DP argument. At rst sight then, the data
discussed here seem to provide a clear argument for the presence of at least a
VP inside process nominals.
In the next section I briey outline my proposal for the internal structure
of process and result nominals respectively.
. The ne structure of process nominals: a rst encounter

The proposal I make here (Chapters 2 to 4) with respect to the internal structure of (process) nominals is as follows: process nominals include nominal as
well as projections that we standardly associate with verbal clauses. Specically,
event nominals include Voice/v and Aspect, projections linked to the expression of eventivity and Viewpoint Aspect. Result nominals, on the other hand,
lack such verbal projections (see also Schoorlemmer 1995, Borer 1999, van
Hout and Roeper 1998 for related views). As a consequence, externally, process
nominals behave like nouns. Internally, however, they display verbal properties.
My proposal then takes the notional type event/process to be associated
with functional layers and not with a specic lexical category, in the spirit of
much recent work, and it is embedded within the framework of DM outlined
in Section 1.4. Hence my structural account of the dierences between process/event and result nominals capitalizes on the possibility of embedding lexical roots under a dierent set of functional projections in each case. My task
then is to (a) determine the number and the type of verbal and nominal projections found within process nominals and (b) determine their function in accounting for the dierences between the two nominal types. As will be shown
in detail in Chapter 4, variation in the number and the type of the projections
Introduction
included in the nominal structure is responsible for the various types of

nominals found within a language and across languages.
Specically, (35) below represents the minimal structure which surfaces
in various eventive environments (Alexiadou 1999a,b for nominalization,
Embick 2000a,b for participles):
(35)
AspectP
Aspect
Aspect
vP
v
LP
L
DESTROY
Comp (=theme)
the city
I take the following properties to be associated with the functional heads

in (35). Following Kratzer (1994a, b) and Chomsky (1995), and see also Harley
(1995), Marantz (1997), Arad (1999), v
(i)
is the locus of agentivity, i.e. it contains features relevant to the licensing

and interpretation of external arguments.
(ii) contains features related to eventivity.
(iii) bears the Case features for the object.
(iv) comes in two types: one that introduces an external argument, and one
that does not.
On the other hand, the verbal functional head Aspect contains features that
relate to the semantic properties of the event denoted by the verb: for instance
perfective for a completed event, imperfective for an ongoing event.
The feature specication of Aspect and of v, plus their presence vs. absence
from the internal architecture of nominals, will be argued to be the source of
much of the variation found in nominalizations across languages and within
a language.
A few notes on the dual nature of v are in order here. Harley (1995) argues
that light v, which she labels EventP, can be of two dierent types: Cause and
Happen/Become. Only the rst one can have a specier, which will end up
being an external argument with an agent/causer thematic role. If the head is
of the type Happen/Become, it will not merge with an external argument. It
thus appears with unaccusatives. EventP contributes to the event interpretation
while the lower VP rootP contributes information not related to eventiveness

of the verb (e.g. Aktionsart). Collins (1997) also proposes that for unaccusative
verbs v, is present, but is somehow decient: it does not check accusative case
and it does not assign an external theta-role. In other words, properties (iii)
create the semantic content of little v. On the other hand, properties (iiiiv) are
the transitivity property of little v (Burzios generalization). The two sets of
properties may be dissociated from each other: there are verbal heads that share
the semantic content of v but not its transitivity property. A case in point is
passive formation, i.e. the sentence the book was read does have an eventive
interpretation and implies the presence of an agent, although it lacks the transitivity property. What is crucial here is that both transitive and non-transitive
strings denote events. The dierence is that the former denote an event that is
brought about by an external causer.
The properties of v will become crucial in the discussion in Chapter 3 concerning the (in-)transitivity of process nominals. Nominalizations, in spite of
their similarity to verbal clauses, crucially dier from them in that no accusative case is assigned to their DP argument, and that no agent is syntactically
projected in Spec,vP. If both these attributes are associated with v, then the
conclusion is that nominalizations either lack such a head or only include the
type of v found with unaccusative predicates. Since, however, the eventive
readings of these nominals are linked with v, I will conclude that in such constructions, the type of v included is the decient one, i.e. the one that does not
assign an external argument, and does not check accusative case. Thus,
nominalizations constitute a reex of Burzios generalization.
This result brings the proposed structure for nominalized clauses close to
analyses of the nature of ergative languages. According to some authors,
ergative languages are reexes of a passive/unaccusative system (see Hale 1970,
Nash 1995). In fact my investigation of nominalization patterns attempts to
substantiate the hypothesis that aspects of the syntax of DPs of nominative
accusative (NA) languages are strikingly similar to aspects of the syntax of
ergative (E) languages. Specically, I show that constructions such as the
destruction of the city by the enemy can be argued to have a direct reex in the
syntax of E languages. In this sense, certain E patterns receive an analysis analogous to the one proposed for these nominalizations. I argue that in both contexts, the by-phrase and the ergative phrase respectively can be analyzed on a
par as instantiations of deep-causers/instrumental phrases. The unifying point
between the two will be the proposal that both nominalizations in N/A languages and E languages have decient vs (Chapter 5). On this view, in both
Introduction
nominalizations and patterns of ergativity there is only one syntactic argument

checking structural case, and only one functional head bearing Case features in
the respective structure.
Coming back to the structure of nominals, my proposal is that process
nominals include (35) (Alexiadou 1999a,b) in addition to nominal functional
projections such as Number or Agr (36a). On the other hand, result ones do
not do so and thus have the structure in (36b).
(36) a.
DP
D
FP (Numb/AgrP)
AP
FP
F
AspectP
Aspect
Aspect
vP
v
LP
L
Comp (=theme)
DP
b.
D
FP
F
LP
The structures in (36) dier from the structure in Marantz (1999) in a crucial
way: in (36) no category changing position, i.e. n, is included. In principle
Marantzs system could explain the eventive nature of certain nominalizations
by allowing axation to take place above v. However, the intuition behind
Marantzs proposal is that there is a notion of a nominalizer/adjectivizer, even
if this notion is in a sense functional. This view introduces a theory internal
inconsistency, and hence will not be adopted here. Rather, the structure in (35)
is spelled-out as verb or noun, depending on the general environment it is
inserted: noun in the domain of D/Number, verb in the domain of Tense.
Identical or distinct nominal axes attach to positions that dier in height, i.e.
below or above Aspect, below or above v, at MS. Thus I derive the ambiguity
observed with certain nominalization axes, i.e. the fact that they do not
discriminate between a process and a result reading, from a dierence in
attachment height.
Note also that this proposal for the structure of nominals diers from
Embicks treatment of participles, which derives all their properties from
features located in functional heads, in that it does not recognize the need to
include an aspectual type of head specied [RESULT] within result nominals.
I come back to these issues in Chapter 2.
On my account, the dierence between result and process nouns relates to
the presence vs. absence of certain verbal-like functional projections, much like
the VP analysis of process nominals. However, it diers from this approach in
that it allows for result nominals to take complements as well, since both types
are derived from unspecied roots that can take internal arguments. Note that
in order to account for the fact that result nominals of the type the announcement that John resigned also select for complements in Grimshaws system, one
has to draw a distinction between complements present in lexical conceptual
structure, possible with both types of nominals, and arguments projected in
argument structure, possible only with process nominals. Here this discrepancy
does not arise. Event readings are associated with functional layers, not with the
presence of argument structure.
. Nominalization patterns across languages

According to my proposal, words and categories are the result of combining
abstract roots with functional projections. Evidently, such a formation owes a
lot to the presence vs. absence of certain functional layers, to their feature specication, and to their selection requirements. This way of viewing the internal
structure of DPs oers a new way of interpreting the nominalization patterns
found across languages and within a language. As I point out in detail in Chapter 4, the various types of nominals reect dierences in the number and the
type of functional projections. That is the agentive nominal dancer does not
contain the same set of nominal or verbal functional projections as the noun
destruction.
In order to briey outline how this idea works consider (37), an instance
of a transitive nominalization:
(37) Johns destruction of the city
Introduction
While (37) is grammatical in English, it is ungrammatical in Greek. In

Chapter 4 I argue that the crosslinguistic availability of constructions of this
type is related to the availability of Spec,DP to function as a thematic position.
Hence such constructions are possible in English, where Spec,DP is a thematic
position, but they are not possible in Greek, where Spec,DP functions as an
A-position (see Chapters 2 and 4).
Interestingly, the investigation of nominalizations of this type will bring me
again to a discussion of ergativity patterns from a dierent perspective. In
many discussions of the origin of ergativity, nominalization is also advanced as
one possible source for it (see Comrie 1978). On these views, ergative marking
is considered to be either (a) the result of the reanalysis of nominalizations in
which the agent is expressed by means of a possessive phrase as in the example
Johns destruction of the city above (see Johns 1992, Siewierska 1998 for a recent
discussion and references), or (b) to be related to constructions such as the
destruction of the city by the enemy (see Comrie 1978 and the discussion in
Section 3). Though the view that aspects of N/A syntax resemble domains of
E syntax has been formulated in the form of hypotheses in other places as well
(see Bok-Bennema 1991, Postal 1977, Williams 1987, among others), to the
best of my knowledge no detailed account seems to exist. Here, by investigating
both these constructions in detail within the nominal syntax of N/A languages,
I revisit typological hypotheses on the source of ergative marking and I attempt
to ultimately identify the constructions in which these two dierent markings,
i.e. the passive and possessive are encountered in dierent languages and constructions. Crucially, the view on the internal structure of DPs generalizes:
variation in functional structure gives dierent types of categories, clauses and
languages.
In certain parts of this book, I pay special attention to empirical data taken
from Greek. However, this study adopts a strong comparative methodology.
It compares characteristics of Greek grammar to properties shown by other
grammars, drawing conclusions of general interest.
. Outline
The book is structured as follows. Chapter 2 contains a brief overview of the
literature on the structure of DPs; it further presents certain aspects of
nominalization in Greek and my proposal for the internal structure of process
nominals in detail. Chapter 3 provides empirical support for the claim that
process nominals are actually unaccusative/ergative constructions and discusses

passive nominals in some detail. Chapter 4 discusses the variation in nominalization types found across languages and within a language. Chapter 5 turns to
an investigation of the similarities between nominalization and ergative languages by rst examining the respective Case patterns. Second, given that in the
literature ergative case is either seen as a prepositional or as a possessor case,
the chapter looks at the relation between these two patterns and (transitive)
nominalizations. In addition, the formation of the (possessive) perfect across
languages is dealt with, since such constructions tend to appear in the perfect.
Chapter 6 summarizes the conclusions drawn in this work.
Notes
. It is assumed that the gerunds in (1) and (3) have two dierent uses: a propositional and
an eventive one. What is the relation between the two syntactic forms, nominal and verbal gerund, and the two semantic forms, propositional and eventive (see also Zucchi
1993, Katz 1999a, Hamm 1999 for a recent discussion)? Vendler (1967) points out that
the question whether we are dealing with a propositional or an eventive use of the gerund
has a great deal more to do with the context in which it occurs (Vendlers container) than
the syntactic form of the gerund itself. Although the verbal gerund is almost always usable
in contexts in which a propositional reading is natural, and the nominal gerund is always
usable in contexts in which an eventive reading is natural, the forms mix quite freely in
many contexts. Fraser (1970), however, notes that these two -ing forms clearly receive a
dierent semantic interpretation, namely (1) is interpreted as an assertion of a fact, while
(3) is interpreted as an action, an activity, an event. Derived nominals can almost always
replace nominal gerunds. If Frasers view is on the right track, then only (2) and (3)
constitute true action nominalizations.
. The following discussion draws from Borer (1993), Carstairs-MacCarthy (1992), Marantz
(1999), and Embick (2000c) among others. It should be noted that what follows is not
meant as an exhaustive overview of the eld. For approaches to word formation in the
early days of Generative Grammar see Lees (1960) and Chomsky (1965). Lees took the
position that nearly all (if not all) nominalizations, i.e. noun phrases between whose parts
there is a syntactic relationship should be derived from sentences through the use of
syntactic transformations. See Wunderlich (1994) for a revision of the categories put
forth in Chomsky (1970).
. A number of operations take place at MS. Merger involves structurally adjacent nodes,
whereby the heads of two independent phrases are brought together but nevertheless
remain separate morphemes in the newly formed item. Fusion brings together sister
terminal nodes under a single terminal node, as is the case of the single ax for Number
and Case in Greek (and many other Indo-European languages). Finally, ssion results in
the split of features carried by one node into a sequence of nodes. Fission and Fusion are
Introduction
the two main morphological processes that immediately disturb the isomorphism between syntactic and phonological features. The application of the operations that modify
the syntactic tree is completed before vocabulary insertion at MS. At the same time, the
addition of terminal nodes at MS, changes the number of terminal elements that might
be phonological realized and thus contributes to the noted lack of isomorphism between
PF and SS (see Halle and Marantz 1993: 115).
. Arad (1999) points out that in Romance and Semitic the same root can form dierent
types of predicates. This is exemplied below for Italian. This fact supports the view of
the lexicon put forth within the DM model.
(i) a.
b.
romp + ere (break, causative)

romp + ersi (break, inchoative)
. However, Davis and Matthewson (2000) point out that the group of Salish languages,
which has been traditionally analyzed as lacking the V-N distinction provides evidence
that the roots carry lexical specication.
. In principle, the generalizations to be made could be expressed if one were to propose
that process nominals include passive VPs (see for instance van Hout and Roeper 1998
for a recent discussion). However, as it will be shown in detail, process nominals do not
behave like passive VPs.
. A similar view to the one outlined above is presented in Williams (1987) who proposed
that there is no distinction between nominalizations with and without argument structure. Rather, all nouns are equipped with an argument structure. In fact in Williams
(1981) it is proposed that nominalization, which he regards as a morphological rule,
applies to verbs to form a new lexical item, aects the argument structure of these verbs,
in that it forces internalization of the external argument. In a sense, the main idea of my
proposal eventually supports the view that all nouns have an argument structure, and
that agents are internalized within process nominals, but it substantiates the hypothesis
that result nominals dier from process nominals in certain functional aspects of their
internal structure. This distinction is not drawn in Williamss work.
. However, it has been observed that in several languages, e.g. Hungarian (see Szabolcsi
1994) and Greek (see Markantonatou 1992), process nominals can also be plural, a
property which correlates with the aspectual class the nominal belongs to, i.e. achievement vs. process (see next chapter).
. A similar contrast is found in German (from Audring 1999):
(i) Jans Prfung
Johns Exam
(ii) *Jans Prfung der Tatsachen
Johns examination of the facts
The presence of a possessor clearly brings about the result interpretation.
. Naturally, a number of semantic accounts exist as well; see in particular Ehrich (1991
and subsequent work), Bierwisch (1989), Zucchi (1993), Pustejovsky (1995), Hamm
(1999) and references therein. Reference to these is made when necessary.
. Szabolcsis (1994) analysis is similar to Grimshaws in that both account for the eventive
reading of nominals in terms of the inclusion of an (abstract) event argument in the
relevant structures. However, she diers from Grimshaw in that she argues against the
suppression of the external argument in passive nominals and in favor of its construal
as PRO (controlled or arbitrary).
. While axes such as -tion, -ing and -er seem to be able to co-occur with the complements of their parental verb, it has also been observed that many deverbalizing axes
prohibit the presence of the underlying verbs arguments (cf. Roeper 1987).
(i) a. *an employee by Mary
b. *a trainee with a great eort(cf. van Hout and Roeper 1998)
c. the trainer of dogs
d. the saver of lives
It has been pointed out in the literature that ax -ee binds a patient argument, while
-er binds an external argument. On the other hand, -ion binds something like a theme.
An analysis that capitalizes on the thematic binding properties of axes crucially believes that stems and axes contribute to the interpretation of the lexical item, and that
axes play a role in licensing arguments in the lexical conceptual structure (see also di
Sciullo and Williams 1987, and references in Grimshaw 1990).
Marantz (1999) distinguishes between -ee and -er nominalizations in suggesting
that the former include a functional nominal head that embeds an unspecied lexical
phrase, while the latter include a functional nominal head that embeds a verbal projection (see the discussion in Section 1.4). A similar view is defended in van Hout and
Roeper (1998).
. However, Fu et al. (1998) have claimed that English nominalizations also permit adverbs. Not all native speakers agree with these judgements.
(i) a.
b.
c.
??the protection of the children completely

??the removal of evidence purposefully
??the explanation of the problem immediately
. Siloni (1997) observes that there is an interesting fact concerning the distribution of
adverbs in Hebrew process nominals: the adverbs one nds with process nominals always have a PP structure, such as the one in (33) which is preceded by the preposition
be. Adverbs lacking a PP structure are not found. This does not hold for Greek. Here
simple adverbs are found as well as PPs.
. In fact axes such English: -ize nationalize, -en deep-en or Greek, -pio: kako-pio
harm, -ono: veve-ono certify can be seen as overt realizations of the functional head v.
. Alexiadou and Stavrou (1998a) argue for the presence of a single functional projection
bearing the event property that selects for a VP inside nominalizations.
. Note that there are constructions where accusative is assigned in the absence of an external argument. For instance, Northern Russian passives discussed in Timberlake (1976),
and the Japanese passives discussed in Harley (1995) and references therein.
. From the point of view of a N/A language, the E system is most reminiscent of passive
Introduction
constructions in a nominative/accusative language. Thus, passive constructions were

initially advanced as a possible source for ergativity (see Hale 1970).
. Van Hout and Roeper (1998) assume an N head containing a nominalization ax.
. Note that the hypothesis to be entertained here makes an interesting prediction with
respect to the lexical categories one can nd across languages. For instance, if a language lacks Tense as a separate category, then this language is expected to neutralize the
dierence between verbs and nouns. As will be shown in the next chapter, this prediction appears to be borne out.
Chapter 2
The Functional Architecture of

Nominalizations
In this chapter I substantiate the proposal that the functional structure of event
nominals includes an Aspect Phrase (AspP) and a light v/Voice Phrase (vP).
The chapter is organized as follows. In Section 1 I rst give an overview of the
literature on the DP. Large part of the discussion in the literature on
nominalizations has been devoted to the question of their internal structure.
Thus, reviewing the literature on the status and the nature of DP internal
functional projections serves as a general background for my purposes. Section
1.4 is devoted to a presentation of the general properties of the Greek DP.
In Section 2 I discuss the various verbal classes, i.e. transitive, intransitive
and di-transitive, and the types of nominals derived from them in terms of the
process vs. result distinction. This section oers a detailed study of derived
nominals in Greek and compares Greek nominalization patterns with the betterknown cases from English, Romance, Slavic and Hebrew/Arabic. In Section 3 I
concentrate on the verbal properties of event nominals and I present my account of the structure of process nominals, which crucially relies on the presence
of AspectP and vP within their functional architecture. I also briey discuss the
internal structure of result nominals. In Section 4 I present a number of arguments against the presence of TenseP inside process nominals. In Section 5
I turn to the conditions enforcing the licensing of argument structure within
process nominals. In Section 6, building on Embick (1998), I give an outline of
the realization of the morphological object noun in a system that denies the
existence of lexical categories as primitives, such as the one adopted here.
Introduction
. NPs are dominated by D

A more recent issue in the investigation of noun phrases concerns the functional structure they contain. Traditionally noun phrases were taken to be the
maximal projections of nouns, as depicted in (1) (see e.g. Jackendo 1977):
(1)
NP
Determiner
N
N
The theoretical developments in the eighties have called this structure into
question. More specically, the extension of the X-bar schema to the sentential functional elements (Chomsky 1986) and the increasing work on headmovement (Baker 1988) have led researchers to elaborate a more articulated
syntactic representation for the noun phrase. Arguing that the functional nominal material should t into the X-bar schema, Abney (1987), Fukui and Speas
(1986), Horrocks and Stavrou (1987), and Szabolcsi (1983) among others
hypothesized that noun phrases, like clauses, are headed by a functional element. Horrocks and Stavrou (1987) label this functional head Art(icle), while
Abney (1987) calls it D(eterminer), and proposes that noun phrases are the
maximal projections of D, the base position of articles. Abneys proposal
capitalizes on the symmetry between NPs and clausal projections. Clauses are
actually VPs dominated by a functional projection, IP. Abney proposes that in
the same way the noun phrase should be seen as a projection of N dominated
by a functional projection, as shown in (2):
(2)
DP
D
D
NP
The proposal for the introduction of a functional category in the NP structure

has received strong empirical support by a series of studies (cf. Ritter 1987,
Delsing 1988, Ouhalla 1988, Taraldsen 1990, Haider 1988 among many others).
The introduction of the functional category D has been linked with the
presence of overt noun movement in a number of languages, e.g. Romanian
and Scandinavian. In fact the syntactic behavior of articles in these languages,
i.e. their axal character, has led linguists to identify the landing site of the
raised noun as D, the base position of the article (see Cornilescu 1993 for
Romanian and Delsing 1993, Taraldsen 1990 for Scandinavian among others).
Alongside this research, several studies have developed a principled explanation of why the nominal expression is the maximal projection of D (cf.
The functional architecture of nominalizations
Szabolcsi 1987, Stowell 1989, Longobardi 1994). The basic insight is that D is
the element that converts the nominal expression into a referential phrase
that consequently can be used as an argument. In this respect, D can be argued
to parallel the complementizer of sentential complements: each turns its
complement (NP and IP respectively) into an expression that can appear in an
argument position. As will be shown in 1.3, this property correlates with the
syntactic status of D in certain languages.
. AgrP, NumberP and GenderP
Subsequent studies of Germanic, Semitic and Romance languages have
suggested that the structure of noun phrases is indeed more articulated and
includes additional inectional structure between DP and NP (see e.g. Ritter
1991, Valois 1991, Cinque 1993, Bernstein 1993, Fassi-Fehri 1993 to mention
a few). For instance, Szabolcsi, on the basis of Hungarian data such as the ones
in (3) below, proposes that AGR is present within the DP:
(3) a.
az en
kalap-om
the I-nom hat-1sg
b. a te
kalap-od
the you-nom hat-2sg
Kalap hat is a noun that agrees with its possessor, marking its person and
number. The possessor phrase bears nominative case, as would the subject of
a sentence. If one maintains the idea that AGR assigns nominative, then we
conclude that NPs in (3a) and (3b) contain an AGR as well.
Ritter (1991) provides evidence for the existence of a dierent type of functional projection between D and N in Hebrew. The projection is labeled Number Phrase and is taken to be the locus of plural axes. According to Ritter, the
axation of plural marking on nouns is similar to the axation of tense and
agreement axes on the verb. In the same vein, Picallo (1991) observes that all
Romance nouns express Gender and Number distinctions (cf. 4a). Picallo
claims that the order in which the suxes appear at S-structure, reects that
successive cyclic movement of the head N up to Num has applied (cf. 4b).
(4) a.
el gat, la gata, els gats, les gates

the cat(s) M/S, F/S, M/P, F/P
b. Les [NumP noveles d[GenP en Pere de [NP Nabokov
the
novels of
Pere of
Nabokov
In related work, which, however, crucially capitalizes on the relative position

of the head noun with respect to the adjectives modifying it, Cinque (1993) and
Crisma (1993), (1995) present arguments for the presence of additional functional projections. For instance, in (5) the noun destruction must appear to
the left of the adjective Roman. Assuming that the referential adjective is
located in a specier position in the extended projection of the noun, the patterns below show that overt N-movement to an intermediate projection applies
in Italian. Actually, the noun in Italian is claimed to move to a position higher
than NP and the category immediately dominating it, since it leaves behind the
thematic adjective romana, as well as classifying adjectives like bronze (from
Zamparelli 1994):
(5) a.
La distruzione romana di Cartagine

the destruction Roman of Carthago
b. *La romana distruzione di Cartagine
c. Le ultime tre famose sculture bronze della moglie
the nal three famous sculptors bronze of the woman
. On the A vs. A status of Spec,DP

Apart from determining the functional architecture of the DP, another issue
that has preoccupied the syntactic literature has been the status (A vs. A) of
Spec,DP. Under Abneys (1987) account, Spec,DP is a thematic-position in
English. Evidence for this comes from the fact that no expletives can be licensed
within English DPs, and no raising takes place either (cf. 6; but see Section 4.1
for a dierent account).
(6) a. *theres arrival
b. *Marys appearance to be sick
On the assumption that expletives are licensed in non-thematic positions and

that raising involves movement from a theta-position to a non-theta position,
the ungrammaticality of the examples in (6) is straightforwardly accounted for,
if Spec,DP is a theta-position.
Horrocks and Stavrou (1987) argue that a crucial dierence between
English and Greek is that in English Spec,DP corresponds to Spec,IP, thus
being an A-position, while in Greek it corresponds to Spec,CP, thus being an
A-position. Since Spec, DP is not an argument position in Greek, whmovement naturally takes place within this domain. Their argument is based
on examples such as the following:
(7) a.
a.
b.
b.
c.
c.
to vivlio tu Chomsky
the book the-gen Chomsky
tu Chomsky to vivlio
i kritiki tu vivliu
the review the-gen book-gen
tu vivliu i kritiki
to endhiaferon ja to arthro afto
the interest about the article this
ja to arthro afto to endhiaferon
In each of the primed examples in (7) the constituent that follows the head N
in the non-primed examples is fronted to a pre-N position. The interpretive
eect of such fronting is one of focalizing. According to Horrocks and Stavrou
(1987:86), all this is obviously reminiscent of the fronting of constituents that
takes place in sentences for the purpose of bringing a particular constituent
into prominence. Sentential focusing in Greek is illustrated in (8):
(8) a.
edhose to vravio
tis
Afrodhitis
gave-3sg the prize-acc the-gen Aphrodite-gen
he gave the prize to Aphrodite
b. tis Afrodhitis edhose to vravio
c. to vravio edhose tis Afrodhitis
As shown in the examples above, the indirect object tis Afrodhitis and the direct
object to vravio may be fronted for focalizing eects. Horrocks and Stavrou
(1987) show that focalization in the clause has the properties of A-movement
(see also Tsimpli 1995). In (8) focalization takes place within the nominal projection. If the fronted constituents in the examples in (8) occupy [Spec,DP],
this means that [Spec,DP] is similar to [Spec,CP].
The parallelism between interrogative clauses and interrogative DPs in
Greek strengthens the assumption that DP is to NP what CP is to VP. (9a) is
an echo question: the wh-constituent ti (what) does not move to the sentenceinitial position. In (9b) the wh-constituent is fronted (all examples from
Horrocks and Stavrou 1987).
(9) a. ekane ti
did-3sg what
He did what?
b. ti ekane
what did-3sg
The same pattern is found DP-internally:

(10) a.
to vivlio tinos
the book who-gen
whose book
b. tinos to vivlio
Example (11), Horrocks and Stavrous 1987:89 (14), illustrates the interaction
between wh-movement at the clausal level and DP-internal wh-movement.
(11) a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
mu ipes
oti diavases [to vivlio tinos]
me told-2sg that read-2sg the book whose
You told me you read whose book?
mu ipes oti diavases [tinosi [to vivlio ti]
tinosi mu ipes oti diavases to vivlio ti
[tinosj [[to vivlio tj]]i mu ipes oti diavases ti
[to vivlio tinos]i mu ipes oti diavases ti
All the above examples are fully grammatical. Example (11a) is taken to represent the structure prior to movements. In (11b), the genitive phrase has moved
to Spec, DP. From this position subsequent movement to Spec, CP as in (11c)
is possible. (11d) and (11e) involve fronting of the whole DP to Spec,CP. In the
former case wh-movement has not applied DP internally, in the latter it has.
Hungarian oers further conrmation for aligning the D node with C, as
shown by Szabolcsi (1994). The Hungarian pre-nominal possessor may occupy
two positions. It may follow the determiner, in which case it has nominative
case (12a), or it may precede the determiner, in which case it has dative case,
as shown in (12b).
(12) a.
a Mari
kalap-ja
the Mari-nom hat-3sg
b. Mari-nak a kalap-ja
Mari-dat the hat-3sg
It seems reasonable to propose that Marinak in (12b) occupies the specier

position of DP, as shown in (13).
(13)
DP
Spec
Marinak
D
D
a
NP
kalapja
Topicalization and wh-movement in Hungarian suggest that [Spec,DP] is also

an escape hatch for A-movement. In (14), the dative possessor Marinak is
topicalized independently from the noun with which it is construed. Such
topicalization of the nominative possessor is not possible (cf. 15). In (16), similarly, the interrogative dative possessor has undergone wh-movement independently of the noun with which it is associated:
(14) [CP [TopP Marinaki [FocP Peter ltta [IP [DP ti a kalapja]]]]].
Mari-dat
Peter saw
the hat
Peter saw Marys hat
(15) *[CP [TopP Marii [FocP Peter ltta [IP [DP a ti kalapja]]]].
(16) [CP [FocP Kineki ltta [IP Kati [DP ti a kalapja]]]?
whose-dat saw Kati the hat
Whose hat did Kati see?
Nevertheless, in studying the parallelisms between clausal and nominal

structure, researchers have often noticed the defective character of nominals
in their functional structure and the fact that such projections are radically
dierent from the ones encountered in the extended projection of the verbs.
Thus, functional projections inside the DP make reference to morphological
properties of nouns and thus are related to number and gender. On the other
hand, the presence of a Voice Phrase, an Aspect Phrase, a Tense Phrase or even
a Mood Phrase inside the DP is a bit more dicult to substantiate. In Section 3
evidence for the presence of certain of these categories inside process nominals
will be presented.
In the next section I turn to a brief examination of the Greek DP.
. Some notes on the Greek DP
The nominal inectional system of Greek, as manifested both in deverbal and
in common regular nouns is rather rich (see Alexiadou and Stravrou 1998b for
a detailed discussion). It manifests morphological distinctions for three distinct
grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and two numbers (singular

and plural) on both the noun and the determiner, as well as any adjectives
modifying the head noun (see 17). In this respect Greek is similar to Romance,
although it displays one more grammatical gender (neuter). However, Greek
is unlike Romance in that it further displays both a full case system on the
noun (like Latin) and the determiner.
(17) a.
ti
megal-i
katastrof-i
the-fem:sg:acc big-fem:sg:acc destruction-fem:sg:acc
b. ton
megal-on
katastrof-on
the-fem:pl:gen big-fem:pl:gen destruction-fem:pl:gen
There are four distinct morphological cases in the singular and four in the plural, nominative, accusative, genitive and vocative (vocative is in most of the
cases non-distinct from nominative; genitive is morphologically distinct from
the nominative in most declensional classes). Case, number and gender appear
in the form of inectional axes on the noun. However, there is a high degree
of syncretism in the language, whereby dierent features are realized by the
same ax. Unlike Romance, number and gender are never axed to the stem
by distinct axes (cf. the contrast between the Spanish nominals in (18) and
the Greek ones in (19); see Ralli 1994; 1998, for a detailed description of the
Greek nominal inection system):
(18) a.
l-a pelicul-a (sg.)

the lm
b.
l-a-s pelicul-a-s (pl)

the lms
(19) a.
o anthrop-os (sg.)
the human
b.
i anthrop-i (pl)
the humans
But neither is case signaled by a distinct ax from gender and/or number

(anthrop-os masc:sg:nom, anthrop-u masc:sg:gen).
In Greek, as has been shown convincingly by Ralli (1994, 1997), gender as
opposed to number, is not a feature of the inectional ax but it is an inherent
feature of the noun stem. This in turn means that gender specication will show
up under the terminal node N. It is reasonable then to assume that this intermediate functional projection relates to the features of number, features that are
syntactically relevant (i.e. determined by syntax, see Harris 1991 for Spanish).
In other words, NumberP is one of the functional projections that provide instructions for LF (see also de Wit 1997, Willim 1995), and thus is present for
independent reasons in the structure (see the discussion in Chapter 1).
(20)
DP
D
FP
F
NP
Number
In (20), one could argue that it is actually Number that is primarily responsible
for nominalizing unspecied roots.
A further characteristic of Greek is that it does not show any eects of
noun displacement within DP, at least with respect to the criteria that have
been crosslinguistically established, i.e. axal articles and adjective placement.
As mentioned in the previous section, Cinque (1993) and related literature
have suggested that the relative order between adjectives and nouns is a criterion for assuming noun-movement in a language or not, under the assumption
that adjectives attach to the same sites crosslinguistically. On this view, languages in which nouns precede adjectives are languages with noun movement.
In Greek, all adjectives always precede the noun, as is illustrated in the examples in (21) and (22):
(21) *to spiti megalo
the house big
(22) *i katastro italiki
the destruction Italian
Moreover, given that the denite article is not an ax in Greek, no argument

in favor of overt N-to-D movement can be formulated either.
With this general background, let us have a closer look at Greek nominal
formation primarily.
. Greek nominal formation

. General remarks
Much like their counterparts in English, Semitic and so on, Greek deverbal
nouns pattern externally like common nominals, i.e. they appear in positions
restricted to nouns, e.g. complement positions of verbs and prepositions.
(23) a.
ida
tin katastro tis polis
saw-1sg the destruction the city-gen
I saw the destruction of the city
b. lipithike
me to kapsimo ton vivlion
felt-sorry-3sg with the burning the books-gen
He felt sorry about the burning of the books
As with common object nouns, derived nominals follow the determiner, and
the adjectival modiers. DPs in the genitive follow the noun as in the case of
possessives in non-derived nominals (cf. (24a) and (24b)). Note that both in
derived and non-derived nominals, the genitive DP can appear in initial position, that is before the denite article (cf. (25)). As mentioned in Section 1.3,
these patterns have been analyzed in Horrocks and Stavrou (1987) as involving
focalization movement to Spec,DP from the complement of N-position, an
instance of A-movement:
(24) a.
i katastro tis polis

the destruction the city-gen
The destruction of the city
b. to vivlio tu Petru
the book the Peter-gen
Peters book
(25) a. tis polis
i katastro
the city-gen the destruction
The citys destruction
b. tu Petru
to vivlio
the Peter-gen the book
There are a number of nominalizing axes in the language. Some of the

nominals consist of a stem (very similar to that of their related verb) and they
are followed by an ax that carries gender and number information (cf. 26),
as discussed above (see also Valetopoulos 2000). In (26) the ax -i is added to
the verb stem, which undergoes morpho-phonological conditioning, to give a
nominal.
(26) i katastrof-i
the destruction-fem:sg
V=katastref-o
destroy-1sg
Other nominal endings are -ma/(i)mo(s), -(s)i, -ito, -ura, -ala, -idi, -tis. In some
cases, the inxes m and s appear in combination. The vowel -i- that precedes
the consonants in each case does not contribute to the meaning of the strings:
(27) a.
to lis-i-m-o
the untying-neut:sg
b. to raps-i-m-o
the sewing-neut:sg
c. ksefon-i-t-o
scream-ing-neut:sg
d. kend-i-d-i
embroidery-neut:sg
e. horef-tis
danc-er
lino
untie-1sg
ravo
sew-1sg
ksefon-o
scream-1sg
kend-o
do embroidery
horevo
dance-1sg
As Valetopoulos (2000) points out, the axes idi, ito, ura and ala do not
seem to support argument structure or to have event readings for that matter.
Hence I assume that these morphemes attach to the root, before this combines
with any higher functional layers (see Chapter 1) and I will not be discussing
examples containing them any further. The ax -tis is used for the formation
of agent nominalizations, as it refers to the person performing an action.
As was the case with English, most of the axes do not disambiguate between an event and a result reading. This is possible only when the nominal is
put in a context that brings about one or the other interpretation, for instance
aspectual modication or predication. Consider the following examples.
(28) a. *i paratirisi tu Jani
epi dio ores itan anakrivis
the observation the John-gen for two hours was inexact
the observation of John for two hours was inexact
b. i paratirisi tu Jani
itan anakrivis
the observation the John-gen was inexact
Johns observation was inexact
c. i paratirisis tu Jani
the observations the John-gen
Johns observations
The noun paratirisi observation is ambiguous between the event and the result
reading. As Picallo (1991) and others observe, only results obtaining from certain activities can have the properties of being inconsistent/inexact. Events or
processes do not have such possibilities. The examples above show precisely
this contrast. Event nominals are not grammatical with predicates that denote
the state of being inconsistent. Hence (28a) is ungrammatical, but (28b) is ne.
Note that the interpretation of the genitive argument is dierent in these two
examples: in (28b) we interpret John as the person to whom the observation
belongs. Similarly in (28c), where the noun is in the plural and thus it clearly
expresses a result on the basis of Grimshaws criteria, John is interpreted as the
possessor. The one interpretation that could be possible for (28a) is one where
John is the person being observed.
According to the main studies on nominalizations in Greek (cf. Markantonatou 1992, Kolliakou 1995, Alexiadou and Stavrou 1998b), the language
shows deverbal formations derived from agentive transitive verbs (e.g. katastro
destruction), and nominals derived from intransitive verbs, exemplied in
(29a) and (29b) below. The latter distinguish between nominals derived from
unaccusative verbs (e.g. afksisi raise), and nominals derived from unergative
predicates (e.g. kolimpi swim).
(29) a.
katastro
perigra
metafrasi
b. aksi
kolimpi
skarfaloma
destruction
description
translation
arrival
swim
climbing
In the next section I consider the various classes of nominals found in

Greek classifying them on the basis of the type of verbs these are related to, i.e.
transitive or not. For ease of exposition I use the standard terminology, but it
should be kept in mind that I take transitivity and verb/category formation to
be a derived property (see the discussion in Chapter 1).
. Nominals derived from transitive predicates
The rst observation to be made about nominals of the type in (29a) is that this
group splits into two classes. In the process reading both surface with internal
arguments. The dierence between the two classes is that nominals such as
destruction always receive a process reading, hence the ungrammaticality of
(30b). These nominals are derived from roots that denote a resultant state and
have an implicit agent/causer component. Nominals such as description, on the
other hand, are ambiguous between a process and a result reading. These seem
to dier from destruction type nouns in that their complement is not aected
and that their meaning alternates between a telic and an atelic one (see the
discussion in Chapter 3):
(30) a.

se pende lepta
the destruction the city-gen in ve minutes
The destruction of the city in ve minutes
b. *i katastro tis polis
(se 5 lepta)
itan anakrivis
the destruction the city-gen (in 5 minutes) was inexact
(31) a.
i perigra tu Jani
ja 1 ora
the description the John-gen for an hour
The description of John for an hour
b. *i perigra tu Jani
ja mia ora itan anakrivis
the description the John-gen for an hour was inexact
c. i perigra tu Jani
itan anakrivis
the description the John-gen was inexact
Johns description was inexact
In (30b) the predicate be inexact creates an environment which brings about

the result reading. The example is ungrammatical even if the aspectual modier
is removed. This is not so with nouns such as description. Once the process
interpretation is not available any more, i.e. when the aspectual modier is not
present, the example is grammatical (cf. 31c). On the process reading (31a), the
genitive argument is always interpreted as the object/entity aected by the
predicate, i.e. being destroyed or being observed. On the other hand, as we saw
above with (28), in a context that brings about the result interpretation, the
genitive argument cannot be interpreted as a theme; it is necessarily interpreted
as a possessor (see the discussion in Chapter 1). Example (31) crucially contrasts with (30) where the city is only interpreted as the entity that got destroyed. Nominals such as those in (30) are referred to in the literature as passive (see Cinque 1980).
There is a further dierence between these two groups. A characteristic
property of Greek nominals derived from agentive transitive predicates such as
destroy is that no more than one single argument can be present bearing
genitive case (see Horrocks and Stavrou 1987, Markantonatou 1992, Alexiadou
and Stavrou 1998a). On the other hand, the presence of two genitives is possible with nouns such as translation, description etc (see e.g. Cinque 1980,
Zubizarreta 1987 for discussion). Consider (32)(33):
(32) a.
b.
(33)

apo tus Italus
the destruction the city-gen by the Italians
The destruction of the city by the Italians
*i katastro tis polis
ton Italon
the destruction the city-gen the Italians-gen
i metafrasi tis tragodias
tu Kakridi
the translation the tragedy-gen the Kakridis-gen
Kakridis translation of the tragedy
(32b) shows that co-occurrence of two genitive phrases is impossible within

destruction type nouns. The agent argument can appear only when it is introduced by a preposition (cf. (32a) and also Horrocks and Stavrou 1987). On the
other hand, in (33) the presence of the two genitives is licit. I come back to
this dierence in Chapters 3 and 4 arguing in the latter that nominals that permit the two genitives are actually result nominals. That is, while the by-phrase
necessarily denotes an agent in (32a), the second genitive denotes a possessor
in (33).
. Nominals derived from intransitive predicates
Though Greek is a language lacking most of the standard tests distinguishing
between the two classes of intransitive predicates, i.e. unaccusatives and
unergatives, Markantonatou (1992), Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou (1999)
among others present certain criteria that can diagnose unacussativity in Greek.
Hence in what follows, I assume that the unaccusative vs. unergative distinction
is also observed in Greek.
What is interesting for the discussion here is that unaccusative and
unergative nominals do not behave alike with respect to the criteria distinguishing event from result nominals. As pointed out by Markantonatou (1992)
and is illustrated in (34), aspectual modication is one domain where the
behavior of these two types of nominals radically diers.
(34) a.
i eksetasi
ton titon
epi dio ores
the examination the students-gen for two hours
The examination of the students for two hours
b. i ptosi ton timon
epi tris vdomades
the fall the prices-gen for three weeks
The fall of the prices for three weeks
c. *to kolimpi tu Jani

epi mia ora
the swimming the John-gen for one hour
While nominals derived from unaccusative predicates happily co-occur with

aspectual modiers, this is not the case with nominals derived from unergative
predicates, as the ungrammaticality of (34c) indicates. Thus, unergative
nominals qualify as result nominals with respect to the criterion established by
Lebaux (1986), Grimshaw (1990) and others.
Moreover, unaccusative nominals can be modied by aspectual adjectives
(cf. 35a), while unergative nominals are not compatible with such modiers.
And, as (35b) further shows, they are not compatible with agentive modiers
either:
(35) a.
i sihni
ptosi ton timon
the frequent fall the prices-gen
The frequent fall of the prices
b. *i siniditi/sihni
ergasia tu ipalilu
the conscious/frequent work the employee-gen
The genitive that appears within unaccusative nominals bears the thematic role
of theme, much like the single DP argument found with their corresponding
verbs. On the other hand, the single genitive that appears within unergative
nominals receives a possessor interpretation (see also Chapter 3).
Interestingly, Greek nominals derived from unaccusative predicates seem
to challenge the view that process nominals are singular nouns (similar observations hold also for other languages). As Markantonatou observes, in certain
instances unaccusative nominals receive the event reading only when the nominal is inected for plural number. This is illustrated in (36) below:
(36) i aksi/i aksis turiston
oli ti nihta
the arrival/the arrivals tourists-gen all the night
*The arrival of tourists during the whole night
The arrivals of tourists during the whole night
As Markantonatou points out, plural nominals in Greek qualify as event

nominals, if they correspond to predicates that have no internal temporal structure and if their aspectual interpretation changes from perfective to imperfective, when the reference of their theme argument changes from a quantized to
a cumulative one. As known, unaccusative predicates, and as a consequence,
nominals derived from such predicates have necessarily telic readings. In fact
if the mass/count distinction in the individual domain corresponds to the process/state vs. achievement/accomplishment distinction in the event domain,
telic nominals qualify as count events and should therefore license pluralization
(see the discussion in Section 3.3). However, as noted by Markantonatou, a
durative interpretation is also possible when the reference of the theme argument of unaccusative nominals is not quantized, as in (36). When the theme
argument is quantized the example becomes ungrammatical, as shown in (37):
(37) i aksi/*i aksis tu Gani
oli ti nihta
the arrival/the arrivals the John-gen all the night
These facts support Tennys (1994) Aspectual Hypothesis, according to which

aspectual roles are mapped on internal argument positions, and these aect the
aspectual interpretation of the whole predicate. Given that unaccusative predicates only have internal arguments, this state of aairs is expected.
Several verbs that belong to the group of alternating unaccusative verbs
give two dierent types of derived nominals. Compare the nominals in (38)
below derived from the verb alazo change, one of the unaccusative predicates
that enter the causative alternation (see also the discussion on passive
nominals in the next chapter):
(38) a.
i alagi tis katastasis

the change the situation-gen
b. to alag-ma ton ruhon
the change the clothes-gen
The interpretation in the two examples is strikingly dierent. In (38b) we understand that the clothes have been changed by someone, while in (38a) it is
the situation that has changed. Several similar examples can be found. There
is a certain tendency in interpreting nominals that contain the inx -m- as
passive, however this is not entirely systematic (see 3.3.3 for discussion on the
aspectual properties of this inx).
To sum up, here I discussed the behavior of intransitive verbs with respect
to nominalization. I pointed out that process nominals can be derived from
predicates classied as unaccusatives in Greek, but not from unergative predicates.
. Nominals derived from ditransitive predicates
Greek has ditransitive constructions (39a), corresponding to the English
one in (39b):
(39) a.
edosa
to vivlio
sto
Jani
gave-1sg the book-acc to-the John-acc
I gave the book to John
b. I gave the book to John
Like English, Greek has a dative alternation, which, as Anagnostopoulou (to

appear) convincingly argues, is like the double object construction in English.
In this construction the goal argument bears morphological genitive case:
(40) a.
edosa
tu Jani
to vivlio
gave-1sg the John-gen the book-acc
I gave John the book
b. I gave John the book
Anagnostopoulou further shows that Greek has two classes of double object
verbs. It distinguishes between the two classes through the case morphology of
the two arguments. In the second class both arguments bear accusative. However, in the rst class the goal qualies as a double object, while in the second
class the goal behaves like a direct object (cf. 41b):
(41) a.
edose
tu Jani
to vivlio
gave-3sg the John-gen the book-acc
He/she gave John the book
b. didaski ta pedia
ti gramatiki
teach-3sg the children-acc the grammar-acc
ton arheon elinikon
the Ancient Greek-gen
He teaches the grammar of Ancient Greek to the children
In fact, Anagnostopoulou points out that some Greek verbs permit the double
accusative construction in addition to the PP and the double object construction, while other verbs belonging to the same semantic class only permit the
double accusative construction. For example, among the verbs that inherently
signify giving, serviro serve licenses all three constructions, while taizo feed
only the double accusative construction:
(42) a.
Servira
to fagito
s-ton Petro
served-1sg the food-acc to-the Peter
I served the food to Peter
b. Servira
tu Petru
to fagito
served-1sg the Peter-gen the food-acc
I served Peter the food
c.
Servira
ton Petro
to fagito
served-1sg the Peter-acc the food-acc
I served Peter the food
What is of interest here is that in Greek, nominalizations related to the verb

form with to are possible, while nominalizations related to the double object
construction are not, like in English. Consider the examples in (43) and (44):
(43) a. *To harisma tis Marias
enos vivliu
(apo ton Petro)
the gift
the Mary-gen a
book-gen (by the Peter)
*Peters gift of Mary of a book
b. *To dosimo tis Marias
ton ruhon
(apo ton Petro)
the giving the Mary-gen the clothes-gen (by the Peter)
(44) a.
To harisma enos vivliu s-tin Maria (apo ton Petro)

The gift a book-gen to-the Mary (by the Peter)
Peters gift of a book to Mary
b. To dosimo ton ruhon
s-tin Maria (apo ton Petro)
the giving the clothes-gen to-the Mary (by the Peter)
Anagnostopoulou argues that the ungrammaticality of the examples in (43) is

an eect relating to the presence of a zero head introducing the goal argument,
like English nominalizations related to the double object construction. I come
back to this point in Chapters 3 and 4.
Verbs licensing the double accusative construction permit process
nominalizations in which the goal surfaces as the complement of the noun. The
fact that aspectual modication, both in form of an adverbial in (45a) and in
form of an adjective in (45b) is licit suggests that such nominals bear the process reading:
(45) a.
i didaskalia ton pedion

epi ores
the teaching the children-gen for hours
b. i taktiki pliromi ton ipalilon
the regular payment the employees-gen
It is possible to form nominalizations where the theme is expressed, but then

the goal remains unexpressed:
(46) a.
didaskalia ton arheon

se takta hronika diastimata
the teaching the Ancient Greek-gen in regular time
intervals
b. *i didaskalia ton arheon ton pedion
c.
i taktiki pliromi ton logariasmon

the regular payment the bills-gen
d. *i pliromi ton logariasmon tu ipalilu
the payment the bills-gen the employee-gen
Anagnostopoulou (to appear) further points out that nominalizations

based on the genitive construction and nominalizations based on the double
accusative construction are not identical from the point of view of their event
structure. In particular, the former are less verbal than the latter. While both
appear to support argument structure, nominalizations from give verbs do not
permit adverbial modication.
(47) *To harisma enos vivliu
s-tin Maria ja ores
the gift
a
book-gen to-the Mary for hours
the gift of a book to Mary for hours
I discuss this further in Chapter 4.

. Nominals derived from psychological predicates
Like other languages, Greek has three classes of psychological predicates (cf.
Anagnostopoulou 1999). Class 1 includes psychological predicates like agapo
love, miso hate. Class 2 experiencer predicates e.g. anisiho (worry),
provlimatizo (puzzle), enohlo (bother), diaskedazo (amuse), fovizo (frighten),
endiafero (interest) qualify as transitives in that they are causatives, and show
evidence of assignment of accusative case. Class 3 experiencer predicates e.g.
aresi (like), ftei (bothers/matters) qualify as unaccusatives (see Alexiadou and
Anagnostopoulou 1999).
In Greek Class 1 predicates, the experiencer has nominative and the theme
accusative case (cf. Anagnostopoulou 1999):
(48) o Janis
agapai ti Maria
the John-nom loves the Mary-acc
John loves Mary
In Class 2, the experiencer has morphological accusative case; the theme/causer

has nominative case and agrees with the verb:
(49) i kategida
fovizi
to Jani
the storm-nom frightens the John-acc
The storm frightens John
The non-causative counterpart of this construction involves a theme being

introduced by a preposition and an experiencer bearing nominative:
(50) o Petros
fovate me tin katastasi
the Peter-nom fears with the situation
Class 3 selects for a dative experiencer (PP as in (51a) or morphological genitive as in (51b)) and a nominative agreeing theme:
(51) a.
To krasi
aresi
ston Petro
the wine-nom like-3sg to-the Peter
Peter likes the wine
b. To krasi
tu
aresi
tu Petru
the wine-nom cl-gen like-3sg the Peter-gen
Peter likes the wine
Consider now the nominals from these classes of verbs. It has been observed that nominalizations can only be related to the non-causative forms of
the predicates that distinguish between causative and non-causative readings,
i.e. Class 2 predicates (cf. Chomsky 1970, Grimshaw 1990, Pesetsky 1995:72,
Markantonatou 1992: 90f.). These seem to be able to be modied by aspectual
modiers:
(52) a.
to endiaferon tu Jani
ja ta ta epi dekaeties
the interest
the John-gen for the plants for decades
b. o fovos tu Jani
ja tis kategides epi tosa hronia
the fear the John-gen for storms
for many years
c. *o fovos tis kategidas epi tris ores itan periergo pragma
the fear the storm-gen for three hours was strange thing
In the above examples the genitive DP is interpreted as the experiencer. Similar

facts are observed for Catalan (cf. Picallo 1991).
At least certain of Class 3 predicates seem to be able to from process
nominalizations. A large number of verbs of this class, however, does not have
a corresponding nominal:
(53) to sinehes fteksimo tu Jani
the constant blaming the John-gen
The discussion so far has established the following: Greek shows a preliminary distinction between event vs. result nominals identied by the criteria of
manner and aspectual modication.
In the next section I turn to the verbal properties of process nominals.
. The verbal properties of process nominals

In this section, I discuss in detail the verbal properties of process nominals that
I link to the presence of VoiceP and AspectP. Evidence for the presence of these
functional layers comes from two main areas: (i) the classes of adverbs that can
be present within process nominals and (ii) the overt morphological reexes
of the presence of Voice and Aspect that can be observed in several languages.
. DP-internal adverbs
In the recent literature a number of signicant facts about the distribution of
adverbs inside nominalizations have been brought into light, an account of
which necessitates certain radical assumptions concerning the internal structure
of these constructions.
As noted in Alexiadou (1997), adverbs can appear in Greek nominalizations (cf. 54):
(54) i katastro ton stihion
olosheros (mas kateplikse)
the destruction the evidence-gen completely us shocked
Under the standard assumption that adverbs modify VPs and not NPs (cf.
Jackendo 1977), the presence of adverbs inside nominals is problematic. Adverbial modication is consistent only with a VP structure. If nominalizations
are not syntactically derived from a VP, the presence of adverbs inside these
constructions cannot be accounted for. As mentioned in Chapter 1, the occurrence of adverbs inside nominals is not licensed simply by the action or process
interpretation associated with them, but rather it is syntactically conditioned.
As the contrast in (55) illustrates, the adverb cannot appear unless the rest of
the complement system accompanies it. In other words only in (55b), where
the eventive nominal is used, as signaled by the presence of the internal argument, is the adverb acceptable.
(55) a. *i katastro olosheros
the destruction completely
b. i katastro tis polis
olosheros
the destruction the city-gen completely
The destruction of the city completely
Besides this general observation, Borer (1993), Hazout (1995) for Hebrew, Fu
(1994) for Chinese, Fu et al. (1998) for English, and Alexiadou (1997, 1999a,b),
Alexiadou and Stavrou (1998a) for Greek point out that not all types of adverbs
are acceptable in nominalizations. As shown in (56)(57) with Hebrew and
Greek data, modal adverbs of the type probably and speaker-oriented adverbs
of the type fortunately are not permitted.
(56) *ktivat Dan et ha-avoda lelo safek
writing Dan acc the work doubtlessly
(57) *i katastro ton stihion
pithanos/ilikrina
the destruction the evidence-gen probably/frankly
In both Greek and Hebrew, the type of adverbs that are acceptable within process nominals are (cf. 5859): manner, aspectual (frequency/interval denoting)
and certain temporal ones.
(58) a.
i katastro ton egrafon

toso prosektika
the destruction the documents-gen that carefully
the destruction of the documents that carefully
b. i katastro ton egrafon
kathimerina
the destruction the documents-gen daily
the destruction of the documents daily
c. i katastro ton egrafon
ktes
the destruction the documents-gen yesterday
the destruction of the documents yesterday
(59) a.
ktivat Dan et ha-avoda bi-mehirut

writing Dan acc the-work quickly
Dans writing of the work quickly
b. axilat Dan et ha-uga be-minus
eating Dan acc the-cake politely
Dans eating the cake politely
The same type of adverbs appear in nominals derived from unaccusative predicates:
(60) i ptosi ton timon
stadiaka
the fall the prices-gen gradually
In contrast, no such adverbs can appear with nominals derived from unergative
predicates:
(61) a. *to kolimpi tu Petru

prosektika
the swim the Peter-gen carefully
b. *to skarfaloma tu Jani
prosektika
the climbing the John-gen carefully
Finally, recall that adverbial modication is possible with nominalizations derived from double accusative verbs.
(62) a
b.
to servirisma tu pelati
me evgenia
the serving the customer-gen with politeness
to servirisma tu kafe
me evgenia
the serving the coee-gen with politeness
The admissibility of certain adverbs in process nominals is not a fact that

simply has to do with some kind of semantic compatibility (given Grimshaws
reasoning, a priori the semantics of a process nominal should not be dierent
from the semantics of a verb). Rather, it is a syntactic fact that has to do with
the principles that determine which elements can be attached at which positions in the tree structure. This does not mean that the admissibility of adverbs
has nothing to do with the event interpretation associated with process
nominals. In fact, Grimshaws account could capture the correlation between
the admissibility of adverbs and the event interpretation as well, by assuming
that adverbs modify eventive predicates, both nominal and verbal. But the interpretation of such nominals as denoting events is not sucient as an explanation to the restrictions on the distribution of adverbs.
But why is adverb distribution signicant and why does it show us something about the internal structure of process nominals? Recent work on the
syntax of adverbs has put forth the hypothesis that adverbial phrases are related
to distinct functional projections (cf. Alexiadou 1997, Cinque 1999). This hypothesis runs in parallel with research on the type and content of functional
projections that constitute the clausal architecture. It crucially builds on the
transparent semantic relation that can be observed crosslinguistically between
projections and adverbs. According to this hypothesis, the presence of aspectual
adverbs is linked to an Aspect phrase, while manner adverbs arguably bear a
tight relation to Voice phrase. On this view, the presence of such adverbs signals the presence of certain low verbal projections within process nominals.
Thus on the basis of this reasoning, I conclude that process nominals contain
a domain that shows clear verbal properties.
. Morphological reexes
Interestingly, nominals in certain languages have a morphological reex of the
inclusion of Voice and Aspect. As far as Voice is concerned, observe that certain Greek process nominals tend to include the inx -m-, which is related to
non-active voice morphology in Greek, as can be seen in the passive perfect
participle (63a):
(63) a.
diavas-men-os
read
b. diavas-m-a
reading
This suggests that at least a number of process nominals in Greek might be

shown to inect for voice. However, this is not very systematic. A more systematic connection between voice morphology and nominals comes from Turkish. In Turkish, as reported in Comrie (1976a), action nominals may show
voice in the same way as a nite verb does. Compare the Turkish sentence in
(64) to the action nominal in (65). Both contain the passive morpheme -il-:
(64) Mektub yaz -il -di
letter write pass past
The letter was written
(65) mektub-un yaz -il -ma-si
letter-gen write pass vn-its
the writing of the letter
Similar patterns are observed in Korean, West Greenlandic, Amharic, Bantu

languages, and Maori.
With respect to Aspect, in Slavic languages the perfective vs. non-perfective
opposition is also observed in process nominals. Consider the following examples containing verbal nouns in Polish (from Schoorlemmer 1995). As (66)
shows, the noun evaluation inects for perfective and imperfective aspect
much like the corresponding verb does in the language:
(66) a.
ocenienie
studentw
przez nauczycieli nastapio szybko
evaluation-pf the students-gen by teachers occurred quickly
b. ocenianie
studentw
przez nauczycieli ciagneo sie
evaluation-imp students-gen by teachers lasted re
przez
cay tydzien
through the whole week
Similar patterns are found in Archi, Inuit, Buryat, Mongolian, Turkish, Tuva,
and Tagalog.
. Aspectual distinctions
In the previous sections I pointed out that the presence of aspectual modication and of aspectual morphology constitutes an argument in favor of the presence of AspectP within nominals. In this section I show that there is something
more to this. Specically, dierent types of nominals receive distinct aspectual
interpretations. The readings discussed here cannot be related to lexical aspect
only but seem to suggest a combination of telicity/telicity and perfectivity/
imperfectivity. In the recent literature telic/telic readings in combination with
the distinction perfective vs. imperfective have been linked to the presence of
an Aspect Phrase (see Iatridou et al. 2000 for a recent discussion and the discussion in Chapter 1).
.. -ing vs. non -ing nominals in English and -ung nominals in German
It has been noted that -ing nominalizations dier in their aspectual properties
from -ion nominalizations, in the sense that -ing nominalizations entail an
imperfective event. This property led e.g. Pustejovsky (1995) and Siegel (1997)
to analyze -ing as a progressive marker.
In particular, Pustejovsky points out that there is no interpretation of -ing
nominalizations as the result of an event, as there is with -ion and other
nominalizations (67b vs. 67c). Moreover, achievements are much less acceptable as -ing nominalizations than are processes (67d vs. 67e).
(67) a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
destroying the memo took an hour

*the destroying was widespread
the destruction was widespread
*the arriving of John
the arrival of John
A further argument for assuming that telicity is encoded in the structure comes
from examining the aspectual properties of -ung nominalizations in German.
These are sensitive to the type of object (quantized/non-quantized) present. As
was the case with unaccusative nominals in Greek, non-quantized objects yield
non-telic readings with -ung nominals:
(68) a. *die Ausgrabung antiker Schtze
in einem Jahr
the excavation antique treasures-gen in one year
b. die jahrelange Ausgrabung antiker Schtze

c. die Ausgrabung eines antiken Schatzes in einem Jahr
d. *die jahrelange Ausgrabung eines antiken Schatzes
.. Passive nominals in English

Tenny (1994) and Snyder (1998) have pointed out that there is a dierence in
aspectual interpretation between passive nominals, i.e. nominals which involve
fronting of the complement to initial position, and other nominal types. Specifically, passive ones only denote delimited events (cf. 69). (69) contrasts with
(70) where the nominal can receive both a telic and an atelic interpretation (see
also the discussion in Chapter 3):
(69) a. the citys destruction in ve minutes
b. *the citys destruction for just ve minutes
(70) a. the destruction of the city in ve minutes
b. the destruction of the city for ve minutes
.. ma/mo vs. non ma/mo nouns in Greek

According to Kolliakou, certain nominalization axes in Greek show selectional restrictions that are sensitive to the aspectual type of the respective nominal. For instance (cf. Kolliakou 1995: 211f.), prototypical state and telic event
predicates do not give grammatical nominalizations when they combine with
the ax -ma/mo (cf. 71):
(71) a. *agapima
loving
b. *katastrema
destroying
c. *dolonima
assassinating
agapi
love
katastro
destruction
dolofonia
assassination
Moreover, as the contrast in (72a-b) shows, while nominals derived from

predicates denoting accomplishments do not tolerate adjectival aspectual modication denoting repetition, this is possible with ma/-mo. English and Hebrew
accomplishment nominals also resist modication by frequent (cf. Borer 1993).
Kolliakou concludes from this that -ma/-mo nouns, if they denote events, they
denote processes.
(72) a.
to sihno plisimo ton piaton

the frequent washing the dishes
b. *i sihni
dolofonia
ton ipefthinon
the frequent assassination the responsible-gen
Further support for this conclusion comes from the observation that in the
cases where two forms of the nominal exist, as is the case with correction below, only the ma/mo form is compatible with modiers such as for an hour.
(73) a.
i diorthosi ton grapton

se pende lepta/*ja
mia ora
the correction the papers-gen in ve minutes/for an hour
b. to diorthoma ton ruhon
se pende lepta/ja
mia ora
the correction the clothes-gen in ve minutes/for an hour
Given that -ma/mo nouns are compatible with such modiers, one can
conclude that these are ambiguous between a process (durative) and an event
(telic) reading in the sense discussed in the introduction. On the other hand,
non -ma/mo nouns tend to refer to telic events only.
Note that stative nominals are also incompatible with adjectival modication signaling repetition.
(74) *i sihni
agapi tu Jani
the frequent love the John-gen
In fact in the above examples both stative and achievement nominals pattern like Grimshaws result nominals with respect to modication by adjectives
such as frequent. According to Grimshaw, such modiers may appear with
plural result nouns, but only with singular process nominals. This contrast is
repeated in (75a and b). In Greek, as (76a and b) show, both statives and
achievement nominals are compatible with such modiers, when they appear
in plural form:
(75) a. *the frequent examinations/examination of the papers
b. the frequent exams/*exam
(76) a.
i sihnes dolofonies
politikon
the frequent assassinations politicians-gen
b. i sihnes agapes
the frequent loves
Thus (76a and b) seem to constitute evidence that these nominals belong to the
class of result nouns. However, if, as mentioned earlier on, one assumes that
the mass/count distinction in the individual domain corresponds to the process/state vs. accomplishment/achievement distinction in the event domain,
telic event nominalizations should license pluralization and disallow repetition
modication in their singular forms., In other words, the fact that
Grimshaws tests do not work as expected with achievement nominals suggests
that these qualify as event, i.e. telic, and not as process, i.e. durative, nominals.
Coming back to stative nominals, some of the tests used in Grimshaw to
diagnose argument structure actually only diagnose the presence of an agent
and hence yield deviant results with such predicates. For instance, while
by-phrases can occur within achievement nominals, they are not possible
within stative nominals.
(77) a.
i dolofonia
tu Athanasiadi
apo ti 17
Noemvri
the assassination the Athanasiadis-gen by the 17th of November
The assassination of Athanasiadis by the 17th of November
a. i dolofonies
politikon
apo ti 17
Noemvri
the assassinations politicians-gen by the 17th of November
The assassination of politicians by the 17th of November
b. *i agapi tis Marias
apo to Jani
the love the Mary-gen by the John
b. i agapi tis Marias
ja to Jani
the love the Mary-gen for the John
Marys love for John
The ungrammaticality of (77b) is related to the fact that the by-phrase receives
a restrictive interpretation within argument supporting nominals, as will be
discussed in Chapter 3. It can only denote a causer, and never an experiencer.
The presence of a by-phrase is licit even when the noun in (77a) is in the plural
(cf. 77a). As (77b) shows, when the theme argument is present within the
stative nominal, it is preceded by a preposition. This pattern is clearly dierent
from the nominalization pattern of non-stative transitive predicates. The genitive argument in (77b) can be only interpreted as an experiencer.
Moreover, while modication by agent-oriented adjectives is possible with
achievement nominals, the presence of such modiers within stative nominals
is ungrammatical:
(78) a.
i eskemeni dolofonia
tu Athanasiadi
the intentional assassination the Athanasiadis-gen
b. *i eskemeni agapi tis Marias

the intentional love the Mary-gen
The ungrammaticality of (78b) is again due to the fact that there is no agent
involved in states in general.
Finally, while it is possible to modify achievement nouns with manner
adverbials, it is ungrammatical with stative nouns. If the presence of a manner
component is somehow related to the presence of agentive features (Hale and
Keyser 1993, Levin and Rappaport 1995), then again the ungrammaticality of
(79b) is expected. However, stative nouns are compatible with aspectual modiers of the type for decades:
(79) a.
i dolofonia
tu Athanasiadi
me frikto tropo
the assassination the Athanasiadi-gen with horrible manner
The assassination of Athanasiadis with a horrible manner
b. *i agapi tis Marias
ja to Jani me trelo pathos
the love the Mary-gen for the John with crazy passion
c. i agapi tis Marias
ja to Jani epi dekaeties
the love the Mary-gen for the John for decades
Marys love for John for decades
If stative nominals can never denote events, then (79b) can be taken as
evidence that these lack a functional layer bringing about an event interpretation, since manner modication goes hand in hand with such a layer. In fact,
as Katz (1999b) points out, manner modication is generally very restricted
with stative predicates. However, these facts say nothing about the availability
of a stative nominal to take arguments. As to why modication by aspectual
modiers of the type for decades is licit, this could be related to the lexical
semantics of the root.
Note that the facts presented here pose certain problems for Grimshaw.
According to Grimshaw, only nominals that have a complex event structure,
i.e. an event structure that can be broken down into aspectual subparts, can
give argument-supporting nominalizations. This view is embedded within the
assumption that nominalization necessarily involves suppression of an external
argument. The data examined so far show that this mapping does not correspond to the actual nominalization possibilities. As we have seen above,
unergative verbs that have activity readings do not give argument-supporting
nominalizations, although arguably they possess an external argument. On
the other hand, unaccusative predicates that have achievement readings give
argument-supporting nominals, although they only correspond to the second
subpart of the aspectual decomposition of a predicate. Moreover, one would
expect that stative predicates, which cannot be argued to involve aspectual
subparts, would also not be able to give argument-supporting nominalizations.
However, examples such as (79c) above are perfectly grammatical.
To conclude, nominals show aspectual oppositions, but AspectP should be
present in all the types of nominals discussed in this section (though see Chapter 4 for certain renements). It receives a dierent specication in each case.
. The structural dierences between process and result nominals
Thus far, the following general properties of process nominals have been identied:
event nominals can refer to dierent types of events. In certain occasions

such nominals bear morphological aspectual marking.
event nominals have a number of verbal properties, in the sense that they
permit adverbial modication. More importantly, there are severe restrictions on adverbial modication, in the sense that low adverbs are licit
within such nominals, but high adverbs are disallowed.
To capture these properties structurally, at least some verbal functional

layers must be present within process nominals. Hence I propose that vP and
AspectP are present within process nominals only. On this view, result
nominals and process nominals are similar in the sense that both include a root
as their basic component, but only the latter include verbal, i.e. eventive, functional layers. The structure assumed for event nominals is shown in (80).
(80)
DP
FP (NumbP/AgrP)
D
the
AP
FP
F AspectP
Aspect
Aspect
vP
v
LP
L
Comp (=theme)
DESTROY the city
AspP and a vP count as low functional projections responsible for the licensing of adverbs. In fact vP and AspP are functional projections which can appear
both under T and D/Number. Embedding under D, and perhaps further nominal layers, results in a morphological noun, as illustrated in (80) above. On the
other hand, embedding under T and further verbal functional layers results in
a morphological verb. In a sense, this analysis makes derived nominals look
very similar to untensed clauses (see de Hackbeil 1984).
On the other hand, the structure depicted in (81) must be assumed for
result nominals. (81) diers from (80) in that no Aspect and no v are included,
namely the two projections that contribute to event interpretation:
(81)
DP
D
FP
F
LP
L
DP
One question that may arise here is whether (81) suces to capture the properties and meaning of result nouns. In the introduction I assumed that the semantic of roots denote a resultant state, which is actually the meaning associated with result nominals. Thus the presence of an additional functional category that bears such interpretation is not necessarily needed. However, one
could argue that what we understand as a result is derived from the presence
of an aspectual head specied [RESULT] which dominates the root, as has been
argued to be the case for stative participles by Embick (2000b). On this view,
the result meaning is derived through a combination of Aspect and the root.
Clearly, the issue is related to the general discussion about whether roots bear
some component of meaning or not. For the purposes of the discussion here,
I take roots to roughly bear the semantics of a resultant state. States are taken
to be primitives in the spirit of Dowty (1979) and others building on Dowty.
Thus, the presence of an aspectual projection specied [RESULT] is not necessary. Note that this seems a necessary step in view of the restrictions noted in
Section 3.3. That is though the feature specication of the functional layers
and the selectional requirements among these contribute a great part of the
meaning, some part of it seems to be constant (see also the related discussion
in Section 5).
(81) makes explicit what I have already suggested: the dierence between
result and process nominals is not one of argument structure, since both nominal types can have complements (see 82 which was discussed also in the introductory chapter), but rather it relates to the presence vs. absence of functional
layers that bring about process/event readings. This is consistent with the fact
that result nominals disallow modication by manner adverbs and aspectual
modiers. On the other hand, a nominal FP is present in both types of
nominals, as discussed in Section 1.
(82) a.
la demonstracio den Joan del teorema de Pitagores

the proof
of Joan of the theorem of Pythagoras
b. la demonstracio den Joan del teorema de Pitagores
the proof
es inconsistent
is inconsistent
Several issues arise. Most importantly, however, if constructions like (82)

are generally possible, how can we explain the fact that the presence of complements is obligatory with process nominals only? Recall that result nominals can,
but need not, have complements. I come back to this in Section 5. The fact,
however, that result nominals can have complements is unexpected both under
an approach to nominalizations that assigns a VP structure only to process
nominals but not to result nominals, as well as under the lexicalist approach
which associates the presence of arguments with the presence of an event
structure. First of all, under an analysis of process nominals in which a VP is
included in their internal structure, it is expected that these and only these will
have complements, as the basic claim of this approach is that process nominals
have the same internal arguments as their verbal counterparts because both
contain a VP. Since a VP is not present within result nominals, it is not immediately clear why complements are present within such nominals.
To deal with this, Picallo (1991) suggests that result nominals, enter
D-structure categorially marked as NPs like intransitives, non-deverbal, and
active transitives. The arguments of lexical nominals do not assign structural
case to their arguments. Rather they enter D-structure specied as assigning
inherent case (genitive or oblique) to their arguments. Grimshaw (1990) and
to some extent Zubizarreta (1987), on the other hand, make a distinction between the notion of complement, i.e. an expression that corresponds to a position in the lexical conceptual structure of the head, and the notion of argument
which is licensed by argument structure. While complements can be present
within result nominals, only arguments can be present within process
nominals.
Having shown how the properties of process nominals are accounted for
in the system proposed in the introduction, in Sections 4 and 5 I address the
following issues in turn:
(i) are there arguments for the presence of higher than Aspect functional
projections inside process nominals?
(ii) what determines the presence of argument structure?
. Process nominals lack tense

. Absence of phenomena related to T: EPP, ECM and raising
In my discussion of the morphological properties of nouns, I pointed out that
these suggest that the inectional projections of Voice and Aspect are present
within nominals. On the other hand, certain other verbal inectional categories, such as Tense and Mood seem to be totally absent. In general, nominalizations seem not to be able to express tense and modality in a manner identical
to their related verbs (cf. Croft 1991). Koptjevskaja-Tamm (1993) investigated
nominalizations in nearly 70 languages and from her sample it is also evident
that nominals tend to inect at least for Aspect and Voice, if at all. In this section I discuss certain phenomena that are straightforwardly accounted for, if
we assume that nominals lack T.
There are several properties of nouns, widely discussed in the literature,

which distinguish them from verbs (see e.g. Stowell 1981, Kayne 1984,
Grimshaw 1990, Giorgi and Longobardi 1991, Drijkoningen 1993, Schoorlemmer 1995, de Wit 1997). These are summarized below:
(a) There are no expletives in nominal constructions:
(83) a. there arrived a man
b. *theres arrival
c. *its rain
(b) Nouns do not allow raising

(84) Mary appears to have left
(85) *Marys appearance to have left
(c) Nouns do not allow passivization across sentence boundaries

(86) The baby is estimated to weigh 8 pounds by the doctor
(87) *the babys estimation to weigh 8 pounds by the doctor
(d) Exceptional case-marking does not occur with nominals:

(88) I believe Mickey to be a genius
(89) *my belief of Mickey to be genius
(90) Jans horen van Marie liedjes zingen
Jans hear of Mary songs sing
The absence of these phenomena within nouns was taken to be due to the fact
that Spec,DP is a thematic position (cf. Abney 1987), unlike Spec,TP that is a
checking and not a thematic position. In what follows I account for the absence
of these phenomena, by showing that these are linked to the presence of T in
a given clause. Given that Tense is absent from nominals, we do not expect to
nd Raising or expletives within them either.
In Chomsky (1995), Collins (1997), Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou (to
appear) among others, it has been proposed that there are two features associated with T: the Extended Projection Principle (EPP) feature and the [assign
nominative] feature. The rst obvious eect of the absence of T in
nominalizations is the fact that the single DP argument does not appear with
nominative case. Second, under the assumption that EPP-related phenomena
(expletive merge and/or argument movement to Spec,TP) take place in order
to satisfy a universal property of T (Chomsky 1998), then it is expected that we
never nd those within DPs, if those lack T (see Abney 1987, Doron and
Rappaport-Hovav 1991, Drijkoningen 1993, Alexiadou and Stavrou 1998a,
Schoorlemmer and de Wit 1996 among many others for claims that EPP is not
respected within nominals). Hence, this explains the fact that expletives cannot
be merged inside DPs. Moreover, arguments of nouns do not exhibit obligatory
movement to a designated functional position in order to satisfy the requirements of this projection the way subjects move to Spec,TP or to T.,
Kayne (1984), and Grimshaw (1990) among others have argued that the
absence of ECM and Raising in nominal structures is due to the fact that N is
syntactically impaired with respect to V. I believe that this is correct. Nominal
clauses dier from verbal clauses in that they lack T. More specically, the lack
of these types of constructions from DPs results from the absence of a landing
site in the higher clause. On the basis of the assumption that raising involves
movement of the argument from the lower Spec,TP to the higher one, Raising
is expected to be illicit within DPs, if these lack TP.
Within the minimalist framework, ECM structures have been used as a
strong argument against Greed because the XP raises overtly to its EPP position,
namely Spec,TP, which is not identiable with its Case position, namely
Spec,AgrOP (cf. Lasnik 1993). From a dierent perspective, it has been argued
that further raising to AgrOP of the higher clause, which is the Case position
of the embedded subject, is made possible by forming a tense-chain between the
two tenses, i.e. the tense in the lower clause and the matrix tense (cf. Bennis
and Hoekstra 1989). Building on this specic proposal, de Wit 1997 proposes
that ECM constructions in nominals are impossible as the lower T cannot be
part of a tense-chain, since the higher clause lacks Tense. Obviously, the structure proposed here which excludes Tense permits a natural implementation of
this analysis. In other words, no tense chain can be formed, as the higher clause
lacks tense, in fact it lacks any tense specication.
Further evidence for the lack of higher than Aspect functional projections
inside process nominals comes from the distribution of adverbs presented in
the Section 3. As discussed there, only lower adverbs can be tolerated within
derived nominals, i.e. adverbs of the type that do not match with T or other
higher functional projections.
Moreover, as discussed in Siloni (1997), the presence of T itself crucially
aects the presence of D or C, assuming that D is the counterpart of C. Siloni
(1997), in a rather dierent context from the one of the present discussion,
investigates in some detail the restrictions on what can appear as a complement
of D. Elaborating on Stowells (1982) correlation between the existence of a CP
level and the presence of a tense operator in the clause, she suggests that what
determines the choice between CP and DP is the presence vs. absence of a tense
operator. Clauses that have no internally determined tense are headed by D. In
other words, while C is associated with tensed clauses, D is associated with
tenseless clauses. In principle this establishes a correlation that certain verbal
projections situated lower than tense can be included within DPs. As soon as
tense is active, the projection turns into a verbal clause (see Chapter 4 for further discussion).
A similar point is made in Pustejovsky (1995: 157f.). Pustejovksy notes that
the way in which a verbal sentence denotes an event is dierent from the way
DPs denote events. Although both strings Mary arrived at 3 pm and Marys
arrival at 3 pm may refer to the same event, they do not express the same content about the event. The former is an assertion of an event having occurred
while the latter denotes an event without an assertion that it has occurred. The
dierence between the two is that in the former the event is tensed and thereby
interpreted as a proposition. Only through tensing of an event secting predicate
can the event in the latter string contribute propositional information as in
Marys arrival was at 3 pm. That is both sentences and NPs denote events, but
the manner with which they denote is quite dierent distinguished by their
types. A proposition is seen as the result of applying tense to an event description. To this end, tense acts as a generalized quantier over event descriptions.
D takes this function in the nominal context.
This view makes the prediction those languages that lack Tense as a separate
category should neutralize the distinction between nouns and verbs. This prediction seems to be borne out. The group of Salish languages lacks a unitary
category T (Matthewson 1996, Davis and Matthewson 1997). These authors
argue that in this language group nominal and verbal projections are identical.
First, the elements that introduce nominal and verbal projections are phonologically identical. Second, they have the same syntactic distribution, as illustrated
in (91)(92):
complement of intransitive verb:
(91) qanm=kan
[kw=nlq=i]
hear-intr-1sg.subj arrive-3pl.poss
I heard that they came
(92) kic-xal kwu=ptk i=uxwalmixw=a
lie down ku=potato pl.det=person=exist
The people plant potatoes
verbal projection
nominal projection
Third, the elements that introduce verbal and nominal elements also
encode the same semantic distinctions.
To conclude, in this section I have argued that process nominals are roots
appearing beneath the functional head Aspect but do not combine with Tense.
While realization of the morphological object verb amounts to combining with
Tense (either via head-movement or Merger), this combination would fail in
nominals, as the functional head D (or a nominal functional category e.g.
Number following Ritter (1991)) dominates the root. Crucially, AspP can combine with either D or T, but not both.
In the next section I turn to some arguments in favor of the presence of
Tense inside nominals and show how they can be re-interpreted in a dierent
way tting the proposal made here.
. Evidence for nominal tense
It has been pointed out in the literature that at the semantic level the absence
of tense in the DP can be challenged. Consider (93):
(93) Every fugitive is now in jail.
This sentence is an assertion about past fugitives who are in jail at present. The
temporal interval of the referents of the DP being fugitives crucially does not
coincide with the interval of them being in jail. This suggests that DPs must be
able to be given a temporal reading independently of that of the clause in which
they appear (En 1987). The independent temporal interpretation of DPs is
constrained by syntactic factors, though, as shown by Musan (1995). In (94)
the NP students can only be assigned a dependent reading, i.e. one in which the
interval of the referents being students coincides with that of their being sick.
(94) There were three students sick.
With respect to temporal readings, DPs seem to behave like embedded clauses
in that they may be dependent (95a) or independent (95b) from the tense of
the higher clause. Temporal dependence of clauses is usually referred to as the
sequence of tense (see e.g. En 1987, also Haegeman and Guron 1999).
(95) a.
b.
Mary said she would come

Mary said she will come.
If the temporal interpretation of a clause is encoded in a specialized projection, TP, then of course by analogy one might well wish to postulate that the
temporal interpretation of the nominal also be related to TP. In the more

familiar languages such as English, French, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish,
Greek, etc. this TP would not have any morphological reex.
In some languages, nominal tense does have an overt morphological reex.
Burton (1997) shows that Halkomelem, a Salishan language spoken on the
Northwest Coast of North America, has overt past tense marking on nouns.
The tense marker on nouns is the same as that on verbs. With verbs the past
tense marker occurs on a pre-verbal auxiliary, as illustrated in (96a). The same
past tense marker lh is also found on Ns as illustrated in (96bc):
(96) a.
i-lh
mex tel s:le
aux-past walk my grandfather
My grandfather walked
b. tel s:le
tel s:lalh
my grandfather
my grandfather-past
my grandfather
my late grandfather
c. tel xeltel
tel xeltel-elh te th
my pencil
my pencil-past
my pencil
the pencil which was mine
or my broken pencil
As shown by the translations, the nouns with past tense marking mean one of
three things: (i) death (96b), (ii) loss of possession (96c), or (iii) destruction
(96c). However, the above data can receive an alternative interpretation along
the lines of Davis (2000). Davis points out that the Tense marker attached to
nouns applies to the referent of the noun, that is the entity that it denotes, or,
in the case of (96c) the referent of the NP including the possessor. Crucially it
does not apply to some state of being a pencil or being a grandfather. According to Davis, this is expected if nouns, as the ones in the examples above,
are aspectless. That is tense distinctions bear on aspectual ones. As a result
Tense within these nouns does not have the same function as the tense markers
do with verbs.
The same kind of inectional endings are signaled by Hockett (1958: 238)
for Potawatomi, for the Salishan languages Statimcets (see Demirdache 1996,
Davis and Matthweson 1997, Lecarme 1998), and for Somali (Lecarme 1996,
1998). Specically, in Somali, a Cushitic (Afroasiatic) language the tense morpheme attach to denite determiners, providing yet again morphological evidence for a DP-internal TP. According to Lecarme, nominal tense is a property
of any DP (common noun phrase). Tense morphology axes to D, i.e. the
denite article -k (masculine)/-t (feminine), encoding a [past] opposition.

Near/far demonstrative enclitics are in complementary distribution with tense
morphemes.
The DP-tense is independent of the predicate-tense: nominal tense and
verbal tense may coincide or dier:
(97) a.
dhibaat-dii
Khalij-ku
wy dhammaatay
problem-DetF [+past] Gulf-DetM[+nom] F+3s ended [+past]
b. ardy-da
baan kasin
students-DetF[past] F+neg understood [+past]
The students (who are present, who I am telling you about) did not
understand your question
c. ardy-dii
wy joogaan
students-DetF[+past] F+3P are-present-[past]
The students (the students I told you about) are present
As was the case in Halkomelem, the past tense marking on the Somali DP may
indicate that the referent no longer exists. In (98) the past tense indicates that
the speaker believes the exhibition is closed, the non-past that he believes it is
still running.
(98) bandhg-ga/-gii
mad daawatay?
Exhibition-DetM[past]/det M[+past] Q+2S saw [+past]
Again such data seem to challenge the view that Tense is not present within
nominals. However, in most of the cases discussed, it is not immediately transparent whether the presence of temporal morphemes establishes reference, or
temporal location. In fact the relation between D and T is not very clear.
Lecarme (1996) suggests that the tense morpheme is attached outside the Determiner morpheme. For instance in (97a) she takes d to be the reex of D and
-ii to be the reex of tense. If the linear order of the morphemes correlates to
the syntactic hierarchy of the heads (Baker 1988, the Mirror Principle), one
would expect TP to dominate DP. Lecarme proposes, though, that DP dominates TP and that the overt Tense morpheme is actually a specier of TP which
then cliticizes to D. In later work (1998) Lecarme takes the [past ] morpheme
to be syncretic with the denite determiner morpheme. While both D and T
specications are normally expressed by a single, syncretic head and thus project only a single maximal projection, DP is obligatorily split when enclitic
possessive pronouns or other material are realized. This view, i.e. the view that
T specication actually expresses reference is adopted in Alexiadou (1997).
Nominal T does not locate events/individuals in time. In fact nominal T could

not even locate events in time, if one of the semantic requirements of T on its
complement is that this is nite, which nominal phrases denitely are not (see
Davis and Matthewson 1997 for discussion). Hence T, even if present inside
nominals, does not function like verbal T.
Having addressed the functional structure of process nominals, I turn to
the issue of the obligatory presence of arguments within them.
. On the obligatory licensing of arguments within process nominals

In the approach to nominalization followed here, the question of licensing of
arguments must be seen under a dierent light. As mentioned several times, on
this approach it is expected that all types of nominals, result and event ones, in
principle to be capable of licensing arguments. However, though it is true that
result nominal can license internal arguments, it is also true that the presence
of arguments is obligatory only in the case of event nominals. Why is this so?
Following much recent work on event structure (van Hout 1996, Borer
1999, Levin 1999 and references therein), I assume that event structure plays
a crucial role in licensing the obligatory presence of arguments. As known,
events must involve a minimum number of participants, i.e. an event cannot
take place in the absence of participants. On the view expressed here, roots
become eventive in the presence of functional structure (Aspect and v). This
amounts in suggesting that the presence of functional structure is responsible
for the obligatory presence of arguments.
However, this view is not without problems. In a system such as the one
proposed in Borer (1999), where arguments are directly projected in the specier position of various aspectual layers, this intuition is captured straightforwardly. Arguments are obligatorily present, as only event nominals contain
aspectual projections. It is not immediately transparent how the advantages of
her system can be translated in mine, though Borer cannot capture the fact that
arguments can indeed be present within result nominals as well.
To deal with this issue, I build on recent work by Beth Levin. Levin (1999)
argues that verb-meanings have two components: one component which is
provided by its event structure, and one component provided by the core
meaning, i.e. the part of the meaning which is idiosyncratic to a specic verb.
This second type is referred to as the constant. Constants are then integrated
into event structure templates to yield the various verb meanings. Let me
equate what Levin refers to as constant with an unspecied root. If this is so,
then generally the semantics of the root are such that they can license an internal argument, as roots are taken to have the semantics of a state that involves
an argument. Thus in principle, presence of arguments is guaranteed independently of the eventive character of the outcome of word-formation. As soon as
such constants enter into a relation with event related projections their presence is obligatory, i.e. they become structure participants in Levins terms, since
they are required by the event structure, although their presence is also required by the constant. The consequence of this for stative nominals is that, if
such nominals lack v and any kind of Aspect, then their arguments are licensed
from the constant, as in the case of result nouns.
In the nal section of this chapter I turn to a few remarks on the actual
realization of the morphological object noun works. The observations and suggestions made there hold for process and result nominals alike.
. Processes in morphological structure

So far I have been assuming that there are no categories such as verbs and
nouns as such. Nevertheless, it is the case that destruction is a morphological
noun, while destroy is a morphological verb. Moreover, it is the case that nouns
receive adjectival modication and agree with adjectives in all phi-features.
Furthermore, we have seen that process nominals can be modied by adverbials
much like VPs. While a treatment of these phenomena by making reference to
two domains, one VP domain and one DP domain, the latter embedding the
former, is straightforward, in a system where there no such reference is possible, it is not immediately clear how one could deal with these.
In the introduction it was assumed that addition of morphemes and of
vocabulary items takes place after Syntax. Following Halle and Marantz (1993)
and Harley and Noyer (1998a,b), I assume that destroy is changed to destruction
in the nominal context in a post-syntactic Readjustment component.
(99) katastrefo katastro/ when governed by D
destroy destruction
The Readjustment Component performs a variety of functions including

the partial modication of the phonological forms of stems, as well as the insertion of morphemes that are not present in the syntax, e.g. Gender (see the
discussion in the introduction). For L to get associated with D it needs to
reach F, either via head to head movement (see Ritter 1991) or via Merger.
Crucial to the question of how roots are provided with inection is the
question of agreement. After all, the agreement patterns of verbs and nouns are
not identical. Moreover, while adjectives show agreement, adverbs do not. I
assume that the presence of an agreement desisence is conditioned by syntactic
factors. That is the presence of agreement is not statable as a property of the
roots, but as a property of roots in syntactic environments. Embick (1998)
provides an explicit account of the post-syntactic processes that apply to yield
inected, agreeing forms in Latin. In what follows I give an outline of Embicks
proposal, which I adopt here.
In a system such as DM, agreement is treated as a property of the Morphology purely, a process involving the assignment of AGR nodes and the copying
of information from structurally dened DPs onto these nodes. Two types of
AGR nodes are distinguished:
(100) a. AGR1: Person/Number
b. AGR2: Number/Gender
The pattern Embick proposes is simple: when an element combines with Tense,
it will show AGR1 (which is in fact directly associated with Tense). When an
element cannot combine with Tense, it will agree in the pattern of Agr2. The
categories that receive AGR nodes are the following:
(101) AGR node
Tense
Determiners
Nouns
Adjectives
No AGR
Verbs
Prepositions
Adverbs
Particles
Functional heads such as Tense will be uniquely identiable in terms of their

abstract feature content. AGR assignment crucially makes reference to the specic head involved. AGR1 is adjoined to nite Tense AGR2 otherwise. The
restriction to nite Tense excludes innitives from the AGR-set.
(102) X X-AGR,
X = T or D
Only roots capable of combining with Tense in the syntax, i.e. verbs will show
AGR1. The second component in the system of agreement concerns the conditions under which properties of a DP are copied onto an AGR node. There are
two copying processes. The rst type is for agreement of the subject-predicate
type:
(103) AGR AGR ["Person, $Number, (Gender]/_gov by DP

["P, $N, (G]
This will cover both agreement between a nite verb and the surface subject
and agreement of a predicate adjective with the DP of which it is predicated.
Copying of the second type must copy information from a root onto an
attributive adjective:
(104) AGR ~ N["P, $N, (G] AGR ["P, $N, (G]
(104) is what accounts for the agreement facts within DPs, i.e. the fact that
prenominal adjectives agree with the head noun. The presence of adverbs inside
nominals and the lack of agreement with these can be accounted for if we assume that, since adverbs are spelled-out within the verbal layers of the clause,
or rather within the layers that are not unambiguously identied as verbal or
nominal, this local relation is critical. As a result, adverbs will not show any
agreement features.
The rules outlined merely provide information to AGR nodes, which are
present in accordance with the rules discussed above. They do not have inuence in determining the type of agreement to be realized.
Conclusion
In this chapter I argued that process nominals are like verbs in the sense that
their internal structure involves an abstract root embedded under vP and AspP.
Like verbal clauses they allow adverbial modication. However, unlike verbal
clauses, the type of modication they allow is restricted, and they lack a number of phenomena associated with Tense. Given that there is no lexical dierence between verbs and process nouns, and between result and process nouns,
apart from the functional domain, all can take arguments.
Notes
. Longobardi (1994) has proposed a source for N-movement related to the semantic
properties of NPs. Longobardi builds his arguments on data like the ones in (i), where,
as he argues, the proper name Gianni raises to D to check its strong referential feature.
This process takes place in the overt syntax in Romance, but covertly in English and
German:
(i) Gianni mio

Gianni my
. To host the adjectives, a number of functional projections are postulated, as illustrated
in (i), whose content and nature, however, remain unspecied:
(i) [DP D [FP AP F [FP AP F [NP N ]]]]
. In recent work Rizzi (1997) and others have argued that the left periphery of the clause,
i.e. the C domain, consists of a number of functional projections. In other words, CP is
actually composed of a number of functional layers, FocusP, TopicP, ForceP and so on.
Giusti (1996) claims that there is some ne structure in the DP as well, but this is defective, both from the crosslinguistic and from the language internal point of view. That is,
not all languages have a ne DP-structure, and furthermore, each single position is not
found in all languages. Giusti identies two such layers DP-internally, FocusP and
TopicP, which are situated either immediately above DP or immediately below DP. These
are not obligatorily present in all languages. I will not consider this issue here.
. According to Ritter (1993: 409), there appears to be some crosslinguistic variation in the
base positions of gender markers. In certain languages e.g. Spanish (contrary to Picallo
1991) gender is specied on the functional head that bears number specication.
. It could be argued that this functional node conates case and number. Halle and
Marantz (1993) also maintain that the single ax morpheme simultaneously denoting
number and case in many Indo-European languages, in contrast with many agglutinative
languages, is the result of fusion of two nodes.
. There is one more feature interfering with gender/number and case, what is usually called
inection class (marker) (Ralli 1994; to appear). Inection class is essentially a
classicatory feature shared by both the nominal stem and the ending, which indicates
the exact declensional class of a particular noun. The specic value (see Ralli op.cit.) of
this feature triggers a particular phonologically expressed marker (roughly corresponding
to Bernsteins (1993) Word Marker and Picallos (1991) Gender). Inection marker,
being a purely morphological feature, simply assigns nouns to declensional classes.
. Recall that in Greek Spec,DP is a non-thematic position (see Section 1.3. for details).
. Markantonatous work is within the LFG model, while Kolliakous is mainly an HPSG
approach. Alexiadou and Stavrou discuss a limited set of the data to be presented here
within the principles and parameters model.
. Alec Marantz and Friderikos Valetopoulos point out to me that sequences that do not
involve an internal argument receive process readings.
(i) to diavasma ja pende ores me eksondose
the reading for ve hours me exhausted
Note that such examples are similar to the English example in (ii):
(ii) the race lasted an hour
According to Grimshaw, such nouns denote simple events. As such they can appear in
contexts that bring about the event interpretation, but cannot license argument structure. Another possibility that comes to mind is to analyze such examples as involving
an empty pronominal object. Such an object pro has been argued to be present with
certain verbs in Italian (see Rizzi 1986). Giorgi and Longobardi (1991) show that the
same situation is found with nominals:
(iii) la tecnica della sue riconciliazioni con se stessi veramente perfetta
the technique of his reconciliations with oneself is really perfect
In (iii) the anaphor se stessi is understood as referentially dependent on an arbitrary
antecedent corresponding to the genitive internal argument.
. This is pointed out also by Markantonatou (1992) and constitutes the basis of the major
distinction between possessives and pseudo possessives in Kolliakou (1995).
. Many thanks to Elena Anagnostopoulou for pointing this out to me.
. This subsection relies on Anagnostopoulous (to appear) research on the double object
construction in Greek.
. Temporal adverbs are included in the set of complement-type of adverbs, i.e. to the type
of adverbs that can appear within a VP. Note that the presence of temporal adverbs here
is not regarded as evidence for the presence of a Tense Phrase within nominals. On the
contrary, it is assumed that temporal adverbs are consistent with an event predicate, i.e.
they relate to the event properties denoted by the head nominal, not to morphological
tense properties.
Gisbert Fanselow observes that in German the following string is grammatical:
(i)
der Mann gestern

the man yesterday
(i) receives an interpretation, according to which there is a specic man who was prominent in a given context yesterday. If the possibility of allowing adverbial modication
were a signal for the presence of functional layers within nouns, then (i) would suggest
that such layers should be included within the structure of the NP man, which is simply a referential NP. (i) could be analyzed as involving a reduced relative clause, i.e.
functional layers not related to the internal structure of the NP. If this is the correct
analysis for such patterns, then the presence of adverbs in such contexts says nothing
about the internal structure of the nominal in terms of the process vs. result distinction.
. It is assumed that that the possibility of a predicate to license a manner adverb is related
to its voice features (see Travis 1988, Alexiadou 1997, Cinque 1999 for discussion and
references).
. Croft (1991: 83) notes that crosslinguistically many nonnite forms and nominalizations
do inect for various categories, particularly Voice and Aspect.
Incidentally, Picallo (1991) observes that -cio is the nominalization ax that characterizes Catalan passive process nominals. She argues that it could be analyzed as the
head of a functional category that is responsible for the passive character of the DP. If
this interpretation is on the right track, then the nominal -s- could be argued to be
located in a functional head, denoting event properties (i.e. light v, see discussion in the
next section).
. At rst sight, Greek nominals seem to be related to the perfective stem
(i)
a.
b.
to diava-s-ma tu vivliu
me prosohi
the reading
the book-gen carefully
diava-s-a
read-perf-1sg
Stavrou and Horrocks (to appear) point out that the s found in a number of Greek
derived nominals could be argued to be related to the Indo-European -t-, which became
-s in later stages of Greek, and thus homophonous to the Greek perfective aspect morpheme. It seems to be the case that historically at some stage -t-/-s- this morpheme got
reanalyzed as being part of the stem, and as constituting no longer part of the ax.
Note that the observations made here concerning the functional morphemes present
within Greek nominals hold also for the result counterparts of these nominals, in the
sense that most of the forms are ambiguous between the two readings. This is not, however, used as an argument that the nominals include Voice and Aspect in their result
interpretation as well. Rather, the presence of Voice and Aspect has a clear semantic
reex in process nominals, and the absence of these categories from the internal structure of result nominals also has a semantic reex.
. Bierwisch (1989) observed that pluralization of nominals in German does not always
bring about the result interpretation. Consider (i):
(i)
die Besteigungen der beiden Gipfel dauerten 6 Wochen

the climbings
the two tops lasted
6 weeks
In (i) the noun clearly has an event interpretation. One could argue that in this case the
nominal has denotes what Grimshaw calls a simple event, and thus pluralization is licit.
But whether is intuitive is a dierent matter.
. As also pointed out in Kolliakou (1995), the fact that adjectival modiers such as frequent can co-occur with plural achievement nouns does not necessarily imply that these
are result nominals. Given that these modiers signal repetition, they are licit with plural
forms of telic event nouns. On their singular form, these nouns clearly denote a culminated event, which of course cannot be modied by frequent.
. Thanks to Winfried Lechner for pointing this out to me.
. It was brought to my attention that sequences such as i sihnes katastrofes tis Trias the
frequent destructions of Troy and i sihnes katalipsis sholion the frequent occupations
of schools are grammatical. However, note that both strings involve actually result
nominals. A test that suggests that this is the case involves the use of possessive clitic
instead of NP.
(i)
a.
*i sihnes katastrofes tis

the frequent destruction hers
b.
(ii) a.
b.
i sihni
katastro tis
the frequent destruction hers
*i sihnes katalipsis tus
the frequent occupations theirs
i sihni
katalipsi tus
the frequent occupation theirs
As Kolliakou (1995) points out the clitic, when present within the DP, is always
referential, i.e. an extensional, never an intensional or kind modier of the noun. The
fact that the clitic is not licit in the plural nominal construction suggests that this involves a kind-modier, i.e. a type of occupation.
. A similar in spirit proposal, which does discriminate between the two types of nominals,
is found in Picallo (1991). According to Picallo, the event/process interpretation for
nominals is available when one analyzes them as being derived from a category neutral
stem, common to both nouns and verbs (see also van Riemsdijk 1983, Pesetsky 1995
among others for similar ideas). Picallo diers from Marantz (1997) in that she analyses
the nominalization ax as an inectional element. In such a structure the nominalization ax heads an NP, which is a functional category. This head takes as a complement a category neutral-lexical projection (LP) headed by a stem, identical to that of the
corresponding verb. The stem L becomes a noun at the syntactic component, by head
raising which makes event nominals necessarily cases of syntactic nominalization.
Picallo, however, proposes that result nominals have the structure illustrated below, i.e.
no category neutral base is included in those. For Picallo, the Projection Principle applies for nominals only when the lexical projection of a DP is category neutral. In other
words, category neutral lexical projections enter the D-structure of syntactic nominals
(event denoting DPs), and that of clausal structures, both in active and passive clauses.
While in nominalizations, categorial specication of the verbal element obtains via
head-adjunction to the head hosting the passive morpheme, in the active sentences
categorial specication obtains by head-adjunction to a functional category VP, selecting
the category-neutral LP. This functional VP is morphologically overt in Catalan. It is
headed by the thematic vowel characteristic of the Romance verbs, as in (ib):
(i)
a.
b.
En Guillem menjava les pomes

Guillem ate the apples
[VP Guillem [V -a- [LP[L menja- [les pommes]]]]]
Adjunction of the verbal stem to the word marker allows the verb to assign structural
case.
. In this chapter deverbal nominals, under a process or a result reading, were the focus
of the discussion. I briey make here some comments on object/concrete nouns. Object
nouns designate entities in the world as opposed to process nouns. According to
Grimshaw, nouns that do not denote an event do not have an argument structure to
satisfy. Thus, concrete nouns do not entail an event and do not have an argument structure. Therefore, they do not have specic theta-roles to discharge. They optionally take
semantic participants, with which according to Grimshaw, they are in rather loose rela-
tions. That is concrete nouns are much like result nominals in their behavior. For the
type of approach put forth here, object nouns are also seen as unspecied roots inserted
under a set of nominal functional projections. Thus they receive a similar treatment to
the one proposed earlier for result nominals. More needs to be said on the semantic
classes of the roots involved in such a formation.
. A number of contexts argue for a separation of these two features in T, which in fact can
be checked by dierent elements. Collins (1997) discusses two cases: expletive constructions and locative inversion. Consider (i):
(i) there are people in the garden
In (i) the expletive checks the EPP-feature of T. If the expletive checked the nominative
Case feature of T, then T would not have any Case feature to check against people.
Hence, there does not have a Case feature, and the nominative feature of T is checked
(covertly) by features of the NP.
. Here I assume that EPP is not necessarily satised by Merge/Move XP. Merge/Move X
can also check EPP, as in VSO pro-drop languages (cf. Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou
1998 for detailed argumentation).
. However, de Wit (1997) provides a formal parallel to the EPP requirement in verbal
clauses. According to de Wit, the conceptual equivalent to the EPP is the requirement
to ll D. This is why possessive pronouns and possessive elements in general are located
in D, and this is perhaps why some languages have expletive determiners. De Wit assumes, following Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou (1998), that there are two ways in
which EPP can be satised, either by merging/moving an X or by merging/moving an
XP. According to de Wit, this specic view on EPP-checking enables the formulation
of a parallelism to the expletive associate facts extensively discussed in the generative
literature within the nominal domain (for a specic implementation see Chomsky 1995
and Frampton 1995). However, as discussed in Section 1.3, the status of D varies across
languages. Thus Spec,DP is unlike Spec,TP a thematic position in English, but it is like
Spec,CP, that is an A-position, in Greek. If Spec,DP is a thematic position, then it is not
clear whether an argument based on the EPP could go through, as the EPP is relevant
for non-thematic positions. If it is an A-position, then clearly the argument does not
go through under the standard way of looking at the EPP. A possibility that comes to
mind is to say that the need for D to be lled is for the whole extended nominal projection to count as an argument (see the discussion in Section 1.1), which is certainly not
the case for T.
. Similarly, if Raising involves restructuring of the lower and higher INFL, as has been
proposed for Raising constructions in Romance in Torrego (1989), and Sola (1992)
among others again it is expected that Raising will not take place in nominals.
. Greek has nominalized clauses investigated in Roussou (1991). These include a CP
which enters in the complement domain of D (see also Chapter 4):
(i) to oti irthe me ksiafniase

the that came-3sg me surprised
The fact that he came surprised me
If D and C are equivalent it is not immediately clear why the pattern in (i) arises. The
reader is referred to Roussous work for extensive discussion. For the purposes of the
present discussion note that (i) contains tense features, i.e. it involves a tensed clause
that initially appears in the complement domain of C, as the correlation mentioned in
the text actually predicts.
. As pointed out to me by Henry Davis, an issue arises concerning the status of predicate
nominals. If nominal formation involves the embedding of an unspecied root under
D, then the issue arises how can one distinguish between player in (ia) and (ib):
(i)
a.
b.
John is a player
The player arrived
My suggestion would be that nominals of the type (ia) are roots embedded under
Number only and do not include D.
Chapter 3
Intransitivity in Nominalization
In the previous chapter I have argued that process nominals are roots appearing
beneath the verbal functional heads Aspect and v. In this chapter I demonstrate that the variant of v within event nominals of the destruction type is the
one that does not project an agent., To substantiate this point, I examine data
from several language families (Section 1). Specically, I discuss process
nominalizations in Greek, English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan,
Hungarian, Slavic (Polish and Russian) and Semitic (Hebrew and Arabic). As
I further point out in Chapter 4, this restriction holds for certain gerundial and
innitival constructions across languages as well. The evidence is based on the
observation that the single genitive argument within such nominals is necessarily interpreted as a theme and agents, if syntactically realized, must be realized
as PPs. Moreover, Spec,vP does not seem to be active in any way within nominals. As will be shown, there is no process of passivization within nominals
(Section 2). Rather, such nominals are generally intransitive, in fact very similar
to ergative constructions, since, when agents are present, they bear the role of
aector/instrument. That is they are of a dierent nature than the agents found
with verbal passives or transitive agents.
Note that Grimshaw (1990) has also suggested that nouns are generally
intransitive. However, for Grimshaw intransitivity is shared by process
nominals and by result nominals which are not argument taking. But the notion of intransitivity developed in Grimshaw refers to the fact that nouns are
defective theta-markers, i.e. they need some help in order to theta-mark their
complements, for instance the presence of the special preposition of in English.
From this a number of facts follow within Grimshaws system. For instance, the
fact that process nominals do not take sentential complements, the fact that NP
movement is not possible within argument-taking nominals, and the fact that
passive complex event nominals do not exist. I deal with these two last issues
in Section 2 of this chapter.
Event nominals are ergative constructions
It has been noted in the literature that across languages event nominals are,
when derived from transitive predicates, passive and not transitive and that
they are derived from unaccusative predicates, but not from unergative ones
(see Picallo 1991, Bottari 1992, Alexiadou and Stavrou 1998a, Alexiadou
1999a,b among others). In passive nominals the agent appears as an adjunct
introduced by a preposition or an adverbial phrase. In what follows I present
in detail the type of data that led researchers to this conclusion.
. Greek event nominals

Consider the Greek examples in (1). In (1a), the agent is introduced by a prepositional phrase. This PP has the same form as the one we nd with verbal
passives (cf. 1b). The example in (1c) shows that the theme argument of
nominals derived from unaccusative predicates appears in the genitive, as
already discussed in the previous chapter; (1d) shows that in nominals derived
from unergative verbs the single argument cannot surface as a PP (recall here
that such nominals have only a result interpretation).
(1) a.

apo tus varvarus mesa se tris meres
the destruction the city-gen by the barbarians within three days
The destruction of the city by the barbarians within three days
b. i poli
katastrake
apo tus varvarus
the city-nom destroyed-pass by the barbarians
The city was destroyed by the barbarians
c. i sinehis ptosi ton timon
anisihi tus pandes
the constant fall the prices-gen worries everybody-acc
The constant fall of the prices worries everybody
d. to kolimpi tu Jani/*apo
to Jani
the swimming the John-gen/by the John
Observe also the contrast between (2a) and (2b). In (2a) the single genitive is
interpreted as the theme argument, i.e. it is the police that has been captured.
In (2b) on the other hand, where the nominal appears in the plural to force a
result interpretation, the genitive can be interpreted as the possessor, i.e. the
series of captures belong to the police.
Intransitivity in nominalization
(2) a.
i silipsi tis astinomias

the capture the police-gen
b. i silipsis tis astinomias
the captures the police-gen
As mentioned in Chapter 2, with nouns such as metafrasi translation,

paratirisi observation, the genitive can be interpreted both as an owner and
as a theme. However, if the nominal is put into a context that discriminates
between a process and a result reading, then the owner interpretation survives
in the result context only, as in (3b) below. In (3a), on the other hand, the
genitive is necessarily understood as the object of observation:
(3) a.
i paratirisi tis Marias

the observation the Mary-gen
b. i paratirisis tis Marias ine panda akrivis
the observations the Mary are always exact-pl
While omitting the PP-agent is possible, omission of the object while retaining
the subject is not compatible with maintaining a process interpretation:
(4) *i sihni katastro tu Nerona
the usual destruction the Nero-gen
What is excluded is an agent bearing genitive case and co-occurring with

a genitive theme, no matter in which order the two genitives appear (see
Horrocks and Stavrou 1987):
(5) a. *i silipsi tu Jani
tis astinomias
the capture the John-gen the police-gen
b. *tis astinomias i silipsi tu Jani
Two genitives are possible but only with nouns of the type description, as mentioned in the previous chapter, although judged unnatural by several speakers
(see Horrocks and Stavrou 1987, Mouma 1993):
(6) i perigra tu topiu
tis Marias
the description the landscape-gen the Mary-gen
Marys description of the landscape
(7) i metafrasi tis Odisias
tu Kakridi
the translation the Odyssey-gen Kakridis-gen
Kakridis translation of the Odyssey
As will be shown in Section 1.3, something similar is found in Romance.

. Event nominals in English and other Germanic languages
With nominals of type destruction the presence of two of-phrases is ungrammatical in English:
(8) *the destruction of the city of the barbarians
There is, however, a basic dierence between Greek and English nominalizations, referred to several times here: English nominalizations derived from
transitive verbs can be both transitive and intransitive (see Chomsky 1970,
Kayne 1984 among others):
(9) a. the/Johns destruction of the city
b. the/the judges reversal of the decision
Sar (1987) points out that in such examples the pre-nominal genitive is not
interpreted as the owner of the head noun, but rather it refers to the causer of
an event of destroying, etc. However, even in English such transitive
nominalizations are limited. For instance, they are acceptable with nominals
derived from verbs like destroy, reverse, assassinate, invade, capture, but not with
nominals derived from verbs like grow (see Pesetsky 1995, Marantz 1997 for
recent discussion).
(10) a. the growth of tomatoes
b. *Johns growth of tomatoes
Nominals such as destruction are related to verbs that resist the causative/inchoative alternation. Pesetsky (1995) has pointed out that English
nominalizations cannot be derived from causative verbs. However, given that
nominalizations such as the ones in (9) above are not permitted in Romance
and Greek, the relevant property that distinguishes them from their English
counterparts has to be investigated. I come back to this issue in Chapter 4.
German and Icelandic also permit prenominal genitives, although there is
some speaker variation with respect to the acceptability of such examples:
(11) Attilas Zerstrung der Stadt
Attila-gen destruction the city-gen
In both languages such constructions are restricted and only possible with
proper names.
In German, as pointed out to me by Gisbert Fanselow (personal communication) and as discussed in Audring (1999), certain nominals can take both NPs
in the genitive and PPs introduced by von as their theme argument (cf. 12a).
Moreover, the PP can be interpreted sometimes as a theme and sometimes as
an owner, depending on whether the result or the process reading is triggered.
Thus in (12c), where the plural form of the noun is used bringing about the
result reading, the PP is understood as the owner of the observation. In (12b),
however, the NP the birds is understood as the object of the observation:
(12) a.
die Entwicklung von groen Maschinen/groer Maschinen

the development of big
machines/big
machines-gen
b. die Beobachtung von Vgeln
the observation of birds
c. die Beobachtungen von Vgeln
the observations of birds
The example in (13a) below is reminiscent of Greek passive nominals. However, it seems that on a par with (13a), the pattern in (13b) exists as well. In
(13b) the theme argument is introduced by a PP, while the agent bears genitive
case. This pattern is reminiscent of one type of Hebrew nominalizations to be
discussed in Section 1.5:
(13) a.
der Angri der serbischen Ziele durch die NATO

the attack the Serbian targets by
the NATO
b. der Angri der NATO
von serbischen Zielen
the attack the NATO-gen of Serbian targets
. Event nominals in Romance

.. Catalan
Picallo (1991) notes that event nominals in Catalan appear to be incapable of
realizing the agent as an argument in the genitive, as the ungrammaticality
of (14) suggests.
(14) *lafusellament de lescamot den Ferrer Guardia
the execution of the squad of Ferrer Guardia
the squads execution of Ferrer Guardia
Genitive arguments are always interpreted as themes in such examples. Thus,

the following strings are grammatical, but only in the interpretation where the
squad and the police are executed or captured respectively. The agent, when
realized, must be realized as a PP (cf. 15c, see also Drijkoningen 1993):
(15) a.
lafusellament de lescamot
the execution of the squad
b. la captura de la policia
the capture of the police
c. lafusellament den Ferrer Guardia per part de lescamot
the execution of Ferrer Guardia on part of the squad
If the agent is realized in the genitive, then the result interpretation is obtained,
since the nominal can appear in an environment requiring such an interpretation (cf. 16b). As discussed in the previous chapter, events or processes cannot
be inconsistent:
(16) a.
la demonstracio den Joan del teorema de Pitagores

the proof
b. la demonstracio den Joan del teorema de Pitagores
the proof
es inconsistent
is inconsistent
Catalan unaccusative nominals are also ambiguous between an event and

a result interpretation. The former is brought up by the inclusion of an aspectual modier, as in (17):
(17) a.
la tornada dels turistes durant lestiu

the returning of the tourists during the summer
b. la crescuda del riu
a la primavera
the swelling of the river in spring
c. la desapacicio den Joan a lhora de sopar
the disappearance of Joan at dinner time
Unergative nominals, on the other hand, are never ambiguous. They never have
the event reading and always denote results. In these, agents can never appear
as PPs:
(18) a.
el salt de latleta
the jump of the athlete
b. *el salt per part
de latleta
the jump on the part of the athlete
The majority of these nominals is morphologically similar to non-deverbal

nouns: they are unable to appear with a nominalization ax, such as -acio,
-ada, -iment, -eig, while event nominals appear with such axes (see example
(17) above):
(19) a. *la saltada,
el saltament de latleta
the jumpation, the jumpment (of the athlete)
b. *el xisclement del nen
the screaming of the child
For Picallo, the dierence in nominalization axes correlates with the fact that
unergative nominals denote results and not processes.
Furthermore, Catalan psych nominals lack passive counterparts, so
experiencer arguments never appear within PPs (see the discussion on the
nature of the by phrase in Chapter 2 and in Section 4 of this chapter).
(20) a.
el temor den Joan als terratremols

the fear of John to earthquakes
b. *el temor als terratremols pare part den Joan
the fear to earthquakes on the part of Joan
According to Picallo, the lexical, denotative, and syntactic properties of psych

DPs suggest that these should be analyzed on a par with non-deverbal, result
nouns and unergative nominals.
.. French, Spanish and Italian
In French, Spanish and Italian (see Cinque 1980, Milner 1982, Zubizarreta
1987, Bottari 1992 among others) two de-phrases cannot appear within process nominals (cf. 21).
(21) a. *la destruction de la ville des soldats
the destruction of the city of the soldiers
b. la destruction de la ville par les soldats
the destruction of the city by the solders
c. *la captura de los fugitivos de los soldados
the capture of the fugitives of the soldiers
d. la captura de los fugitivos por los soldados
the capture of the fugitives by the soldiers
e. *la cattura del soldato del enemico
the capture of the soldier of the enemy
French
Spanish
Italian
f.
la cattura del soldato da parte del enemico

the capture of the soldier by
the enemy
In (21b, d, f) the agent is introduced by a PP that has a similar form to the PP

introducing the agent in verbal passive sentences.
In these languages, (21a, c and e) become grammatical again, when an
adjectival possessive precedes the nominal (cf. (22a) from Milner 1982: 130).
Moreover, as (22b) shows, similarly to Greek the presence of two genitive
phrases is legitimate with translation type nominals, although judged unnatural (cf. the Catalan examples in (16)).
(22) a.
sa description dun passant

her description of a passant
b. la traduction de Pierre de luvre de Zola
the translation of Peter of the work of Zola
In (22a), the adjectival possessor can only be interpreted as the owner. However, the prenominal possessor in Romance can never be interpreted as the
theme, the agent being introduced by a de-phrase:
(23) *sa dmonstration dun mathmaticien grec
her demonstration of a mathematician Greek
As can be clearly observed, in Romance and the Greek there is a crucial dierence between nouns like destruction and nouns like translation: two genitives
cannot appear within the former, but can within the latter. Incidentally, this
group of nouns is the one that produces nominalizations that are ambiguous
between the process and the result reading in all these languages. English, on
the other hand, diers from these languages in permitting transitive nominalizations even with nouns of the destruction type. Extensive discussion of these
patterns takes place in Chapter 4.
Bottari (1992) argues extensively that Italian process nominals do not actually have an external argument slot. One of his arguments is repeated below.
As (24) shows, while a nominal derived from an unaccusative predicate is compatible with the negation strategy (24a), a nominal derived from an unergative
predicate is not (24b):
(24) a.
il mancato arrivato del treno

the non-arrival
of the train
b. *il mancato pianto di Luigi
the non-mourning of Luigi
The possibility of a head noun to be modied by negation is sensitive to the

interpretation of the nominal. According to Bottari, the negated nominal strategy is bound to [+PAS] nominals or the [+PAS] version of nominals, at least:
(25) a. *la mancata descrizione
the non-description
b. la mancate descrizione della vita
the non description
of the city
Bottari explicitly argues that Romance passive nominals of the type (25b), i.e.
nominals that include internal arguments only, are process nominals. According to Bottaris analysis, the presence of negation is sensitive to the presence of
an internal argument. For this reason, only passive and unaccusative predicates
can be subject to it. On the other hand, unergative predicates are not acceptable
as is manifested by the ungrammaticality of (24b). This fact suggests that only
passive and unaccusative predicates give true process nominalizations in
Italian.
. Slavic event nominals

.. Russian
In Russian process nominals (cf. Comrie 1976, Schoorlemmer 1995) the theme
argument surfaces bearing genitive case, while the agent bears a dierent
case, namely the instrumental. In (26a), the process reading of the nominal is
highlighted by the presence of the aspectual modier. As in Greek, only one
argument bearing genitive can be present. This is illustrated in (26b), an
ungrammatical example where both arguments bear genitive case:
(26) a.
unitoeni
butylki
piva
za pjatminut
extermination bottle-gen beer-gen in ve minutes
dvumja studentami-ve vpolne obynaja
two-students-instr is thing entirely usual
b. *Razruenie Saraeva blokadnikov
destruction Sarajevo-gen siege-holders-gen
Process nominals are also derived from unaccusative predicates, and as

Schoorlemmer points out, also from unergative predicates. In both cases the
single argument appears in the genitive. An example including an unergative
nominal is given in (27):
(27) Ee polzanie po polu v teenie celogo veera

her crawling over the oor in course of the whole evening
zabespokoilo menja
worried me
The presence of event unergative nominalizations seems at rst sight problematic for the view to be proposed here that process nominals are generally
unaccusative. However, it could be argued that Russian does not distinguish
between unergatives and unaccusatives, thus permitting intransitive structures
that generally include an internal argument.
.. Polish
Rozwadowska (1995) discusses the distinction between argument taking
nominals and non-argument taking nominals in Polish. She shows that Polish
nominals denoting complex events (in Grimshaws terms) can be split into two
groups: verbal nominals and derived process nominals. The former preserve
overt morphological contrast between the imperfective and the perfective aspect, as already demonstrated in Chapter 2. The relevant examples are repeated
below (from Schoorlemmer 1995: 321):
(28) a.
ocenienie
studentw
przez nauczyciei nastapio
evaluation-perf the students-gen by teachers occurred
szybko
quickly
b. ocenianie
studentw
przez nauczyciei ciagneo sie
przez cay
tydzien
As discussed in Chapter 2, nouns terminating in -nie/-cie inherit their aspectual

properties from their related verbs. Crucially they are marked morphologically
for aspect. The inheritance of aspectual properties is also reected in their
choice of aspectual modiers:
(29) ich zreperowanie w ciagu dwch tygodni
their repairing-perf in course of two weeks
repairing them in course of two weeks
Polish verbal nominals take obligatorily direct object arguments, but their
inheritance of other arguments is not possible.
On the other hand, process derived nominals terminate in semi-productive

and non-productive nominalizing axes. These too can be modied by agentive adjuncts, and aspectual phrases (from Centarowska 1997):
(30) a.
ochrona ciebie
przed promieniowaniem przez najbliizszy
protection your-gen against radiation
during coming
tydzien
week
b. celowa sprzedaz was
do gorszego klubu pilkarskiego
deliberate sale
you-gen to worse club football
These nominals dier from the verbal nominals in that they do not permit
modication by manner adverbs and no accusative marked adjuncts.
In both types of nominals, however, as in Russian and Greek, only one
argument can be marked with genitive case. What is important for the discussion here is the fact that Schoorlemmer acknowledges that both in Russian and
in Polish there is only one structural case associated with the single argument
of the verb (unaccusative or unergative). If a nominal is derived from a transitive verb then this must be passivized, i.e. the external role is expressed by a PP.
. Semitic event nominals
.. Hebrew
Hebrew process nominals come in two types. The rst one includes a by-phrase
similar to the one used to form the passive (see Borer 1993). In this type, the
theme argument appears either in the el-phrase or is bare. The second construction is known in the literature as the construct state, while the former is
known as the free state. Doron (1989) has claimed that with concrete nouns the
complement is connected to the head of the construct state with some kind of
inalienable possession relation. However, Siloni (1997) argues against this
distinction.
(31) a.
ha-Sikum el ha-ir al yedey ha-Siltonot

the rehabilitation of the city by the authorities
b. Sikum
ha-ir al yedey ha-Siltonot
the rehabilitation the city by the authorities
Borer (1993) extensively argues that (31) involves a passive within the nominal.
In fact both Hazout (1995) and Borer (1993) propose that Hebrew process
nominals contain a passivized verbal projection.
As in Greek, while omission of the subject is possible, omission of the

object while retaining the subject is not compatible with maintaining the
process reading for the nominal:
(32) a.
hoxaxat ha-teana al yedey ha-matematikait

proof the claim by
the mathematician
kedey lizkot ba-pras
in order to win the prize
b. *ha-hoxaxa el ha-matematikait
the proof of the mathematician
The second type of Hebrew process nominals is illustrated in (33). In (33) the
agent is introduced either by the el-phrase (33b) or bears bare genitive (33a).
Most importantly the theme argument bears accusative case. This is manifested
by the fact that it is introduced by the accusative marker et:
(33) a.
ha-harisa
ha-cava et ha-ir
the destruction the army acc the city
b. ha-harisa
el- ha-cava et ha-ir
the destruction of the army acc the city
The armys destruction of the city
As (34) shows, this type of nominal can also be modied by adverbials:

(34) harisat
ha-cava et hair bi-mehirut
the destruction the army acc the city in quickness
The armys destruction of the city quickly
Thus the second type of Hebrew nominals poses a potential problem for the
view that event nominals are crosslinguistically intransitive (cf. Siloni 1994:
67, Borer 1993). I come back to this in Chapter 4.
.. Arabic
Arabic masdars, much like Hebrew process nominals, also come in various
types. In nominals of type (35a), the theme is introduced by a preposition,
while the agent bears genitive. On the other hand, in (35b) the theme bears
genitive (cf. Fassi-Fehri 1993: 234).
aqlaqa-nii ntiqaad
r-rajul-i
li-l-masruuc-i
annoyed-me criticizing-nom the man-gen to the project-gen
b. hadm-u
l-madiinat-i
the destroying the city-gen
(35) a.
In nominals of type (36), the theme argument appears in the accusative and
the agent in the genitive. In fact this construction has been argued to bear some
resemblance to English gerunds (see Aoun 1981, and Fassi-Fehri 1993 for
discussion and references).
(36) aqlaqa-nii ntiqaad
r-rajul-i
l-masruuc-a
annoyed-me criticizing-nom the man-gen the project-acc
. Hungarian event nominals

In Hungarian derived nominals surface with two suxes: -as/-es, glossed DEV
in the examples below (taken from Szabolcsi 1994).
(37) hivatkoz-s
reference-dev
The internal argument of derived nominals appears in the possessors position

bearing nominative case:
(38) a hbor egyv-ev bell val befejez-s-e
the war-nom year-loc within being end-dev-poss.3sg
The ending of the war within one year
Agent subjects appear as possessors or in an ltal by-phrase and can mostly

remain unexpressed:
(39) a.
Pter
Mari ellen val felszolal-s-a
Peter-nom Mari against being speak-dev-poss-3sg
Peters speaking against Mari
b. Peter
Mari ltal val megszgyent-s-e
Peter-nom Mary by being humiliate-dev-poss-3sg
Theme subjects of intransitive nominals can also appear in the possessor position (40a). Experiencer subjects appear only in possessor position, and can
never introduced by a by-phrase (cf. (40b) vs. (40c)):
(40) a.
a problema
tegnap delutan val
the problem-nom yesterday afternoon being
flmerl-s-e
emerge-dev-poss-3sg
The emergence of the problem yesterday afternoon
b. Pter
Jnos ltal val megver-s-e
Peter-nom Janos by being beat-dev-poss-3sg
beating up of Peter by Janos
c. *a Jnos ltal val megver-s-e
Szabolcsi observes that when a noun is derived from a verb that has both a
transitive and an intransitive construal, the process interpretation is only available on the intransitive reading:
(41) a.
Mari
mos
Mari-nom wash-3sg
b. a mos-s
the wash-dev
c. Mari
mos-s-a
Mari-nom wash-dev-poss-3sg
*the fact that Mari washes clothes
In Hungarian if there is one argument in need of case, it can always get nominative in the possessors position. If there are two arguments, one of them, if
an agent, resorts to being expressed as a by phrase. Inherent case on postpositions remains unaected within nominalizations. In other words, it is never
the case that the two arguments are expressed with the same case. One of them
must be included in the form of a prepositional phrase.
To conclude, in this section I examined process nominals in a number of
languages. I have shown that crosslinguistically process nominals are either
passive or unaccusative. Before proceeding to a structural account of this fact,
in the next section I turn to a detailed investigation of the properties of passive
nominals.
. On the properties of passive nominals

. Background
The term passive nominal refers to two related but not quite identical types of
nominal constructions. The standard example of a passive nominal is given in
(43). Chomsky (1970, 1972), Kayne (1984), Pesetsky (1990) and others argue
that such nominals have the same argument structure as active nominals of the
type exemplied in (44). As a consequence, they also have the same D-structure
and are then derived by movement, akin to movement of arguments within

passive verbal clauses for reasons of case-assignment. The theme argument
would move to subject position so that it can be assigned case by In/D(=s).
Exactly as with verbal passives, the underlying object of the nominal becomes
the surface subject (cf. also Anderson 1983, Giorgi and Longobardi 1991,
Zubizarreta 1987, Cinque 1980).
(42) D-structure
(43) S-structure
(44) Johns distribution of the drugs
[distribution the drugs]

the drugs [distribution t]
Grimshaw (1990) notes that nominals such as the ones in (43) are similar not
only to verbal passives, but also to cases of adjectival modication by a
referential or ethnic adjective. In the examples below, (45) is a passive nominal
whose interpretation is quite close to that of (46). (47) is also similar to (45):
here the adjective appears to be related to the argument corresponding to the
argument of the verb.
(45) Reagans defeat
(46) Reagan was defeated
(47) The French defeat
In Greek and Romance, the term passive nominal refers to nominals such
as destruction, capture and so on which are inherently passive in meaning and
co-occur with by-phrases across languages, and also in English (see Cinque
1980):
(48) i silipsi tu Jani apo tin astinomia
the capture the John by the police
The Romance/Greek and the English constructions are similar in that they both
have a D-structure similar to verbal passive structures, i.e. no agent is merged
at the specier of vP. Picallo (1991) argues that the Romance construction
involves a movement akin to that of the English one in (43). In the Romance
counterpart of (48), the theme argument moves to a functional projection
within DP, Spec,GenP, for reasons of Case-assignment. In this respect, (48)
diers from (43), in that only the latter involves fronting to Spec,DP. In
Romance such instances of preposing involve only pronominal objects (see
2.2.2), while in Greek preposing has the properties of A-movement (see
Chapter 2). But this is not the only dierence between the two constructions.
Another dierence relates to how they fare with respect to Aectedness (see the
discussion in the next section).
Before turning to these issues, note that it is by no means a settled issue
whether nominals of type (43) involve movement. For instance, other researchers have claimed that passive nominals never have a D-structure representation
as in (42) (see Williams 1982, Higginbotham 1983, Grimshaw 1990 and to
some extent Sar 1987). Given that such nominals do not have an argument
structure, no passive movement takes place NP-internally. On the contrary,
these authors claim, (49) corresponds to the representation such nominals
should receive:
(49) a. a-structure:
b. D and S-structure
distribution
the drugs distribution
Yet another line of research, represented by e.g. Doron and Rappaport-Hovav

(1991), argues that passive nominals involve lexical externalization of the internal argument, as in (50) below. This analysis crucially relies on the fact that
Spec,DP is a thematic position in English, given that it is not licensed by any
other principles such as the EPP, as discussed in Chapter 2.
(50) a. a-structure:
b. D- and S-structure
distribution (y)
the drugs distribution
In the next sub-sections I rst deal with the properties of English passive
nominals. I discuss the notion of Aectedness in 2.2.1 and certain crosslinguistic
asymmetries in the way nominals show sensitivity to this property in 2.2.2. In
Section 2.2.3 I argue against the result analysis of passive nominals. Building
on Tenny (1994) and Snyder (1998), I show hat English passive nominals are
generally event nominals, i.e. have a terminative interpretation. Given that
Grimshaws tests diagnose process readings, i.e. are sensitive to a durative interpretation, it is expected that nominals solely possessing a telic interpretation are
not well behaved with respect to these tests. In Section 2.2.4 I discuss the derivation of this type of English nominals.
In Section 2.3 I turn to the role of adjectival modication. I argue that
nominals of the type (43) are event nominals, while adjectival modication is
consistent only with result nominals. Finally, in 2.4 I show that nominals of the
type in (48) do not involve a process of passivization.
. Aectedness and aspectual properties

.. On the notion of aectedness
It is well known that in English a certain class of nouns does not admit the
passive construction (cf. Chomsky 1970 and references therein for a rst attempt towards explaining this asymmetry). Those who do admit it have been
argued to be subject to the so-called Aectedness constraint. In the literature
there have been several attempts to dene the Aectedness property. Anderson
(1977) denes objects that cannot be realized in the prenominal position as
unaected in the traditional semantic sense, i.e. as not being aected by the
eventuality denoted by the predicate. She formulates the following generalization: if the head noun does not express an action that aects, i.e. modies, the
state of the object, the latter cannot occur in the prenominal position. The data
in (51) seem to be consistent with this.
(51) a.
b.
c.
d.
*the facts knowledge

knowledge of that fact
*the books discussion
the discussion of the book
It was later observed by Jaeggli (1986) (cf. also Roberts 1987, Tenny 1987,
Zubizarreta 1987 among others) that similar restrictions hold in the domain of
middles:
(52) a. This wood slits easily
b. *This cat chases easily
In particular, Jaeggli (1986) formulated the Aectedness Constraint as follows.

(53) If a complement of X is unaected, it is impossible to eliminate the external role of X.
On this view, Aectedness is a property that should be derived from a general

theory of theta-assignment.
Other semantic characterizations of Aectedness have appeared in the literature. Roberts (1987), for example, identies verbs with aected arguments as
the class of accomplishment verbs. As will be shown, there seems to be evidence
that there is a connection between achievement predicates and Aectedness. On
the other hand, Tenny characterizes Aectedness as a semantic property, having
to do with predicate meaning and the manner in which a predicates arguments
participate in the event the predicate describes. For Tenny, aected objects are
objects capable of delimiting the event denoted by the verb.
Doron and Rappaport-Hovav (1991) dene Aectedness over event structure representations and claim that what characterizes it is the separation of the
arguments of the verb into dierent sub-eventualities, with the external argument missing from one of the sub-eventualities. Destroy is such a predicate
type, i.e. one can distinguish between a Cause and a Become part, know is not
such a predicate type, as one cannot distinguish between sub-eventualities.
(54) y is an aected argument of V (x, y) i the event-structure of V contains
a sub-eventuality e such that y, but not x, is an argument in e.
.. Aectedness across languages

While in English the possibility of preposing within NPs is a context for identifying aected objects, the behavior of related nouns in other languages is not
similar. For instance, Cinque (1980) observes that in Italian the class of nouns
in question is bipartite: some of these nouns can be passivized, whereas others
still cannot. Notice that there is a dierence between Italian and English regarding NP-preposing within the DP in that there is no NP-fronting in Italian
(55c). Hence the reference to NP preposing in Italian is understood in terms
of pronominal preposing :
(55) a.
la conoscenza dellalgebra
the knowledge of algebra
b. la sua conoscenza
the its knowledge
c. *la di Giorgio descrizione
Giorgios description
In Italian it is perfectly possible to express the internal argument by means of

a possessive with the same class of nominals that cannot undergo preposing in
English. Other nouns displaying the same contrast pointed out in Cinque
(1980) are discussione discussion, pereguimento pursuit.
Greek lacks possessive adjectives, and moreover, as pointed out in Chapter 2, DP-preposing is an instance of A-movement. Hence Greek does not
exhibit any type of restriction in terms of NP-internal fronting:
(56) a.
tis polis
i katastro
the city-gen the destruction
the citys destruction
b. tis algevras
i gnosi
the algebra-gen the knowledge
algebras knowledge
Markantonatou (1992) points out that Greek passive nominals do not seem to
be subject to an Aectedness restriction, as the examples in (56b) and in (57)
below are grammatical in Greek, while the equivalent English passive constructions involving fronting are not:
(57) i sizitisi
tu vivliu
apo tus idikus
the discussion the book-gen by the specialists
the books discussion by the specialists
Kolliakou (1995), however, attempts to establish a test for diagnosing Aectedness in Greek, namely the admissibility of a pronominal object possessive.
Building on Tenny, she points out that nominals that lack a telic event interpretation cannot co-occur with such an object (see also Chapter 2):
(58) a.
to mazema tis elias

the harvesting the olive-gen
b. *to mazema tis
the harvesting cl-gen
(59) a. i dilosi
tis paretisis
the statement the resignation
b. *i dilosi
tis
the declaration cl-gen
(59b) is ungrammatical if the clitic is interpreted as the theme argument of the

nominal. It is grammatical if the clitic refers to the individual that made the
statement. Note, however, that both the nominals in (58) and (59) are passive.
In other words, the above facts show that the passive character of the nominal
is not directly related to Aectedness. Rather Aectedness seems to be a more
general property characterizing the aspectual properties of the noun.
Anagnostopoulou (to appear) points out that certain cases of Greek passive
nominalizations are also subject to the Aectedness constraint, in a manner
similar to English passive nominalizations. Consider the examples in (60):
(60) a.
*?to
kitagma tis thalassas jia ores me kurase

the look
the sea-gen for hours me tired made
Looking at the sea for hours made me tired
b. to kitagma tu vivliou
jia ores me kurase
the look
the book-gen for hours me tired made
Looking at the book for hours made me tired
Anagnostopoulou observes that it is plausible to account for the contrast
between (60a) and (60b) in terms of the Aectedness constraint. The book can
be construed as an aected theme more easily than the sea. For example, a
book can change position while I am looking at it, I can turn its pages, I can
write notes on it etc. On the other hand, there is no way I can aect the sea by
simply looking at it. Note further that only (60b) can be accompanied by a PP
agent.
(61) to kitagma tu vivliu
ja ores apo to Jani
the look
the book-gen for hours by John
Consider now Spanish. In Spanish, aected arguments are marked by the dative
preposition a (Torrego 1998:18 and references therein).
(62) a.
el guardia vi (a) un prisionero

the guard sees to a prisoner
b. el guarida golpe *(a) un prisionero
the guard sees
a prisoner
The object of the verb see in (62a) does not have to be marked by the dative
preposition. The object of the verb beat in (62b) must appear with the dative
preposition.
This marking shows up in nominalizations as well (Torrego 1998: 38f.):
(63) a.
su acusacion al
teniente
her accusation to the lieutenant
b. *su acusacion del teniente
her accusation of the lieutenant
The genitive preposition is rejected in favor of the dative preposition a to.

According to Torrego, such nominals are process nominals. When the agent is
not present, the nominal can be followed by the a genitive phrase:
(64) la acusacion del teniente
the accusation of the lieutenant
In general the case marker a tends to be impossible when the object is not affected by the derived nominal:
(65) su vision del/*al
soldato
his view of the/to the soldier
Torrego further observes that there is a dierence between derived nominals
and their related verbs. While the aected object of a verb has to be animate,
the aected object of the derived nominal is not subject to such a restriction:
(66) a.
sus golpes a la mesa

their blows at the table
b. golpe (*a) la mesa
she hit
the table
The absence of an animacy constraint within derived nominals is explained in

terms of the structural conditions that yield this constraint. In the domain of
verbs, object raising is forced to the outer Spec,vP. In the domains of nominals,
however, such a movement is not possible.
Again note that the Spanish facts discussed in Torrego, unlike their Greek
counterparts are transitive, i.e. they involve the presence of a prenominal
agent. According to the interpretation of the facts given in Torrego, Spanish
seems to present evidence for Aectedness in a dierent context from the one
in which we encounter such restrictions in English.
.. Passive nominals are not result nominals
Let us now take a closer look at the aspectual properties of passive nominals.
According to Grimshaw (1990), passive nominals as in (43) and (47) never
have argument structure, i.e. they do not qualify as complex event nominals in
her terms. The evidence Grimshaw presents falls in six categories. First, she
points out that nouns that appear to be unambiguously result nominals allow
preposing of possessives.
(67) a. this problems solution
b. Jacks murder
Second, unambiguously theta-marking nouns, such as gerunds, do not allow

preposing of possessives:
(68) a. *the trees falling
b. *the citys destroying
Third, disambiguation of nouns toward the result interpretation leaves the

grammaticality untouched. Thus, the plural form of the passive nominal can
be used without altering the well formedness of the example. Moreover, passive
nominals fail to occur with aspectual adjuncts:
(69) the French defeats
(70) *the books translation for three months
Fourth, passive nominals permit modiers like yesterdays:

(71) yesterdays European defeat
Fifth, passive nominals do not show the same control behavior as active
nominals.
(72) *the books translation in order to make it available to a wider readership
Finally, the passive reading in which the referential adjective seems to be related
to an argument disappears when a possessive is included:
(73) *Reagans liberal defeat
The ungrammaticality of (73) is accounted for if defeat is a result nominal,

since if it were an argument taking nominal adding the possessive should have
no eect.
According to Grimshaw, given that passive nominals lack argument structure, Aectedness cannot be a property reecting a property of argument structure. Neither can it be conceived as being a property of possessive modiers,
as not all possessive modiers are subject to Aectedness:
(74) Johns dog
It would be hard to argue that the possessor in (74) is aected by the possessee.
Thus it is only the complement use of the possessive that is subject to an Aectedness requirement. For Grimshaw complements are present in the lexical conceptual structure, and they do not necessarily project as arguments in argument
structure. On the other hand, Zubizarreta (1987) argues that aected objects
are arguments incorporated into the noun and this is what distinguishes them
from other arguments. In other words, the citys destruction is interpreted as a
compound. As such it receives only the result interpretation, and as expected
the following example is ungrammatical:
(75) *Reagans defeat during a whole year was accurately reported
However, there are reasons to cast doubts on treatments that necessarily associate passive nominals with the result interpretation. First, Doron and
Rappaport-Hovav (1991) point out that the prenominal NP in result nominals
is typically free-thematic in its interpretation, but the prenominal NP in passive nominals can only be interpreted as corresponding to the internal argument of the verb. The drugs in (76a) must be internal argument of distribution,
whereas under the result nominal analysis in (76b), John can be either the
theme or the agent:
(76) a. the drugs distribution

b. Johns analysis
Precisely in the case where the prenominal NP must be interpreted as internal,

the nominals do not display any semantic drift, as shown in (77a), and are noncount as shown in (77b). Nouns lacking an argument structure are typically
count nouns, and may undergo semantic drift as in (77c):
(77) a. the citys development
b. *the citys developments
c. the citys developments
(no semantic drift)

(out as plural of (a))
(semantic drift to housing complexes, the
city interpreted as possessor)
According to Doron and Rappaport-Hovav, these consideration suggest that

the prenominal NP in nominals such as (77a) is indeed an argument of the
verb, and that passive nominals dier from result nominals in having an
a-structure.
Recall that in Chapter 2, when discussing the aspectual properties of event
nominals, I presented data from Tenny (1994) and Snyder (1998) showing that
passive nominals can only be modied by punctual modiers. Hence, the reason for the ungrammaticality of examples like (75) is related to the type of
aspectual modication used. According to these authors, passive nominals
denote only the culmination of the event, i.e. they are terminative, they denote
events and not processes. In other words, such nominals assert that the goal has
been achieved, while there is no such assertion in English active nominals. On
this view, it does not come as a surprise that passive nominals are incompatible
with durative modiers. Passive nominals are permitted in a context containing
a modier bringing about the telic interpretation, as shown in (78):
(78) a. The books publication in a month
b. *The books publication for a month
(Tenny 1994: 161)
Crucially, examples that force a non-delimited reading, in Tennys terms, of the

passive nominal are not grammatical, while examples that force a delimited
reading are well-formed.
Note that the Greek examples discussed in Anagnostopoulou (to appear)
dier from the English passive nominals in the following way: unlike their
English counterparts they can be modied by durative adverbials (compare
(60b) to (78b) above). Thus, Greek passive nominals seem to pattern like
English so-called active nominalizations, which do not exhibit preposing, with

respect to their aspectual properties, i.e. they denote processes. In other words,
Greek passive nominals do not denote the culmination of the event, but rather
they can also refer to duration. Greek nominals that denote the culmination of
an event and thus pattern like English passive nominals are nominals derived
from achievement predicates. The relevant examples are repeated in (79). As
shown in (79c), the nominal assassination can be linked with a possessive clitic:
(79) a.
i dolofonia
tu Athanasiadi se 5 lepta
the assassination the Athanasiadis in 5 minutes
b. *i dolofonia
tu Athanasiadi ja mia ora
the assassination the Athanasiadis for one hour
c. i dolofonia
tu
the assassination his
Greek presents us with an interesting puzzle. Although both (79a) and (60b)
involve passive nominals, culmination of an event is denoted only in (79), i.e.
only in the case of an achievement nominal. This state of aairs seems to support Kolliakous (1995) argument that nominals of the type presented in (60)
involve process nominals, i.e. nominals denoting non-delimited events. This
clearly shows that the passive character of the nominal is only indirectly related to Aectedness, if at all. Moreover, this shows that, at least in Greek, affected arguments are not necessarily measuring-out the event in Tennys terms
leading to a telic interpretation, but can also be included within nominals bearing durative readings. In turn this suggests that aectedness is a property derived from a combination of root, constant, meaning and functional structure
that brings about event properties.
Clearly, all the above facts cannot be accounted for if we assume
Grimshaws analysis.
.. On the derivation of passive nominals
Having shown that English passive nominals are a special case of event
nominals, I now turn to their derivation.
Roberts (1987) and Doron and Rappaport-Hovav (1991) among others
analyze passive nominals as involving externalization of internal arguments.
For Doron and Rappaport-Hovav, this externalization is lexical and can
only be done with verbs that include sub-eventualities of the total eventuality described by the verb and its arguments. Their proposal is illustrated
below:
(80) destroy (x, y)

Cause (DO (x), Become (destroyed (y)))
The passive nominal destruction has an event structure that corresponds only
to the sub-constituent become, as shown in (81).
(81) a-structure:
e-structure:
destruction (y)
Become (destroyed (y)))
On this view, the argument of the passive nominal would be projected in

Spec,DP directly. The structures in (81) capture the fact that the original external argument is no longer part of the lexical representation of the passive
nominals, a fact that, according to the authors, explains the impossibility of an
adjunct modifying an external argument and the absence of control into purpose clauses. Merging of the argument with DP is possible in English, since
Spec,DP is a theta-position, unlike its counterpart in the other languages under
discussion.
For Roberts (1987) passivization within DPs actually involves the process
E(TH), i.e. externalize theme. Thus, it is a rule that applies to items with particular thematic properties. Whenever the argument does not bear the theme
thematic role, it cannot be externalized (see the discussion in the previous section on Aectedness). Hence the ungrammatical examples in (82) are explained
on this basis: the class of verbs whose derived nominals cannot form passive
in DP corresponds to the class of verbs which cannot form middles, i.e. to
verbs that do not have themes as internal arguments:
(82) a. *the penaltys fear
b. *the librarys gift of the money
c. *Johns laughing at
psychological verbs
double object verbs
verb + preposition
On movement approaches, the genitive moves from its original position to

Spec,DP, as outlined in Section 2.1. Within an approach to event nominals that
recognizes that their internal structure includes a number of functional layers,
as outlined in Chapter 2, one could argue that movement to Spec,DP is preceded
by movement to Spec,AspP, as suggested in van Hout and Roeper (1998), identifying each step of the derivation as being linked to semantic/event interpretation.
According to van Hout and Roeper, theme arguments in nominalizations move
to Spec,AspP for telicity checking. In this case, Aspect must be specied as being
[+perfective]. The DP in passive nominals could be argued to undergo further
movement to Spec,DP, the locus of specicity/deniteness.
However, there seems to be no conclusive evidence that movement takes

place within passive nominals (see also the discussion in Williams 1982,
Rothstein 1983). Take for instance the resultative construction. As known,
resultative phrases generally appear with transitive verbs. Such phrases may be
predicated only of the object of a transitive verb, never of the subject. This
restriction predicts that if a verb has no object, then it cannot appear with a
resultative phrase. And indeed, as is known, unergative predicates do not take
resultative phrases. On the other hand, passive and unaccusative verbs may
appear with resultative phrases predicated of their surface subjects, without
challenging this restriction: given a movement analysis of passives and
unaccusatives, their surface subject is an underlying object. If in passive
nominalizations the thematic genitive were an underlying object, we would
expect that it could be predicated of a resultative phrase, contrary to fact:
(83) a.
b.
c.
d.
the collapse of the building apart

*the buildings collapse apart
*Johns arrival nude (Rothstein 1983)
the arrival of John late (Pustejovsky 1995)
The examples in (83) suggest that passive nominals cannot be derived via a
movement analysis, as they are not sensitive to tests diagnosing underlying
object-hood. This strongly supports analyses such as Roberts and Doron and
Rappaport-Hovavs, and suggests that the genitive phrase is directly merged in
Spec,DP. Since Spec,DP is a thematic position in English, this merger is licit.
Potentially the status of Spec,DP (A vs. A) across languages explains the
crosslinguistic asymmetries discussed earlier on in the sense that only in English can Spec,DP license arguments.
On this view, passive nominals dier from non-passive ones, in that the
theme DP is directly merged at Spec,DP and not in the complement domain
of the root. In other words, passive nominals solely have external theme-arguments. Given that Spec,DP is not restricted to a single thematic role (see the
discussion in Grimshaw 1990 and references therein: also the discussion in
Chapter 5), such a direct merging is possible, without the DP necessarily receiving an agent interpretation.
To conclude, note that it has been pointed out that there are certain similarities between passive nominals and middles, but also adjectival passives (see
Roberts 1987, den Dikken and Sybesma 1998, and Longobardi 1999 among
others). I will not discuss the similarities to adjectival passives, as these are
taken to be generally stative (though see the appendix to Chapter 5), and
stativity is not a characteristic property of passive nominals (Roberts 1987). I

briey mention some arguments that passive nominals have more in common
with middle formation than with a verbal passive. Longobardi (1999) points
out that a dierence between verbal passives and nominal passives is that unaffected objects can passivize in the former, but not in the latter (see also the
discussion in Roberts 1987). Moreover, in some languages other than English
the preposition introducing the agent in nominals with a possessivized object
is not the same as the one expressing the agent in verbal passives (cf. Italian da
vs. da parte di, German von vs. durch). The dierence might perhaps be related
to the dierent intrinsic semantics of the prepositions: by displays some independent instrumental meaning not shared by da and von.
(84) a.
Die Stadt ist von den Barbaren zerstrt worden

the city is by the barbarians destroyed
b. die Zerstrung der Stadt
durch die Barbaren
the destruction the city-gen through the Barbarians
Another observation that Longobardi makes is that languages have quite

distinct morphological forms for passives but not always for passive nouns
(but see the Turkish data discussed in the previous chapter); again this is
reminiscent of the formation of middles for verbs.
. Referential adjectives
In the previous section I established that English passive nominals are actually
event nominals. Greek passive nominals, which can also be process nominals,
dier from the English type passive nominals in that they permit a number of
aspectual interpretations. Let me now turn to the role of adjectival modication
by group/ethnic/referential adjectives and show how this relates to the result vs.
event distinction and to the discussion concerning passive nominals.
It has been suggested that adjectives as the ones in (85) appear to behave
almost like NPs (cf. Zubizarreta 1985 and Kayne 1984). According to Kayne,
these can only encode an unlinked theta-role. Adjectival modication is precluded if the role encoded in the adjectival form is linked, i.e. linked to that of
an internal argument (85c):
(85) a. the American invasion of Vietnam
b. the French defeat of the English
c. *the Austro-Hungarian disappearance of the political scene
The set includes adjectives expressing nationality and other adjectives such as
local, national, liberal, and so forth. Grimshaw refers to these adjectives as
group adjectives, since they seem to pick out groups with a dening characteristic. Giorgi and Longobardi (1991) label them referential adjectives.
According to Grimshaw, group adjectives like possessives are ambiguous.
Sometimes they must be analyzed as subject-like and occur with process
nominals. This is illustrated in (86), where the inclusion of a group adjective
makes the presence of a complement to the noun obligatory. In (86) the use of
the adjective constant forces the process reading of assignment:
(86) the constant American assignment *(of untrained ocials)
Grimshaws position with respect to cases like (86) is that group adjectives are
like argument-adjuncts and not real arguments of the noun, much like possessives. On the other hand, Kayne (1984) suggests that the external theta-role of
nominals can be assigned also to this group of adjectives.
When these adjectives are used in the passive, as illustrated in (87), they
can be related to a linked theta-role, i.e. that of an internal argument. However,
the head in (87) is unambiguously a result nominal, given that it can pluralize,
as in (87c) (hence the ill-formedness of *an attack of a foreign country), yet the
group adjective is permitted. Thus, in their passive use, group adjectives are
modiers of result nominals.
(87) a. the French defeat
b. the defeat of France
c. the French attacks on
The prediction this makes is that nominals modied by the passive use of
group adjective, should not be able to co-occur with a by-phrase licensed by
argument structure. The data in (88) illustrate precisely this point:
(88) a. *the liberal defeat by Reagan
b. *a Central American invasion by the U.S. Army
On Grimshaws view then, group adjectives modify result nominals in their

passive use, but are a-adjuncts to process nominals in their agentive interpretation.
Let us consider the distribution of referential adjectives in Greek in some
detail. Such adjectives can modify intransitive object nominals, but it appears
that they can also modify transitive nominals, as in (89b):
(89) a.
i germaniki apopsi
the German point of view
b. i amerikaniki kritiki stus hirismus tu Milosevits
the American criticism to the acts the Milosevic-gen
However, in Greek the counterpart of (86) is ungrammatical:

(90) a. *i sinehis amerikani anathesi ton aksiomatuhon
the constant American assignment the ocials-gen
b. *i germaniki katohi
tis Ellados
the German occupation the Greece-gen
(89b) diers from the examples in (90) in one important respect: the complement of the noun does not bear genitive case, but rather is introduced by a
preposition. If the complement of the noun appeared in genitive, the example
would be ungrammatical. Moreover, consider the contrast in (91ab):
(91) a.
i katohi
tis Ellados
apo tus Germanus ja 3
hronia
the occupation the Greece-gen by the Germans for three years
b. *i germaniki katohi
tis Ellados
ja 3
hronia
the German occupation the Greece-gen for three years
While the passive nominal in (91a) can be accompanied by an aspectual PP,

this is not possible in (91b), where the nominal is modied additionally by a
group adjective. This suggests that only (91a) qualies as a process nominal,
and not (91b).
It can be shown that referential adjectives do not behave like syntactic
subjects across languages. For instance, no implicit argument control is possible
in the presence of a group adjective, while this is case when the NP subject is
present:
(92) a. Cleopatras seduction of Caesar in order to become pregnant
b. *the Egyptian humiliation of Caesar in order to become the most
powerful nation (Markantonatou and Oersnes 1999)
The contrast in (92) further suggests that nominals including referential/group

adjectives pattern like result nouns.
Moreover, while nominal subjects are able to bind a reexive in object
position, this is not possible with the referential adjective, as is shown by the
examples in (93), taken from Markantonatou and Oersnes (1999):
(93) a. Johns destruction of himself

b. ??the American destruction of themselves
Bosque and Picallo (1996) point out that the internal argument of an event
nominal in Catalan cannot surface as a thematic adjective. Similar facts hold for
Greek:
(94) a. *la produccin sedera por parte de la Chila
the production silky on the part of China
b. *i amerikaniki kritiki apo tin Ellada
the American criticism by
Greece
meaning: the criticism of Americans by Greece
On the other hand, (95) is grammatical:

(95)
i germaniki ipohorisi
the German retreat
However, (95) is not a process nominal. Evidence for this comes from the ungrammatical (96):
(96) a. *i germaniki ipohorisi se 1 ora
the German retreat in an hour
b. *i sinehis germaniki ipohorisi
the constant German retreat
Whenever the process reading of the nominal is forced, either by the presence
of an aspectual adjective or an aspectual modier, the example becomes ungrammatical.
For Bosque and Picallo, the ungrammaticality of the examples in (94)
follows from a violation of the Projection Principle. The nominals production
and criticism must have an argument syntactically mapped into a complement
position. If thematic adjectives in general are always mapped into a Specier
position, then the ungrammaticality of (94) can be accounted for because the
nominal head lacks a complement.
Bosque and Picallo (1996) and Picallo (1991) suggest that thematic adjectives can appear only within result nominals, and the discussion here supports
their claim. Note that both in Romance, and Greek, result nouns can appear in
transitive form, see the discussion in Chapter 4:
(97) a.
la proposta sovitica (de desarmament)

the Soviet proposal (of disarmament)
b. i italiki protasi ja ton afoplismo

the Italian proposal for
disarmament
Finally, note that referential adjectives in Greek do not pattern like other
adjectives or even other DPs such as the possessor that qualify as a-adjuncts in
Grimshaws terms. First of all, they cannot be found in predicative position,
they cannot appear together with degree modiers, and they cannot be licensed
in the environment of determiner spreading (see e.g. Alexiadou and Wilder
1998, Androutsopoulou 1995, Kolliakou 1995, Stavrou 1995, Alexiadou and
Stavrou 1999):
(98) a. *i apofasi ine amerikaniki
the decision is American
b. *i poli amerikaniki apofasi
the very American decision
c. *i apofasi i amerikani
the decision the American
Thus, the sequences referential adjective-noun seem to pattern like syntactic

compounds with respect to Ralli and Stavrous (1997) criteria. This might be
taken to suggest that the structure of the NP that includes a referential adjective
modifying a result nominal is actually of the type illustrated in (99):
(99)
N
A
To sum up, in this section I discussed the environments in which modication by referential adjectives is licit. The Romance and Greek facts point to the
conclusion that modication by referential adjectives is licensed by result
nominals and not by process nominals. A similar point can be made for the
English cases.
. No process of passivization
There is a further point in the discussion on the formation of passive nominals
and nominalization in general which needs to be addressed in this context.
Grimshaw (1990) and Borer (1993) argue that nominals such as the destruction
of the city by the enemy are derived through a process akin to passivization, i.e.
a process that involves demotion of an external argument. Borer specically
argues that a passivized VP is selected by a superordinate N ax to yield the
derived nominal. A similar view is defended in Picallo (1991). Moreover, in

some analyses of passive, it is argued that the external theta-role is absorbed by
the passive morphology (cf. Jaeggli 1986, Baker, Jaeggli and Roberts 1989). van
Hout and Rooper (1998) suggest that nominalization axes might play a similar role, i.e. that of absorbing a theta-role.
While this proposal is quite attractive, and could account for the fact that
process nominalizations are generally intransitive, as described in Section 1, it
will not be pursued here. First, such a proposal fails to capture the fact that
unaccusative predicates also give grammatical process nominals. If
nominalization generally involved demotion of an external argument, then the
formation of unaccusative event nominals should be impossible for the same
reason that impersonal passivization does not occur with unaccusative verbs.
Second, as Roberts (1987) points out, nominalization forms include various
axes, a fact that makes a treatment similar to the one oered for verbal
passives (where the passive morpheme absorbs the subject thematic role) dicult. Moreover, note that it is not clear whether one can assume a syntactic
analysis even for verbal passives. For instance, syntactic treatments of verbal
passives in general run into a series of problems discussed at length in Embick
(1997). To just mention one, it is not clear what the role of passive-like morphology is in deponent verbs, as the one shown in (100) below. It denitely
does not absorb an external role, thus it does not block the assignment of accusative case to the direct object:
(100) a.
metahirizome
to leksiko
use-non-active the dictionary
I use the dictionary
b. katastrake
i poli
destroyed-non-active the city
The city was destroyed
Thus even if one were to make the strict parallelism between nominal and verbal passive, the above discussion suggests that, in general, presence of special
morphology cannot be used as evidence for arguing that demotion takes
place.
There is also a further asymmetry between nominal and verbal passives
that seem to suggest that the former belong to a dierent type of process.
Marantz (1997) points out that nominals including in their meaning reference
to an agent are derived generally from predicates such as destroy which do not
undergo the causative-inchoative alternation. Greek nominals derived from
verbs participating in the causative-inchoative alternation, as briey discussed

in the previous chapter, give either intransitive or passive nominal forms.
Sometimes the nominalization form has distinct forms for the passive and the
intransitive:
(101) a.
o Janis alakse ta ruha

John changed the clothes
b. ta ruha /i katastasi alaks-an/e
the clothes/the situation changed-3pl/3sg
c. ta ruha alahtikan
(apo to Jani)
the clothes were changed from the John
d. to alag-m-a ton ruhon
(apo to Jani)
the change the clothes-gen (from the John)
e. i alag-i tis katastasis
(*apo to Jani)
the change the situation-gen (from the John)
The interesting observation that can be made here is that the nominals which
can license a by phrase also include the inx -m-, while this is not possible for
the ones which do not include the inx.
But, sometimes a passive nominal is possible, although the corresponding
alternating verb does not passivize:
(102) a.
b.
c.
d.
(103) a.
b.
c.
o Janis halarose tis vides

John loosened the screws
i vides halarosan
the screws loosened
*i vides halarothikan
the screws were loosened
to halaroma tis vidas
(apo to Jani)
the loosing the screw-gen (from the John)
to tzami espase
the glass broke
*to tzami spastike
apo ton aera
the glass broke-pass-3sg by the wind
?to spasimo tu tzamiu apo ton aera
the break the glass by the wind
In (103c) above the NP introduced by the preposition carries what Fox and
Grodzinsky (1998) call the aector role or is causative in meaning. The verb
break or the verb loose cannot form a verbal passive. However, the noun can
appear in the putative passive construction.
Formation of passive forms restricted to nominals is not particular to
Greek. In Hebrew, as Hazout (1990) signals, there are deverbal nouns in the
putative passive construction, although their source verb cannot passivize.
For instance, the verb calax crossed cannot undergo passivization, but its
corresponding noun clixa (crossing) does appear in the nominal passive construction.
(104) a.
ha-cava calax et ha-teala

the-army crossed acc the-canal
b. *ha-teala nicleca
al yedey ha-cava
the-canal was crossed by
the-army
c. clixat ha-teala alyedey ha-cava
crossing the-canal by
the-army
Borer (1993) argues that these cases involve impersonal passivization, a process
that is generally found in Hebrew. A similar argument could not be made for
Greek, as Greek lacks impersonal passivization:
(105) *edo horeftike ti nihta
here was danced the night
A related pattern is found in Hixkaryana, a Carib language. This language lacks

agentive passives, but in process passive nominals the agent is introduced by
the relator wya to, by, which is the marking following the indirect object (and
also the causee NP in causative constructions derived from transitive verbs, cf.
Koptjevskaja-Tamm 1993: 156f.).
(106) Waraka wya honyko wonir
xe
wehxaha
Waraky by peccary 3.poss:shoot:an:pres::poss desire I:am
I want Waraka to shoot peccary
Finally, another type of argument that has been brought up in the literature
in order to suggest that nominalization is akin to passivization relates to the
presence of implicit arguments in both constructions. This is visible by the
existence of pairs like the following (cf. Roeper 1987):
(107) a. They opened the door in order to let air in
b. The door was opened in order to let air in
c. the opening of the door in order to let air in
Event nominals like passives allow control into an innitival purpose clause
(see Chapter 1). Roeper (1987) and van Hout and Roeper (1998) (see also
Harley 1995) take this to indicate that an implicit argument is present within
process nominals. However, Lasnik (1988) and Williams (1985) argue against
this. For instance, Lasnik pointed out that the controller need not be the agent,
as is illustrated in (108a). Williams has observed that the purpose clause is
legitimate in instances where no agent is conceivably present grammatically,
as in (108b):
(108) a. The boat was sunk by the torpedo [PRO to prove a point]
b. The thermostat is on low [PRO to save money]
The above remarks can be taken to show that no agent needs to be syntactically
active in nominals.
Engelhardt (1999), in her discussion of Hebrew nominalization, points
out that if derived nominals hosted an external argument in the form of PRO,
the predicate should have retained its ability to license accusative case, as is
the case in innitival constructions. However, the unavailability of accusative
case marking points to the absence of null subjects within nominal constructions.
I take such arguments to convincingly show that no implicit argument
is present within nominalizations. In other words, nominals in general lack
external arguments, implicit or non-implicit, altogether: there is no suppressed external argument in process nominals. I come back to this issue in
Section 4.
To conclude, the discussion so far established the following: (a) process
nominals of the destruction type are intransitive, (b) English passive nominals
are event nominals and thus have argument structure, and (c) intransitive
nominals are not derived by a process of passivization. This is consistent with
the assumption that transitivity is a derived property and with the general
framework presented in the introduction. In the next section I propose attempt
my account for the patterns discussed above.
. The structure of process nominals revisited

Given the results of the previous sections the structure proposed in Chapter 2
for process nominals and repeated here in (109) should be re-considered:
(109)
DP
FP (NumbP/AgrP)
D
the
AP
FP
F AspectP
AspectP
Aspect
vP
v
LP
L
Comp (=theme)
DESTROY the city
Specically, the accurate structural representation of process nominals should
make reference to the fact that no thematic agent can be projected.
As mentioned in the introduction, in the recent literature it has been argued that agents are introduced by a functional head situated immediately
above the projection hosting the internal argument of the verb. This head has
been labeled v in Chomsky (1995), or Voice in Kratzer (1994a,b). Moreover,
the recent literature distinguishes two types of light vs: a transitive light v, and
an intransitive one. The former combines with the external argument, the latter
does not (110):
(110) (i) transitive v [+external argument] v1 = Cause
(ii) intransitive v [external argument] v2 = Become/Happen
Given my discussion here, the situation that emerges with respect to

nominalizations is the following. On the one hand, a functional head of the type
v needs to be present within certain nominals, otherwise we would have no account for the process/event reading a group of nominals is associated with. On
the other hand, the type of v included within such nominals has to be one that
does not license an external argument. In other words, it has to be an intransitive light v. This is precisely the proposal I want to make. To account for the fact
that process nominals are generally intransitive, I propose that the type of v
found in process nominalizations is the one found in unaccusative structures,
i.e. the one that does not project an external argument/agent. In other words,
only v of type (110ii) is licit within process nominals of the destruction type.
On this proposal the burden of nominal derivation lies on the combinatory

properties of functional heads and roots, i.e. it relies on the selectional/
compatibility requirements between v and specic roots. A causative v introduces the causer argument. A non-causative v does not. Both can combine with
various semantic classes of roots. For instance, both vs can combine with roots
like DESTROY denoting a change of state, not internally caused and implying
an external cause or an agent and with roots like GROW denoting a change of
state that is internally caused. In both cases embedding the roots under transitive
v yields a transitive structure. When non-causative v combines with DESTROY
the result is a verbal passive or a nominalization, depending on whether the
structure will appear under T or D. In both cases the agent appears in the form
of a PP. When non-causative v combines with GROW the result is an
unaccusative verb, in the domain of T, or a nominal in the domain of D. Crucially, the presence of an agent is dictated by both the semantics of the root and
the properties of v. Naturally, not all roots will be able to appear in all syntacticosemantic environments with the same result. Within DM illicit combinations,
though well formed syntactically, cannot be interpreted Encyclopedically (I will
not tackle this issue here, see Embick 2000c and Marantz 1999 for discussion).
This view on the derivation of nominals accounts for the fact that specic
nominalization types exist with only certain root types in combination with
specic functional layers. For instance, unergative predicates never give passive nominalizations. It has been argued that such predicates have the internal
structure depicted in (111), i.e. they include a type (110i) v, as agentivity constitutes an integral part of their meaning. Unaccusative structures dier from
unergative ones in that their v is of type (110ii), i.e. it does not bear agentivity
features:
(111)
vP
Subject
v
v
LP
The root involved in this formation must be of the type that simply denotes an
activity, the agentivity component being a property of the functional layer.
Within the nominal system, (111) could only be included in the formation of
agentive nominalizations of the dancer type (see the discussion in Chapter 4).
Note that my analysis crucially assumes that the manner component associated with v is active, i.e. it can license manner adverbs, even though v is
decient (contra Hale and Keyser 1993, and Levin and Rappaport 1995). I take
v to be decient only with respect to its role of introducing an external
argument. It is not decient with respect to its possibility of licensing manner
modication. Recall that in Chapter 1, I pointed out that there is a distinction
between the transitivity content of v, and its semantic content. On the basis of
this distinction, I propose that the property responsible for the licensing of
manner modication is to be located in the semantic content of little v, and not
its transitivity property. That is, eventive predicates only license manner (see
Ernst 1998, Katz 1999b).
The proposal that light v in (109) is an unaccusative light v leads to an
answer to the question why process nominals cannot assign accusative case to
their DP arguments. As has been already mentioned, light v performs the two
requirements of Burzios generalization: it introduces the external argument
and licenses accusative case. Given that in (109) no external argument is projected, no accusative case can be assigned within nominals.
Assuming that only v = Become/Happen is present within nominalizations
explains the restrictions on nominalizations with the Genitive construction in
Greek. If one adopts the proposal that the light v introducing the Goal argument is actually identical with the v introducing the agent (Marantz 1993), then
the ungrammaticality of nominalizations with Goal arguments is accounted for.
What can appear in the genitive in nominalizations are theme arguments only
and v is structurally absent. Marantz, building on Larson (1988), argues that
double object constructions involve complex predicate structures in which the
verb takes as its complement a predicate phrase, in this case a VP. In such a
stacked VP structure, the object aected by the predicate is projected as the
specier of the lower VP, while the goal argument is projected as the specier
of a higher, applicative or light v head (cf. Anagnostopoulou to appear,
McGinnis 1998):
(112)
vP
goal
v
v
VP
theme V
V
If what I have said so far is along the right lines, then the fact that goal
nominalizations are ungrammatical is accounted for under the analysis suggested here, as nominalization involves a defective v, i.e. one that does not
project a specier (see the discussion in Chapter 4).
A nal remark on word order within the DP is in order to conclude the
discussion in this section. In the previous chapter, while discussing noun morphology, I suggested that must reach F so that it is in the complement domain of D and can be Spelled-out as a noun. This would permit the DPtheme
to move to AspectP for reasons that have to do with Case-checking. In principle there is no problem for such an analysis (and see also van Hout and Roeper
1998). The only problem that this analysis might face is the location of adverbial modiers that follow the DPtheme. Assuming that manner adverbs are
located in Spec,vP, and aspectual adverbs are located in Spec,Asp, we would be
forced to propose that the DPtheme targets the external specier of Aspect,
adverbs not blocking the movement of a DP argument. According to this view,
adverbs can occupy specier positions, but the system as such does not preclude an extra specier to locate the arguments (see Laenzlinger 1998).
. By-phrases and more on the lack of external arguments

An issue that has not yet been touched upon concerns the role of the by-phrase
within derived nominals. In this chapter I argued that external arguments of
any type are absent from process nominals. Recall from that discussion that in
a number of languages, agents within nominals take the form of PPs or adverbial phrases. I repeat some of the relevant data below:
(113) the destruction of the city by the barbarians
(114) i katastro tu dasus
apo tus polites
the destruction the forest-gen by the citizens
Pesetsky (1995: 312) observes that in general, the by-phrase is possible whenever a verb with an external argument undergoes morphological change that
prevents normal case assignment to the object. This includes passivization, but
also nominalization and adjectivization of all relevant sorts (-able). However,
apart from the discrepancies between verbal passives and passive nominals
discussed in this chapter, it has been noted in the literature that there are some
dierences between the by-phrase encountered with verbal passives and the
by-phrase found with derived nominals.
A rst dierence concerns the status of the by-phrase within nominal
and verbal passives (originally observed in Hornstein 1977). Building on this

observation, Rappaport (1983) states the by-phrase in verbal-passives can bear
any thematic-role. By-phrases found in nominals dier from by-phrases found
in verbal passives in that they are thematically limited. This point is extensively
discussed in Roberts (1987), Grimshaw (1990) and recently in Fox and
Grodzinsky (1998) among others. The data below illustrate the acclaimed difference (from Fox and Grodzinsky, henceforth F&G 1998: 325). F&G point out
that by-phrases in derived nominals can only be interpreted as agents, instruments or creators. In other words, the object of by must be an aector. This is
not the case with all by-phrases found with verbal passives, which can bear any
semantic role. Thus, although (115a) is grammatical, (116b) is not. In German,
the PP introduced by durch is used instead:
(115) a. the imprisonment of refugees by the government
b. the destruction of the city by lightning
c. a book by Chomsky
(116) a. the package was received by John
b. *the receipt of the package by John
c. die Entgegennahme des Pakets durch Hans/*von Hans
the receipt
the package through Hans/by Hans
Following Jaeggli (1986), Roberts (1987), Baker, Jaeggli and Roberts (1989),
F&G argue that in verbal passives the thematic role of the subject is transmitted
to the by-phrase. This operation involves the transmission of a theta-role that
is never completely unsuppressed, and hence is unlimited. On the other hand,
theta-transmission cannot take place in nominals. If this were the case, the
above contrast would remain unaccounted for.
For F&G, by has certain semantic properties that allow it to assign
an aector thematic-role to its complement. In this case the by-phrase can be
interpreted independently of the availability of theta-transmission. If this is
correct, it supports the view put forth here that there is no external argument
present in nominalizations. It further signals that in general all nominals,
whether they appear to be passive or not have an intransitive base. The presence of a by-phrase is licit, when this is compatible with the semantics of the
root (see Marantz 1997). This is so for destruction and capture type nouns
crosslinguistically. A similar conclusion is also drawn in Bottari (1992) for derived nominals in Italian and den Dikken and Sybesma (1998) for English.
However, note that in English by-phrases do not only refer to agents, but
can refer to the author or creator within result nominals. There are languages,
e.g. Spanish, Hebrew, Russian where the counterpart of the by-phrase is only
found with verbal passives and process nominals and not with other nominals.
In other words, these languages formally distinguish between authorship by and
passive by. This is illustrated below for Spanish:
(117) a.
La captura de los fugitivos por les soldados

the capture of the fugitives by the soldiers
b. *un libro por Chomsky
a book by Chomsky
c. un libro de Chomsky
In Spanish, both the derived nominal and the verbal passive contain the form
por. However, authorship in (117c) is denoted by means of the preposition de,
while English uses by in such contexts as well. Similarly, in Russian both in
passives and in derived nominals the agent theta-role is expressed via an instrumental phrase. In Hebrew, the preposition al-yedey introduces the external
argument only with passive nominals and verbal passives:
(118) a.
ha-ir Sukma al yedey ha-Siltonot

the city was rehabilitated by the authorities
b. *tmuma al yedey David
picture by David
c. tmuma meet David
picture by David
Italian is also similar: it distinguishes between markers for agents da parte di

and for authorship di. Greek also uses the same agent marker for verbal
passives and passive nominals, while it uses the genitive case to denote the
author or the creator:
(119) a.
i katastro tu dasus
apo tus polites
the destruction the forest-gen by the citizens
b. to vivlio tu Chomsky
the book the Chomsky-gen
It is precisely this set of facts that led Grimshaw to conclude that suppression of external arguments takes place in passives, and also in process nominals.
In order to account for the dierence in the distribution of by-phrase in
nominals and verbal passives, Grimshaw suggests that the reason why the by
phrase in nominals is uniquely linked with the role of agent, and not with that
of any external argument is because nominals do not have suppressed external
arguments, although they have suppressed agents. F&G, on the other hand,
distinguish between languages that only license by-phrases via theta-transmission (Spanish) from those that only do so in the passive (English). Thus, in
F&Gs terms apart from English, in all other languages discussed here thetatransmission would be involved in nominals as well as in verbal passives. However, I presented arguments against the view that such a process is possible in
nominalizations. Furthermore, it would be mysterious why only English were
not to allow theta-transmission, if it is such a general process.
Let us then assume that in all the languages discussed in this section no
theta-transmission takes place. Prepositional phrases introduced by by or da
parte di or por could be considered as being similar to ergative or instrumental
markers, a fact which Williams attempts to capture in terms of (120) (see Williams 1987: 365):
(120) The agent is assigned to a by phrase if there is an internal theme
Nominals are a clear illustration of (120): theme arguments bear genitive

and agents must be marked dierently, as it is not possible to have two de- or
genitive phrases within a process nominal. This, in correlation with the fact
that nominalizations lack external arguments, can be taken to suggest that in
nominalizations both arguments are internal. This view echoes Williams
(1981) claim that nominalization involves internalization of an external argument. It is perhaps for this reason that the two arguments bear distinct markers: since they are both internal they are distinguished by means of special
marking. In fact one could suggest that ergative marking is the result of the
following principle (see Marantz 1991):
(121) No ergative-case on a non-thematic subject
In other words, the by-phrase is internal to the verbal root and is thematically
licensed by the preposition by or apo or por etc.
Note that (120) or (121) seem to follow from a more general restriction.
Given the results of the discussion here, nominalizations fall under the generalization established in Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou (to appear). The authors, after examining a wide range of data, point out that whenever a sentence
contains both a subject and a direct object, one of the arguments must vacate
the VP by Spell-Out. They propose that argument externalization is related to
Case. It is due to the fact that movement of both arguments to a single head T
which contains two active Case features in the covert component is banned.
This restriction is not obeyed when the second argument is a PP. In fact they
note in passing that nominalizations provide a further environment where this
generalization is attested. The bulk of facts examined here clearly point to the
validity of the claim: given that in nominalizations both arguments are internal,
and there is only one functional head checking structural case, one of them
must surface as a PP.
On this view, the by-phrase behaves like an independent phrase that creates
a specic semantic relation depending on the presence of an aected internal
theme, i.e. it is marked semantically (and morphologically) for its function.
This seems to be close to the notion of passive agent in Croft (1991). In this
respect, the by-phrase is strictly parallel to ergative case, if this is analyzed as a
prepositional/lexical case (see the discussion in Chapter 5). In fact according
to Nash (1995) only nominative-accusative languages have external arguments,
ergative ones have only VP internal agents.
Structurally, the by-phrase can be represented either as a specier or as
complement of LP:
(122)
LP
DP
(123)
L
LP
PP
L PP
L DP
Note that (122) above is very close to the proposal in Marantz (1984) that
ergative languages dier from nominative-accusative languages in that in the
former the projection of the arguments at D-structure is the reverse. Also it is
similar to Pesetskys (1995) representation of the low cause argument, and in
agreement with the intuition that agents in nominalizations derived from predicates that do not passivize behave like causers/instruments (see below).
In any case, both structures bring passive nominals close to inalienable
possession/partitive/theme-instrumental structures (see Marantz 1993) and
express the intuition that the aected theme and the aector are part of the same
sub-event. These structures reect a binary relation between the two arguments, as opposed to structures including agents introduced by light v. In this
sense, the aecting of an instrumental or an aector agent is taken to occur
within the same event that aects the theme. This restriction on the type of
agent phrases in nominalizations enables us to understand why we nd process
nominals accompanied by by-phrases, although their corresponding verbal
passives do not exist, as discussed in Chapter 2 and here. This is so, because the
agent in the nominalization structure has a dierent status than the agent in
the verbal passive.
If this view is correct note that one can account for the fact that by-phrases
do not co-occur with transitive agents as in *Johns destruction of the city by the
barbarians by assuming, following Pesetskys analysis of experiencer predicates,
that the low cause moves to the higher cause position, i.e. the two positions
(complement of L and Spec,DP) are transformationally related (see Anagnostopoulou to appear). I come back to this point in the next chapter.
Finally, let me come back to the genitive of authorship. The view adopted
in this work concerning the status of this genitive is the one put forth in
Grimshaw. For Grimshaw, nouns such as book do not have an argument structure, as they refer to objects and not to processes. In this case, the genitivephrase would be interpreted as a possessor, i.e. it would be a non-thematic
subject. The ergative generalization would not be activated and these phrases
would not receive an ergative marking. Now in English it seems to be the case
that by can have both an ergative and a non-ergative use, while most of the
other languages distinguish clearly between the two contexts.
Notes
. Picallo (1991) has claimed that process nominals are passive in Catalan; see also Bottari
(1992) for Italian and Borer (1993) for Hebrew.
. Note that under Grimshaws (1990) and Borers (1993) analysis, nominalization always
aects external arguments. Thus, it is unexpected that unaccusative predicates, which lack
external arguments, also feed process nominalizations.
. In earlier stages of Greek it was possible to express the agent via a genitive, so that two
genitives were included within a derived nominal.
. Note that the following German examples are grammatical (Gisbert Fanselow personal
communication):
(i)
a.
b.
dieser Vorschlag einer Haushaltskrzung der Grnen

this proposal a
budget-cut-gen the Greens-gen
The Green Partys proposal of a budget cut
dieser Versuch eines Rckritts
des Umweltministers
this attempt a
resignation-gen the environment minister-gen
The environment ministers attempt of a resignation
However, the nominals in (i) qualify as result nominals on the basis of Grimshaws criteria.
Both are preceded by demonstratives which can only precede result nominals:
(ii) they observed the/*that assignment of the problem (Grimshaw 1990: 54)
As will be discussed in Chapter 4 the possibility of having two genitives inside a nominal
is also licit with result nominals in Greek.
. In Spanish, as in Greek (see Chapter 2), certain nominalizations suxes are sensitive to
the type of verb (see also the discussion in the introduction). Bever and Sanz (1997) point
out that in Spanish the axes -on, -ada specify that the argument of the nominalization
is the patient of the verb, while axes like -ador specify the agent of an action. When
applying these suxes to monadic verbs, agent suxes attach to unergative verbs, while
patient ones to unaccusatives:
(i)
a.
b.
(ii) a.
b.
Mario habla mucho

Mario talks a lot
Mario lloro mucho
Mario cried a lot
es muy hablador
he is a great talker
*la llorada de Mario fue larga
the crying of Mario was long
Maro llega siempre muy temprano *es buen llegador

Mario always arrives very early
he is a good arriver
Mario llego a tiempo
la llegada de Mario fue muy esperada
Mario arrived on time
Marios arrival was very much awaited
. In fact the argument concerning negation might turn out to be more complicated than
Bottari presents it. Kaiser (1968) has pointed out that negated nominals are not acceptable in all contexts. For example, the sentence in (ia) is seems to be ill-formed:
(i)
a.
b.
*the non-arrival of the train lasted an hour

the arrival of the train lasted an hour
Baeuerle (1987) has suggested that the contrast in (ia-b) is evidence that events are not
a subset of propositions. The reason one should be driven to this conclusion is the following. Suppose that the semantic function of the negation operator is that of applying
a set of possible worlds to yield the complements of these sets. In this case, the NP the
non-arrival of the train will denote a proposition (a set of worlds in which the train didnt arrive). Suppose that the predicates lasted an hour, as Vendler (1967) proposed for
independent reasons, semantically select for events but not for propositional entities. In
this case, the contrast in (i) is expected: these predicates should not be able to combine
with the NP the non-arrival of the train, since the presence of negation forces the propositional reading of the NP, but they should be able to combine with the NP the arrival of
the train, since this NP may denote an event. Now, if eventualities were a subset of propositions, then the arrival of the train, like the negated NP the non-arrival of the train will
denote a proposition. But then, the contrast in the examples above cannot be accounted
for. A similar view is defended in Zucchi (1993). However, it is by far not settled whether
propositions belong to the set of eventualities or not. For instance, for Pustejovksy (1995)
what contributes to propositional readings is the presence of an operator that quanties
over events. I leave the issue here open.
. This has led Schoorlemmer (1995) to concluded that Aspect phrase is present within a
verbal nominal but not within a process nominal. If this is taken to be an extra criterion
for the presence of an Aspect phrase, note that modication by such nominals is possible
within a Greek process nominal. See also the discussion in the next chapter.
(i)

ta mesanihta
the destruction the city-gen the midnight-acc
. Recall that result nominals, on the other hand, have been argued at least by Picallo (1991)
to be transitive. In Catalan, predicates that select results happily co-occur with two genitives. This is never possible with passive nominals. The presence of such patterns could
be taken to argue that the distinction between event vs. result nominals maps into the
distinction passive vs. active nominals, in the sense that result nominals include transitive
agents, i.e. possessors while event ones do not (cf. Picallo 1991). I will come back to this
issue in Chapter 4.
. It has been argued by Shin (1998), that formation of -ung nominals in German is sensitive to the Aectedness property. In other words, the theme arguments of such nominals
must be changed quantitatively or qualitatively:
(i)
a.
b.
*die Verkorkung der Flasche

the corking up of the bottle
die Verkorkung der Panzengewebe
the corking up of the plant tissues
In (ia) the theme argument, the bottle, does not undergo the change in state of aairs
denoted by the predicate, it has only acquired a new property, namely to be closed with
a cork. On the other hand, in (ib) the theme argument has into changed into a cork after
the termination of the process denoted by the head noun. Ehrich (1991) also points out
that -ung nominalizations in German are compatible with achievement nominals only.
See the discussion in the previous chapter
. However, the situation was dierent in Ancient Greek, where constructions such as i tis
poleos katastro were acceptable. This suggests that there was an Aectedness constraint
active in earlier periods of the language.
. Gisbert Fanselow (personal communication) observes that one reason for the oddity of
(60a) might be that looking at the sea does not denote an action. Hence, the object of the
predicate cannot be aected given that no action is involved which could result in changing something in the object.
. The Spanish facts presented here will be seen under a dierent light in Chapter 4. It will
be argued that these nominals are actually result nominals, i.e. the marker will be analyzed as an oblique marker. Thus, the fact that the genitive is not possible within the types
of nominals discussed in Torrego will be accounted for by showing that there is no environment for a structural case to be assigned within such nominals. Perhaps this is the
reason why these nominals do not conform with the animacy requirement.
. However, Roberts (1987: 249) gives a set of examples where such strings are grammatical:
(i) the citys destruction in order to prove a point
According to Graham Katz (personal communication), the texts example does not create
a strong ungrammaticality eect. Moreover, he points out that in general there seems to
be a preference for NPs associated with relational nouns to appear in the pre-nominal
position.
Tenny (1987) points out that certain passive nominals seem to be able to co-occur with
adjunct modiers such as completely:
(ii) the doors opening completely
. Interestingly predicates that are characterized by the separation property tend to be
achievement predicates.
. Many thanks to Alec Marantz for bringing these data to my attention.
. Elena Anagnostopoulou (personal communication) suggests that the reason why (91b)
is ungrammatical in Greek is related to the fact that the counterpart of Johns destruction
of the city is also ungrammatical, i.e. to the fact that there is a thematic position in the
English DP which is not active in Greek. Note, however, that there are a number of differences between the adjectival and the genitive construction even in English. Moreover,
the position in which the adjective is merged is not identical with the position in which
the genitive is merged, the latter being projected into Spec,DP, as will be discussed later
on in the text.
. A similar pattern exists in Italian. Bottari (1992: 72) notes that in Italian not all nouns
yield felicitous results when modied by an adjective. Moreover, there is a contrast between nominals ending in -zione and those belonging to the -ura class. The latter give
even worse results:
(i)
a.
b.
??la
restitiuzione giapponese dei prigioneri americani

the restitution Japanese of the American prisoners
*la lettura tedesca della nuova ordinanza ebbe luogo alle cinque
the reading German of the new decree
took place at ve.
Bottari interprets these facts as suggesting that the external argument cannot be realized
in Italian nominals in the form of a group adjective, i.e. these are passive in character.
Note that -ura nominals in Italian also resist adjectival possessives, in fact they hardly
allow the realization of an external argument.
. Alexiadou and Stavrou (1998b, 1999) actually claim that there are no genuinely thematic
adjectives as such, in the same sense as there are thematic DPs. The explanation given
there is as follows: so-called ethnic/group nouns give rise to derived adjectives through
axation of the sux -ik-. This sux turns a noun (for example, Italos Italian) into the
corresponding adjective Ital-ik. It absorbs the thematic role and at the same time allows
the derived category to agree with the noun in all the relevant phi-features through the
adjectival endings that can now be added to the -ik- inx. Hence, such adjectives bear
only a lexical (etymological) relation to their original nominal parent, and this is what
gives the impression of their being assigned a thematic role. In other words, modication
by a referential adjective of this type provides us with a further test that distinguishes
between result and event nominals: only the former can be modied by these adjectives.
. Here the Turkish facts presented in the previous chapter could be relevant. One could
argue that in Turkish the presence of passive morphology is sucient to absorb and
transmit the theta-role to the adverbial subject.
. According to Embick (1997), special morphology is used when v is not associated with
an external argument.
. The Carib pattern is reminiscent of Romance causative formation. Bok-Bennema (1991:
18) notes that in many accusative languages innitival complements of causative and
perception verbs are characterized by an ergative case system. The French examples in (i)
illustrate this:
(i)
a.
b.
Marie le fera
chanter/tomber
Mary him will make sing/fall
Marie le fera
acheter Paul
Mary it will make buy
to Paul
Mary will make Paul buy it
In (i-b) we see that the object of acheter has the same case as the subject of the intransitive verbs chanter/tomber in (i-a), while the subject of the transitive bears dative case. For
the analysis to be presented in the next chapter, this means that both the French causative
construction and the Carib pattern involve deep agents. Interestingly, the phrase in
French is also used to mark the indirect object of a di-transitive verb and to express possession as in la voiture Jean the car to John (see Kayne 1994 for a recent discussion).
. Schoorlemmer (1998) makes a similar point to the one made here on the basis of Russian
facts.
. Thanks to Elena Anagnostopoulou for raising this issue.
. Picallo (1991) also proposes that syntactic nominals are another instance of Burzios
generalization: they cannot assign structural case to their internal argument, thus no
thematic role can be assigned to the subject position. The internal argument does not
receive inherent case as the head nominal itself is a product of a syntactic derivation. The
external argument is absorbed by the nominalization ax (see also Roberts 1987 for
verbal passives).
. A similar view with respect to the status of the of phrase has been advanced in Williams
(1987).
. Fukui and Speas (1986) suggest that the by-phrase is simply the VP-internal subject position.
. Interestingly, this structural analysis of the agent within nominalizations and ergative
languages is in agreement with proposals about the development of ergative marking,
such as the one put forth in Garrett (1990). Garrett (1990: 264f) states that ergative and
instrumental case marking are identical in many languages. In fact several typologists
have speculated that ergatives have actually emerged from old instrumentals. According
to Garrett, instrumental NPs were reanalyzed as subjects. Such reanalysis is permitted

because of the functional overlap between instrument and agents in clauses with transitive predicates, e.g. John opened the door with the key and the key opened the door. Similar
reanalysis does not occur with intransitive predicates, as thematic instruments are rare
or absent altogether in the subject position of intransitive clauses, e.g. John walks with a
cane, but *a cane walks. Note here that the fact that German uses the preposition durch
or that Russian denotes agents with instrumental case in passive nominalizations is supporting an analysis of this preposition as being an instrumental marker.
. Thanks to Elena Anagnostopoulou for pointing this out to me. Sar (1987) argues that
the fact that *Johns destruction of the city by the barbarians is ungrammatical suggests that
the possessive and the by-phrase are arguments of the head noun. This specic claim is
refuted in Grimshaw (1990: Chapter 4).
. In order to determine which of the structures corresponds exactly to the underlying
structure of nominalizations, note that there is a binding asymmetry between the two
examples in (i):
(i)
a.
b.
the destruction of himself by John

*the destruction of John by himself
To account for this asymmetry, several linguists have suggested that (ia) is acceptable
because the anaphor himself is c-commanded by John, but does not bind John. (ib) is
ungrammatical, because the anaphor himself is not bound by its potential antecedent
John, but it c-commands it. Rouveret (1994) suggests that the contrast in (i) suggests that
the agent within nominals can be projected in two ways: either in Spec, NP, or when the
specier of NP is not projected, as a sister to N. This is depicted in (ii):
(ii) a.
b.
[NP [Spec PPagent] [N PPtheme]]

[NP [N N PPtheme ] PPagent]]
In (iib) both the arguments of the noun are internal to N, the theme argument is a sister
to N and the agent a sister to N. This line of argumentation seems somehow to support
the view that the agent is located under the same intermediate projection as the theme.
Chapter 4
Variation in Functional Structure
In the previous chapters, I argued that (Greek) process nominals of the type
destruction include the functional heads Aspect and v in addition to nominal
functional heads. As is well known, however, not all nominalizations share the
same properties. For instance, as discussed in Chapter 1, gerunds in English
have distinct characteristics from derived nominals. Moreover, nominalizations
are not uniform across languages: while adverbs can appear within process
nominals in Greek, this is not possible with process nominals in English. In this
chapter, I show how this lack of uniformity has its origin in the variation in the
number and the type of (verbal and nominal) functional projections included
within DPs. The reasoning is as follows. The properties of constructions that
generally exhibit a mixed verbal/nominal character are the result of an association of an unspecied root with nominal functional categories in addition to
the verbal ones (see also Borsley and Kornlt 2000). But in principle the number of these categories could vary. It could be minimal or the whole set of projections encountered in other clause types. Moreover, the type of these projections, i.e. A vs. A, transitive vs. intransitive, is also subject to variation. Thus
rst, one should not expect nominalizations to be uniform across languages or
nominal constructions in general to behave alike. Second, dierent nominalization axes are expected to attach to dierent set of projections.
The chapter is organized as follows. In Section 1 I discuss variation linked
with the number and type of verbal functional projections. In Section 2 I turn
to variation related to the number and type of nominal projections. Finally, in
the appendix I demonstrate how the system proposed here accounts for various
types of nominal innitives.
Variation in the set of verbal projections
. Presence vs. absence of C

In Chapter 2 I put forward the proposal that deverbal formation involves the
combination of AspectP with a nominal head. However, in principle D can also

combine with higher verbal projections, giving rise to nominalized clauses
across languages. In fact it seems to be the case that AspectP combines with
both D and T, but only when a C level is present. The result of this combination is nominalized clauses; these have distinct properties from derived
nominals; notably they include predicates that inect for tense and agreement.
(1) and (2) illustrate this type of nominalization for Greek and Turkish (Greek
example from Roussou 1991, Turkish from Borsley and Kornlt 2000):
(1) to oti irthe
the that he came
(2) Ben [siz
tatil-e
ik-acag-iniz-i
I you-gen vacation-dat go-out-fact.fut-2pl-acc
duy-du-m
hear-past-1sg
I heard that you will leave for vacation
In the next section I turn to some of the nominalization types discussed in

Chapters 1, 2 and 3, namely -er nominals and gerunds, and show how the differences between these and nominals of the destruction type can be accounted
for in terms of the presence vs. absence of an AspectP.
. Presence vs. absence of Aspect
.. -er nominals vs. non -er nominals (in Greek)
As has been noted in the literature, there are certain parallels between eventive
-er and process nominals of the destruction type (see Rappaport and Levin
(R&L) 1992 for extensive discussion). For instance, eventive -er nominals,
much like process nominals, can take complements (cf. (3) and (4)):
(3)
the defenders *(of human rights)
(4) a. a devourer of fresh fruit/*a (good) devourer
b. she devours fresh fruit/*she devours
For R&L (1992) inheritance of complement structure is the crucial factor for
the division of -er nominals in two major subclasses eventive and noneventive. The distinction between agentive and instrumental -er nominals is
secondary and relies on this rst major distinction.
Moreover, eventive -er nominals can be modied by adjectives such as
Variation in functional structure
frequent. This type of modication is possible only in the presence of the internal argument (much like the examples we saw in Chapter 1 with nominals of
the destruction type):
(5) a. constant defenders *(of the governments policies)
b. frequent consumer *(of tobacco)
When the nominal is non-eventive, i.e. when no complement is required, then

the aspectual modier is not allowed:
(6) a. this machine continues to be our only (*frequent) transmitter
b. this machine continues to be our only transmitter
(*to headquarters)
On the basis of these facts, R&L conclude that both eventive deverbals and
-er nominals include an event position (along the lines of Larson 1983,
Higginbotham 1985, Rothstein 1983, Larson 1998). At rst sight, these similarities could lead one to suggest that -er nominals share the same structure with
destruction type nominals.
However, there are signicant dierences between -er nominals and the
type of nominals discussed so far, reviewed recently in Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou and Stavrou (2000) (see also R&L 1992). First, unlike other process
nominals, -er nominals do not permit manner adverbial modication. This is
illustrated in (7) with an example from Greek, a language where adverbial
modication is licit with destruction type nominals, as has been extensively
discussed in Chapter 2:
(7) *o katharistis tu
ktiriu prosekitka
the cleaner
of the building carefully
Second, as the examples in (8) show, -er nominals cannot bear aspectual modication. This means that -er nominals, contrary to destruction type nominals,
are not interpreted aspectually, as they cannot be modied by any type of aspectual adjunct, perfective or imperfective:
(8) a. *i damastes ton
fotonion
mesa se/gia enan eona . . .
the tamers the-gen photons-gen within/for a
century
b. *o katharistis tu
ktiriu epi ena mina telika apolithike
the cleaner
the-gen building for a month nally got red
These contrasts suggest that -er nominals have a diminished verbal character,
even in their agentive reading.
This property of -er nominals will be captured in term of variation in their

functional architecture. What type of projections can be argued to be included
within such nominals? Given that these are agentive, they must include v (see
Marantz 1999, van Hout and Roeper 1998 among others). But the type of v
they contain is dierent from the one found with other types of process
nominals: while v in destruction lacks agentivity features (see Chapter 3), v in
dancer contains agentivity features. Moreover, given that -er nominals do not
permit aspectual modication and do not show the aspectual distinctions
found with other process nominals, they must lack AspectP. As a result of their
functional structure, -er nominals never denote specied events, but the agent
of an event. If correct, this suggests that both Aspect and v contribute to the
licensing of arguments. As a result, both -er nominals and process nominals of
the destruction type can license internal arguments, in spite of the dierences
between them with respect to their functional architecture.
The question that arises next is the following: if v is present, why isnt the
licensing of manner adverbs possible, since, as I argued in Chapter 2, this is
linked to v? Note that -er nominals do have a manner component. This is
clearly present on one reading of (9), which denotes that Olga dances beautifully
(Larson 1998, 1999 for discussion).
(9) Olga is a beautiful dancer
Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou and Stavrou (2000) give a partial answer to this

question. These authors propose that there is a link between the morphology
of adverbial (manner) modication and the presence of AspectP. Only when
AspectP is present is adverbial manner modication licit. Hence in both types
of nominals a root BEAUTIFUL can be included in the structure. In the environment of functional layers that include Aspect, such as dancing, it will be
spelled out as an adverb. In the case of dancer, where AspectP is not included,
it will be spelled-out as an adjective.
Consider now how this proposal relates to the semantics of -er nominals.
-Er nominals denote individuals (or classes of individuals) and more specically the agent of an event, while process nominals denote events and the agent,
when present in the form of a PP, is a participant in the event. Evidently,
AspectP is relevant for events and not for individuals (see also Davis 2000). In
the rst case, the event is a property of an individual, while in the second case
the individual is a participant in the event.
The next question is what blocks the presence of adverbial aspectual modication, but legitimates the presence of adjectival aspectual modication.
Clearly, the absence of aspectual adverbials is related to the absence of AspectP.

The presence of aspectual adjectives, on the other hand, is potentially related
to NumberP. If one considers Number and Aspect to be categories of the same
type (see de Wit 1997, Alexiadou and Stavrou 1998a,b, Alexiadou 1999b and
references therein), aspectual adjectives are licensed by Number.
.. Polish vs. Russian nominals
Support for the suggested link between the presence of adverbial manner modication and Aspect comes from the following asymmetry between Polish verbal
nouns and Russian derived nominals. As discussed in Chapter 2, Polish verbal
nouns exhibit true aspectual oppositions in the sense of perfective vs. imperfective. The relevant data are repeated below.
(10) a.
ocenienie
studentw
przez nauczyciei nastapio szybko
valuation-pf the students-gen by teachers occurred quickly
b. ocenianie
studentw
przez nauczyciei ciagneo sie
przez cay
tydzien
This is not the case with derived nominals in Russian, as is illustrated in (11).
Although the Russian verb destroy has both a perfective and an imperfective
form, the nominal destruction exhibits no such opposition. In fact
Schoorlemmer (1995) provides a detailed argumentation for the lack of Aspect
from the structure of Russian nominals:
(11) razruit-razsuat
destroy-perf/destroy-imp
razruenie
destruction
As reported by Vinogradov and vedova (1964), diachronically -nie nominals

in Russian are by-products of passive verbal formation. Moreover, they have
long been considered part of the verbal paradigm. Nie was added to the passive
participle in an unrestricted way. When the passive form was non-existent a
dummy passive formative was added to the verbal stem in order to keep the
nominalizing pattern consistent. In fact in nineteenth-century Russian -nie
nominalizations were formed from both members of the aspectual verbal pair,
perfective and imperfective verbal bases, as illustrated in (12) below:
(12) a.
vypisanie
writing-out perf
b. vypisyvanie
writing-out imperf
Vinogradov and vedova mention a gradual diminishing of verbal characteristics of -nie nominals that started with the loss of the aspectual distinction.
Interestingly, Russian nominals do not permit manner modication, while
Polish ones do so (data from Schoorlemmer 1995):
(13) a.
uzucie noza
spryntie
use
knife-gen cleverly
b. *upotreblenie noa
xitro
use
knife-gen cleverly
Polish
Russian
Again in (13) a correlation between the presence of AspectP and the presence
of manner adverbial modication is observed.
Finally, recall that Polish has two types of nominalizations: verbal nominals
and derived nominals (Chapter 3, Section 1.4.2). The latter show no aspectual
opposition and do not license manner adverbial modication. This pattern
provides further evidence for the link between AspectP and manner adverbial
modication.
.. Gerunds vs. derived nominals in English
A similar contrast is found if one compares English gerunds to English derived
nominals. As pointed out in Chapter 2, (14a) diers from (14c) in that -ing
nominalizations entail an imperfective event. However, this is not the only
dierence between the two types of nominals. As Lees (1960) observed, gerunds
permit auxiliaries and adverbs, but disallow articles and prenominal adjectives.
On the other hand, derived nominals (and mixed nominalizations) do not
license auxiliaries or adverbs, but allow for prenominal adjectives and articles.
The examples in (14) and (15) illustrate these dierences (Zucchi 1993: 21):
(14) a.
b.
c.
d.
the performance of the song

the beautiful performance of the song
*the having performance of the song
*the performance of the song beautifully
(15) a.
b.
c.
d.
*the performing the song

*his beautiful performing the song
his having performed the song
his having performed the song beautifully
This contrast may also be attributed to the presence vs. absence of AspectP.
If Aspect is considered to be absent from English derived nominals of the
destruction type, one could attribute their aspectual variable behavior to this
structural property. They are aspectually unmarked, and hence can take both
perfective and imperfective readings.
.. Nominals from di-transitive predicates in Greek
Consider nally nominalizations from di-transitive predicates in Greek. As
Anagnostopoulou (to appear) points out these nominals appear to have
decient verbal structure in that they often seem to resist aspectual adverbial
modication and that they do not easily co-occur with manner adverbials.
Starting with aspectual adverbial modication, the following examples seem
to be deviant or ungrammatical:
(16) a.
To harisma enos vivliu

s-tin Maria ??se ena lepto/
the gift
a
book-gen to-the Mary in one minute/
*epi deka lepta
for ten minutes
b. To dosimo ton ruhon
s-tin Maria ?*se ena lepto/
the giving the clothes-gen to-the Mary in one minute/
?*epi deka lepta
for ten minutes
Manner adverbs which are generally licensed with event nominalizations in

Greek, are not easily tolerated with the nominals under discussion:
(17) a.
??To
harisma enos vivliu

s-tin Maria me enthusiasmo
the gift
a
book-gen to-the Mary with enthusiasm
b. ??To dosimo ton ruhon
s-tin Maria me hara
the giving the clothes-gen to-the Mary with pleasure
On the other hand, adjectival modication denoting repetition with singular

nouns seems to be acceptable, as is generally the case with process nominalizations:
(18) a.
To tahtiko harisma vivlion

s-tin Maria
the regular gift
books-gen to-the Mary
b. To sihno dosimo ruhon
s-tus ftohus
the frequent giving the clothes-gen to-the poor
Nominalizations based on double accusative roots are much better behaved. They happily co-occur with dierent kinds of aspectual modication
(19) as well as manner adverbs (20):
(19) a.
i didaskalia ton mathiton

??se mia ora/epi mia ora
the teaching the students-gen in an hour/for an hour
b. i pliromi ton ipalilon
se deka lepta
the payment the employees-gen in ten minutes
(20) a.
i didaskalia ton mathiton

me enthusiasmo
the teaching the students-gen with enthusiasm
b. i pliromi ton ipalilon
me
aprothimia
the payment the employees-gen without pleasure
It thus appears that nominalizations based on give-verbs are more decient

than their counterparts based on pay-verbs. Nominalizations based on
pay-verbs seem to show the properties of Russian derived nominals and -er
nominals, i.e. to show decient verbal structure. Specically, given that they
lack aspectual and manner adverbial modication, they must also lack AspectP.
Recall that nominals derived from stative psych-verbs cannot be modied
by manner adverbs; this is shown again in (21a). Moreover, nominals derived
from non-causative forms of psych predicates are not completely acceptable in
such environments either. Both, however, permit aspectual adverbial modiers:
(21) a.
i agapi tu Jani
ja ti Maria
*trela
the love the John-gen for the Mary-acc madly
b. o fovos tu Jani
ja ti thalasa ??mehri trelas
the fear the John-gen for the sea-acc to
madness
On the assumption that stative environments generally lack vP, the above pattern seems to point to the following possibilities: either stative nominals lack
AspectP as well, and the availability of durative adverbial aspectual modicaTable 1.
Type of Nominal
Nominalized Clause
Derived Nominals
-er nominals/certain derived
ones?
Stative-nominals?
Language
Greek
Greek/Polish
English/Greek/Russian
Structure
D embeds CP
D embeds AspectP
D embeds vP
Greek
D embeds LP
tion is linked to the semantics of the roots, as these has been dened in
Chapter 2, or they contain an AspectP which bears the specication [stative]
(see Embick 2000b for such a proposal concerning stative participles). Table 1
summarizes the patterns of variation discussed so far.
. Variation depending on the type of v/Voice (transitive vs. intransitive)
More nominal types emerge depending on whether the v included in the structure is transitive or not. As already discussed in the previous section, -er
nominals dier from derived nominals in that they include an agentive v. In
this section I examine more types of nominalizations whose properties can be
attributed to the status of v.
.. Gerunds vs. derived nominals in English
As was mentioned in the introduction and in Section 1.2.3, English gerunds
contrast with derived nominals of type destruction. The dierences between
these two are summarized in (22).,
(22)
Adjectives
Article
DP-distribution
Overt Subject
Accusative Object
NPs
*
*
Gerunds
*
*
(gen)
In fact English has several types of gerunds illustrated in (23ab) with similar
meaning and distribution:
(23) a. Johns performing the song
b. I imagined John performing the song
The gerunds in (23a) and (23b) have frequently been considered not to form
a unied class, the former is referred to as POSS-ing, while the latter as
ACC-ing. It has been argued that the gerund in (23a), with its subject in the
genitive is syntactically dierent from the gerund in (23b) with an objective
case subject (Rosenbaum 1967, Roeper and Wasow 1972, Horn 1975, Abney
1987 among others). Here I concentrate mainly on the former type.
Chomsky (1970) has suggested that gerunds are NPs dominating Ss. Zucchi
(1993), however, points out that since there are no sentences with a genitive
subject, the presence of a genitive NP indicates that the preverbal NP is not a
sentential subject either. That is the presence of a genitive subject is consistent

with a DP structure and not with a verbal sentential one. Moreover, gerunds,
unlike sentences, do not license sentential adverbial modiers. This suggests
that they do not involve high functional projections that can host such
adverbs of the type found with verbal clauses, as discussed in Chapter 2:
(24) a. *Johns probably being a spy
b. *Johns fortunately knowing the answer
Recently, Harley and Noyer (1998b) attempted to account for these dierences
within the framework of Distributed Morphology. They argued that in the
gerundive context a vP is necessarily present, as gerunds take the verbal from
of the root, rather than the nominal one. As gerunds cannot take a determiner
(*the destroying the city), Harley and Noyer proposed that gerunds are special
instances of small clauses with vP predicates, as illustrated in (25) below.
(25) [SC Belushi [vP mixingj [FP drugs and alcoholi [LP tj ti]]]]
According to Harley and Noyer, the subject of the gerund is not merged in
Spec,vP. In their system it is the presence of FP that makes the licensing of
accusative case on the internal argument possible.
With Harley and Noyer, I assume that vP is present within gerunds. In fact
as I argued in Chapter 2 and above, AspectP is also included in their functional
architecture. However, there are problems with Harley and Noyers account
having to do rst with the position of the subject and second with the availability of accusative case. According to the system assumed in the introduction, the
presence of an FP licensing accusative is not necessary; v can be argued to project a specier, so that it can also license accusative case on the internal argument. However, matters are not that simple. Portner (1992:94) discusses one
argument in favor of assuming that the subject of gerunds is directly projected
in Spec,DP (he makes the argument for both the POSS-ing and the ACC-ing
type). This involves scope. Consider (26):
(26) Everyone(s) not smiling bothered me
Here, everyone obligatorily has wide scope over not. This fact is in contrast to
the state of aairs with a clause:
(27) Everyone did not smile
If (26) contains a structure similar to (27) as a subpart, in the sense that subjects are generated in Spec,vP, it is quite dicult to see how to prevent all the
scope relations possible in (27) from being available in (26). However, if everyone is generated in Spec,DP wide scope for everyone seems inevitable. There are
two ways one might seek to derive wide scope for not in (26). Either not is able
to raise at LF adjoining to IP, or everyone reconstructs at LF to a position below
negation, i.e. to Spec,vP. The former possibility is not available with (26). The
latter possibility cannot be the correct structure for (26), given that wide scope
for the negation is not possible. Thus in this case the subject is generated external to the vP, it has not been moved there from anywhere and therefore no
scope reconstruction can occur. In fact Portner assumes that PRO is generated
in Spec,vP.
Here I adopt Portners proposal and I take v in gerunds to be transitive.
Given that gerunds appear in nominal contexts in English and take possessor
subjects, they are embedded under a D head which is the locus of the possessive ax. Spec,DP is also the position where the subject is generated. There is
a remaining issue concerning the absence of adjectives from gerunds. This fact
can be taken to correlate with the absence of any other nominal functional
projections from gerunds. In other words, English gerunds are AspectPs embedded directly under D, i.e. they lack NumberP.
Finally, English mixed nominalizations, e.g. Johns destroying of the city,
pattern with English derived nominals with respect to the status of v and presumably the presence of AspectP (see Harley and Noyer 1998b for extensive
discussion).
Table (28) summarizes the variation discussed thus far.
(28)
Transitive v
Intransitive v
Agentive v
Gerunds in English -er nominals in English/Greek
Non agentive v
destruction nominals across
languages, English mixed
nominalizations
A note of clarication is in order here. I have been assuming that there are two
sources of variation related to v: agentivity and transitivity (see Embick 2000c).
This means that in principle v could be agentive, and not transitive, for instance as in verbal passives, or -er nominals. But it could also be agenitive and
transitive as in transitive verbal constructions and gerunds.
.. Nominalizations in Hebrew
In the previous section the possibility of licensing an accusative object within
a nominal construction was attributed to the presence of a transitive v. In this
section I concentrate on Hebrew nominalizations, one variant of which

also licenses accusative case on the internal argument. The relevant data are
repeated below:
(29) harisat
ha-cava et hair bi-mehirut
the destruction the army the city in quickness
In (29) the internal argument, the city, is preceded by the accusative marker
et and the agent bears genitive case.
As far as I can see, there are two possible accounts for this pattern. The rst
possibility is to suggest that Hebrew, like English, has two types of nominals.
One type which includes a transitive v, and one type which contains an intransitive v. Given that the two types do not show any other signicant dierences
between them, the dierence in transitivity must be related to the feature specication of v.
The second possibility is to suggest that the accusative case found in these
Hebrew nominals is not a structural accusative and that in (29) the genitive is
the only structural case present. In fact this has been independently argued for
in Siloni (1997). Here I summarize two of her arguments. Siloni points outs
that there are signicant distinctions between the accusative case of transitive
verbs and that found in nominal contexts which point to the conclusion that
the accusative within event nominals is not a structural case, but rather an
inherent one. The most salient distinction concerns the particle et. This particle appears with a denite object only. That is, when a verb takes a denite
complement, et must precede the complement. When the verb takes an indenite accusative complement, et cannot appear. Nouns can assign accusative
case only in the presence of et:
(30) a.
ha-cava hara
*(et) ha-ir
the-army destroyed acc the city
b. ha-cava haras
(*et) ir axat
the-army destroyed acc city one
c. harisat
ha-cava et ha-ir
destruction the-army acc the-city
When the objects of nouns receive genitive case they can be indenite. According to Siloni, as there is no reason to assume that there is a deniteness
requirement on the objects of event nominals, this distinction in the use of
et in nominal contexts is unexpected, if the et found in nominal contexts were
the same as the one found in verbal contexts.
A second dierence relates to the fact that event nominals are unable to
realize their object as an accusative pronoun:
(31) a.
ha-cava haras
oto
the-army destroyed him
b. *harisat
ha-cava oto
destruction the-army him
Assuming that the accusative case borne by pronouns is structural, the fact that
this cannot occur within a nominal context follows from the hypothesis that
the accusative case in nominals is inherent and not structural.
Other instances of inherent accusative case have been discussed in the generative literature for instance, in German (van Riemsdijk 1983), in Italian
(Belletti and Rizzi 1988), in Icelandic (Zaenen et al. 1985), and in Spanish
(Torrego 1998). As mentioned in Chapter 3, Torrego (1998) argues that affected objects in Spanish bear inherent accusative. Such aected objects are
introduced by the dative marker a:
(32) a.
su acusacion al
teniente
her accusation to the lieutenant
b. *su acusacion del teniente
However, there exists a further complication both in Hebrew and in

Spanish, as far as the case of the theme argument is concerned. Recall that in
Spanish when the possessive adjective is not present, as in (33), the de-phrase
becomes grammatical again. Contrast (33) to the examples under (32). Moreover, in the type of Hebrew nominals referred to as passive, the theme argument surfaces with genitive case and not with accusative. This is illustrated
in the (34ab). (34c), where the theme argument bears accusative case, is ungrammatical:
(33)
la acusacion del teniente

the accusation of the lieutenant
(34) a.
ha-harisa
el ha-ir
the-destruction of the-city
b. harisat
ha-ir
destruction the-city
the citys destruction
c. *ha-harisa
et ha-ir
the-destruction acc the-city
In the above examples when a genitive agent is present the theme argument
bears inherent case. When the agent is absent, the theme surfaces with genitive
case. This pattern is expected if (a) genitive is a structural case, and (b) only
one structural case can be licensed within the DP. What is not immediately
clear is why there should be such a distinction between structural genitive objects and inherent accusative ones related to the absence vs. presence of an
agent. One would not expect structural case to be present in the absence of an
agent, and inherent case to be possible in the presence of a genitive agent, under the standard interpretation of Burzios generalization, unless the genitive
arguments (theme and agent respectively) compete for the same head assigning
case (but see Siloni 1997 and Torrego 1998 for alternative views). If nominalizations constitute an environment that falls under the generalization
established in Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou (to appear), as suggested in the
previous chapter, this state of aairs is expected: as both arguments are internal
to the same domain, and there is only one head checking structural case, one
of them must surface bearing a prepositional/inherent marking.
The situation in Hebrew is a bit more complex. Consider the Hebrew
nominalization patterns once again.
(35) a.
ha-harisa
el ha-cava et hair
the-destruction of the-army acc the city
b. harisat
ha-cava et hair
destruction the-army acc the city
c. bxinat
ha-mismaxim al-yedey ha-raut
ha-musmexet
examination the-document by
the-authority the-competent
d. ha-bxina
el ha-mismaxim al yedey ha-raut
the-examination of the-documents by
the-authority
ha-musmexet
the competent
(35ab) illustrate the two ways in which a genitival relation between a head
noun and a noun phrase can be indicated in Hebrew. While in (35a) genitive
case is realized via el of , in (35b) el of does not appear and abstract genitive
seems to be assigned by the head noun itself. The second construction is known
in the literature as the construct state, while the former is known as the free
state. In (35cd) the agent is introduced by a by-phrase. The complement of the
head noun appears either in the construct (35c) or in the free (35d) state. Now
a noun that takes an inherent accusative theme cannot realize an al-yedey
by phrase.
According to Siloni, inherent accusative is available within NPs only if

the external argument has been discharged. This is the case in (35ab), but
not in (35cd), where the by-phrases do not bear the external thematic role in
the same way genitive arguments do. In further support of this claim, Siloni
points out that et phrases are possible within nominals that contain referential
adjectives:
(36) a.
ha-hafcaca ha-yisreelit et levanon

the-bombing the-Israeli acc Lebanon
b. ha-sixzur
ha-sini
et ha-xoma
the-reconstruction the-Chinese acc the-wall
Genitive case is illicit in the above examples. Silonis conclusion seems puzzling. Even more so since inherent accusatives are included within passive and
unaccusative constructions in colloquial Hebrew (cf. Siloni 1997: 84 and references therein):
(37) a.
noda
li
et ze etmol
was known to me acc this yesterday
b. kara
li
kvar et ha-teuna ha-zot
happened to me already acc the-accident the-this
While it could be argued that (37a) involves an implicit agent, no such possibility arises for (37b), an unaccusative predicate.
In fact, as McCloskey (1996) points out in his discussion of salient
unaccusative constructions in Irish, such patterns are anticipated by the general
framework developed in Burzio (1986). Consider the Irish unaccusative verbs
in some detail. Irish has two types of unaccusative predicates: salient
unaccusatives, i.e. verbs which take a single argument marked with what traditionally is taken to be a preposition and which entirely lack a structural subject
(38a). McCloskey establishes by various tests that this single oblique argument
remains internal at all levels of representation. Verbs belonging to the second
type, referred to as putative unaccusatives, although semantically belong to the
class of unaccusative verbs, bear no formal mark of being dierent syntactically
from any other intransitive (38b). Many of these verbs exist in systematic alternation with the salient unaccusative type. As McCloskey convincingly shows,
the single argument of these verbs is a surface subject, and is not introduced by
a preposition:
(38) a.
neartaigh
ar a ghlr
strengthened on his voice
His voice strengthened
b. neartaigh
a ghlr
strengthened his voice
His voice strengthened
The general framework developed in Burzio leads one to expect the existence
of unaccusatives that subcategorize for a PP, i.e. the salient unaccusative in
Irish. Burzio suggested that such verbs do not exist. However, the Hebrew and
Irish facts show that Burzio was right in his proposals: there exist unaccusative
predicates single arguments of which bear inherent/prepositional case. A similar point can be made on the basis of unaccusative predicates in German,
where the single argument bears either inherent accusative or dative as shown
in the examples in (39) (see Grewendorf 1989 among others for discussion):
(39) a.
mich friert
me is cold
b. mir schwindelt
to me is dizzy
On this interpretation, the Hebrew examples can be used as evidence in favor

of the lack of an external argument. That is the fact that the theme-argument
bears inherent accusative case is not linked to the presence of an external argument. Rather it suggests the lack thereof. In other words, inherent accusative
is licit in the absence of an external argument, as expected under Burzios generalization. Inherent accusative is present whenever there is a structural genitive
in the clause, and only one functional head where case could be checked (see
also the discussion in Chapter 5).
One nal remark concerning the data in (36) is in order here. Recall that
in Chapter 3 I argued that the licensing of referential adjectives is only possible
within result nominals. Based on this, one could suggest that the nominals in
(36) are result nominals and not event nominals. If this is correct, (36) should
be analyzed on a par with the Romance data discussed later on in this chapter.
The data in (35ab), however, still pose a problem, since these clearly involve process nominals. Taking Silonis analysis of the et phrase to be on the
right track, I believe that the Hebrew constructions involve a type of antipassive in the nominal structure. A similar proposal should be made for the
German cases briey discussed in Chapter 3, i.e. the alternation der Angri der
Zielen durch die NATO vs. der Angri der NATO von der Zielen, both meaning
Natos attack of the targets. The anti-passive, as this is found in a number of
ergative languages, has the following properties: the underlying agent becomes
subject of the antipassive and surfaces in the absolutive, i.e. the case standardly
associated with internal arguments in ergative languages. The underlying object
goes into a peripheral function being marked by an inherent/oblique case. This
is shown below with an example from Squamish (Jacobs 1994:131). (40a) illustrates the ergative/transitive pattern, while (40b) illustrates the antipassive
clause, in which the patient is marked in the oblique case:
(40) a.
na chem-t--as
ta Tam ta Pita
RL bite-trans-3abs-3erg det Tom det Peter
Tom bit Peter
b. na ipa7-m- alhi Qlqalilh t-ta
skwam
RL hold:dt:3abs det Q.(name) obl-det bark
Q. had some cedar bark with her
The Hebrew examples in (35ab) are exactly parallel to this. Viewed this way,
(35ab) involve a theme bearing oblique case and an (internalized) agent bearing genitive case (assuming that there is no semantic distinction between the
free and the construct state). On the other hand, (35cd) involve the passive
construction, i.e. an agent being prepositional, and a theme bearing genitive
case.
To sum up, in this section I examined the nature of accusative case within
Hebrew nominals. Following Siloni, I suggested a possible analysis of the
Hebrew examples according to which (a) accusative case within nominals is not
structural, (b) languages dier (even internally) with respect to whether the
nominals which include non-structural accusative are process or result. For
instance, the Spanish cases involved result nominals, while some of the Hebrew
nominals were clearly process nominals; (c) Hebrew process nominals with
accusative marked objects are actually anti-passive constructions, i.e. they
involve internalized agents and oblique marked objects.
. Variation in the set of nominal projections

. Presence vs. absence of number: licensing of adjectival modication
In the previous section I examined how the dierences in the type and the
number of verbal functional projections can account for the various nominal
constructions one nds across languages and within a language. In this section
I turn to variation related to the number and the nature of nominal functional
projections.
A rst source of variation is the presence vs. absence of the functional category Number. As discussed in Chapter 2, Ritter (1991) argued that Number is
included within the functional architecture of nominals on the basis of the fact
that plural endings have the same status as tense and agreement axes do in
the verbal domain. If one takes this proposal seriously, the obvious conclusion
is in the absence of a singular vs. plural opposition, NumberP should be absent
as well.
In the rst section of this chapter, it was signaled that -er nominals can
pluralize and permit adjectival modication. In fact the presence of adjectival
modication was argued to bear a close relationship to Number. The relevant
data are repeated below.
(41) the faithful defenders of the governments policies
On the other hand, gerunds lack plural marking, and also do not license adjectival modication. This is accounted for, if we assume that Number is licensed
within -er nominals, but its presence is not permitted within gerunds.
The question that arises next concerns the presence of Number within
process nominals of the destruction type, which, according to Grimshaw, do not
pluralize, but do license adjectival modication. Interestingly, it can be shown
that Grimshaws claim is not correct. As mentioned in Chapter 2, Bierwisch
(1989) observed that pluralization of nominals in German does not always
bring about the result interpretation, as in examples such as die Besteigungen
der beiden Gipfel dauerten 6 Wochen the climbings the two tops lasted 6 weeks,
where the noun clearly has an event interpretation. Moreover, Greek nominals
related to unaccusative predicates do receive an event interpretation when in
the plural e.g. i aksis turiston oli ti nihta the arrivals tourists-gen all the
night. This set of data clearly shows that Grimshaws criterion distinguishing
process from result nominals in terms of the availability of plural marking does
not hold. Hence process nominals include the functional category Number.
. Variation depending on the type of D
In all the nominal types discussed so far, D is present in the structural representation. The presence of this functional head turns the construction into an ar-
gument. What I claim in this section is that the A vs. A status of Spec,DP is also
a source of parametric variation. As will be shown, languages in which Spec,DP
is an A-position permit transitive nominalizations e.g. Johns destruction of the
city, while languages in which Spec,DP is an A-position do not allow them.
As mentioned in Chapter 3, Greek process nominalizations cannot be transitive, in the sense that it is never the case that both the theme and the agent
argument of the nominal can surface bearing genitive case. The relevant data
are repeated below:
(42) a. *i katastro tu vivliu
tis Marias
se pende lepta
the destruction the book-gen the Mary-gen in ve minutes
b. *tis Marias i katastro tu vivliu se pende lepta
c. *i perigra tu Jani
tis Marias
se pende lepta
the description the John-gen the Mary-gen in ve minutes
The examples in (42) are all ungrammatical. When both arguments of the
nominal are present, agents necessarily surface as PPs:
(43) i katastro tis polis
apo tus ehtrus se pende lepta
the destruction the city-gen from the enemies in ve minutes
The destruction of the city by the enemies in ve minutes
However, as it has been pointed out in several places throughout this study,
(44) below is possible. In (44) the rst genitive, the one immediately following
the head noun, is understood as the object of description, while the second one
is understood as the individual to whom the description belongs, i.e. the author
of the description. (44) diers from (42c) in that the genitive DP understood as
the author of the description refers to a known poet and thus makes the interpretation easier to get.
(44) ?i perigra tu topiu
tu Seferi
(*se pende lepta)
the description the landscape the Seferis-gen in ve minutes
Other nouns that behave like this are metafrasi translation, anaskopisi
review, and also certain picture nouns agalma statue, portreto portrait. At
rst sight, (44) seems to challenge the view that process nominalizations in
Greek are intransitive and raises some questions the claim that two arguments
bearing genitive case are illicit within nominalizations.
As mentioned in Chapter 3, there exists a dierence between Greek,
Romance, and Germanic with respect to the availability of transitive nominalizations. Consider again some data from English and German:
(47) a. the Vandals destruction of Rome

b. Johns translation of the book
(48) a.
Kolumbus Entdeckung Amerikas

Columbus discovery of America
b. Attilas Zerstrung der Stadt
Attilas destruction the city-gen
c. Marias bersetzung des Buches
Marys translation of the book
The examples in (47) and (48) show that English and German generally permit
transitive nominalizations, where the agent appears in prenominal position
even with destruction type nouns. However, as already mentioned in the introduction, English destruction type nominalizations are transitive, but English
nominalizations related to verbs entering the causative-inchoative alternation
such as grow are never transitive.
(49) a. Johns destruction of the city
b. *Johns growth of tomatoes
If transitivity in nominalization is generally possible, the fact that this does not
happen with all types of predicates is mysterious. This asymmetry had been
taken in Chomsky (1970) as an argument for the lexicalist treatment of derived
nominals as opposed to gerunds.
Recall now the situation in French (50) and Italian (51).
(50) a. *sa destruction de la ville
her destruction of the city
b. sa description dun passant
c. la traduction de Pierre de loevre de Zola
the translation of Peter of the work of Zola
(51)
la tua descrizione di Giorgio

the your description of G.
As pointed out in Chapters 2 and 3, French and Greek disallow transitive

nominalizations with destruction type nouns, while they allow them with translation type nominals. What is interesting here is that the agent can either
appear in the form of an adjectival possessive, or a de-phrase. Italian permits
similar constructions as well: in (51) the agent appears in the form of an

adjectival possessive and the theme is introduced by di.
In what follows I show that the nominals in the languages under discussion
split into two groups. In the one group, which includes Greek and Romance,
the nominals involved are result nominals that can license a possessor argument. In the second group, which includes English, the nominals involved are
not transitive in the sense that they involve agents introduced by a light v.
Rather agents are introduced by D, a projection which has thematic properties
in a language like English. Greek does not license such a position, as Spec,DP
behaves like an A-position in this language.
In the next subsection I turn rst to the distribution of the two genitives
in Greek and Romance.
.. Two genitives are allowed only within result nouns
In the data discussed above we saw that in languages such as Greek and
Romance, transitive nominalizations are restricted only to translation type
nouns and are impossible with destruction type nouns. Zubizarreta (1987) notes
that this relates to a semantic dierence between the two groups: nouns like
description, translation and so on can denote a process or an event but they can
also denote the result of a process. Nouns like destruction, on the other hand,
can only refer to a process and never to the result of a process.
With respect to Greek, Markantonatou (1992) and Kolliakou (1995) both
present arguments that the second genitive in the examples in (44) bears a
somehow loser relationship to the possessed noun. Markantonatou claims that
the noun and the thematic genitive form some kind of compound, and the
second genitive functions as a possessor. On the other hand, Kolliakou argues
that the two genitives instantiate dierent types of possessives, the innermost
being a pseudo-possessive. Kolliakou actually makes the point that pseudopossessive genitives are analogous to non-intersective adjectives. On this view,
the innermost genitive in (44) determines the kind of description.
Let us look at the syntactic behavior of the two genitives in Greek in some
detail. While the two genitives behave as normal constituents when they occur
in the DP alone, when they occur together the rst genitive seems to be attached to the deverbal noun in a compound form. As the examples below
show, there is a contrast in possessor-extraction contexts. While extraction of
the creator (52b) is grammatical, extraction of the theme argument is impossible when the creator genitive is present (52a). In (52c) the wh-phrase can refer
both to the work, Odyssey, and to the translator, Kakridis:
(52) a. *tinos i metafrasi tu Kakridi

ine sto
ra deksia?
whose the translation the Kakridi-gen is on the shelf on the right
b. tinos i metafrasi tis Odisias
ine sto
ra deksia?
whose the translation the Odyssey-gen is on the shelf on the right
c. tinos i metafrasi ine sto
ra deksia
whose the translation is on the shelf on the right
Similarly in the case of possessor fronting, movement of the theme argument

in the presence of the creator is ungrammatical:
(53) a. *tis Odisias
i metafrasi tu Kakridi ine sto
ra
the Odyssey-gen the translation the Kakridi is on the shelf
deksia
on the right
b. tu Kakridi
i metafrasi tis Odisias
the Kakridi-gen the translation the Odyssey-gen
c. tis Odisias i metafrasi
the Odyssey the translation
In (52) and (53) the theme argument cannot move over the Creator genitive
to Spec,DP. Markantonatou (1992) attributes this contrast to the fact that the
head noun together with the theme genitive forms one constituent that can
only move as a unit.
This conclusion is supported by data such as the ones given in (54). As
the contrast in these strings shows, modication of the theme genitive is not
permitted, while modication of the creator genitive is well formed:
(54) a. *i metafrasi tis makroskelus Odisias tu Kakridi . . .
the translation the lengthy
Odyssey the Kakridi
b. i metafrasi tis Odisias tu eksohu Kakridi
the translation the Odyssey the great Kakridi
c. i metafrasi tis makroskelus Odisias
the translation the lengthy
Odyssey
The two genitive phrases also contrast with respect to modication by relative
clauses:
(55) a. *tu Kakridi
i metafrasi tis Odisias,
the Kakridi-gen the translation the Odyssey-gen,
i opia ine ena oreo
piima
the which is a beautiful poem
b. i metafrasi tis Odisias

tu Kakridi,
the translation the Odyssey-gen the Kakridi-gen
o opios ipirkse, daskalos mu
who
was
teacher my
c. i metafrasi tis Odisias, i opia ine ena oreo piima
the translation the Odyssey the which is a nice poem
In (55) only the genitive bearing the creator role can be modied by a relative
clause. Of course, relative clause modication of the deverbal noun is also
possible.
Given these dierences, it seems correct to follow Markantonatou and
claim that in examples like the ones above metafrasi and Odisias are interpreted
as being one single unit. This phenomenon is well attested in Greek where
constructions of the sort Noun +NP [gen] that behave as units are in really
common use e.g. faki epas lenses contact-gen. Further support for this comes
from the use of possessive-clitic test established in Kolliakou (1995). Kolliakou
points out that possessive clitics, when present within the DP, are always
referential, i.e. they denote an extensional, never an intensional or kind modier of the noun. Hence the genitive DP in (56a) cannot be replaced by a clitic:
(56) a.
to vivlio tis istorias

the book the history-gen
b. *to vivlio tis
the book hers
Consider now (57):

(57) a.
i perigra tu topiu
tu Seferi
the description the landscape-gen the Seferis-gen
Seferis description of the landscape
b. i perigra tu tu topiu
the description his the landscape-gen
his description of the landscape
c. *i perigra tu
tu Seferi
the description its [the landscape] tu Seferi-gen
d. i perigra tu
apo ton Seferi
the description its [the landscape] by Seferis
In (57a) the creator follows the head noun and the genitive complement. In
(57b) the clitic is clearly interpreted as the creator of the description. On the
other hand, in (57c) where the creator is in the genitive and the possessive clitic
refers to the theme is out. The only option to express the theme relation for the
possessive is (57d), with the PP expressing the agent. (57c) is parallel to (56b)
above, i.e. the theme genitive together with the head noun denote a type of
description.
To sum up, the above examples constitute evidence for considering the
head nominal together with the innermost genitive as a type of compound. The
outer genitive bears the role of the possessor; it is presumably situated in the
specier of a PossP (Delsing 1993). In other words, its licensing follows from
the general pattern of the syntax of possession (see for instance the proposals
in den Dikken 1997 and Alexiadou and Wilder 1998). Note here that, if possessors bear structural case, the fact that noun head forms a compound together with the theme argument enables the construction to escape Alexiadou
and Anagnostopoulous (to appear) generalization, by leaving only one argument inside the DP bearing structural case, namely the possessor. In other
words, the two genitives do not compete for the same Case checking head, as
one of them forms a compound with the head noun, and hence does not need
to check its case (see Baker 1988).
Zubizarreta (1987) made a similar suggestion concerning the Romance
examples discussed in the previous subsection. According to her, result nouns
can include a possessor variable, while process nominals cannot carry such a
variable. As a result, the possessive pronoun that appears is interpreted as a
possessor, i.e. as carrying a modier role. The dierence between English and
Romance follows from the fact that in English the prenominal position is not
position that is restricted to [+poss] elements. Hence the item that appears
there bears a number of roles. On this view, the nouns that permit the double
genitive constructions are not process nominals.
As expected both Greek and Romance translation type nouns behave alike
with respect to the tests distinguishing process from result nominals. As the
examples below show, Greek nominals that permit the double genitive construction do not permit aspectual modication of the type licensed inside process nominals:
(58) a.
i sihni
metafrasi tis Odisias
the frequent translation the Odyssey-gen
b. *i sihni
metafrasi tis Odisias
tu Kazandzaki
the frequent translation the Odyssey-gen the Kazandzakis
ine sto
ra
is on the shelf
Furthermore, as shown in (59), modication by aspectual adjectives is possible

for the noun accompanied by the two genitives, but only when the plural
form of such nominals is used. This is expected, if plural nominals tend to
denote results, keeping in mind the renements made in Chapter 2 and earlier
on here:
(59) i sihnes perigrafes tu topiu
tu Seferi
the frequent descriptions the landscape-gen the Seferis-gen
Seferis frequent descriptions of the landscape
When the second genitive is replaced by the apo-phrase, the string is interpreted as a passive nominal, and thus can appear in an environment which
licenses event/process readings, such as that involving the predicate begin (60a).
On the other hand, the nominal with the two genitives is ungrammatical (60b),
as expected if it only has the result interpretation:
(60) a.
i metafrasi tis Odisias

apo ton Kakridi arhise
the translation the Odyssey-gen from the Kakridis started-3sg
prin dio mines
before two months
The translation of the Odyssey by Kakridis started two months ago
b. *i metafrasi tis Odisias
tu Kakridi arhise
prin
the translation the Odyssey-gen the Kakridis started-3sg before
dio mines
two months
Similar contrasts can be observed in Romance (French data from Siloni

1997:98; Catalan data from Picallo 1991: 293f.):
(61) a.
b.
c.
(62) a.
b.
la prsentation de livres de ce journaliste est toujours rane

the presentation of books of this journalist is always rened
*la prsentation frequente de livres de ce journaliste . . .
the presentation frequent of books of this journalist
la prsentation frequente de livres par ce journaliste
la demonstracio deen Joan del teorema de Pitgores s inconsistent
the proof of Joan of Pythagoras theorem is inconsistent
*la demonstracio del teorema de Pitgores per part deen Joan s
inconsistent
the proof of the theorem of Pythagoras on the part of Joan is inconsistent
As (61b) shows, aspectual modication, which brings about the process reading
of the nominal, is not licit when two de-phrases are present. (61c), on the other
hand, in which the agent is introduced by a PP, is grammatical under the process reading. The same holds for the Catalan examples (62ab). Predicates that
generally select for results, such as being inconsistent, happily allow the nominal
construction with the two de-phrases, while they disallow the passive one,
where the agent is introduced by a PP.
A similar point has been made by Engelhardt and Trugman (1999) for
double genitives in Russian nominals. According to these authors, double genitives are only allowed with some non-process derived nominals and some
nominals derived from verbs that assign inherent genitive. On the other hand,
the presence of double genitives is disallowed within process nominals, as discussed in Chapter 3:
(63) a.
konspekt lekcii
brata
summary lecture-gen brother-gen
brothers summary of the lecture
b. konspektirovanie lekcii
*brata/bratom
summarizing
lecture-gen brother-gen/instr
brothers summarizing the lecture
Note in the examples above that the two forms dier. Only the second one,
bears the ax -nie. In fact only -nie monimalizations permit modication by
frequent and constant:
(64) postojannoe vyveivanie/*vyvyska belja
constant hanging-out sign laundry-gen
To conclude, in this section I discussed the presence of transitive patterns of

nominalizations across languages. I presented evidence that these constructions
do not actually involve process nominals, but rather result ones. Moreover, I
showed that the complement genitive appears to form some sort of compound
with the head noun. In this sense, such nominalizations do not run into the
problem of having two DPs with the same case competing for the same checking head. In the next section I turn to English transitive nominalizations.
.. Agents in Spec,DP
Recall that in English the string Johns destruction of the city is grammatical.
Unlike the constructions discussed in the previous subsection, such nominals
are clearly process nominals. In order to maintain the proposal that in destruc-
tion type nominalizations v is always decient, I have to suggest that the agent
in English transitive nominalizations cannot be merged in Spec,vP, but rather
it is located in the specier of a dierent functional head, one that can license
such arguments. The functional head that comes to mind is D. Recall that in
Chapter 2, I presented arguments that Spec,DP is a thematic position in English. According to Abney (1987), evidence for this fact comes from the observation that the thematic argument in passive nominalizations can occupy this
position, as exemplied in (65):
(65) the citys destruction
On this view, the DP expressing the actor is never generated in Spec, vP, but
in Spec,DP. Crucially, the type of agent involved in such constructions is not
the type associated with a light v, as in the case of transitive verbal clauses.
In principle there are two options for the agent to be situated in Spec,DP.
The rst possibility is that the DP is directly merged there. Spec,DP is a thematic position, one that can host thematic DPs, hence such a direct Merging
is possible (see the discussion on passive nominals in Chapter 3). The second
alternative, suggested to me by Elena Anagnostopoulou, is that the DP can be
moved there from its base position within the LP (see Chapter 3 and (66a)).
This analysis is in fact the one Pesetsky (1995) proposes for deriving causative
experiencer predicates. According to Pesetsky, constructions of the type this
annoys John involve movement from a lower causer position to a high causer
position, as depicted in (66b). A similar derivation could be proposed for the
transitive nominalizations discussed in this subsection.
(66) a.
LP
Theme L
L
b.
PP
VP
Causeri V
V
VP
Exper V
V Causeri
As noted in the previous chapter, such a derivation would account for the fact
that sequences of the type *Johns destruction of the city by the barbarians are
ungrammatical.
However, as already mentioned, Spec,DP in English is not a position
strictly related to an agent theta-role. The data in (67ab) illustrate that possessives are not thematically restricted, in the way by-phrases within nominalizations are. In fact Grimshaw (1990) took this lack of restrictiveness as an
argument for the view that in nominalization the possessive is licensed by any
suppressed argument, i.e. in principle it can be associated with any theta role:
goal, theme, agent, experiencer, location, source etc.
b. Many peoples fear of ying
c. yesterdays destruction of the city
As (67c) shows, a temporal possessive can also occur in prenominal position. Naturally such DPs cannot be associated with any thematic role. In other
words, the prenominal DP in (67c) could not be argued to have moved there,
in the sense that yesterday could never have the function of a deepcauser/instrument of the type *the destruction of the city by yesterday. In fact one
could argue, on the basis of the above analysis, that only those DPs that are
initially merged as by-phrases keep their agentive thematic-role, as only these
undergo movement from a thematic position to a thematic position. According
to Pesetsky, the thematic roles assigned to the two positions must be of the
same type for this process of movement to be licit in the rst place. DPs which
are merged in Spec,DP directly are never linked with an agentive thematic role,
if this view is correct.
Assuming that agents in transitive nominalizations are located in Spec,DP
and are never merged in Spec,vP, explains why in German only proper names
can appear within these constructions (see Chapter 3). These are arguably situated in D (see Longobardi 1994).
Two questions still remain, however. First, why do English nominals not
behave uniformly with respect to the possibility of including an agent e.g.
Johns destructions of the books vs. *Johns growth of tomatoes? Second, why is
there a crosslinguistic asymmetry with respect to the availability of transitive
nominalizations?
Turning to the rst issue, there are two possibilities. According to the rst
one, whenever a root denotes an externally caused event such as DESTROY,
the specier of D can be interpreted as an external causer (agent). On the other
hand, roots like GROW which denote an activity that occurs spontaneously,
thus being internally caused, do not permit the external causation interpretation of the specier of D (see also the discussion in Chapter 3). This accounts
for the unavailability of transitive nominalizations with verbs like grow entering
the causative alternation. Crucially, GROW can receive an agentive interpretation only if it is inserted under a syntactic causative head. This is not the case
with DESTROY which inherently possesses such an agentive interpretation.
Alternatively, both roots can give transitive nominalizations, but formations
with GROW will not be felicitous, as these will receive no Encyclopedic interpretation.
With respect to the crosslinguistic distribution of the availability of agents
introduced by D, it is necessary to recall from Chapter 2 that the status of
Spec,DP varies across languages While it has an A status in English, it has an
A-status in e.g. Greek. As mentioned in Chapter 2, in English DP corresponds
to IP, while in Greek DP corresponds to CP. Spec, DP is not an argument position in Greek and thus wh-movement naturally takes place within this domain.
The relevant data from Horrocks and Stavrou (1987) are repeated below:
(68) a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
mu ipes
oti diavases [to vivlio tinos]
me told-2sg that read-2sg the book whose
You told me you read whose book?
mu ipes oti diavases [tinosi [to vivlio ti]
tinosi mu ipes oti diavases to vivlio ti
[tinosj [[to vivlio tj]]i mu ipes oti diavases ti
[to vivlio tinos]i mu ipes oti diavases ti
Example (68a) is taken to represent the structure prior to movements. In (68b),

the genitive phrase has moved to Spec, DP. From this position subsequent
movement to Spec, CP as in (68c) is possible. (68d) and (68e) involve fronting
of the whole DP to Spec,CP. In the former case wh-movement has not applied
DP internally, in the latter it has.
In (69) I repeat Szabolcsis (1994) data that oer further conrmation for
aligning Spec,DP with Spec,CP. The Hungarian pre-nominal possessor may
occupy two positions. It may follow the determiner, in which case it has nominative case (69a), or it may precede the determiner, in which case it has dative
case, as shown in (69b).
(69) a.
a Mari
kalap-ja
the Mari-nom hat-3sg
b. Mari-nak a kalap-ja
Mari-dat the hat-3sg
As discussed in Chapter 2, it seems reasonable to propose that Marinak in

(69b) occupies the specier position of an A-position. Interestingly in
Hungarian, agents appear either as nominative possessors or within an ltal
by phrase:
(70) a.
Pter
Mari ellen val felszolal-s-a
Peter-nom Mari against being speak-dev-poss-3sg.
Peters speaking against Mari
b. Peter
Mari ltal val megszgyent-s-e
Peter-nom Mary by being humiliate-dev-poss-3sg
On the basis of the above, I conclude that transitive nominalizations are

only possible, when a thematic specier, other than Spec,vP is licensed in the
structure. Hence in Greek such nominalizations are never possible, while they
are in English.
Finally, let me turn to the discussion of the Romance facts that include an
adjectival possessor. Recall that in Romance it is not possible to have an adjectival possessor with destruction type nouns, while this is the case with translation
type nouns. The relevant data are repeated below.
(71) a. *sa destruction de la ville
her destruction of the city
b. sa description dun passant
In the previous section I pointed out that according to Zubizarreta (1987)

nominals with two de-phrases were actually result nominals. She has also argued that sequences of the type (71b) involve result nominals. Translation type
nouns allow for the adjectival to be interpreted as a possessor and not as an
agent. Thus we would expect that whenever such nouns are put in a context
that clearly disambiguates between the result and the event reading, it is always
the case that nominals preceded by an adjectival possessor receive the result
interpretation. Evidence for this comes from the facts discussed in Bottari
(1992), who shows that nominals introduced by possessive pronouns actually
lack the event interpretation. Bottari notes that when selected by certain predicates (factives) derived nominals can be modied by negated element. In this
case the derived nominals receive a propositional interpretation. Thus, accord-
ing to Bottari, the negation strategy is bound on the argument supporting

property of these nominals: only argument taking nominals, i.e. process
nominals are compatible with the negated nominal strategy, non-argument
taking nominals i.e. result nominals are not. In this light, consider the following examples:
(72) a.
la non-descrizione della vita campestre mi aveva sorpreso

the non-description of country life surprised me
b. *la non-descrizione mi aveva sorpreso
c. *la sua non-descrizione della citta li aveva irritati
his non description of the city irritated them
The ungrammaticality of (72b) is attributed to the fact that the nominal in this
environment has the result reading that is incompatible with negation. Interestingly, when a prenonimal possessive adjective is present then the nominal cannot be negated, patterning like a non-process noun (72c). Given that only such
constructions can have a possessive reading, it is only in these that the possessor adjective can be present.
To conclude, both Romance and Greek dier from English in that the
English transitive nominalization pattern crucially involves process nominals
with an extra thematic position. In other words, the transitive nominalizations
are not of the same type in the languages under discussion: they involve result
nominals in Romance/Greek, and such nominals are analyzed in terms of
possession structures, but involve process nominals in English, where Spec,DP
can be licensed as a thematic position irrespectively of the decient character
of v, which is common for all process nominals of the destruction type across
languages.
. Summary
In this chapter I have made three points. First, I demonstrated that the presence
of Aspect contributes to event specication, and moreover, it is linked with the
availability of adverbial modication Second, I proposed that while the presence of v contributes to eventive interpretation, the transitivity of v regulates
the agentive vs. non-agentive character of the nominal and the availability of
accusative case. Third, I argued that the A vs. A status of D regulates the availability of transitive nominalizations.
Appendix: Nominal innitives

In languages such as Italian, Dutch and German innitival constructions can
appear in the complement domain of a determiner. This is illustrated in (73)
with an Italian example:
(73) Giovanni ud il mormorare
John
heard the whisper-inf
Much like other nominals, nominalized innitives can appear in argument

positions. This is illustrated below with an Italian example, but similar facts
hold for the Dutch and German constructions:
(74) il suo mormorare parole dolci spiega la reazione di Maria
the his whisper
sweet words explains the reaction of Mary
Grimshaw and Selkirk (1976) and Salvi (1983) have observed that Italian
innitivals of kind (73) contain at least a VP node, given that they can be
modied by adverbs (75). Similar observations hold for Dutch (see Zwart 1987)
and German (see Ehrich 1991 among others):
(75) il suo scrivere quella lettera improvissamente
the his write that letter suddenly
(76) het annhoudend appels eten begint mij te vervelen
the continuously apples eat-inf begins me to bore
(77) das oft kleine Katzen streicheln
the often small cats
caress
In terms of the model developed here, the above facts suggest that nominalized
innitives include AspectP and vP.
Nominalized innitives show evidence for the presence of a more elaborated nominal domain, since they allow adjectival modiers:
(78) a.
il suo continuo eseguire

la canzone
the his continual perform-inf the song
b. het aanhoudende appels eten
begint mij te vervelen
the continual
apples eat-inf begins me to bore
c. das stndige Belstigen der Frau
the continuous annoying the woman-gen
However, if one looks closer, several sub-types of innitivals present them-
selves. For instance, in Italian, the nominal innitival seems to have three
subtypes, listed in (79), from Zucchi (1993):
(79) a.
lavere
egli scritto quella lettera
the have-inf he written that letter
b. il suo mormorare parole dolci
the his whisper
sweet words
c. il mormorare sommesso del mare
the whisper-inf soft
of the sea
Grimshaw and Selkirk (1976), Salvi (1983), Zucchi (1993) give evidence that
the NPs in (79b) and (79c) dier in their internal structure. Whenever the
argument of the innitive is introduced by the preposition di of , adjectives but
not adverbs modify the innitive:
(80) a. *il cessare improvvisamente delle ostilit
the cease-inf suddenly
of the hostilities
b. il cessare improvisso delle ostilit
the cease-inf sudden
of the hostilities
Moreover, the innitive cannot occur with a direct object when the subject of
innitive is introduced by di. Both adverbs and direct objects occur when no
of-subject is present:
(81) a. *il rievocare
la guerra degli anziani
the re-evoke-inf the war of the elders
b. il rievocare degli anziani
the re-evoke of the elders
c. il suo mormorare sommessamente
the his whisper-inf softly
d. il suo mormorare parole dolci
the his whisper
soft words
The syntactic behavior of the innitive in the (a) and (c) examples is similar to
the behavior of deverbal nominals in Italian:
(82) *la rievocazione la guerra degli anziani
the re-evocation the war of the elders
The pattern in (79a) is yet again dierent, in the sense that it includes a
nominative subject, while in (79b) the subject is introduced in the form of
a possessive pronoun. Moreover, no adjectives are allowed in the innitival

type (79a):
(83) a. *il continuo essere egli a corto di denaro
the continuous be-inf he short of money
b. il suo continuo esserse a corto di denaro
the his continuous be-inf short of money
Zucchi (1993) claims that there is a semantic distinction between the three
classes. Type (79a) appears in contexts where that-clauses occur. Type (79c) is
compatible with event predicates. Type (79b) denotes propositional entities.
This dierence in interpretation seems to correlate with the dierent syntactic
properties these various classes of innitivals have. From the point of view of
the analysis presented in the previous sections, (79a) has the status of a fulledged clause. Note that it includes weak pronominal subjects, such as egli,
which according to Cardinaletti (1997) are located in Spec,AgrSP. On the other
hand, construction (79b) patterns much like English gerunds, as accusative
objects and adverbs are licensed within the construction. Finally, (79c) seems
to lack AspP, as it does not tolerate adverbial modication and to involve a
decient vP projection.
German nominal innitivals also seem to split in two sub-types, one that
patterns very much like process nominalizations, and one that seems similar to
English gerunds, since it permits accusative objects and adverbial modication
(see Ehrich 1991 for discussion). The rst type is illustrated in (84). The theme
argument bears genitive case, the agent is introduced either by a PP or is in
initial position:
(84) a.
das Belstigen der Frau

durch Peter
the annoying the woman-gen by
Peter
b. Peters Belstigen der Frau
Peters annoying the woman-gen
Thus, whatever analysis one assumes for process nominals, carries over to these
constructions (see Reuland and Kosmeijer 1993 for a detailed description and
an analysis).
The second type is illustrated in (85):
(85) das oft kleine Katzen streicheln
the often small cats
caress
Note that adverbs are not licit within the rst sub-type of innitivals. This
suggests that the internal structure of type (b) includes AspectP, while this
projection lacks from the rst type. Moreover, v in type (b) licenses accusative
case, while it is decient in type (a).
Ehrich (1991) suggests that there is a semantic dierence between the two
types. Type (a) refers to specic events, while type (b) refers to generic events.
For this reason, innitivals of type (b) are not compatible with temporal
expressions like yesterday:
(86) *die Mlltonne gestern leeren
the carbage-bin yesterday empty
In this sense the distinction between the two types is parallel to the distinction
discussed in the case of Italian innitives and English gerunds.
Turning to innitival clauses in Welsh, it should be noted that these are
referred to as verbal nouns (cf. Rouveret 1994). Verbal nouns are used to form
periphrastic forms of tenses together with the auxiliary be and also to form
complement clauses. However, as shown by Rouveret, they show mixed verbal
and nominal properties. What is interesting for our discussion here is the fact
that the internal argument of the verb noun appears to have the same dependence on the head element, as genitive arguments do in nominal contexts:
(87) a.
geiriau cn
words of song
b. dysgu cn
learning a song
(Rouveret 1994: 252)
In Irish, which has a rich inectional morphology, the direct object visibly
bears genitive case:
(88) Nuair a bh siad ag ceannach an t
when c were they Prog buy
the house-gen
when they were in the process of buying the house
Similarly to a nominal in the genitival construction, the verbal noun does not
cause mutation of the initial consonant of the dependent term.
Interestingly, sequences that include two arguments bearing genitive case
are ungrammatical:
(89) *ddarllen y plant
lyfr arall
read
the children book other
Example (89) becomes grammatical again, once the subject DP is introduced
by the marker . According to Rouveret, this shows that there is only one case
available in the lower DP.
(90) i rplant
ddarllen llyfr arall
to the children read
book other
This pattern is strikingly similar to the one of process nominals observed

Greek, and discussed in the previous Chapters.
Notes
. I will not be concerned with this type here. One could derive the dierence between
eventive and non-eventive -er nominals in a system that makes use of roots in multiple
environments, by assuming that the latter include a v that is only agentive, but lacks event
features. This is possible if one assumes that v is split into two layers, one containing
event information, and one containing only agentivity features. Both of these could be
included in the structure, or only one of them could combine with the root giving us the
dierent types of nominals.
. Notice that in Greek -er nominals, literally, -t- nominals, being animate, have a variable
gender (di Domenico 1995, Harris 1991, Alexiadou and Stavrou 1999).
Another distinctive property of the -er nominal in Greek, dierentiating it from both
instrumental nominals and derived event nominals (katastro) is the fact that agentive
-er nouns are modied by adjectival ethnic nouns and not by ethnic adjectives:
(i) a.
b.
o Elinas tragudistis vs *o Elinikos tragudistis

the Greek singer
i eliniki katastro
the Greek destruction
This distinction between the two adjectives is sensitive to the animacy of the modied
noun involved.
. A dierent type of explanation is given in Larson (1998). Larson points out that the adjective in (9) in the text is ambiguous between an intersective and a non-intersective
reading; these readings are paraphrased in (ia,b):
(i) a.
b.
Olga is dancer and Olga is beautiful

Olga dances beautifully
On the non-intersective reading beautiful applies to Olga as a dancer, i.e. her dancing is
beautiful even if she herself is unattractive. Larson claims that the reading in (ib) only
involves the presence of an event argument.
. Hamm (1999:33.) discusses the nominalization patterns found in Akatek Maya. In this
language there are three types of nominalizations. Type 1 has a more sentential structure
in the sense that aspect morphology is contained and adverbs can modify the head noun,
but adjectives are not allowed. There are two further types, both of them lacking aspect
inection. They both disallow licensing of adverbs. It seems then that there exists a strong
correlation between the availability of such projections and licensing of adverbs
crosslinguistically.
. This of course raises the question why although v is included in the structure in both
cases, we end up denoting an individual in the case of -er nominals, but an event in the
case of process nominals. Richard Larson (personal communication) suggests that the
semantics of these nominals can be derived compositionally in the following way. Take
-er and -ing as giving scope to the relevant arguments with respect to lambda abstraction.
Suppose dance rst combines with an event argument and an agent: dance (x,e). More
generally, suppose that unergative nouns N rst combine with an event argument and
then an agent. Finally, suppose the translation of N into IL is N. Then the eect of adding -er can be given as follows:
(i) N-er ==> lx G e[C(e) f N(x,e)]
dancer ==> lx G e[C(e) f dance(x,e)]
the set of individuals x, such that generally for events e, if e is a context of the
right kind C, x dances in e.
This account seems compatible with Marantzs (1999) system that makes use of
nominalizing heads, but it is not immediately compatible with the assumptions made
here which do not rely on the presence of such heads. Perhaps one way to implement
syntactically the semantics of (i) is to assume that v breaks into two layers each hosting
a dierent feature: a lower v encoding eventivity and a higher one encoding agentivity
(Alec Marantz personal communication).
. Engelhardt and Trugman (1999) point out that licensing of PP modication is licit:
(i) konspektirovanie lekcii
vpopyxax
summarizing
lecture-gen in haste
. Note here that since Greek lacks nominal gerunds altogether, it is not surprising that in
most instances Greek nominalizations share properties with English gerunds.
. In Alexiadou (1999a) nominal gerunds were contrasted with verbal gerunds of the type
found in Hebrew (see Siloni 1997) and in Greek (see Rivero 1994). These constructions
fall outside the scope of the investigation here.
. Arabic masdars have been argued by Fassi-Fehri (1993) to be very similar to English
gerunds. As (i) shows, the masdar can appear in the position of a direct object. As is the
case with English gerunds, the agent bears genitive case and the object bears accusative
case:
(i) ?aqlaqa-nii ntiqaad
r-rajul-i
l-masruuc-a
annoyed-me criticizing-nom the man-gen the project-acc
Constructions that show a similar pattern, i.e. genitive subjects and accusative objects are
found across languages, that is they are not limited in gerundial or nominal contexts. In
fact such patterns generally reect a nominal system, even though they are encountered
in verbal-like domains (see Borsley and Kornlt 2000 for discussion of a number of patterns across languages). For instance, there are languages where genitive subjects appear
inside verbal clauses. Ouhalla (1997) signals that in VSO orders in Berber, the postverbal
subject bears genitive case, while the object bears absolutive case. This is illustrated in
(ii-a). And in fact Ouhalla takes this pattern to suggest that the syntax of the verbal clauses
is nominal. In Turkish nominalized clauses the subject also bears genitive case and agrees
with the verb (cf. (ii-b) from Kornlt (1998)), while the object bears accusative case:
(ii) a.
Zra-n ifruxn
Hamish
see-3pl boys-gen Hamish-abs
The children have seen Hamish
b. bizi-im oku
dug-umuz kitap-lar
we-gen read-nonfut-p 1pl
book-pl
. Abney (1987) has proposed that POSS-ing gerunds involve nominalizations of VPs,
while ACC-ing gerunds involve nominalizations of sentences, i.e. at least TPs. Evidence
that the two gerund forms have a dierent internal structure comes from the fact that
there exists a number of environments where they two do not behave alike (cf. Horn
1975, Portner 1992 and references therein). For instance, only poss-ing gerunds permit
reciprocal subjects, and can be topicalized. On the other hand, only acc-ing gerunds
can be clefted, and it is only possible to extract out of acc-ing gerunds and not out of
poss-ing:
(i) a. each others giving up the ship
b. *each other giving up the ship
c. *Fred singing the national anthem everyone imagined
d. Freds singing the national anthem everyone imagined
e. Its John kissing Mary that would upset me
f. Which city do you remember him describing?
g. *Which city do you remember his describing?
Portner (1992) argues extensively that these dierences between the two reect rst the
dierence in structure and follow from an analysis according to POSS-ing gerunds are
denite while ACC-ing gerunds are indenite. According to Portner, the POSS element
plays exactly the same role as the denite determiner.
. Note that this makes the structure of English gerunds look similar to the structure of
participles. This is a welcome result in view of the fact that -ing gerunds grew out of
participles historically (see Demske 1999 for discussion and references). German -ung
nominalizations would receive a treatment analogous to English gerunds.
. Engelhardt (1999) contains arguments against Silonis view. If Engelhardts points are
along the right track, then the dierence between the two types of nominals in Hebrew
is derived by the proposal in the previous paragraph in the main text.
. A case can be made that at least in Spanish the nominals containing inherent accusatives
are not event nominals. In the next section I argue that Romance nominals including
an adjectival possessor are actually result nominals. If this is correct, then the Spanish
facts in (32a) should be analyzed as instances of result nominals. Thus, the theme argument bears inherent case, as there is no functional projection licensing a structural case.
In fact, the Spanish paradigm gives the most convincing argument for the non-structural
nature of case (genitive or accusative) within result nominals. Specically, Spanish presents us with a clear distinction between the domains where structural genitive is licensed, i.e. in process nominals which are intransitive (33), and those in which nonstructural case is permitted, i.e. in result nominals which are transitive (32a), in the
sense that they include a functional head which licenses the possessor argument.
. Thanks to Gisbert Fanselow for pointing this out to me.
. The Chinese de-construction presents a pattern somehow related to the discussion on
anti-passive within nominal structures. As Niina Zhang pointed out to me in this construction, all arguments of a de-verbalized phrase must be raised to the left of de; on the
other hand, if both the agent and the theme DPs are present with a verb, it is always the
agent DP raises and remains as a DP, while the theme DP merges with a preposition to
form a PP. Although de cannot initiate a phrase, the pre-de phrase does not need to be
nominal. Thus the raising of an argument is not required by de itself. Instead, it is required by the post-de verb. Thus it seems that de makes its dominated verb unable to
keep the arguments in their in situ positions. When both an agent and a theme argument raise, the theme argument is reformed as a PP. This is similar to the antipassive
operation found in ergative languages, where an ergative subject is changed into an
absolute subject and an absolute object is changed into an oblique nominal (in dative
case, for example), as discussed earlier in connection with Hebrew nominals.
. Squamish has two types of antipassive clauses. The rst one is the one shown in (40b).
The second type involves incorporation of the patient into the theme as a sux, marked
bold in (i) below:
(i) ses
men st-qwuyach-7m- kwetsi manlh
1sg:nom next give-nger-st:3abs that same
Then that same one extended his nger
Most of incorporated objects are body parts.
. Arabic seems to exhibit an anti-passive construction as well. In (i) the preposition li,
which has the same form as the dative preposition, may be used to case mark the direct
object (from Fassi-Fehri 1993: 247):
(i) aqlaqa-nii ntiqaad
r-rajul-i
li-l-masruuc-i
annoyed-me criticizing-nom the man-gen the project-gen
. Although the fact that the nominal cannot be modied by an aspectual phrase in (44)
would be enough to establish that this has only the result reading, and hence does not
constitute a problem for the analysis proposed here, in what follows I go systematically
over Greek and Romance data to establish this point. I show that (44) does not question
the internal structure proposed for process nominals. In fact my argumentation will
turn out to support the view put forth in Picallo (1991) that result nominals are transitive and also support the proposal that the structural case features inside process
nominals are located in Aspect and not in a nominal category.
. As is well known, adjectives generally split into two types: pure intersective adjectives
of the type illustrated in (ia) and non-intersective ones of the type illustrated in (ic). The
contrast between the two types is illustrated in the paraphrases in (ib) and (id) respectively (from Larson and Segal 1995: 499). Non-intersective adjectives lack predicative
counterparts:
(i) a.
b.
c.
d.
that is a yellow kitchen

that is yellow, and that is a kitchen
Marya is a former dancer
Marya is a former and Marya is a dancer
. A similar view is defended in Borer (1993) who argues that in agents in transitive
nominalizations could be analyzed as receiving the possessor theta role from s, located
under D (see also Marantz 1997, Harley and Noyer 1998a,b). Although, Borer and
Marantz and Harley and Noyer all suggest that the agent is projected in SpecDP, Borers
analysis diers from the analysis in Harley and Noyer in that she argues that the input
to the examples such the Vandals destruction of the city is again a passivized DP: the
Vandals is situated in Spec,DP and is co-referential with the suppressed subject. My
analysis crucially diers from Borers in that I assume that no suppressed argument is
present within process nominals, and that the structure involved is an unaccusative one.
. In a sense this relates to Grimshaws view that the possessive in these examples functions
like an argument-adjunct. The possessor shares some properties with arguments and
some with adjuncts. On this view, Spec,DP has such a status that permits it to host
adjuncts as well as thematic DPs.
Note that the view expressed in the text is linked to the discussion in Chapter 3
concerning the derivation of passive nominals, which involve external themes.
. In recent work, Pesetsky and Torrego (2000) argue that D is the counterpart of C across
languages. In their view, possessors occupy the specier position of a functional projection below D. If this is correct, then it means that the specier of this projection is not
licensed in Greek, much like Spec,IP is not an A-position in the language (see Alexiadou
and Anagnostopoulou 1998).
. Incidentally note that the Spanish facts discussed in Chapter 3 in connection with aectedness can be seen in a new light here. These nominals involve a possessive adjective and
an object introduced by the marker a. If these nominals are analyzed as result nominals,
as suggested, then the question arises what the status of the object is in this case, i.e.
does it bear inherent or structural case.
Chapter 5
Nominalization and Ergativity
The previous chapters studied in detail the internal structure of nominals. In

this chapter I show how the view on nominalization put forward here enables
us to capture certain similarities between nominals in nominative-accusative
languages and certain patterns found in ergative languages. In order to do that
I examine two dierent aspects of the link between nominal structure and
ergative patterns. In the rst part of this chapter I deal with certain similarities
related to Case (Sections 1 to 3). In the second part I turn to two views on
ergative marking, the rst one of which was briey discussed in Chapter 3,
namely that ergative case is either analogous to a PP or to a possessor. These
two ergative patterns are seen here as a reex of the two ways of denoting
agenthood within nominalizations (Chapters 3 and 4): as either merged in
Spec,DP or included in the form of a by-phrase within the lexical phrase containing the root.
The Case patterns in nominalization and ergative languages
According to Dixon (1994), the term ergative is used to describe a grammatical

pattern in which the subject of an intransitive clause is treated in the same way
as the object of a transitive clause. The term was rst used to refer to the case
marking on constituents of a noun phrase: ergative is the case of the transitive
subject, while absolutive is the case of the intransitive subject and the transitive object. Ergativity is thus complementary to the familiar grammatical pattern of accusativity, in which one case (nominative) marks both intransitive
and transitive subject, with another case (accusative) being used for the transitive object. The examples in (1) illustrate this supercial characteristic for English, a nominative-accusative language and for Tonga, an ergative language
(Tonga examples from Bok-Bennema 1991: 2):
(1) a. She kicked her
b. She worked/she arrived
c. *Her worked
(2) a.
Nae
tamatei a-Kollaiate e Tevita
aux-past kill
abs-Goliath erg-David
David killed Goliath
b. Nae
alu a-Tevia ki Fisi
aux-past go abs-David to Fiji
David went to Fiji
Specically, in certain ergative languages the agent argument, referred to

as A-argument, is marked with ergative case, while the patient argument, referred to as P-argument, and the sole argument of intransitives (referred to as
the S-argument) are marked with absolutive case. This state of aairs is similar
to the case patterns in nominalizations, as shown in (3). The theme argument
city in (3a) and the intransitive subject John in (3b) both have genitive case.
The agent in (3a) is introduced by a preposition.
(3) a.

(apo tus Italus)
the destruction the city-gen by the Italians
b. i aksi tu Jani
the arrival the John-gen
The similarities between these two patterns are summarized in table (1) below
(see also Alexiadou 1999a,b, Bok-Bennema 1991, Williams 1987 and de Wit
1997 among others).,
Table 1.
A-argument
S-argument
P-argument
N/A system
nom
nom
acc
E/A system
erg
abs
abs
Nominalizations
pp
gen
gen
It is an old intuition in the literature that ergative languages dier from

accusative languages in that ergative constructions are actually passive constructions (see e.g. Fillmore 1968, Hale 1970). Subsequent syntactic research on
ergative languages has led to various competing proposals, which are briey
discussed in note 5 and in the next subsection. Here I concentrate on a specic
view on the syntax of ergative languages, namely one that oers a natural way
of capturing the analogy between nominalized clauses in nominative-accusative
languages and ergative languages.
According to Bok-Bennema (1991), ergativity is characterized by the inabil-
ity of transitive verbs to assign structural case, that is it is sub-sumed under the
more general pattern of unaccusativity (see the discussion in Grewendorf
1989). Bok-Bennema in fact claims that ergative patterns arise as a solution to
the Case problem posed by unaccusativity. In an ergative language, one way to
solve the Case problem is to have an exceptional case for the subject, so that the
nominative case becomes free to be assigned to the object. This is very much
reminiscent of the analysis of nominalizations presented in Chapter 3.
In the next section I present in detail the analysis of ergative languages that
brings the two patterns together. According to this analysis, ergative case is not
to be a structural case, but rather a lexical/prepositional case, much like the
prepositional phrase introducing agents within nominalizations and ergative
languages, like process nominals, have a decient v. I discuss these two points
in turn.
. Unaccusativity in ergative languages

. Ergative as a lexical case
The literature on ergativity contains several attempts to reconcile the well
known Case and Agreement patterns of ergative languages with a constrained
theory of Universal Grammar (see note 4). Some of the analyses within the GB
theory equate absolutive case to the nominative of nominative-accusative languages (see Bok-Bennema 1991, Nash 1995, 1996, Woolford 1997). The
ergative case is analyzed as a by phrase (Hale 1970), a PP or a KP (Bittner
1994), a genitive NP (Bok-Bennema (1991) or an abstract equivalent of the
accusative (Murasugi 1992). In particular Nash (1996) proposes that ergative
languages dier from accusative languages in that the former lack vP, which is
the structural position assumed in Chomsky (1995) to host the transitive subject. According to this proposal, agents are not thematically projected in
ergative languages, in the sense that they are not thematically projected as
speciers of a light v. They can be introduced in the structure as adjuncts. I
come back to this in the next section. Nash claims that ergative is not a structural case parallel to nominative (and see also Mahajan 1993, Woolford 1997
and references therein). Rather it is a lexical case, parallel to dative. On the
other hand, Bobaljik (1992) and Laka (1993) argue that absolutive case is the
counterpart of accusative case, while ergative case is the counterpart of nominative case.
Let us consider the view that ergative is a lexical case in some detail. First,
ergative case is morphologically marked, much like dative case, a property
which might bring into question its structural nature, under the view that morphologically marked cases are standardly not considered to be structural (see
Nash 1995). Second, as Woolford (1997) points out, there is a gap in the current inventory of lexical cases available in UG, because there is no lexical case
associated with agents. Ergative case lls this gap.
However, although it is well known that ergative case is associated with the
agent theta role, this association is not perfect. For instance, ergative marking
is used on locative arguments in Avar, on instrumentals in Udi, and it is
homophonous with the genitive case marking in Inuit (Nash 1996: 198). In this
respect, the apo phrase that introduces agents within derived nominals in Greek
is quite similar: apo is not exclusively used to denote the agent, it can be used
to denote the causer or the source, as is illustrated in the examples (4a) and
(4b) respectively. Nevertheless, when apo combines with an animate phrase, it
denotes the agent (5):
(4) a.
o Janis
arostise apo ti stenahoria tu
John-nom got sick from the troubles his
John got sick because of his troubles
b. o Janis
irthe apo tin Ameriki
John-nom came from the America-acc
John came from the U.S
(5)
o Janis
skotothike
apo ton Petro
John-nom killed-pass-3sg from Peter-acc
Although lexical cases such as dative or ergative usually mark predictable

theta-roles, there is enough idiosyncratic behavior involved to conclude that a
verbs ability to assign lexical case to one of its arguments has to be specied
in that verbs lexical entry. Woolford notices that although some scholars accept the idea that there is a link between ergative case and the thematic role of
agent in the active type of ergative languages where even intransitive agent
subjects are marked with ergative case (e.g. Basque), they reject this idea for the
type of ergative languages where only transitive subjects get ergative case. If
ergative case were really a lexical case associated with agents, then it would not
be limited only to transitive clauses. However, note that dative subject languages also divide in a similar manner: there are those that permit dative subjects in intransitive clauses e.g. Icelandic, and there are those that allow dative
subjects only in transitive clauses e.g. Japanese. Second, Laka (1993) has argued
that intransitive ergative agents in Basque are actually not intransitive, but
rather transitive. Absolutive subjects are never associated with the agent role,
except in the anti-passive construction.
Evidence supporting the above claims comes from the following facts. As
shown in (6) and (7), ergative subjects, like dative subjects, cannot appear in
constructions with structural accusative objects, but rather they appear with
absolutive and nominative objects respectively. Thus in Hindi, a split ergative
language, in nominative accusative constructions only the nominative subject
triggers agreement while the object cannot:
(6) Raam
rotii
khaataa
thaa
Ram-masc.nom bread-fem-acc eat imp.masc be-past.masc
Ram habitually ate bread
When the subject is dative or ergative, the object becomes absolutive and triggers agreement:
(7) Raam-ne rotii
khaayii
thii
Ram-erg bread-nom-fem eat perf-fem be past-fem
Similar facts can be observed in Icelandic, a language that has constructions

with a dative subject and a nominative object. When the subject is dative, the
object cannot be accusative (from Woolford 1997: 193194):
(8) Konan
ddi
bkina
woman-nom translated book-acc
The woman translated the book
(9) Barninu batnai
veikin
child-dat recovered from disease-nom (*acc)
The child recovered from a disease
If the ungrammaticality of a structural accusative object in a dative subject

construction is due to the fact that dative is a lexical case (as argued for in Yip,
Maling and Jackendo 1987), then this parallelism between dative and ergative
subject constructions supports the view that ergative is a lexical case.
. v is decient in ergative languages
In the previous section I presented arguments that ergative case is a lexical/
prepositional case and not a structural one. Here I turn to the hypothesis that
ergative languages do not contain a transitive v by concentrating on Nashs

(1995) proposal.
According to Nash, given that ergative case is a lexical case, ergative and
accusative languages do not share the same D-structure, or rather they do not
look alike at a point prior to syntactic movement, after Merging of arguments
has taken place. In accusative languages the subject is projected external to the
VP, as the specier of a functional projection that selects a VP. In ergative languages, the subject is projected VP-internally, as the highest adjunct of the
lexical VP projection. (10a and b) below represent the two structures for nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive languages respectively from Nash
(1995, 1996):
(10) a.
vP
Su
b.
v
VP
agent
VP
V
V
V
OB
OB
The Internal Ergative Subject Hypothesis argues for the validity of Marantzs
(1984) proposal, according to which ergative and accusative languages have
dierent D-structures (see note 5). However, unlike Marantz, there is no implication in Nashs approach that objects are dierently projected in ergative and
accusative languages. In both language types, they are merged as sisters of the
lexical verb.
I re-interpret Nashs analysis here as suggesting that ergative languages
actually involve a decient v. Hence the proposal in Nash and the one advanced here for nominalizations share an important common property: they
both analyze certain nominalizations and ergative patterns as involving only
unaccusative structures with a single theme argument. In other words, the two
patterns are reections of the same structure: one that involves a single theme
argument that appears as sister of the lexical root, and an adjunct type of
(11)
AspP
Asp vP
v
LP
L Theme
phrase that introduces the agent. Crucially, both nominalization and ergative
clauses contain the partial tree in (11), representing mono-valent constructions,
i.e. constructions that lack agents. (11) may then be embedded under D, giving
rise to a nominal structure or under T giving rise to an unaccusative/passive/
ergative structure.
When agents are included, these appear either as PPs within LP or, in
the case of transitive nominalizations as possessors in Spec,DP (for ergative
languages see the discussion in Section 4).
In what follows I deal with case assignment/checking within nominals, in
the sense of locating the functional category responsible for the licensing of the
case associated with the single theme argument. I rst argue that genitive case
in process nominals is not a lexical case, but a structural one much like nominative or absolutive case. I then proceed to identify the projection responsible
for its checking.
. Remarks on Case within DPs

. Genitive is a structural case
Many instances of morphologically case-marked DPs that can occur with [+N]
categories, such as dative, genitive and partitive case have traditionally been
analyzed as inherent cases. In contrast to V and P, A and N are taken to be the
prototypical examples of inherent case assigners. Chomsky (1986) assumes that
genitive case is assigned under theta-government to the right of N at
D-structure and that subsequently case realization allows for the genitive to be
spelled-out in prenominal position through the use of s. However, Corver
(1990) points out a number of problems with Chomskys treatment. First of all,
it is not clear why s is only realized in prenominal position. Second, it is not
clear why the of-phrase cannot be realized on both sides of the head noun.
Furthermore, as mentioned in Chapter 4, the prenominal in genitive is not
necessarily theta-related to the noun. Consider (12) below:
(12)
yesterdays weather
Yesterdays cannot be argued to be in a thematic relation with the noun. Hence

it is not clear how the inherent case assignment mechanism actually works in
this case.
The assumption that the post-nominal genitive is an inherent case has also
been challenged by a number of researchers (see de Wit 1997 and references

therein). Recent studies suggest that postnominal genitive is the nominal equivalent to accusative case. In this sense genitive is a structural case or at least it
shares some characteristics with the structural cases (see the contributions to
Alexiadou and Wilder 1998). Here I concentrate on the arguments that specically show that the genitive case within derived nominals is not an inherent
case (see also Alexiadou and Stavrou 1998c for a brief discussion on the basis
of Greek data).
The most typical instance of an inherent case is one in which a particular
case is associated with a particular theta-role or related set of theta-roles. The
feature [+genitive] is then linked to a specic interpretation. On the other hand,
the structural cases, nominative and accusative, have the characteristic property
that there are no thematic restrictions on the elements that bear these cases. For
instance, any grammatical subject will get nominative case, regardless of the
type of thematic role that it has been assigned and what its base position is.
In the preceding sections we have seen that the genitive argument in
nominalizations bears the thematic role of theme. Under a congurational
theta-theory, this means that any DP being merged as the sister of an unspecied root will have this role. The thematic role in itself says nothing about the
morphological case that this DP will surface with at PF. In the view adopted
here, nominalizations, as well as verbal clauses, are formed derivationally. Thus
an argument for genitive being an inherent case is not easily formulated, since
only at PF we have a noun or a verb. Given that the same argument surfaces
once with genitive and once with accusative case, depending on the domain it
is included in, we cannot maintain the view that themes are always associated
with genitives. In other words, we know that when the lexical roots found in
nominalizations appear as verbs they do not assign inherent case. Since inherent case is attached, or must be seen as attached to certain roots, and since
there is no category distinction between those categories assigning structural
and those assigning inherent case, genitive case is not inherent. Thus it seems
that the actual morphological ax associated with the theme argument is a
more general property of the overall structure.
Moreover, if genitive were an inherent case then it would not be immediately clear why the presence of a second genitive, bearing another thematic role,
is banned, as the ungrammaticality of (13) shows (and see Chapter 3 for a
detailed discussion).
(13) *the destruction of the city of the barbarians
This fact suggests that only one DP can bear genitive, which in turn means that
there is only one head within DPs that bears the feature [assign genitive].
Furthermore, even under a view that takes nominalizations to involve some
degree of argument structure change (Williams 1981), if the theme-genitive
were inherent, then we would expect this to be constant across clause-types.
Inherent case or PPs are never aected by argument structure changing processes. We have seen in Chapter 3 that this is the case in Hungarian. Here I
further exemplify this with Russian (from Schoorlemmer 1995: 324):
(14) a.
zloupotrebljat vlastju
abuse-inf
power-instr
b. Zloupotrebljenie vlastju
abuse
power-instr
As discussed in Chapter 1, the impossibility to surface with accusative case

correlates with the status of light v. If v is decient, as is the case in
unaccusatives and passives, then v lacks an accusative case feature. This is the
case also in nominalizations. v is decient; hence no DP can surface with accusative case. Moreover, since the whole structure is embedded under D and
not under T, the single DP will not surface with nominative case either. The
question that arises next is where the feature [assign genitive] is located, a case
feature not related to T and v.
Consider the structural conguration proposed for nominalizations. The
functional layers contain v, AspP and potentially there is a higher functional
projection below D, NumberP or AgrP. With v decient, there are two options,
assuming that D, a C type of projection, can bear no case feature: genitive case
is related to Number/Agr, or genitive case is related to Aspect. de Wit (1997)
assumes, without further argumentation, a version of the rst option, i.e. that
the feature [assign genitive] resides within an Agr type of phrase, labeled Possessor Phrase. That something like this might be on the right track is further
supported by the Hungarian facts described in Chapter 3, where the single
argument bearing structural case surfaces with nominative, i.e. the case of possessors. I come back to this point.
Before turning to case assignment in the DP, let me briey outline my assumptions concerning Case Theory.
. Case as a morphological property
The theory of abstract Case together with the extended projection principle
have played a central role in the analysis of the syntax of arguments within the
generative literature. However, recently several researchers (see Marantz 1991,
Harley 1995, Haeberli 1999 among others) have pointed out that the theory
of abstract Case can be eliminated from the Grammar. In particular, in systems such as the one put forth in Marantz (1991), and Harley (1995), case
realization is seen as a morphological property of the clause as a whole.
Which case is assigned to which DP arguments depends on how many DPs
check structural case in the clause. In principle checking of case can proceed
in any functional projection, as case is part of the syntactic conguration and
is not linked with a specic head in the functional domain. Specically,
Marantz (1991) suggests that morphological realization of Case follows the
hierarchy in (15):
(15) Case realization disjunctive hierarchy
lexically governed case (dative, genitive, e.t.c)
dependent case (accusative and ergative)
unmarked case (environment sensitive: nominative, absolutive, genitive
in DPs)
default case
The mechanism regulating which case appears if only one argument is

syntactically realized has been given various formulations. For instance, Yip et
al. (1987) propose a characterization of clause-bound case assignment depending on the number of NPs that are available for case assignment. In the same
vein, Harley (1995) proposes the Mechanical Case Parameter:
(16) a.
if one case feature is checked structurally in a clause it is realized as

Nominative/Absolutive (mandatory case)
b. if two case features are checked structurally in a clause the second is
realized as Accusative/Ergative
c. the mandatory case in a multiple-case clause is assigned in the
top/bottom functional projection
Under this reasoning, if only one case feature is checked structurally within
nominals, then morphologically this case would be realized as genitive, irrespectively of where the case features as such are situated. In other words, morphological case is dissociated from a specic structural position (and see Harley
1995, Alexiadou 1999a,b for further discussion). Based on the hypothesis that
within destruction type nominals only the theme argument must check structural case, let us examine the possible checkers for it.
. Locus of genitive
As already mentioned, in principle there are three functional projections that
could be related to genitive case: DP, NumberP and AspectP.
For Abney (1987) D in (17) dominates the abstract nominal AGR that in
languages such as English assigns genitive case to the DPs in Spec, DP.
(17)
DP
DP
the teachers
D NP
AGR book
But with the exception of phrases in nominalizations, in no other instance is

the genitive phrase situated in D. Moreover, D has a mixed status, i.e. in some
languages it is an A-position while it is an A-position in others. Because of
these reasons, I do not consider the possibility of locating the genitive case
feature in D, although arguably the morphological realization of this feature is
determined by the presence of D, which determines the nominal character of
the clause.
Number could be argued to be the locus of the genitive case features (see
e.g. Valois 1991, Ritter 1991). Specically, Rouveret (1994) argues that Number has the same function within DP as Tense does within IP in the sense
that it determines the reference of the nominal phrase and it licenses the case
of the genitive complement. However, it seems rather to be the case that
Aspect is the counterpart of Number and not Tense. As argued for in
Alexiadou (1999b, 2000), a link between Aspect and Number in DPs can be
established on the basis of the observation that the mass vs. count properties
of the noun phrase have a direct inuence on the aspectual character of a
sentence (see e.g. Krifka 1992 among others). For instance, a count noun
phrase can refer to something that is specially delimited, while a mass noun
phrase describes something of undened extent or quantity. These thoughts,
in combination with the remarks made in Chapter 2 with respect to the role
of nominal tense as merely establishing reference, lead to the conclusion that
NumberP has a role similar to AspectP, while TP is similar to DP: Tense and
D establish reference, while Number and Aspect relate to properties of
(de)limitation.
There is a further dierence between Number and Tense. Although Number is present in all nominal clauses, it only bears a Case feature when the
structure contains a genitive complement. Tense is present in all propositions,

but bears a Case feature only in nite ones. In other words, the case vs. [case]
properties of Tense are determined by its own feature specication. Those of
number, on the other hand, are determined by the presence vs. absence of an
internal complement. This asymmetry is puzzling.
But now note that one could suggest that Number bears genitive case features by virtue of being the nominal counterpart of Aspect. In particular, Aspect has been argued to be responsible for accusative case checking (see Laka
1993), but also for nominative case checking in e.g. intransitive dativenominative constructions in Icelandic (see Taraldsen 1995) e.g. Mer lika
bkurnar ekki I-dat like the books-nom not (see Alexiadou 1999b, 2000 for
discussion and further references). In these constructions the dative argument
checks the EPP feature of T, while the nominative arguments checks its Case
features in Aspect. Thus Rouverets argument for Number could go through,
if one equates Aspect with Number. In this sense the symmetry between the
verbal and nominal clauses would be complete: in both Case features in clauses
where only one argument checks structural case are associated with low functional projections.
Moreover, the fact that there are nominalizations that lack AspectP seems
to suggest that Number might play a role in Case checking. As we have seen in
the previous chapter, there is an asymmetry between nominals of type discoverer and of the type destruction in that the former contain Number and lack
Aspect, while the latter seem to contain both categories. Both, however, appear
together with arguments bearing genitive. Thus it could very well be the case
that the genitive within -er nominals at least is located in Number.
What happens though when both categories are present, as is the case with
most process nominalizations? Is it Number or Aspect that is responsible for
Case licensing? It is not clear how one can decide on that. On the one hand,
van Hout and Roeper (1998) have argued structural case on the argument DP
of the process nominal is checked on Aspect in destruction type nominals. On
the other hand, if Aspect and Number are indeed semantically related, it might
be impossible to answer the question with respect to the location of Case features in an insightful way.
Let me consider the following Hungarian data in an attempt to shed some
light into this puzzle. Recall that in Hungarian argumental DPs bear nominative case. The relevant data are repeated below:
(18) Pter
Jnos ltal val megver-s-e
Peter-nom Janos by being beat-dev-poss-3sg
beating up of Peter by Janos
Szabolcsi (1994) suggests that the locus of the structural case within DPs is
ArgP, given that in Hungarian possessors inect much like verbal arguments.
The existence of such paradigms would make it possible to argue that actually
nominativegenitive arguments are associated with Number or AgrP.
Consider now the paradigm in detail. In Hungarian possessive inection
is almost identical to verbal inection, with the following twist: with singular
possessors it corresponds to the denite object conjugation, and with plural
possessors to the indenite object conjugation. Interestingly, though, number
agreement while total in nite clauses, is only partial in the nominal domain.
Full lexical possessors show anti-agreement in number with the possessive ax.
More specically, when the possessor is third person plural, the plural marking
is only on the possessor and not on the noun.
To account for this pattern den Dikken (1998) proposes the following analysis. Possessive constructions involve a small clause whose head, a dative preposition, takes the possessor as its complement, as in (19). The Possessor can
undergo movement to an A-specier just outside the small clause, as in (20):
(19) [SC Possessum [PP Pdat Possessor]]
(20) [DP D [AgrP Agr [FP [PP DP] [F]]]]
Building on Rouveret (1994), den Dikken argues that the possessor is situated
below Agr, in Spec,FP. On this account, the anti-agreement phenomenon observed within the Hungarian DP is due to the fact that the possessor and Agr
are not found in a Spec, head conguration. Note that den Dikkens analysis
is intended for possessors, however, it could hold for thematic arguments as
well, as there is no dierence in the case and agreement patterns in the two
cases. I take this analysis to indicate that nominative case within the Hungarian
DP, and hence genitive within DPs in general, can also be associated with a
lower functional projection, such as Aspect, and not necessarily with NumberP.
Clearly the issue awaits further research.
Thus far I claimed that the case patterns found in nominalization mimic
those found in ergative languages. In what follows I turn to the two patterns in
which agents appear in nominalizations and their reex in ergative, and not
only, languages.
. Agents, ergativity and the perfect

While discussing nominalizations across languages in Chapters 3 and 4, it was
pointed out that agents within such constructions are expressed either by a
prepositional phrase within LP or as possessors in Spec,DP, as in (21).

b. the destruction of the city by John
In Section 2 of this chapter I presented Nashs view that agents in ergative languages are similar to PP agents within nominals of the type (21b). However,
this is only one view on the nature of ergative subjects. According to another
one (see Mahajan 1997), ergative agents are much like possessors. In fact transitive sentences in Inuit have been argued to be very similar to (21a). Specically,
Johns (1992) proposes that the derivation of the transitive Eskimo clause undergoes three stages. At stage I, which is prior to insertion in the syntax, a nominal is lexically derived from a verb. This is the passive nominal, illustrated in
(22a) below (cf. Johns 1992: 62f.). At stage II, at D-structure, the derived nominal is the complement of a functional category that takes a subject, and the
combination results in a nominal phrase (22b). This is formally a possessive
phrase. Finally, at stage III, the nominal phrase is the complement of another
functional phrase, which, according to Johns has its own subject in the
absolutive, resulting in a matrix transitive clause:
(22) a.
kapi-jaq
stab-pass.part
the stabbed one
b. anguti-up kapi-ja-a
man-erg stab-pass.part.3s
the one that the man stabbed or the mans stabbed one
c. anguti-up nanuq kapi-ja-a-
man-erg bear-abs stab.pass.part.3s/3S
the man stabbed the bear or the bear is the mans stabbed one
In Eskimo linguistics, a signicant similarity in case and agreement between

transitive clauses and possessive phrases has been observed (see Johns 1992:
63f.). First, the case assigned to the possessor is the ergative (relative) case,
which is the same case that is assigned to the actor of the transitive construction, as shown in (23) below:
(23) a.
Jaani-up taku-ja-a-nga
John-erg see-pass.part-3s/1S
John saw me
b. Jaani-up nasa-a
John-erg hat-3s
Johns hat
Second, the agreement found on the possessed noun in the possessive construction is very similar to the agreement that refers to the actor argument in the
transitive construction:
(24) a.
taku-ja-ra
verb-pass.part-agr
I see it
b. nasa-ra
noun-agr
my hat
According to Johns, the role of the patient is linked to the referential index of
the nominal and will be assigned to the referential index of the passive nominal. The fact that the role of patient is already used up explains why, unlike the
specier of an English example such as (25) below, the Inuktitut specier can
only be the actor:
(25) Johns destruction
= John was destroyed
(26) Jaani-up taku-ja-a
John-erg see-pass.part-3s
the one John sees *Johns being seen
The specier of an English event nominal must be interpreted as the external

argument when the internal argument has been assigned, as in (21a) above.
According to this view then, transitive sentences in certain ergative languages patterns like transitive nominalizations. In fact, this proposal relates
to Allens (1964) view of the emergence of transitive constructions through the
possessive structure. According to Allen, possessors or possessive case are generally used to express the subject of a transitive sentence, as is the case in the
Eskimo examples discussed here.
In sum (27) illustrates the congurations that have been argued in the
literature on ergative languages to be responsible for the introduction of
ergative-subjects.
(27) a. Possessor Predicate Theme
b. Predicate Theme PP
In the next section I investigate the distribution of the patterns in (27) in

some detail. Since in most of the cases my data come from perfect formation
across languages (see Abraham 1993, 1998, 2000, Benveniste 1966, Kayne 1993,
and many others), I rst provide a brief overview of the interpretation and the
form of the perfect, so that I can refer back to its properties in the course of the
discussion.
. Background
The perfect is rather dierent from other aspects e.g. perfective vs. imperfective,
as it tells nothing directly about the situation itself, but rather relates some state
to a preceding situation. According to Comrie (1976b), the two English sentences I have lost my pen and I lost my pen dier in meaning. With the perfect,
there is an implication that the pen is still lost, while with the non-perfect there
is no such implication. More generally, the perfect indicates the continuing
present relevance of a past situation. This dierence between the perfect and
the non-perfect has led many linguists to doubt whether the perfect should be
considered an aspect at all. One way in which the perfect diers from other
aspects is in that it partakes of both the present and the past. A sentence such
as Mary ate says that a certain event took place in the past. The perfect construction Mary has eaten says that Mary is now in a certain state, a state of
having eaten in the past. have eaten is thus true of a resultant state, a state that
holds at a given time if and only if the agent in question is the agent of an eating event that culminated earlier than that time (see Comrie 1976b, Parsons
1990 among many others and references therein).
As is well known, there are two forms in which the meaning of the perfect
is expressed crosslinguistically: analytic and synthetic. For instance, the perfect
active in Latin is a synthetic form with an aspectual ax and a specic set of
endings varying for person and number (cf. 28a). On the other hand, the present perfect in English is an analytic from consisting of a special auxiliary and
a participle (28b):
(28) a.
amavi
I have loved
b. I have built this house
Languages that express the perfect analytically show a further split. There are
languages, e.g. English, Greek, which use auxiliary HAVE in the formation of
the perfect with all types of predicates, transitive and intransitives, unergatives
and unaccusatives:
(29) a. I have bought the book
b. I have sung
c.
I have arrived
There are also languages such as Italian or German which use auxiliary HAVE
in the formation of the perfect with transitive and unergative verbs, while they
use auxiliary BE with unaccusative verbs. These languages are referred to as
auxiliary selection languages. In languages such as Italian, the unaccusative
participle agrees with the derived subject, while transitive and unergative participles show no agreement. That is participle agreement and the presence of
HAVE are in complementary distribution (see Kayne 1993, however, who
discusses some exceptions to this). Adjectival inection with unaccusative predicates was possible in Old English and in Old German (Renate Musan personal
communication), as shown in (30d,e), where the participle bears plural inection. As Burzio (1986) states, one nds both BE and participial agreement in
passives, cases of reexive si and unaccusative verbs.
(30) a.
Gianni ha capito la questiona

Gianni has understood the question
b. Gianni ha telefonato
Gianni has called
c. Gianni e arrivato
Gianni is arrived
d. we wron gecumene
we were come
e. Er ist gekommen > er ist ein gekommener
He is come he is one who came
Finally, there are languages which use auxiliary BE with all types of predicates, transitives and intransitives alike, e.g. Bulgarian, Irish, Hindi and so on.
In Bulgarian the perfect participle always agrees with the subject, derived or
non-derived. The latter case is illustrated in (31a) from Iatridou &al. 2000. In
Hindi transitive perfects, the participle agrees with the theme argument (31b)
from Mahajan (1997).
(31) a.
Maria e pisal-a
knigata
Maria is write-fem-sg the book
Maria has written the book
b. Raam-ne bhindiiyaa pakaayii
he
Ram-erg okra.fem.pl cook.perf.fem.pl be-pres.fem.pl
Ram has cooked okra
In general the above patterns show that whenever the auxiliary is BE the participle is a verb that agrees in the adjectival pattern, while whenever the auxiliary
is HAVE the participle is more verbal. I come back to this issue.
Before concluding, a few remarks on the morphology of the perfect are
necessary. In languages with analytic perfects, usually the special auxiliary carries Tense information and the participle is specied for aspect in the sense of
perfective vs. imperfective. For instance, in Greek, the perfect participle is based
on the perfective aspect stem, even though Greek verbs show a perfective/
imperfective distinction outside the perfect.
(32) a.
o Janis
ehi diavasi
to vivlio
John-nom has read-perf the book-acc
John has read the book
b. o Janis
diavase/diavaze
to vivlio
John-nom read-perf-3sg/imp-3sg the book
In Bulgarian, the perfect participle is based both on the perfective and on the
imperfective stem. There is also a participle based on a neutral aspect (see
Iatridou et al. 2000 for discussion and references therein):
(33) a.
Marija (*vinagi) e obiknala

Ivan
Maria (*always) is love-perf.part Ivan
(*ot 1980 nasam).
(*from 1980 towards-now)
Maria has fallen in love with Ivan.
b. Marija vinagi e obicala
Ivan.
Maria always is love-imperf.part Ivan
Maria has always loved Ivan
Iatridou et al. (2000) point out that since the participle contains (im)perfective
specication (as we saw in Bulgarian and Greek) and since Tense is clearly
above the perfect morphology, and is expressed by the auxiliary, then the order
of the axes in a tree representation must be as in (34):
(34)
Tense [Perfect [Asp [VP]]
(34) seems to be an accurate representation for a number of languages as is

clear from Cinques (1999) detailed discussion (see also von Stechow 1999).
Specically, Cinque observes that in inectional languages suxes typically
close o the word disallowing further axation. As a consequence of that,
when more suxes occur in a sentence more verbs are needed to bear them,
typically one for each sux. In languages such as English and Spanish, where
no successive leftward movements of lower parts of the clause take place, the
sequence of the various V + sux combinations may thus be taken to provide
direct evidence for the relative order of the corresponding functional heads. If
so, a sentence such as (35a) in English and its equivalent (35b) in Spanish, give
evidence for the order of functional heads in (36):
(35) a. These books have been being read all year
b. Esos libros han estado siendo leidos todo el ao
(36)
Tense > AspectPerfect > AspectProgressive > Voice > V
That is perfect participles are at least inected for Voice and Aspect (much like
process nominalizations; see the discussion in the appendix).
After this brief introduction, let us take a closer look at the distribution of
the patterns in (27) crosslinguistically.
. The crosslinguistic distribution of the possessive agent
It has been observed that across languages there is a strong preference to use
a dierent marking to express the agent/subject in the perfect, namely a marking usually associated with possessors. For instance, the perfect tense in OldIndo-European languages manifested a pattern, which was described as
ergative. Specically, in Old Persian (cf. Allen 1964, Bok-Bennema 1991 among
others) the subject in the perfect was nominative with intransitive verbs, but
genitive with transitive verbs, whereas the direct object surfaced with nominative case (data from Bok-Bennema 1991: 19f):
(37) a.
Bardiya
avajata
bardiya-nom killed
Bardiya was killed
b. ima
tya
mana kartam Pasrthavaiy
this-nom what-nom I-gen done Parthia-loc
This is what I have done in Parthia
In Old Persian genitive is also the case of the agent in the passive construction.
Something similar is found in Ancient Greek, in examples such as the following:
(38) ta
toutoi pepragmena
the+these-dat things done
lit. Their acts
In (38), the agent is expressed by the dative and not as in a normal passive by
the preposition hupo.
In Latin, constructions of the type illustrated in (39) are documented (from
Jacob 1998: 108):
(39) quid tibi nos tactio est
what you us touched is
These constructions were formed on the basis of an action nominal or an

innitival and had also a deontic meaning associated with them. Again the
agent here is introduced with a dative, i.e. a case standardly associated with the
possessor in Latin and in Greek.
An instance of a possessor subject is manifested in Northern Russian, and
particularly in Northern Russian passives (NRPs). Timberlake (1976) describes
the following pattern. NRPs are formed from intransitive as well as transitive
verbs. The underlying subject is expressed by a prepositional phrase u +genitive,
which is actually the form for the possessor in NR. The underlying object is
expressed either in the accusative or genitive, or in the nominative. When it
appears in the nominative, it can both appear agreeing with the nite verb and
without any agreement:
(40) a.
U menja bylo telenka zarezno

me aux calf-acc slaughtered-part
by me theres been slaughtered a calf
b. Pereexano
bylo doroga tut
crossed-part-n-sg aux road-nom.f-sg
theres been crossing over the road
c. U
rybaka
byl sxavacem
by the sherman aux caught.part.m.sg
medvezij jazyk
bears
tongue.nom.m.sg.
by the sherman was caught a bears tongue
Timberlake shows that in NRPs the agent phrase has strong subject properties.
The underlying object can optionally acquire the subject properties for case and
agreement. According to Timberlake, the NRP facts argue for a partial demotion of the subject, and an incomplete promotion of the object. The prepositional subject of this construction behaves actually as a possessive phrase.
Related patterns are found in ergative languages that exhibit tense-splits.
That is in the perfect subjects appear as possessors. Consider Georgian. In the
present Tense the subject of a transitive or an intransitive carries nominative

case. The object of the transitive carries dative case. In the aorist, the subject of
the transitive carries ergative case. In the perfect, the subject carries dative case
(cf. King 1994: 94f.).
(41) a.
deda
cerils
cers
mother-nom letter-dat write-3s.3o
Mother is writing a letter
b. dedam
cerili
daCera
mother-erg letter-nom write.3s.3o
Mother wrote a letter
c. dedas
cerili
dauCeria
mother-dat letter-nom write-3s.3io
Mother apparently wrote a letter
Present
Aorist
Perfect
The subject in the perfect is marked with a case standardly associated with
experiencers/beneciaries.
According to Mahajan (1997) a similar pattern can be observed in Hindi.
In the perfective, Hindi subjects of transitive verbs carry ergative case (42),
while in the imperfective Hindi has a nominative-accusative syntax:
(42) Raam-ne bhindiiyaa pakaayii
he
Ram-erg okra.fem.pl cook.perf.fem.pl be-pres.fem.pl
Ram has cooked ocra
To form a regular possessive construction, Hindi uses the genitive or the dative.
But according to Mahajan (1997), these cases are related. He claims that
ergative, genitive and dative constitute specic choices of morphological form
of a lexical preposition and not dierent items. The presence of ergative in the
perfective is tied to the lexical properties of the perfective morphology.
Now for both the Hindi and Georgian perfect constructions, it has been
argued that the participle cannot assign Case (see Mahajan 1997, King 1994
among others). King (1994) in fact explicitly argues that there is no external
argument present in the perfect tense in Georgian. King proposes that these
constructions actually involve a dative argument being introduced by a light
semi-functional head. This structure is very close to the structure of possessors
and that of double object constructions, as analyzed in Marantz (1993),
McGinnis (1998), and Anagnostopoulou (to appear).
Apart from containing possessor subjects, what all these examples have in
common is that they all involve a passive participle (but see Abraham 1998) or
an action nominal. In the system developed in this monograph the structure

of participles and action nominals is closely related (see the appendix). In fact
most of the patterns discussed here appear to be similar to transitive
nominalizations presented in Chapter 4, where I argued that agents are merged
in D. According to Kayne (1993), the structure of perfect participles contains
such a projection universally. In fact this head plays a crucial role in restoring
transitivity and in auxiliary selection. When D incorporates into the universal
auxiliary BE, the result is perfect formation with auxiliary HAVE.
The following questions arise. Why do the subjects in the perfect surface
as possessors? What are the dierences between nominalizations and perfect
participles? I turn to the former issue in the next section. As for the latter, see
the discussion in the appendix and several remarks made in the following subSections.
. Possessor subjects in the perfect
As already mentioned, a perfect sentence such I have eaten is true of a resultant state, a state that holds at a given time if and only if the agent in question
is the agent of an eating event that culminated earlier than that time. According
to several authors (see the references above), this is taken to suggest that the
perfect is stative in meaning. But in fact the perfect bears the interpretation of
a state reached as the result of a prior eventuality. What is of interest here is
that it has been pointed out that subjects in the perfect have properties distinct
from subjects in non-perfect constructions: namely they appear to pattern on
a par with subjects of stative verbs.
Before turning to the behavior of perfect subjects, let me note here some
of the characteristics of stative subjects. As Kratzer (1994b) recently discusses,
such subjects are not true causers. Consider (43):
(43)
Mittie owns the dog
In (43) the verb is stative and the external argument denotes, according to
Kratzer, the person who is the holder of the state consisting in owning the dog.
Kratzer calls this other type of external argument holder. Under the assumption that external arguments are introduced by light heads, to compute the
meaning of (43), we need a head adding the external argument, which is dierent from that introducing the argument of an eventive predicate. In Kratzers
system one cannot combine the holder function with the denotation of an
action predicate or the agent function with the denotation of a stative predi-
cate. This explains why there is a connection between the Aktionsart of a verb
and the thematic role of its external argument. Thus, subjects of stative verbs
can be understood as possessors, experiencers and not as true causers.
Further evidence for the dierence between possessors and causers and
their interaction with the various aspectual classes of predicates comes from
other language families as well. Kibrik (1993) describes processes of transitivity
increase in Athabaskan languages. Apart from causativization, i.e. the introduction of a new agent to the original propositional structure resulting in a formation of a single, though derivationally non-elementary propositional structure,
across Athabaskan languages a typological variety of causatives is spread, the socalled possessives. These are derived exclusively from states indicating motionless location or existence and designate possessing the object in a certain state.
Consider a Hupa example of a possessive formed from an existential/locative
state verb (from Kibrik 1993: 55):
-sa- - a:n
3/a-a-TI-lie
It is lying
b. -s-eh-l-a:
3/g-a-!sg/A-TI-lie
I have it lying there
(44) a.
In Hupa, the causatives as such and the possessives are in complementary

distribution depending on the lexical class of the initial verb: the possessives are
derived from the verbs of existential/locative state and the causatives form other
types of verbs allowing Actor supplementation. Similar patterns occur in other
Athabaskan languages, e.g. Slave and Navajo. There is a great deal of parallelism
between these two processes.
In the recent literature it has been pointed out that the perfect shares certain characteristics with stative predicates. Specically, Iatridou et al. (2000)
observe the following patterns. As is well known, statives cannot appear in the
imperative mood while there is no such restriction with eventives:
(45) a. write a book
b. *know French
Like statives, the perfect cannot appear in the imperative:

(46) a. Write a book
b. *have written a book
Pseudocleft formation is another environment where the perfect patterns on

a par with stative predicates.
(47) a. what I did was kiss Mary
b. *what I did was love Mary
c. *what I did was have kissed Mary
Note now that the Georgian perfect shows properties similar to stative
predicates in the language. According to Nash (1994), in order to augment
their valency, stative verbs in Georgian combine with applicative morphemes.
In (48b), the verb is combined with u- that is glossed as BEN/POSS, which
signals the presence of a benefactive-possessive DP:
(48) a.
Nino
tax tze cev-s
Nino-nom sofa on lie-pres:3sg
Nino lies on the sofa
b. Am Kac-s
svili
u-Cev-s
saavadmqoposi
this man-dat child-nom ben/poss-lie-pres:3sg hospital-in
lit. To this man the child lies in the hospital
What this shows is that subjects of stative verbs and perfect subjects have a
common property: they both surface with a case related to possessors. On the
other hand, another set of thematic suxes is included in the nominative pattern, which includes non-stative verbs and external arguments that behave like
causers. Nash (1996) identies these suxes as the instantiation of causative
v in the language, as they are only present in the nominative pattern (see 48b).
However, ergative subjects, i.e. aorist subjects, do not relate to any of these
patterns:
(49) a.
Gogo-m xe
da=xaT-a
girl-erg tree-nom prev-draw-aor-sg
The girl drew a tree
b. Gogo
xe-s
da=xaT-av-s
girl-nom tree-obj prev-draw-pres-sg
The girl will draw a tree
The above patterns show the following: rst, the semantic dierence of
stative subjects has a morphological reex in some languages. Second, the perfect shares common properties with stative predicates. Third, subjects in the
perfect in certain languages surface with morphology related to possessors. In
other words, in certain languages the morphology of the subject is consistent

with its semantic function. This is in agreement with the long-standing intuition in the generative literature that the perfect is in principle a possessive
construction.
Building on Kratzer and Iatridou et al., I take the perfect to correspond
roughly to a passive construction which comes into ones possession. The head
introducing the subject in the perfect could be taken to be a nominal functional
head, in a way similar to the type of head introducing the possessor in the case
of transitive nominalizations in English. This is actually what Kings proposal
about the perfect in Georgian amounts to as well. On this view then, both perfect structures and transitive nominalizations include the internal structure of
an action nominal of the type discussed in Chapter 4.
Thus it seems that Georgian has a clear reex of the semantic relations
between the various predicates and their respective agent/subject arguments
across Tenses: subjects in the perfect surface bearing the possessor case, i.e. they
are introduced by a nominal head (pattern 27a). Subjects in the aorist, on the
other hand, are deep causers, and thus surface with ergative case (pattern 27b).
Finally, external causers introduced by v surface with nominative. That is the
three tense series include dierent internal structures. In turn this suggests that
the selectional relationships between dierent types of Tense/Aspect/v heads
and their complements trigger these asymmetries.
Recall that in the Hindi perfect, the agent argument surfaces with ergative
case. In view of the above remarks, this could mean that its thematic relation
to the predicate is similar to the one found in the aorist in Georgian, i.e.
ergative subjects are deep agents, as will be suggested in the next section, or else
it is an accident of morphology. Note here that the Hindi perfective construction has evolved from constructions in the earlier language that showed inected agentive forms in initial position, and past participles in concord with
non-initial grammatical subjects, in other words, i.e. he wrote the book was
expressed as by him the book was written. Certain usages in the Dehli dialect
and the Panjab dialect still indicate the historical origin of the construction
(source: McGregor, 1995:78). If Hindi perfect agents are deep causers, then one
would expect that the semantics of the Hindi perfect relate actually to those of
the Georgian aorist/perfective. This might not be so unexpected, as we know
independently that there are languages where the perfect has the semantics of
the perfective, e.g. Italian (see Giorgi and Pianesi 1997 for extensive discussion).
With this in mind, let me turn to a brief discussion of the phenomenon of
auxiliary selection.
. Auxiliary selection
. HAVE-BE and the perfect
As discussed in the previous section, subjects in the perfect are actually possessors. This fact, if true, brings us to two related claims that have received much
attention in the literature: (a) verb HAVE is basically BE + P e.g. I have a book
is derived from to me there is a book and (b) the use of HAVE in the perfect tense
is derived from a BE possessive construction (see Benveniste 1966, Kayne 1993).
In the Principles and Parameters literature this link between possession and
the emergence of transitive structures is understood in the following sense:
auxiliary HAVE restores the transitivity of the predicate (see Hoekstra 1984,
Roberts 1987 among others). Others have argued that the selection of a specic
auxiliary is correlated with the Aktionsart properties of the predicate, at least
in some languages e.g. German (see Grewendorf 1989, Abraham 2000 and references therein). On this view, predicates that denote an uncompleted action
take auxiliary HAVE, while predicates that denote a completed action take
auxiliary BE. More recently, it has been argued that transitivity is restored in
languages that use auxiliary HAVE in the formation of the perfect, and of
the possessive construction by means of incorporation of the P that introduces
the possessor to the universal copula BE (see e.g. Kayne 1993, Mahajan 1997).
According to this view, transitivity is not restored in ergative languages which
lack the HAVE possessive construction and only use the BE one, and form the
perfect with auxiliary BE only.
Let me rst consider in some detail Mahajans account, as it states a very
important generalization. Mahajan has attempted to put the fact that a lexically
distinct form of the verb HAVE is generally missing in verb peripheral
languages together with the fact that ergative case patterns are found only in
peripheral languages, SOV, and VSO, while verb medial languages are never
ergative. He oers an explanation of this correlation on the basis of the structures in (50).
(50) a.
AuxP
VP Aux
Aux VP
XP
V
V
AuxP
b.
YP
XP
YP
V
V
In SOV languages, the preposition, which introduces the subject cannot incorporate into Aux to yield HAVE. According to Mahajan, this accounts for the
aspect-split factor, i.e. the fact that in most ergative-split languages it is in perfect where such a split arises and HAVE is also the auxiliary used to form the
perfect tense.
However, if one were to assume, as I did in the previous section, that
ergative subjects in Hindi are located in the complement domain of the lexical
head, then incorporation cannot take place. That is the subject is too deeply
embedded to incorporate into the auxiliary BE.
A further case in point is the perfective passive in Irish. As mentioned
above, in Irish the perfect is formed by means of auxiliary BE. Consider the
example in (51) from McCloskey (1996):
(51) ta teach ceannaithe agam
be house bought
by me
I have bought a house
Here the argument corresponding to the subject argument in a transitive

clause appears as the object of a preposition, while the argument corresponding to the object in a transitive clause appears as a surface subject. As
McCloskey points out, this is actually an unaccusative pattern. Both the progressive and the perfective passive contain auxiliary BE. Mahajans account
cannot explain the fact that Irish (or Bulgarian for that matter) has auxiliary
BE although it is not an ergative, head-nal, language. However, such facts
follow straightforwardly from the assumption that there are two structures
involved in introducing agents in these constructions: one which locates
them in the specier of a nominal head (pattern 27a) and one that locates
them inside the lexical projection (pattern 27b). If Irish participles contained
deep prepositional agents, as is suggested by (51), then we would have an
explanation for the fact that Irish uses only auxiliary BE in the formation of
periphrastic tenses, since again the subject is too deeply embedded, and cannot
incorporate into the auxiliary.
Note that Irish uses for the expression of statives and psychological states
exactly the same structures used to express possession. The experiencer appears
in a prepositional phrase in object position (see Noonan 1993):
(52) a.
t gaeilge ag Fliodhais
be Irish at Fliodhais
Fliodhais knows Irish
b. t eagla roimh an bpca ag Ailill

be fear before the Puca at Ailill
Ailill fears the Puca
Crucially, the language uses nominal predicate constructions to express psychological states. Hence the underlying structure of both (51) and (52) involves
(27b) and not (27a).
Let me mow turn to some harder cases: these include auxiliary selection
languages, and nally only HAVE languages, which seem to be the hardest case
for any account that treats HAVE as a derivative form of BE.
. Auxiliary selection languages and only HAVE languages
In the previous section I briey mentioned the derivation of HAVE in accounts
that follow Kaynes analysis of auxiliary selection. Another version of such an
account is given in (53) from Iatridou et al. (2000). This is very close to the
structure of transitive nominalizations discussed in Chapter 4.
(53)
BEP
BE
XP (+N)
X PerfP
Perf AspP
en
VP
In (53) there are two derivations that take place. X is a nominal head. In one
possible derivation it may incorporate into BE resulting in HAVE. In such a
case, the participle stays where it is, i.e. in Perf and it does not show agreement. In the second derivation, the participle raises to X and therefore it shows
nominal inection (number, gender). In such a case, the auxiliary remains BE.
In languages like English, only the rst derivation is possible. In languages like
Bulgarian, only the second derivation is possible. Languages in which both
derivations are possible are auxiliary-selection languages. For Iatridou et al. X
is actually a stativity head that can be seen as introducing the possessor subject,
comparable to D in transitive nominalizations, as I mentioned above. However,
in this account it is not entirely clear what is the property that forces one or the
other derivation in HAVE only or BE only languages.
Let me rst point out that serious problems for the incorporation analysis
arise with only HAVE languages. If a Kaynian type of analysis were on the right
track, there would be no explanation for the reason why some languages show
up with HAVE also in unaccusative structures. In these, there is no oblique
possessor/agent that could incorporate into a higher auxiliary to yield HAVE.
At least for these languages then another source from the one discussed so far
should be considered.
A possibility that suggests itself is that in only HAVE languages, the path
followed involved rst the formation of the possessive/main verb HAVE, perhaps via P incorporation, as suggested. This item then was used to form the
perfect combined with a subordinate (perhaps innitival or other small) clause.
A derivation like this is suggested in Hoekstra (1984), Harris and Campell
(1995), and Iatridou (1996) among others.
According to Harris and Campbell (1995: 182.), Old French and Old
English were languages which formed the perfect by means of constructions
that had more or less the following meaning: one possesses that which has
been done. Examples of this construction are given below for Old French and
Old English respectively:
(54) a.
et chis empereres avoit letres seur lui escrites qui

and this emperor has letters on him written which
b. gyt ge habba eowre heortan geblende
yet you have your hearts blinded
The characteristic properties of such constructions are stated as follows. They

consist of a possessor subject, the verb HAVE, the possessed object and a clause
that included the object and a verb realized as a passive participle. The subordinate clause could be construed with a subject, not necessarily co-referential
with that of the main clause. The existence of two subjects each verb is accounted for by positing two clauses, i.e. a biclausal structure. This subordinate/small clause involves actually a Control structure in the transitive variant.
That is the meaning of the Old French and Old English examples is (55a) and
not (55b) below. Interestingly, Parsons (1990) observes that sequences as in
(55a) above are quite similar to the structure of perception verbs and could be
analyzed the same way, i.e. as a verb taking a small clause complement (55c).
According to Parsons, the source of the modern English perfect lies in the
meaning of HAVE that makes me in (55c) responsible for his present state of
bindedness in the most direct way.
(55) a. Sara has the nished report

b. To Sara is the nished report
c. I saw him bound
Harris and Campbell (1995) also report that in English the perfect HAVE
developed out of the possessive HAVE through a process of reanalysis, which
in their terms involves a biclausal structure which becomes a monoclausal one.
A similar process took place also in German (Renate Musan personal communication.). In other words, the main verb HAVE becomes an auxiliary (see
Roberts 1993).
In view of the fact that there are languages, e.g. Greek, where very few relics
of an auxiliary selection are detected, then perhaps in these languages the
perfect developed from structures of this type. In other words, perhaps HAVE
is derived from BE, but in the formation of the perfect Tense this is not visible
anymore. In fact the perfect construction in Greek seems to have developed
from the combination of a main verb HAVE together with an innitive irrespective of transitivity of the predicate. According to Browning (1969), such
formations were common round 1300. Some examples are given below:
(56) a.
ehi
elthi
etote o Mega Kiris
have-3sg come-inf then the great Lord-nom
(Moreas Chronicle 4365)
b. sas exo
ipi
you have-1sg told-inf
(Moreas Chronicle 6773)
However, Horrocks (1997) points out that Brownings examples are not supported by the manuscript tradition, or by the sense required in the relevant
contexts. Horrocks (1997: 228f.) states that the formation of a perfect with
HAVE took place in the modern period and that this formation originated
from constructions involving the past tense of the verb HAVE in Greek and an
aorist innitival, crucially a counterfactual conditional. This form was later
used as the pluperfect and subsequently the perfect form involving the present
tense of the verb HAVE was formed. An example illustrating a conditional
interpretation is given in (57):
(57) ekini
an se ihan vri
these men if you would have found
This periphrasis came to be interpreted as a hypothetical pluperfect rather than
a true modal, through the assumption that it represented a hypothetical pastof-past. From there this periphrasis began to be used in real times past-of-past
contexts as a true pluperfect. According to Horrocks, perfect formation was still
rare in the vernacular Greek of the 19th century, and was at the time beginning
to being used by writers. The only true perfect forms in Medieval Greek were
periphrases using the perfect passive participle in combination with rst the
verb BE and later the verb HAVE, though the latter seems to be a formation
that took place after Romance inuence. That is the perfect at some stage had
a form similar to the English example in (55a).
Now, if the origin of the perfect construction, at least in the cases discussed
above, was actually a Control innitival structure, then the lower v was/is not
decient, and hence its accusative case assigning property is not impaired. The
only thing that happened was that a lexical verb became a functional one.
The development of the perfect in certain Romance languages could also
be argued to have followed a similar path. For instance, in languages such as
Spanish, it seems to be the case that it developed from a clause embedded under main verb HAVE. This would explain the fact why in Spanish there is no
auxiliary selection irrespectively of the transitivity of the predicate. Moreover,
in this case main verb HAVE developed from a verb meaning carry or hold.
So far I have discussed cases in which the perfect developed from a construction that involved the main verb HAVE. I have also mentioned cases in
which the perfect has developed from a passive construction (Hindi). The different derivations correlate with the type of auxiliary used in the respective
languages. The question that arises now is why it is the case that we nd auxiliary selection languages, i.e. languages where the selection of an auxiliary correlates with the transitivity of the predicate. For instance, French and Spanish are
both Romance languages but only French is an auxiliary selection language. I
restrict myself in just saying that the HAVE construction in principle could be
derived either via incorporation of P to BE or follow a derivation similar to the
path followed in English and Greek. As for the use of BE with unaccusatives,
this follows straightforwardly from a Kaynian type analysis. I refer the reader
to the articles cited in the text for an extensive discussion.
. Conclusion
In this chapter I examined two main similarities between nominalization and
patterns of ergativity: case and perfect formation. Specically, I investigated
the possible sources for the formation of the perfect tense to the extent that
these are related to the patterns of nominalization. Second, I discussed briey
the issue of auxiliary selection.
The rst observation made is that the transitive perfect has a semantic
interpretation according to which the subject is no longer a causer. This led to
the idea that languages are expected to express the perfect subject similar to
possessors. As discussed in Chapters 3 and 4 subjects in nominals come in two
ways: they are either merged in Spec,DP as possessors or appear within the
domain of the root. If one transfers these patterns to perfect formation, then
HAVE languages, which result from incorporation, involve possessor subjects,
while BE languages involve deep-agents introduced as PPs.
The second observation is that in certain cases the perfect is formed by a
main verb HAVE and a complement clause. The main verb HAVE is later reanalyzed as an auxiliary. Although these languages also express the perfect as
a possession structure, they never make a dierence between transitive and
intransitive verbs.
The third point made is that auxiliary selection languages perhaps make a
distinction between an adjectival/resultant state construction and a transitiveresultant state one. The HAVE pattern could either have developed out of a biclausal source or could be the result of P incorporation into BE, as suggested
in Kayne (1993) and work inspired by Kayne.
Appendix: Participle formation

The literature recognizes that in languages such as English there are three types
of participles, illustrated in (58), namely the perfect participle, the passive participle and the so-called adjectival participle:
(58) a. I have written three poems
b. Three poems were written by me
c. Three poems in this book are well-written
These participles show the same morphology as the table in (59) illustrates:
(59) Perfect
sung
written
fought
Passive
sung
written
fought
Adjectival
sung
written
fought
Lieber (1980) based on this fact proposes that English adjectival passives are
formed from verbal participles (passive and perfect participle) by zero axation.
The table in (60) summarizes the properties they have in common, and
where they dier:
(60)
Perfect
Morphology: -en +
Stative
+ (on some accounts)
Eventive
(on some accounts)
Verbal
+
Adjectival
Passive meaning
Active meaning +
Passive
+
+
+
Adjectival
+
+
+
+
In what follows, I concentrate mainly on the dierences between adjectival and

passive participles (see also Embick 2000b). For perfect participles see Iatridou,
Anagnostopoulou and Izvorski (2000), and some comments made in the main
text and later on here.
The standard view on adjectival passives has been that adjectival passives
are rst of all passive and second of all lexical. For instance, Bresnan (1982)
argued that the passive participle only (and not the perfect participle, contra
Lieber 1980) constitutes the input to the adjectival passive formation rule.
Therefore, the eaten dog means the dog that *was* eaten and not the dog that
*has* eaten. Levin and Rappaport (1986) follow Lieber and Bresnan in assuming that there is a category-changing rule of type in (61):
V[part] [V[part]]A
(61)
The authors follow Bresnan in taking the adjectival passive participle to be

passive (that is as involving some form of suppression of the external argument).
Since Wasow 1977, it has been assumed that adjectival passive participles
are lexical. This is expressed in Jackendo (1977) and Abney (1987) in structural terms as follows. The adjectival passive ax is base generated as a sister
of V and makes V into an adjective:
Lexical participle=adjectival passive participle
(62)
Z
V
Z
participle ax
On the other hand, Jackendo and Abney assume that the participle ax
of verbal participles adjoins to the whole VP (i.e. verbal participles are phrasal):
Verbal Participle = passive participle
(63)
Z
VP
Z
participle ax
Recently, Kratzer (1994b) argued in detail that adjectival passives are neither
passive nor always lexical. Kratzer argues for a dierent way of looking at adjectival passives by making two points (embedded within the view that the external argument is not an argument of the verb, Marantz 1984). First of all, as
Kratzer points out, adjectival participles are not passive. The view that adjectival passives have passive meaning does not account for the fact that while
passives necessarily have an implicit agent, adjectival passives do not (i.e. they
are compatible with reexive actions). This is clearly shown in German where
the two types of passive are distinguished through the presence of a dierent
auxiliary, werden vs. sein:
(64) a.
das Kind war gekmmt

Adjectival Passive
the child was combed
Stative: Compatible with reexive action (no agent)
b. das Kind wurde gekmmt
Verbal Passive
the child was combed
Eventive: Incompatible with reexive action (necessarily agent)
Second, adjectival passives are not always lexical, but can also be phrasal. Evidence for the existence of phrasal adjectival passives comes from the availability
of manner adverbial distribution. As shown in (65), adverbs may not modify
adjectives (98b), but they may modify certain adjectival passives (65a):
(65) a.
das Haar war ziemlich schlampig gekmmt

the hair was rather sloppily combed
b. *das Haar war ziemlich schlampig fettig
the hair was rather sloppily greasy
Kratzer proposes that the adverbs modify the verb in a lower VP that is
embedded within the adjectival passive morpheme. She further points out that
negated adjectival passives are incompatible with manner modication:
(66) *das Haar war hsslich ungekmmt

the hair was ugly uncombed
The fact that modication is impossible in (66) is taken to mean that the ax
cannot attach to a verbal maximal projection, i.e. the participles of the type in
(66) are not phrasal.
Greek provides morphological evidence in favor of Kratzers partition.
Negated participles systematically exhibit dierent morphology than participles
without negation, and this correlates with a dierence in the availability of
manner modication, as shown in (67).
(67) a.
to pedhi ine htenismeno askima

the child is combed ugly
b. to pedhi ine ahtenisto/ *ahtenisto askima
the child is uncombed/*uncombed ugly
c. gra-meno: written
a-graf-to: unwritten
ftiag-meno: made
a-ftiah-to: unmade
diavas-meno: read
a-diavas-to: unread
This leads to the view that there are three types of participles (abstracting away
from perfect participles): (i) passive, (ii) lexical adjectival and (iii) phrasal adjectival, whose properties are summarized below:
(68)
Same morphology
Eventive
Verbal
Agent
Manner adverbs
Passive
+
+
+
+
+
Lexical Adjectival
+ (not in Greek)
Phrasal Adjectival
+
For Kratzer, phrasal adjectival participles are built by attachment of the adjectival participle ax to the phrasal category. Lexical adjectival participles are built
by attachment of the participle ax to the lexical category.
Let us see how this distinction translates in the system proposed here,
where dierent types of categories are derived from the combination of roots
with dierent kinds of functional heads. Starting from adjectival participles, the
presence of manner adverbs in the phrasal ones means that light v is present
licensing a manner component:
(69)
vP
v
LP
L
Comp(theme)
write
This v is an intransitive v (Embick 2000b), and therefore the participle is compatible with a reexive action.
Moreover, the fact that this manner component is realized with an adverb
and not with an adjective suggests that an Asp head is also present (see Embick
2000b; see Chapter 4 for arguments that the presence of Asp is crucial for the
realization of manner adverbials in the Morphology Component). In fact
phrasal adjectival participles include an Asp specied as [Perfect of Result],
thus receiving the structural representation in (70):
(70)
AspP
Asp
vP
v
LP
L
write
Comp(theme)
Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou and Stavrou (2000) suggest, following Kratzer

(1994b), that this Asp head encodes the meaning expressed in the Perfect of
Result (Comrie 1976b for discussion). They further propose that the perfect of
result is not encoded n the meaning of the true perfect which in such a system
would be attached higher than Asp and would be compatible with any aspectual specication (progressive, non-progressive, etc.) (see Iatridou, Anagnostopoulou and Izvorski, op.cit., for an analysis of the syntax of perfect). The formula in (104) below, from Kratzer (1994b: 36), gives the semantics associated
with this participial form:
(71) 1. build=8xe8es [building (e) and exist (x) (f target (e))]
2. PERFECT of RESULT 8P<s,t>8s ses [P(e) and s = ftarget(e) ]
3. (build PERFECT of RESULT) = 8x8se [building (e) and exist (x)
(s) & s= f target (e)) and & s= f target (e) ] = 8x8se [building(e) and
exist(x)(s) & s= f target (e) ]
Kratzers analysis translated into this framework takes the presence of v to be

responsible for making build into [building (e)]
This in turn means that the stative meaning of adjectival passives does not
follow from the category A(djective), but from the semantic information on
Asp (cf. Embick 2000b, who argues that the meaning expressed in English by
adjectival participles, in Creek it is expressed by verbs).
On the other hand, lexical adjectival participles do not include v. Therefore,
there is no manner modication that is licensed by v. Moreover, lexical Adjectival Participles do not include Asp. Since there is no v, the meaning of lexical
adjectival passives cannot be that of the perfect of Result that requires an event.
Negated participles do not have event implications and therefore they are always lexical. Lexical adjectival passives are taken to be bare roots, assuming that
roots express always resultant states (Harley and Noyer 1998a).
(72)
LP
L
Comp(theme)
This analysis makes a prediction: since lexical adjectival passives are bare roots
and therefore stative, it is predicted that double object verbs which, on some
accounts cf. for instance Marantz (1993), Collins (1997), McGinnis (1998),
Anagnostopoulou (to appear), include a light v introducing the indirect object
can form phrasal but no lexical adjectival passives.
(73)
vP
Goal
vAPPL
VP
V
Theme
This prediction is borne out in German. Kratzer (1994b) shows that while double object verbs may yield phrasal adjectival passives (74d) they may not yield
lexical adjectival passives (74e):
(74) a.
weil
sie ihm
because they him-dat
b. *weil
sie ihm
c. *weil
sie ihm
die Antwort
the answer-acc
die Antwort
the answer-acc
die Antwort
the answer-acc
sterten
whispered
sterten
whispered
zu-sterten
to-whispered
d. die Antwort war ihm

zugestert
the answer was him-dat to-whispered
e. *die Antwort war ihm unzugestert
The obligatoriness of the prex -zu in the example (74c) suggests that it
instantiates vAPPL in (74). The ungrammaticality of the form with negation
(74e) shows that lexical adjectival passives including vAPPL are impossible.
Finally, verbal passives include v [+agent] and Asp. v is Agentive, while Asp
can contain all possible specications similarly to verbs, contra Embick (2000b)
who argues that Asp carries only a perfective specication.
There is a last point that must be addressed in this discussion and that
relates to the agreement properties of perfect participles in auxiliary selection
languages and how participles dier from adjectives in their formation.
Although participles receive adjectival morphology, this does not mean that they
also possess the semantics of the adjective. A soup that is cool does not have to
be cooled, but a soup that is cooled requires a cooling event. From the point of
view adopted here, it must be the case that adjectives and participles dier in
that the former are bare roots, while the latter include certain layers of functional structure. Crucially, the formation of the participle may involve v, and
Aspect, while the formation of the adjective does not. While agreement on
adjectives is a result of copying/matching operations with a nominal head,
agreement on perfect participles is a result of the nominal character of the
construction. In cases where the auxiliary is HAVE there is no presence of agreement. Here one must assume that participles behave like non-nite verbal
constituents. That is they do not combine with a nominal projection and they
do not combine with Tense either. As a result, they are not included in the
AGR-set and they surface with no agreement whatsoever, i.e. the default case.
This seems to be in agreement with the historical development of the perfect, at
least in Greek.
Notes
. Although ergativity generally manifests itself in morphological case-systems, the term is
also used for languages that have no morphological case, but in which the unique argument in intransitive sentences agrees with the verb in the same way as the theme in transitive sentences and in which the agent of the latter shows another form of agreement (see
Marantz 1984, Levin 1985, Bok-Bennema 1991, Murasugi 1992, Dixon 1994, Nash 1995
among others for more details).
. Massam (to appear) discusses the consequences of this hypothesis for nominalizations
in ergative languages. According to her, one might expect that the nominal case system
is identical to the verbal phrase, or one might nd a sort of antipassive situation. The
latter is what she argues to be the case in Niuean.
. Williams (1987) in fact suggests that genitival of in English is an absolutive case marker.
. Interestingly, in Archi, an ergative language, nominalizations retain the ergative pattern
of nite clauses (cf. Koptjevskaja-Tamm 1993:93):
(i) labu armili girman Ralq-b-amul el
we-gen army-erg Germans:cl1:2pl:nom defeat:ac:cl1:2pl:nom
ko
we:nom learned
We learned about the defeat of the Germans by our army
N/A languages exhibit this pattern only in the domain of nominal syntax.
. de Rijk (1966) and Marantz (1984) propose that the projection of arguments are reversed
in ergative and accusative languages. Levin and Massam (1984) were the rst to outline
the proposal that ergativity patterns are related to a parameter in Case theory. They propose the following conditions on Case assignment:
(i) a.
b.
c.
Cx must be assigned
Cy (yx ) can be assigned under theta-government
Case is assigned only under government
The parameter they propose is as follows:

(ii) a.
b.
x = I (Nominative/Accusative)
x= V (Ergative/Absolutive)
The notion of obligatory case assignment is adopted in Bobaljik (1992) (see also Laka
1993, Harley 1995, Fanselow 1998 among others), within the framework of Chomsky
(1995).
. The details of her analysis can be summarized as follows. In her system INFL assigns
exceptional genitive (i.e. ergative) to transitive subjects which move to Spec,IP. Objects
raise and adjoin to I from where they receive nominative (or absolutive) case. An alternative solution is to express the agent or the theme role as an oblique NP either by
passivizing or antipassivizing the clause. Bok-Bennema assumes that accusative case is in
principle available in ergative languages. Whether or not this case can be assigned follows
from the specic properties of transitive verbs.
The proposal in Bittner and Hale (1996) also shares some basic common ground with
Bok-Bennemas analysis. Bittner and Hale (1996) propose a general system of CaseBinding, according to which case assignment in ergative languages works as follows: a
transitive verb cannot case-bind the direct object as there are no other elements that
compete with it for case. As a result the object moves to INFL to get nominative. In other
words, in ergative languages the verbs do not see the nominative case, and hence cannot
assign accusative.
. Nash (1995) further claims that such an analysis of ergativity enables us to capture two
related phenomena: the perfectivity of ergative constructions and person-splits. I will
not discuss person-splits here, but I will make a few observations with respect to the
perfectivity of ergative constructions. In ergative congurations, as Nash observes, the
transitive sentence expresses a completed action. This is also a property independently
characterizing unaccusative predicates (see the discussion in the previous section). According to Nash, this directly follows from the fact that ergative languages dier from
nominative accusative ones in having a decient v.
. Recall further from the discussion of the data in the previous chapters that certain passive nominals in Greek were also interpreted as perfective, i.e. as expression of an action
that has been completed. Given the reasoning in Nash (see previous footnote), this can
be explained in a similar manner.
. A line of argumentation that I will not discuss here is the one taken by a number of
researchers (starting with Chomsky 1986) and presented more recently in Harley and
Noyer (1998b). According to this, of insertion in English takes place as a last resort, as
there is no functional projection within process nominals that could assign case to the
theme argument. I suppose that a similar argument could be made for genitive, i.e.
genitive case could be analyzed as a last resort case, but I will not go into that here.
. Irene Rapp pointed out to me that in German there are several nouns whose complements are preceded by a preposition, which is not selected by the corresponding verb:
(i) a.
b.
ich wnsche einen Apfel

I wish
an apple-acc
der Wunsch nach einem Apfel
the wish
after an
appl-dat
Rapp takes such cases as illustrating that Case is dependent on the semantics of the noun
and it is not structurally assigned. I leave this issue open here.
. Haeberli (1999) diers from the Marantz and Harley in that he argues that EPP can also
be dispensed with. On the other hand, Marantz and Harley argue that arguments are
licensed by (extended) projection and not by abstract Case.
. In other systems, such as Wunderlichs (1997), Case is determined on the basis of the
properties of the thematic role borne by a noun phrase, and directly linked to entries
in the thematic grid of a verb.
. Thanks to Elena Anagnostopoulou and Gisbert Fanselow for making this suggestion.
. Another case that seems similar in this context is the necessive construction in Finnish,
discussed by Laitinen and Vilkuna (1993). Necessive predicates in Finnish are impersonal and consist of a verb like must or the copula and the passive participle of the
verb. They express modal concepts, such as necessity and obligation. The single argument bears genitive case, as in (i), but can also bear nominative. Neither has all the
properties of the grammatical subject. When a transitive structure is used the agent
bears genitive case.
(i) lehmien
pit
tulla
kotiin
cow-pl:gen must-3sg come-in home
The cows must come home
(ii) sinun
pit tuoda
lehmt
kotiin
you-gen must bring-in cow-pl:nom home
According to Laitinen and Vilkuna, when the nominative case is used in the intransitive context, then the NP refers mostly likely to an inanimate entity. The genitive refers
to an animate. As far as I understand from the description of the data, such constructions also consist an ergative pattern in an otherwise non-ergative language and reect
an unaccusative system. What is particularly interesting, in view of the discussion in
Section 3, is the fact that these environments involve a passive participle and an oblique
agent. From this point of view they resemble possessive perfects in Northern Russian
discussed in Timberlake (1976). Thanks to Gisbert Fanselow for bringing this pattern
to my attention.
. These proposals are in agreement with certain views on the development of transitive
structures presents itself (cf. Horrocks 1998 for a recent overview). At an early stage,
which is preserved in nominalizations in nominative-accusative languages, languages
lack a formal expression of an external argument. In other words, the functional projection vP, which introduces the external argument and is responsible for the assignment
of accusative case is inactive. One single argument, the single argument of intransitives
and the one (theme) argument of transitives, is represented as the internal argument of
the verb. The remaining arguments (if any) are represented as optional adjuncts marked
semantically for function, e.g. dative for location/experiencer, genitive for source/agent.
. Many thanks to Elena Anagnostopoulou for bringing Kratzers argument to my attention.
. Sometimes possessive constructions are translated into English with the help of the verb
keep.
. Here I follow a suggestion by Sabine Iatridou (personal communication). For Iatridou
et al. this nominal head is a stativity head that is located higher than AspPPerfect in (36).
. A problem that Mahajans account faces is that it cannot explain the fact that there are
head-nal languages that are auxiliary selection languages, e.g. German. Moreover,
Mahajans account becomes more problematic, if ones assumes, following Zwart (1993),
Kayne (1994) and others, that there are no head nal languages. In this case, the reason
for the parameter splitting have to be located somewhere else.
. Mahajan points out that Basque is a language that has ergative subjects, is head nal but
still uses HAVE. The existence of such type of languages further strengthens the conclusion that the factors that determine auxiliary selection are rather complex. It might be
that in Basque the construction had a derivation similar to the one in English (cf. below
in the main text).
. Note that this correlates also with the fact that Irish is a language that also lacks the
double object construction. Assuming that the correct analysis of this construction is
one that involves the Goal argument being introduced by a light head, much like possessors, then this suggests that Irish only has the structure where agents are PPs, and
possessors appear only as locatives, i.e. again as PPs. That is Irish lacks auxiliary HAVE
because, unlike English, it lacks the structure responsible for the introduction of Goal
arguments, as proposed in Harley (1995).
. Another possibility that suggests itself, at least for some cases (progressive), is that
the subject is introduced by a light head, which is actually the copula. Evidence for this
comes from the following facts. In the Skye dialect of Scots Gaelic (see also Hendrick
1991, Carnie 1995), subjects of innitival clauses are only licensed when a light verb be
is present:
(i)
be thoigh leam sibh/Miri a bhith acoiseachd don sgoil

c want with 1s you/Maryprt be prt walk
to school
(ii) *be thoigh leam sibh/Miri acoiseachd don sgoil

c want with 1s you/Mary prt walk to school
I want you/Mary to walk to school
The discussion of these constructions and of the perfective construction in the Celtic
literature oered in Carnie (1995) concludes that these involve split VPs: a light v,
headed by the auxiliary introducing the subject and a participle which involves certain
aspectual projections and an object which carries genitive case. Suppose that the participle has a variant of the structure suggested in the appendix, i.e. that it is a lexical root
together with an internal theme that is dominated by Aspect. This part of structure
combines with a higher light head that introduces the agent. Given that this light head
is actually the auxiliary, no incorporation could take place yielding HAVE in this case,
since the subject is located in the specier of the copula.
. In the Old English example cited in (30), the participle carried inection. There are also
cases where one nds no inectional markings on the participle. However, according
to Harris and Campell these instances were soon replaced by auxiliary have.
Moreover, in Hellenistic Greek there are some cases where the verb to be together
with a perfect participle is used to denote the perfect, carrying person and number
agreement. Transitive verbs on the other hand form the perfect by using the aorist participle and the auxiliary have. However, as Browning (1969) notes these uses never became general.
. Such constructions also exist in modern Greek (cf. Iatridou 1996 for discussion):
(i) eho
grameno to grama
have-1sg written the letter
The construction in (i) is quite close to the one of the ordinary perfect construction in
Modern Greek, but diers from it in that it involves a dierent type of participle, one
that agrees with the object.
According to Iatridou, these constructions can be analyzed as follows: HAVE takes
a passive small clause as its complement, as in (ii). The object receives accusative from
the verb HAVE, which is the main verb used in this occasion.
(ii) eho
[to grammai grammeno ti]
have-1sg the letter
written
However, (ii) diers from the possessive construction with HAVE as it lacks a possessive
reading. In (ii) there is no thematic relation between the subject of the small clause and
the verb HAVE. As Iatridou points out, if there is a small clause below HAVE, the predicate must be stage-level, while the subject of the small clause can be denite or indenite (iiia). When the verb takes only an NP complement, the latter cannot be indenite
(iiib). When the complement of HAVE is a denite NP (iiib), the sequence means
something like I have the car in my temporary custody:
(iii) a.
eho
to pedi arosto/*kondo
have-1sg the child sick/short
I have the child sick/*short
b. eho
to aftokinito
have-1sg the car
Iatridou links this interpretation with presence of an unpronounced stage-level predicate, i.e. (iiib) has the interpretation of a small clause with a covert predicate. Iatridou
points out then that the complement of HAVE does not show a behavior similar to that
of BE in there is . . . environments, but rather it behaves more like when-clauses, in that
a denite NP is possible as long as the predicate is a stage-level one. This possibility does
not exist for the there is construction. This is used as an argument against the decomposition approach to HAVE.
. Note here that this is very close to the two structures that have been proposed in the
literature for possessors: possessors can either be locational PPs within a small clause
that includes the possessed item, or they can be introduced by a light head (see den
Dikken 1997, Alexiadou 1999b for references and discussion). PP/locational possessors
are what I label here deep agents/causers.
. This section is based on joint work together with Elena Anagnostopoulou and Melita
Stavrou.
Chapter 6
Conclusions
This study was devoted to an examination of the internal functional architecture of nominals under the following viewpoint: what we think of as the
syntactic categories N, V and A are actually morphological categories created
by the syntax, i.e. post-syntactically realized. Certain functional heads play a
central role in dening a domain for syntax and for phonological and semantic
interpretation. It is syntax that creates the words, and it is syntax that makes
sense of the constraints on word formation.
My main results can be summarized as follows. Functional projections fully
determine the categorial status of lexical projections (Marantz 1997), and not
vice versa. The behavior and appearance of verbs/nominals/participles follows
from general processes operating in specic syntactic structures, and both are
linked to the presence or absence of functional layers and of their feature specication (T, D, Aspect, v). The categorical distinction on the basis of primitive
features was replaced by a system where such distinctions are dened by functional heads.
Moreover, I showed that nominals/participles split into several types depending on whether they include certain layers of functional structure, e.g. light
v and Aspect, Number and D, or not and depending on the feature specication of these projections. Importantly, the study established a typology of derivational processes denoting events in terms of functional architecture. In fact
not only do dierent type of nominals arise depending on the feature specication and presence vs. absence of functional heads, but also dierent clauses and
dierent language types (Chapter 5).
Concerning the distinction between process and result nominals, I argued
that while result nominals are inserted directly under nominal projections,
event nominals of the destruction type include a set of verbal functional projections, namely AspP and a vP of the type that does not license an external argument (cf. 1). The presence of AspP explains the aspectual properties that these
nominals have been argued to possess (cf. Grimshaw 1990). The presence of vP
accounts for the eventive reading of these nominals.
(1)
DP
FP (NumbP/AgrP)
D
the
AP
FP
F AspectP
Aspect
Aspect
vP
v
LP
L
Comp (=theme)
DESTROY the city
On my proposal, LP is included in the internal structure of result nominals as
well, meaning that both result and process nominals can have complements. In
other words, the crucial dierence between the two groups of nouns lies on the
presence of functional layers that are responsible for event interpretation within
event/process nouns and the lack thereof from result nominals.
A great deal of the discussion in Chapter 4 concentrated on showing how
variation dependent on the number and the type of the functional layers given
in (1) is responsible for the various nominalization types across languages and
within a language.
The second goal of my investigation was to pursue the hypothesis that aspects of the syntax of DPs of nominative-accusative languages are strikingly
similar to aspects of the syntax of ergative languages. Specically, after identifying the functional layers which should be assumed within process nominals
(Chapter 2), and showing that process nominals are actually intransitive (Chapter 3), I argued in Chapter 5 that the Case patterns in process nominalizations
in NA languages of the type the destruction of the city by John mirror those of
E languages, in the sense that the nominalization string constitutes an ergative
pattern. I proposed that this parallelism can be explained in terms of a common underlying structure. The unifying point was the proposal that both
nominalizations in N/A languages and E languages are in fact unaccusative
systems. This view was in agreement with one of the views on ergativity that
have been proposed in the recent literature. In both contexts, the by-phrase and
Conclusion
the ergative phrase respectively were analyzed on a par as instantiations of

deep-causers/instrumental phrases (Chapter 3). Chapter 5 also oered some
remarks against the one to one link between projections and case features
couched within the framework of Marantz (1991).
Furthermore, in Chapter 5 the Inuit transitive construction was related to
the transitive nominalization patterns found in English, e.g. Johns destruction
of the city. In fact both constructions involving possessor Agents and those involving PP Agents in ergative languages were examined to the extent that they
are related to nominalization patterns. Given that such patterns are found in
the perfect tense in several languages, it was suggested that perfect formation
across languages depends on the means the individual languages have to express
the nominal pattern in general. An analysis of ergative splits was suggested,
which capitalizes on the variation related to the feature specication of functional heads that build the functional architecture of the clause in each case.
In sum, I hope to have shown how the dierences and similarities among
the various (nominalization) patterns across languages follow from dierences
in the functional architecture and how nominalized clauses in turn interact
with the syntax of the perfect and that of ergative languages. I also hope to have
made a convincing case for the claim that there are no dierences between
word formation and syntax. Evidently, several problems have not been addressed and certain issues and questions arise from my analysis. Pursuing them
goes well beyond the scope of this study. Hopefully they will be addressed in
further research.
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Index
adjective 7, 68, 69, 123, 128, 130
agentive 41
aspectual 41, 44, 129
classifying 30
ethnic 91, 103
group 104
intersective 162, 166
thematic 30, 106
possessive 139, 156, 139, 147, 157
predicate 69
referential 91, 98, 103, 104, 105, 107
adverbs 14, 15, 16, 24, 47, 49, 56, 57, 61, 68,
69, 127, 136, 158, 159, 160, 162, 163
Aectedness 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 100,
101, 122, 166
Agent 7, 11, 12, 17, 18, 21, 37, 38, 40, 54, 55,
77 ., 88 ., 102, 103, 108, 110 ., 124,
125, 130, 138 ., 150, 152 ., 160, 163,
165, 166, 168, 170 ., 182, 185 ., 195,
200, 201, 204 .
agreement 29, 68, 69, 169, 171,180, 181, 186,
204, 207, 208
assignment 68, 69
participial 183, 204
phrase 179
Aktionsart 18, 189, 192
Ancient Greek 43, 122, 185
Arabic 27, 77, 88, 163, 165
argument 14, 15, 19, 43, 87, 90, 98, 99, 145,
146, 148, 150, 168, 174, 176, 199
actor 181
agent 40, 54, 81, 113, 188, 124, 125, 154,
173 (see also agent)
across Tenses 191
deep Agents 198
in passives 200
dative 178
event 12, 13
external 17, 18, 23, 24, 56, 84, 107, 108,
109, 111, 112, 113, 115, 115, 116, 117,
118, 119, 120, 140, 142, 187
and Aktionsart 189
genitive 38, 39, 42, 71, 141, 161 (see also
genitive)
goal 44, 45, 114
holder 188
internal 11, 20, 47, 86, 89, 100, 101 104,
105
implicit 110
movement 60, 61
in perfect passives 193

possessor 147
referential 13
structure 9, 10, 37
licensing of 16, 17, 59, 66, 67
change 175
theme 42, 44, 45, 54, 58, 78, 79, 85, 88, 122,
147, 168, 183
movement of 148
in -er nominals 129
Aspect 6, 27, 57, 58, 101, 157, 162, 175, 177,
178, 179, 182, 184, 185, 191, 204, 208,
211
imperfective 50,52, 86, 184
perfective 50,52, 86, 101, 184
phrase 16, 17, 19, 33, 47, 49, 50, 52, 57, 59,
61, 63, 66, 67, 71, 72, 115, 121, 122,
128, 130, 131, 133, 165, 177, 202, 204
Aspectual Hypothesis 42
aspectual 49, 115, 134
durative 134
frequency 48
interval denoting 48
manner 48, 49, 58, 87, 113, 115, 129, 130,
134, 200, 201, 202
modal 48
temporal 48, 71
speaker-oriented 48
Atomicity Thesis 3
auxiliary selection 183, 188, 191, 192, 194,
196, 197, 198, 204, 207
Berber 164
Bulgarian 183, 184, 193, 194
Burzios Generalization 18, 114, 124, 140, 142
Case:
absolutive 167, 169
binding 205
ergative 169,192
as a lexical case 169, 170, 171
features 17
genitive: as a structural case 173, 174, 175
inherent 138, 140, 174
as a last resort 206
parameter 205
possessor 191
realization disjunction hierarchy 176
Catalan 13, 46, 71, 73, 77, 81, 82, 83, 84, 106,
120, 122, 151, 152
Index
Chinese 48, 165

constant 3, 67, 78, 104, 129, 152, 175
control 12, 98, 101, 105, 111, 195, 197
dative alternation 43
determiner:
denite 65
in gerunds 136
in innitives 158
phrase 1, 28, 29
A vs. A status of 31, 32, 155, 156
spreading 107
double object verbs 43, 44, 71, 101, 114, 187,
203, 207
ergativity 1, 19, 21, 25, 167, 168, 169, 179,
197, 204, 205, 206, 212
features 3, 4, 6, 8, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 34, 55,
60, 67, 69, 71, 74, 75, 113, 119, 123,
130, 162, 165, 176, 177, 178, 211, 213
morphological 6
syntactic-semantic 6
Finnish 206
French 13, 14, 64, 77, 83, 91, 97, 103, 104,
124, 146, 151, 189, 195, 197
inection class 70
instrument 77, 125, 154
Internal Ergative Subject Hypothesis 172
Inuit 51, 170, 180, 213
Irish 141, 142, 161, 183, 193, 207, 208
Italian 23, 30, 35, 64, 71, 77, 83, 84, 85, 94,
103, 116, 117, 120, 123, 139, 146, 158,
159, 161, 183, 191
Lexical Integrity Hypothesis 3
lexicon 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 23
Maya 162
Mechanical Case Parameter 176
Mirror Principle 65
modier 12
agent-oriented 11
aspectual 11, 39, 82, 85, 99, 106, 129, 150
punctual 99
extensional vs. intensional 73, 149
Morphological Structure 6, 67
processes in 67, 68, 69
Halkomelem 64, 65
Hebrew 15, 16, 24, 27, 29, 48, 52, 77, 81, 87, 88,
110, 111, 117, 120, 137 ., 163, 164, 165
Hindi 171, 183, 187, 191, 193, 197
Hixkaryana 110
Hungarian 23, 29, 32, 33, 77, 89, 90, 103, 155,
156, 175, 178, 179
Hupa 189
nominalization 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 15 ., 42, 52,

54 ., 66, 71, 73, 77, 83, 107 ., 118,
120, 121, 124, 127, 128, 140, 162, 167,
173, 179, 197, 198, 212, 213
mixed 1, 3
transitive 80, 146, 154, 156, 157, 191, 194
nominals:
accusative case in 15, 16, 138, 139
adverbs in 15, 16, 47, 48, 49 (see also adverbs)
as ergative contructions 112, 167
ECM in 59, 60, 61
-er 24, 128, 129, 130
event 9, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89
complex 9
expletives in 30, 60
focus movement in 32, 33, 155
passive 52, 90, 91, 92, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99,
100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107,
109, 110, 166, 181
plural 72
process 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19,
20, 111, 166
VP node in 14, 15, 59, 73
raising in 30, 60
result 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18,
19, 20
tense in 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 71
wh-movement in 32, 33, 155
number phrase 29, 131, 137, 177, 17
Icelandic 80, 139, 170, 171, 178

incorporation
noun 165
preposition 5, 192, 193, 195, 197, 208
Old English 183, 195, 208

Old German 183
Old French 195
Old Persian 185
gender phrase 29
gender 6, 29, 33, 34, 36, 67, 68, 70, 162, 194
genitive 32, 34, 36, 38 ., 45, 46, 54, 59, 71,
77 ., 96, 101 ., 114, 117, 118, 120, 122,
123, 135 ., 155, 160 ., 185 ., 205 .
Georgian 186, 187, 190, 191
German 23, 51, 64, 69, 71, 72, 77, 80, 81, 103,
105, 116, 120, 122, 125, 139, 142, 144,
145, 146, 154, 158, 160, 164, 183, 192,
196, 200, 203, 206, 207
gerund 1, 2, 22, 135, 136, 161, 164
Greek 15, 16, 21 ., 27, 30 ., 64, 70 ., 80, 81,
84 ., 91, 94 ., 114, 117, 120 ., 127,
128, 129, 133, 134, 137, 144 ., 155,
156, 157, 162, 163, 165, 166, 170, 174,
182, 184, 185, 186, 196, 197, 201, 204,
206, 208
Index
passive 18, 22 ., 39, 42, 50, 52, 71, 73, 83, 84,
85, 87, 105, 107, 108, 168, 171, 173,
185, 186, 187, 191, 195, 197, 198 (see
also passive nominals)
adjectival 4, 199, 199, 200, 201, 206, 207,
208
agent 119
participle 131
perfective 193,
verbal 4, 107, 108, 115, 116, 117, 118, 199,
200, 201, 206, 207, 208
perfect 22, 50, 71, 170, 179, 181, 182, 183,
184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191,
192, 193, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 201,
202, 203, 204, 208, 213
Polish 50, 77, 86, 87, 131, 132, 134
possessive constructions 179, 207
possessor subject 186, 194, 195
predicate 2, 12, 18, 23, 85, 93, 100, 102, 108,
113, 114, 119 ., 128, 133, 134, 136,
144, 146, 152, 153, 156, 160, 182, 183,
189, 190 ., 206
ditransitive 42, 43
psychological 45, 46, 47
unaccusative 40, 41, 42, 78
putative 141, 142
salient 141, 142
transitive 38, 39
unergative 40, 41, 42
Projection Principle 60, 73, 106, 175

root 7, 8, 23, 37, 55, 56, 58, 63, 67, 69, 75,
100, 102, 113, 116, 118, 127, 130, 136,
154, 162, 167, 172, 174, 198, 208
Russian 24, 77, 85, 86, 87, 117, 124, 125, 131,
132, 134, 152, 175, 186, 207
Small clause 179, 195, 208, 209
Somali 64, 65
Spanish 34, 64, 70, 77, 83, 96, 97, 117, 118,
121, 122, 139, 143, 164, 165, 166, 185,
197
Squamish 143, 165
Tense 6, 8, 19, 25, 29, 33, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64,
65, 68, 69, 71, 75, 128, 144, 177, 178,
184, 185, 186, 187, 191, 192, 193, 196,
198, 204, 213
chain 61
Theme 2, 6, 24, 39, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 54,
77 ., 84 ., 95, 96, 98, 101, 102, 114,
118 ., 125, 139 ., 145 ., 150, 154,
160, 164, 165, 168, 172 ., 181, 183,
204 ., (see also argument)
Tonga 167
Turkish 50, 51, 103, 124, 128, 164
Voice Phrase 27, 33, 49
In the series LINGUISTIK AKTUELL/LINGUISTICS TODAY (LA) the following titles

have been published thus far, or are scheduled for publication:
1. KLAPPENBACH, Ruth (1911-1977): Studien zur Modernen Deutschen Lexikographie.
Auswahl aus den Lexikographischen Arbeiten von Ruth Klappenbach, erweitert um drei
Beitrge von Helene Malige-Klappenbach. 1980.
2. EHLICH, Konrad & Jochen REHBEIN: Augenkommunikation. Methodenreflexion und
Beispielanalyse. 1982.
3. ABRAHAM, Werner (ed.): On the Formal Syntax of the Westgermania. Papers from
the 3rd Groningen Grammar Talks (3e Groninger Grammatikgesprche), Groningen,
January 1981. 1983.
4. ABRAHAM, Werner & Sjaak De MEIJ (eds): Topic, Focus and Configurationality.
Papers from the 6th Groningen Grammar Talks, Groningen, 1984. 1986.
5. GREWENDORF, Gnther and Wolfgang STERNEFELD (eds): Scrambling and Barriers. 1990.
6. BHATT, Christa, Elisabeth LBEL and Claudia SCHMIDT (eds): Syntactic Phrase
Structure Phenomena in Noun Phrases and Sentences. 1989.
7. FARLI, Tor A.: The Syntax of Norwegian Passive Constructions. 1992.
8. FANSELOW, Gisbert (ed.): The Parametrization of Universal Grammar. 1993.
9. GELDEREN, Elly van: The Rise of Functional Categories. 1993.
10. CINQUE, Guglielmo and Guiliana GIUSTI (eds): Advances in Roumanian Linguistics.
1995.
11. LUTZ, Uli and Jrgen PAFEL (eds): On Extraction and Extraposition in German. 1995.
12. ABRAHAM, W., S. EPSTEIN, H. THRINSSON and C.J.W. ZWART (eds): Minimal
Ideas. Linguistic studies in the minimalist framework. 1996.
13. ALEXIADOU Artemis and T. Alan HALL (eds): Studies on Universal Grammar and
Typological Variation. 1997.
14. ANAGNOSTOPOULOU, Elena, Henk VAN RIEMSDIJK and Frans ZWARTS (eds):
Materials on Left Dislocation. 1997.
15. ROHRBACHER, Bernhard Wolfgang: Morphology-Driven Syntax. A theory of V to I
raising and pro-drop. 1999.
16. LIU, FENG-HSI: Scope and Specificity. 1997.
17. BEERMAN, Dorothee, David LEBLANC and Henk van RIEMSDIJK (eds): Rightward
Movement. 1997.
18. ALEXIADOU, Artemis: Adverb Placement. A case study in antisymmetric syntax.
1997.
19. JOSEFSSON, Gunlg: Minimal Words in a Minimal Syntax. Word formation in Swedish. 1998.
20. LAENZLINGER, Christopher: Comparative Studies in Word Order Variation. Adverbs, pronouns, and clause structure in Romance and Germanic. 1998.
21. KLEIN, Henny: Adverbs of Degree in Dutch and Related Languages. 1998.
22. ALEXIADOU, Artemis and Chris WILDER (eds): Possessors, Predicates and Movement in the Determiner Phrase. 1998.
23. GIANNAKIDOU, Anastasia: Polarity Sensitivity as (Non)Veridical Dependency. 1998.
24. REBUSCHI, Georges and Laurice TULLER (eds): The Grammar of Focus. 1999.
25. FELSER, Claudia: Verbal Complement Clauses. A minimalist study of direct perception
constructions. 1999.
26. ACKEMA, Peter: Issues in Morphosyntax. 1999.

27. RUZICKA,
Rudolf: Control in Grammar and Pragmatics. A cross-linguistic study.
1999.
28. HERMANS, Ben and Marc van OOSTENDORP (eds.): The Derivational Residue in
Phonological Optimality Theory. 1999.
29. MIYAMOTO, Tadao: The Light Verb Construction in Japanese. The role of the verbal
noun. 1999.
30. BEUKEMA, Frits and Marcel den DIKKEN (eds.): Clitic Phenomena in European
Languages. 2000.
31. SVENONIUS, Peter (ed.): The Derivation of VO and OV. 2000.
32. ALEXIADOU, Artemis, Paul LAW, Andr MEINUNGER and Chris WILDER (eds.):
The Syntax of Relative Clauses. 2000.
33. PUSKS, Genoveva: Word Order in Hungarian. The syntax of -positions. 2000.
34. REULAND, Eric (ed.): Arguments and Case. Explaining Burzios Generalization.
2000.
35. HRARSDTTIR, Thorbjrg. Word Order Change in Icelandic. From OV to VO.
2000.
36. GERLACH, Birgit and Janet GRIJZENHOUT (eds.): Clitics in Phonology, Morphology and Syntax. 2000.
37. LUTZ, Uli, Gereon MLLER and Arnim von STECHOW (eds.): Wh-Scope Marking.
2000.
38. MEINUNGER, Andr: Syntactic Aspects of Topic and Comment. 2000.
39. GELDEREN, Elly van: A History of English Reflexive Pronouns. Person, Self, and
Interpretability. 2000.
40. HOEKSEMA, Jack, Hotze RULLMANN, Victor SANCHEZ-VALENCIA and Ton
van der WOUDEN (eds.): Perspectives on Negation and Polarity Items. 2001.
41. ZELLER, Jochen : Particle Verbs and Local Domains. n.y.p.
42. ALEXIADOU, Artemis : Functional Structure in Nominals. Nominalization and
ergativity. 2001.
43. FEATHERSTON, Sam: Empty Categories in Sentence Processing. 2001.
44. TAYLAN, Eser E. (ed.): The Verb in Turkish. n.y.p.
45. ABRAHAM, Werner and C. Jan-Wouter ZWART (eds.): Issues in Formal German(ic)
Typology. n.y.p
46. PANAGIOTIDIS, Phoevos: Pronouns, clitics and Empty Nouns. Pronominality and
licensing in syntax. n.y.p.

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<DOCINFO

TITLE "Functional Structure in Nominals: Nominalization and ergativity"

SUBJECT "Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, Volume 42"

SIZE HEIGHT "220"

Functional Structure in Nominals

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today

Advisory Editorial Board

John Benjamins Publishing Company

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

2001 John Benjamins B.V.

This book is based on my Habilitationsschrift Post-doctoral thesis On the

Some theoretical and methodological preliminaries

. Verbs and deverbal nominals in English

Native speakers of English perceive the nominals in these examples as being

Functional structure in nominals

(4) The barbarians destroyed the city.

Furthermore, morphological -ing axation is transparent only in gerunds.

(8) a. I learned about Johns smoking stogies

However, it remains a matter of controversy whether the structure of derived

Functional structure in nominals

structure and the relation of these features to the internal composition

The highlighted applicative morpheme in the (b) sentence is associated with

Functional structure in nominals

to as Distributed Morphology (DM), but see e.g. Schoorlemmer (1995),

Following Chomsky (1998), it is assumed that Universal Grammar (UG)

On such an approach, functional heads fully determine the category of a lexical

Functional structure in nominals

According to Marantz, correlations among phonological, syntactic and

exist only at a supercial level enables us to readily capture this property.

. An ambiguity in the nominal system

Functional structure in nominals

Functional structure in nominals

the frequent examination of the papers

(24a) is grammatical if the NP is interpreted as a possessive modier. But if

In the next subsection I briey review previous analyses of the dierences

la discussi de les dades va durar tot el dia

(28a) clearly involves a process nominal, as expressions denoting events or

Functional structure in nominals

la prsentation de livres de ce journaliste est toujours rane

(30) a. Their conclusion that there is no relevant data.

In the French example in (29a) the noun presentation is thematically related to

There are languages, however, in which modication of a nominal by

i katastro ton egrafon

Functional structure in nominals

. The ne structure of process nominals: a rst encounter

included in the nominal structure is responsible for the various types of

I take the following properties to be associated with the functional heads

is the locus of agentivity, i.e. it contains features relevant to the licensing

Functional structure in nominals

while the lower VP rootP contributes information not related to eventiveness

nominalizations and patterns of ergativity there is only one syntactic argument

Functional structure in nominals

. Nominalization patterns across languages

While (37) is grammatical in English, it is ungrammatical in Greek. In

Functional structure in nominals

process nominals are actually unaccusative/ergative constructions and discusses

romp + ere (break, causative)

Functional structure in nominals

??the protection of the children completely

constructions in a nominative/accusative language. Thus, passive constructions were

The Functional Architecture of

. NPs are dominated by D