Verbal properties of deverbal nominals

Mehr zum Buch

Deverbal nominalisations and their syntactic and semantic properties are a significant focus in linguistics. This dissertation presents an aspectual analysis of these nominalisations, bridging lexicon, syntax, and morphology while integrating established theoretical frameworks. It introduces a compositional system for eventive noun phrases that merges the meanings of the base verb, its arguments, and the derivational suffix, thereby connecting various linguistic disciplines. The interaction of event nominals with their syntactic and semantic contexts is examined across three languages: French, German, and English. The initial chapters survey current linguistic theories on nominalisations in diverse languages. The third chapter highlights the complexities of the French nominalisation system through both quantitative and qualitative corpus analysis, discussing neologisms and their contexts. Chapters four and five present the semantic composition system for eventive noun phrases, exploring different classes of base verbs and types of verbal arguments. Chapter six addresses structural borrowing from English into French and German, questioning whether the aspectual properties of foreign suffixes can be preserved in the target language. The concluding chapter summarizes the findings and connects them to other established theories in the field.