Arguments and modifiers in deverbal nominals: Romanian Genitives and de-PPs

Elena Soare,Isabelle Roy

doi:10.5565/rev/isogloss.133

Abstract

This paper addresses the distribution of Genitives and PPs in deverbal nominalizations with a particular focus on Romanian -tor nominals that express agents, e.g., vânzător ‘seller’, and instruments, e.g., tocător ‘shredder’. The issue of the distribution of Genitives is central to understanding the argumental structure properties of deverbal nominalizations in Romanian, and cross-linguistically. Derived nominals expressing agents and instruments have been and continue to be the subject of much controversy in the literature with respect to whether they (or at least some of them) involve an argument structure. We argue that the existence of an argumental Genitive in Romanian provides strong support for views that propose that (at least a subclass of) agent nominals have argument-structure properties. However, we also show that a proper understanding of the distribution of Genitive case-marked complements and PPs bears upon their interpretive nature, and more particularly on their specific vs. non-specific interpretation.

Highlights

The goal of this paper is to address the distribution of argumental Genitives and PPs in Romanian deverbal -tor nominals as an insight into the argument structure properties of these nominal formations
Across the languages that have deverbal nominals, we find two possibilities to express arguments and modifiers of AS-Ns, namely with PPs or with Genitives: (8) a. [The enemy’s] destruction [of the city] [in two hours]
The absence of Genitive with dispositional agent -tor nominals follows from two factors: (i) non-specificity of the internal argument, which is realized as a bare nominal, and (ii) the impossibility to mark case on bare nominals

Summary

Introduction

In French, arguments of episodic and dispositional agent -eur AS-Ns are realized as de-PPs, to the modifiers with instruments (R-Ns) (12):. Since agent -tor nominals are AS-Ns and instrument -tor nominals are R-Ns (following the results of Roy & Soare 2020 for Romanian), we would expect argumental Genitives in the former case and not in the latter. Episodic agent nominals would project an internal argument, associated with Genitive case marking; while de-PPs in dispositional agents, as well as instruments, would no longer be internal arguments. We will argue that the correlation between case marking and specificity, together with the correlation between specific internal event and episodic reading derives, without resorting to any additional stipulations, the interpretive differences between episodic and dispositional agent nominals, as well as the restricted distribution of the Genitive. The mere existence of an argumental Genitive in Romanian -tor nominals argues against the Chomsky/Borer view that treats all individual-denoting nominals as R-Ns altogether

Genitive case and specificity

Argumental PPs in AS-Ns

Conclusion