Abstract
In this paper we will investigate the nature of deverbal nominals across languages. Deverbal nouns are typically classified according to their word-formation model: affixation and conver-sion. Our study will compare the word formation of deverbal nominals in Slavic (Croatian, Slovenian and Polish) and Romance languages (Italian, French and Spanish) in order to show (i) that affixation corresponds to a specific mode of morphological operations and (ii) that the differences and similarities between deverbal nominals of these two language families follow from the properties of the base verbs. Furthermore, our analysis will try to shed some light on the distinction between nouns and verbs. The paper comprises three major thematic parts. The first part briefly reviews the basic notions and theoretical assumptions of Generative Grammar regarding word formation. We have especially tried to explain those notions that we draw from Distributed Morphology. This part further exposes the theoretical framework that is used in this paper. In the second part, deverbal nominals in Slavic languages are analysed and de-scribed. We primarily investigate the Slavic languages, since in these languages morphology plays a larger role in the construction of deverbal nouns. The third part contains an investiga-tion of the phrasal structure of nominalizations across the Romance languages. We close the work with a general conclusion about the behaviour of deverbal nouns in these two groups of languages. We concentrate mainly on the differences between the phrasal architecture of nom-inalizations and correspondent verbal constructions.
Highlights
In this chapter we expose the basic principles of the two main approaches to word formation found in Generative Grammar
Chomsky (1995: 130) assumes, in essence, that the output of some word-formation component consists of fully created lexical elements with a set of properties which may be relevant for syntax, but with an untransparent internal structure, these outputs must move through the syntactic tree (X-bartheoretical conditions) – i. e., this movement is not morphological in nature
We will start our discussion with the word formation of event/process and agentive nominals in Slavic languages because in these languages the verb shows greater morphological complexity than it does in the Romance languages
Summary
Chomsky (1995: 235–241; 2001: 7–10) believes that a classical perspective on the lexicon and lexical forms is more appropriate because dividing lexical categories into roots and functional heads complicates the description: “Functional categories lacking semantic features require complication of phrase structure theory [...]” (ibid.: 43). The basic differences between these two approaches (lexical and purely syntactic) include the atomicity of lexical forms at the syntactic level, the presence of phonological features as early as during lexical insertion, and the place of word-formation rules in the grammar. Chomsky (1995: 130) assumes, in essence, that the output of some word-formation component consists of fully created lexical elements with a set of properties which may be relevant for syntax, but with an untransparent internal structure, these outputs must move through the syntactic tree (X-bartheoretical conditions) – i. We tried to clarify the main notions and problems that are discussed in the rest of the article
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