Abstract
AbstractThe paper presents the results of a study investigating a possible influence of the viewpoint (perfective vs. imperfective) and lexical (telic vs. atelic) aspect of Polish verbs on the countability of eventive nominalizations (substantiva verbalia) derived from these verbs. Polishsubstantiva verbaliapreserve many properties of the base verbs, including the eventive meaning and aspectual morphology. Native speakers of Polish rated the acceptability of nominalizations in count and mass contexts. An effect of both viewpoint and lexical aspect was found in mass contexts, where aspectually delimited (perfective, accomplishment) nominalizations were less acceptable than non-delimited (imperfective, state) nominalizations. In count contexts, only an effect of the lexical aspect was clearly present, with accomplishment nominalizations being more acceptable than state nominalizations. The nominalizations were overall rated as more natural in mass than count constructions, regardless of the aspect. The results indicate that aspect plays a role in establishing the countability of a word, but it does not fully determine it.
Highlights
Countability refers to a contrasting behavior of nouns in many languages
Nominalizations delimited in terms of the lexical aspect were rated as more “natural” than non-delimited nominalizations, but there was no difference for the viewpoint aspect
In an acceptability judgment study, participants rated nominalizations derived from aspectually delimited verbs as less natural in mass contexts than nominalizations derived from non-delimited verbs
Summary
Countability refers to a contrasting behavior of nouns in many languages. This phenomenon (under different names) has been extensively discussed by multiple scholars (Allan 1980; Chierchia 2010; Joosten 2003; Link 1983/2008; Pelletier 2009; Rothstein 2010). G. three cats), but they are not typically used with measuring phrases Mass nouns can naturally occur with measuring phrases G. one liter of water, three square meters of sand), but not with plural morphology G. #golds) or combined with numerals without any measuring phrase Count and mass nouns tend to be compatible with different quantifiers and determiners (compare every/each/#much/#little cat and #every/#each/much/little water)
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