English Nouns
The Ecology of Nominalization

English Nouns explores the mechanisms by which English nominalizations come to have a variety of readings depending on their syntactic context.

Rochelle Lieber (Author)

9781107161375, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 September 2016

206 pages
23.5 x 16.9 x 1.5 cm, 0.43 kg

Using extensive data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (Davies, 2008), this groundbreaking book shows that the syntactic patterns in which English nominalizations can be found and the range of possible readings they can express are very different from what has been claimed in past theoretical treatments, and therefore that previous treatments cannot be correct. Lieber argues that the relationship between form and meaning in the nominalization processes of English is virtually never one-to-one, but rather forms a complex web that can be likened to a derivational ecosystem. Using the Lexical Semantic Framework (LSF), she develops an analysis that captures the interrelatedness and context dependence of nominal readings, and suggests that the key to the behavior of nominalizations is that their underlying semantic representations are underspecified in specific ways and that their ultimate interpretation must be fixed in context using processes available within the LSF.

Part I. Preliminaries: 1. Introduction
2. Terminology and methodology: 2.1 Terminology
2.2 Methodology
Part II. Data: 3. Event/result nominalizations: 3.1 Previous claims
3.2 Nineteen questions
3.3 Adding it all up
4. Nominalizations as a derivational ecosystem: 4.1 The derivational ecosystem
4.2 Forms and readings
4.3 Inanimate patient nouns
4.4 Conclusion
Part III. Nominalization within the LSF: 5. A lexical semantic approach to nominalization: the basics: 5.1 Recap of the LSF
5.2 E versus R skeletons: a first pass
6. The eventive reading: 6.1 ATK nominalizations with the eventive reading
6.2 -ing nominalizations
6.3 Conversion nouns
6.4 A note on simplex nouns
6.5 Conclusion
7. Referential readings: 7.1 Basic skeletons
7.2 Referential readings for ATK, -ing, and conversion Ns
7.3 Personal and participant nominalizations
7.4 Abstract nominalizations
7.5 Collectives
7.6 Underpopulated habitats
7.7 Modal and evaluative elements of affixal meaning
7.8 Conclusion
8. Nominalizations and compounding in the LSF: 8.1 Claims
8.2 The corpus data
8.3 The LSF analysis
8.4 Conclusions and loose ends
9. Nouns in the wild.

Subject Areas: Lexicography [CFM], Grammar, syntax & morphology [CFK], Semantics, discourse analysis, etc [CFG], Literacy [CFC], Linguistics [CF]