Scaling the variation in Romance and Germanic nominalizations

We investigate the distribution of verbal and nominal layers in Romance and Germanic nominalizations. Specifically, we examine pairs of ‘verbal’ vs. ‘nominal’ nominalizations in two Romance (Spanish & Romanian) and two Germanic (English & German) languages. Our study proposes a large spectrum of nominal and verbal properties. While these are differently instantiated among languages, the variation we find cannot be attributed to a Germanic vs. Romance parameter; instead, we find micro-variation constrained by the compatibility between the general building blocks of verbal and nominal categories. Besides the vP-layers responsible for argument structure and Aktionsart and the DP-layer responsible for the nominal external syntax, we make a case for further functional verbal and nominal layers in nominalizations: Asp(ect)P, Class(ifier)P, and Num(ber)P. These projections are in complementary distribution in some languages and co-occur in others.