Malagasy fact- and claim-type nominals

Malagasy has two characteristics that are interesting for a study of nominalizations: (i) one expresses ‘the fact that x’ with a nominalized form of the verb used when an adjunct is extracted, (ii) non-derived nominals expressing notions such as ‘the idea’ or ‘the statement’ cannot take CP complements directly. We explore these facts within the context of Kayne’s claim that nouns cannot take complements and that apparent CP complements are relative clauses. We suggest (i) that the verb form used to express ‘the fact that x’ is created through adjunct relativization, and (ii) that nouns in Malagasy may only take CP complements if either they are derived from verbs or if the sentential complements contain a verb-like head.