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Article published In: Language and Linguistics
Vol. 26:2 (2025) ► pp.355–385

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Structures under nominalization

A parametric variation in Mandarin and English

 | Nanjing University of Science and Technology
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 24 February 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00199.wan
Abstract
This paper means to make a comparative study of the nominals denoting an event in Mandarin and English. I propose that although English has three types of eventive nominals — simple event nominal, Referential (R-) nominal, and Argument Structure (AS-) nominal — Mandarin has only simple event nominals. The category shifting, which is required in the derivation of R-nominals and AS-nominals in English, is an operation unavailable in Mandarin, a result caused by the lack of categorial (c-) functors by assumption. I propose that a Mandarin eventive nominal enters syntax as a category-less root and immediately gets an N category by merging as the complement to a semantic (s-) functor from the extended projection of N. It thus projects no argument structure and undergoes no V-N shift, resulting in its incapability of taking post-nominal arguments. The DPs interpreted as arguments are merged external to the nominal and are thus flexible in terms of their thematic roles. The analysis shows that there is a parametric variation based on the inventory of c-functors between Mandarin and English.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1The Mandarin eventive nominals
    • 1.2The central claim
  • 2.The problems
    • 2.1The object position problem
    • 2.2The subject interpretation problem
    • 2.3The compositionality problem
    • 2.4Summary
  • 3.Theoretical basis and assumptions
    • 3.1Two types of functors
    • 3.2English derived nominals under XS-analysis
  • 4.Eventive nominals in Mandarin
    • 4.1The structure under nominalization
    • 4.2Solving the object position problem
    • 4.3Solving the compositionality problem
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • List of abbreviations
  • References
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