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In:Noun Valency
Edited by Olga Spevak
[Studies in Language Companion Series 158] 2014
► pp. 89–112

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Chapter 4. Case assignment, aspect, and (non-)expression of patients

A study of the internal structure of Czech verbal nouns

 | Rutgers University
Published online: 19 June 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.158.04dvo
After reviewing various surface realizations of agents, patients and goals in Czech nominalizations, I present a syntactic analysis which straightforwardly accounts for the case form of these arguments, based on the well-known idea in the literature that nouns can share with verbs a substantive part of the extended verbal projection. Moreover, both imperfective verbs and nouns can combine with null existentially interpreted patients while neither perfective verbs nor perfective nouns allow them. I explain this as the interaction of the properties of verbal Aspect/Quantity category and the missing number projection of implicit patients. Finally, I show that only nominals (regardless of their aspectual value) but not verbs can combine with null patients referring to an entity from the previous discourse.
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