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This study uses modern linguistic theory to analyze a frequently recurring syntactic phenomenon in the Hebrew Bible that has thus far resisted explanation: כי אם. The combination of the two particles כי and אם produces a construction that is notoriously difficult to describe, analyze syntactically, and translate. Dictionaries of Biblical Hebrew offer a dizzying variety of translations for this construction, including “that if,” “except,” “unless,” “but,” “but only,” and “surely,” among other possibilities. In this book, Grace J. Park provides a new approach that strives for greater precision and consistency in translation. Park argues that כי אם is used in three patterns: the “full focus” pattern, the “reduced focus” pattern, and the less common “non-focus” pattern. Her syntactic analysis of all 156 occurrences of the כי אם construction in the Bible lends greater clarity to the contested passages. Drawing on recent linguistic research into the typology of clausal nominalization as well as previous work on contrastive focus, this innovative project provides important new insight into the syntax of Biblical Hebrew. It will be especially valuable for scholars seeking to translate כי אם more consistently and accurately.

This paper investigates the relationship between infinitival nominalizations and analytical passives in Brazilian Portuguese. Taking Distributed Morphology as a theoretical framework (Halle & Marantz 1993; Marantz 1997), we propose a parallel structure for these formations based on the important similarities they present. Specifically, we propose that the derivation of both these structures includes a projection of a mixed nature, a Switch head (Panagiotidis 2015), which carries features of two different categories and thus can interrupt an extended projection and begin a new one. In this case, the Switch makes the originally verbal structure to become nominal. We argue that the distinction between nominal infinitives and passives is that in the former, the Switch carries an [N] feature, while in the latter, it brings an [A] feature to the structure. Infinitival nominalizations, thus, are formally nouns, as evidenced by their compatibility with determiners and different argument positions prototypically associated with nouns. In passives, this operation results in participles, which behave like adjectives: they do not admit a determiner, they have unvalued φ-features and they need a copular verb to be projected into a verbal structure.

In this paper I examine eleven different processes of deverbal nominalization in Runyankore, a Lacustrine Bantu language spoken in Uganda. After establishing both general and Runyankore-specific properties that distinguish nouns from verbs, I test each of these nominalizations against 13 phonological, morphological, and syntactic criteria. Although all eleven nominalization constructions can take the determiner-like initial vowel “augment”, and all can be derived from verb bases that include derivational suffixes (“extensions”), e.g. causative, applicative, and reciprocal, only some of the nominalizations allow a pronominal object prefix or a following noun phrase object or adverbial. The various properties are tabulated to show that the different nominalizations vary along a cline, meeting all, some, or none of the nine most discriminating criteria in defining “noun” vs. “verb”.

Finite clausal arguments differ from other arguments— and other CPs— in two fundamental ways: (a) they do not move leftward (Koster 1978, Alrenga 2005, Takahashi 2010, Moulton 2013) and (b) they may combine with nouns that do not accept arguments (Stowell 1981, Grimshaw 1990). I argue that finite clausal arguments are predicates of propositional content (type >), following proposals in Kratzer 2006, Moulton 2009. They combine with nouns by Predicate Modification, explaining (b). In order to complement verbs, CPs trigger two type-driven leftward movements (CP-movement and remnant AspPfronting). I argue that the resulting configuration prevents further leftward movement of clausal arguments, explaining (a). Also derived are the right-peripheral position of CPs relative to arguments and the verbal complex in Germanic, freezing effects in the VP, extraction from and binding into CPs, and the similarities and differences among CP argument extraposition, heavy NP shift, and relative clause extraposition. More broadly, the proposal demonstrates that copies can denote restricted variables, but need not be DPs (cf. Fox 2002, Takahashi 2010, Johnson 2012).

This article examines the way that critical discourse is written. It does so by considering the concept of nominalization. Critical discourse analysts have suggested that nominalization (along with passivization) has important ideological functions such as deleting agency and reifying processes. However, the language used by critical analysts, as they explore nominalization, is revealing. They tend to use, and thereby instantiate, the very forms of language whose ideological potentiality they are warning against — such as deleting agency, using passives and turning processes into entities. The concept of 'nominalization' is itself a nominalization; it is typically used in imprecise ways that fail to specify underlying processes. If critical analysts take seriously their own ideological warnings about nominalization and passivization, they need to change the standard ways of writing critical analysis. We need to use simpler, less technical prose that clearly ascribes actions to human agents.

The aim of this paper is to analyze a type of Spanish (and Romance) complex locative non-directional prepositional expressions taking a genitive complement, like encima/cerca de (“on top/near of”). We will center our attention on an alternation that has gone unnoticed by most theoretical and descriptive grammars: this genitive complement may appear as an argument of the main predicate and show dative case (se sentó encima de Juan, “(S)he sat on top of Juan” > se le sentó encima, “Lit. (S)he DAT sat on top”). Most of these complex PPs may correspond to what has been called ‘Axial Parts’ (Svenonius 2006, 2008), but the paradigm extends to other cases. Based on work by Larson and Samiian (2021) on the typology of nominalization in prepositions in Iranian Persian, we show that the common property of these prepositional expressions is that they contain a nominal element: a relational noun or a nominalized preposition. Apart from the dative alternation, one of the properties shown by complex locative prepositions in Spanish is that a stressed postnominal possessive is allowed, which can be masculine or feminine, giving rise to dialectal variation: detrás mío/mía, Lit. “behind mine”, cerca mío/mía, Lit. “near mine”. We will show that what determines the gender of the possessive is the nominalizer and the level of grammaticalization of the nominal head.

Linguistic ontologists and antilinguistic, ‘serious’ ontologists both accept the inference from ‘Fido is a dog’ to ‘Fido has the property of being a dog’ but disagree about its ontological consequences. In arguing that we are committed to properties on the basis of these transformations, linguistic ontologists employ a neo-Fregean meta-ontological principle, on which the function of singular terms is to refer. To reject this, serious ontologists must defend an alternative. This paper defends an alternative on which the function of singular terms is not generally to refer and on which they are generally ontologically noncommittal. This is the best way to reject linguistic, ‘easy’ arguments for the existence of properties. The account recommends neutralism about quantification (drawing on Barcan Marcus and Meinongianism), coherently bringing together two important yet uncombined meta-ontological movements. Moreover, it employs Ramseyan insights about the transformations to provide a nonreductionist, non-error-theoretic redundancy approach to explicit talk about properties.

This paper investigates the relationship between infinitival nominalizations and analytical passives in Brazilian Portuguese. Taking Distributed Morphology as a theoretical framework (Halle & Marantz 1993; Marantz 1997), we propose a parallel structure for these formations based on the important similarities they present. Specifically, we propose that the derivation of both these structures includes a projection of a mixed nature, a Switch head (Panagiotidis 2015), which carries features of two different categories and thus can interrupt an extended projection and begin a new one. In this case, the Switch makes the originally verbal structure to become nominal. We argue that the distinction between nominal infinitives and passives is that in the former, the Switch carries an [N] feature, while in the latter, it brings an [A] feature to the structure. Infinitival nominalizations, thus, are formally nouns, as evidenced by their compatibility with determiners and different argument positions prototypically associated with nouns. In passives, this operation results in participles, which behave like adjectives: they do not admit a determiner, they have unvalued φ-features and they need a copular verb to be projected into a verbal structure.

This article examines the English suffix -ation within a hybrid Scenario Model (SM) and Relational Morphology (RM) framework. We claim that -ation lexicalizes a compact “event-plus-result mini-scenario inherited from Latin -ātiō. The derived noun thus evokes both the unfolding process and the state or product that follows it. Derivation begins with an SM filter. Only verbs that denote an extended activity naturally culminating in an outcome can host the suffix. Surviving candidates enter the RM network, where each verb family is represented by a mother schema containing open role variables. For -er, the mother schema consists of a single semantic variable. Speakers then freely instantiate it as Agent, Instrument, Location, and other participant roles, which explains the suffix’s broad semantic range. By contrast, -ation adds an intermediate Event mother schema whose only daughter is Result. Consequently, the lattice stops once the Process and its outcome are recorded. If a potential reading is already realized by an entrenched schema, RM records no additional -ation sister, leaving further readings idiosyncratic. The model also accounts for the rare Instrument and plantation-type -ation Location nouns. They arise through a metonymic hop from the Result node and persist only when no rival form occupies that semantic slot. KCI Citation Count: 0

This work is about verb nominalizations and the relation between these forms, the argument structure of their verbal bases, and verbs’ possible meanings. Since Chomsky’s seminal work (Chomsky, 1970), nominalizations have become a window to investigate fundamental aspects of argument structure and assess linguistic theory. Following such a tradition, adopting the framework of Distributed Morphology (Halle; Marantz, 1993; Marantz, 1997, 2013b) and using Brazilian Portuguese data, this paper explores typical nominal forms derived from various kinds of Brazilian Portuguese verbs to evaluate a specific proposal of constructionist argument structure theory found in Medeiros (2018). The BP data show that syntactic-semantic decompositions of verb phrases are at least partially preserved in their derived nominal forms in a very systematic manner, and that these forms maintain the complex structural meaning in all kinds of situations – even when these are interpreted as result nominals. This work also provides some innovative syntactic-semantic means to deal with result nominals interpreted as entities (as in the case of construção (construction)), showing how to obtain, compositionally, such entity readings, demonstrating that even in these cases there are clear reflexes of event meanings.