Nominalization In Latin

This book investigates the properties of Latin nouns that have a systematic correspondence with a clause structure - referred to as verbal nouns - on the basis of data from a range of text types, both narrative and technical. Olga Spevak explores the much-debated concepts of 'abstract nouns' in general and 'verbal derivatives' in particular, and shows that syntactic parameters are helpful in establishing a better classification for what have traditionally been called nomina actionis. She adopts a descriptive approach and provides methods and criteria for identifying these nouns and for distinguishing them from nouns with concrete reference. This distinction is important both for a full understanding of Latin texts and for the presentation of the words themselves in dictionaries. The analysis reveals that verbal nouns, gerunds, gerundives, participles in participial clauses, and in part also infinitives, are competing expressions with a low degree of 'sententiality'; they serve to condense clausal expressions, to varying extents, and they form a system in which the elements are partly overlapping and partly complementary. The fact that Latin does not have a verbal noun available for every verb can therefore be understood as simply a facet of this complex system.

The book presents a systematic theoretical account of the fundamental constructional mechanisms that underlie deverbal nominalization in general, and it makes an original descriptive contribution by discussing a number of nominalization systems in detail. The main theoretical motif is that nominalization strongly calls for a functional rather than purely structural approach. The book goes more deeply into a number of functional constructs needed to model nominalization (drawn from Cognitive Grammar and Systemic-Functional Grammar) and it elaborates on the internal functional organization of nominal and clausal structure [e.g. the notions of type specification, instantiation and grounding (Langacker 1991) are discussed in detail and shown to be crucial for the analysis of deverbal nominalization]. It is argued that deverbal nominalizations are basically re-classifications of verbal predicates into nominal constructions. This re-classification either applies at word rank or it involves the rank shift (Halliday 1966) of a clause-like unit, with its internal structure preserved (e.g. signing the contract quickly). The re-classified unit then adopts a specific nominal strategy, with some form of nominal determination and quantification (e.g. her signing the contract quickly). The descriptive part of the book zooms in on nominalizations that are derived at word rank (deverbal -er nominals) and on nominalizations applying to 'a temporal clausal heads' (e.g. John's playing the piano) and finite clauses. Of the gerundive and finite types of nominalization, those that function in factive contexts are focused on. In the analysis of deverbal -er nominals a case is made for a 'subject' analysis of the system and an elaborate discussion of the clausal middle construction (e.g. this book reads easily) - which is argued to show systematic resemblances with non-agentive -er nominals - is included. Of the remaining nominalization types (John's playing the piano; playing the piano; the fact that he plays the piano; that he plays the piano ), especially the nominal behaviour (e.g. proper name vs. common noun strategy) and (in the case of gerundive nominals) the various structural and semantic subtypes that can be distinguished among them are discussed.

Recent scholarship has confirmed earlier observations that nominalization plays a crucial role in the formation of complex constructions in the world’s languages. Grammatical nominalizations are one of the most salient and widespread features of languages of the Americas, yet they have not been approached as foundational grammatical structures for constructions such as relative clauses and complement clauses. This is due to an imbalance in past scholarship, which has tended to focus on these constructions at the expense of the nominalization structures underlying them. The papers in this collection treat grammatical nominalizations in their own right, and as a starting point for the investigation of their uses in complex grammatical structures. A representative sample of Amerindian languages, with focus on South America, examines properties of grammatical nominalizations such as their multiple functions, their internal and external syntax, and their diachronic development. Among the far-reaching theoretical conclusions reached by the studies in this volume is that the various types of relative clauses recognized in the typological literature are actually no more than epiphenomena arising from the different uses of grammatical nominalizations.

The volume explores the semantics of nominalizations from different theoretical points of view: formal and lexical semantics, cognitive-functional grammar, lexical-functional grammar, discourse representation theory. Data from a variety of languages are taken into account, including Hungarian, Italian, French, German and English. The papers discuss the semantics of distinct readings of nominalizations and meaning differences observed between competing affixes.

With contributions by R. Amacker, C. Bodelot, P. Carvalho, W. Dressler, G. Haverlin, R. Maltby

The collection of articles presented in this volume addresses a number of general theoretical, methodological and empirical issues in the field of Historical Linguistics, in different levels of analysis and on different themes: (i) phonology, (ii) morphology, (iii) morphosyntax, (iv) syntax, (v) diachronic typology, (vi) semantics and pragmatics, and (vii) language contact, variation and diffusion. The topics discussed, often in a comparative perspective, feature a variety of languages and language families and cover a wide range of research areas. Novel analyses and often new diachronic data — also from less known and under-investigated languages — are provided to the debate on the principles, mechanisms, paths and models of language change, as well as the relationship between synchronic variation and diachrony. The volume is of interest to scholars of different persuasions working on all aspects of language change.