Aspectual features and categorial shift
- The point of departure of this paper is the claim by Heyvaert, Maekelberghe & Buyle (2019) that the suffix -ing has no aspectual meaning in English gerunds. Rather, the interpretation of nominal and verbal gerunds depends, so they argue, on situation or viewpoint aspect, a claim that contradicts the wide-spread view that the aspectual meaning of English gerunds is brought about by the nominalizing suffix. The present paper addresses the issue from a comparative perspective, focusing on German ung-nominals: while they share aspectual features with their English counterparts, empirical evidence from productivity, distribution, and argument linking shows (i) that the derivational suffix -ung imposes aspectual restrictions on possible verb bases, and (ii) that with respect to argument linking, the deverbal nominal favors the state component of a complex event predicate over its process component. From the historical record of German, we learn that these aspectual restrictions do not hold for ung-nominals in earlier periods of German. WithThe point of departure of this paper is the claim by Heyvaert, Maekelberghe & Buyle (2019) that the suffix -ing has no aspectual meaning in English gerunds. Rather, the interpretation of nominal and verbal gerunds depends, so they argue, on situation or viewpoint aspect, a claim that contradicts the wide-spread view that the aspectual meaning of English gerunds is brought about by the nominalizing suffix. The present paper addresses the issue from a comparative perspective, focusing on German ung-nominals: while they share aspectual features with their English counterparts, empirical evidence from productivity, distribution, and argument linking shows (i) that the derivational suffix -ung imposes aspectual restrictions on possible verb bases, and (ii) that with respect to argument linking, the deverbal nominal favors the state component of a complex event predicate over its process component. From the historical record of German, we learn that these aspectual restrictions do not hold for ung-nominals in earlier periods of German. With the rise of aspectual restrictions, the nominalization pattern turns more nominal resulting in a position further towards the nominal end of the deverbalization continuum. It appears, then, that it is only in the historical pariods of German that ung-nominals pattern with English nominals as regards their aspectual features. Currently, German ung-nominals are more noun-like than nominal (and verbal) gerunds in English. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.…
Verfasserangaben: | Ulrike DemskeORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2018.08.006 |
ISSN: | 0388-0001 |
ISSN: | 1873-5746 |
Titel des übergeordneten Werks (Englisch): | Language sciences |
Untertitel (Englisch): | deverbal nominals in German and English |
Verlag: | Elsevier |
Verlagsort: | Oxford |
Publikationstyp: | Wissenschaftlicher Artikel |
Sprache: | Englisch |
Datum der Erstveröffentlichung: | 01.05.2019 |
Erscheinungsjahr: | 2019 |
Datum der Freischaltung: | 24.02.2021 |
Band: | 73 |
Seitenanzahl: | 12 |
Erste Seite: | 50 |
Letzte Seite: | 61 |
Organisationseinheiten: | Philosophische Fakultät / Institut für Germanistik |
DDC-Klassifikation: | 4 Sprache / 40 Sprache / 400 Sprache |
Peer Review: | Referiert |