Nominalization is not an unusual linguistic phenomenon in the languages of the world. As Crystal (Reference Crystal2008: 328) states, “nominalization refers to the process of forming a noun from some other word-class or, especially in classical transformational grammar, the derivation of a noun phrase from an underlying clause.” Because nominalizations seem to “be mixed in nature: part noun, part something else” (Paul, 2014, p. vii), they have attracted the attention of many linguists. This volume contains investigations of nominalization patterns across a wide range of languages, including Ojibwe, Blackfoot, Dënesųłıné, English, Malagasy, Lithuanian, and Halkomelem (Central Coast Salish). The main issues with which all the papers in this volume are concerned are the possible nominalization constructions and their distributional properties, exploring and interpreting the categorical status of nominalizations, and different degrees of nominality. Indeed, the book is intended to shed light on some complicated issues for linguists working in the areas of morphology, syntax, and semantics.
The volume has three parts in addition to an introduction by Ileana Paul. Part one, consisting of three articles, deals with the verbal structure inside nominalizations. Part two, also with three articles, focuses on the referent of nominalizations. Part three, containing two contributions, discusses the nature of the nominalizer, namely, ways of nominalization, including different derivations of nouns and varying degrees of nominality.
“Nominalizations in Ojibwe”, by Eric Mathieu, aims to explain nominalization processes in Ojibwe by examining result nominals and agent nominals. Mathieu tackles the puzzle mentioned in Harley (Reference Harley, Giannakidou and Rathert2009) for English nominalizations, which can be summed up as “meaning shifts from event to result readings do not affect the internal morphological structure of the nominalization” (p. 3), and demonstrates that there are no internal or external arguments in result nominals in spite of their transitive morphology. Furthermore, Mathieu shows that only some cases of agent nominalizations in Ojibwe are true nominalizations; other cases are not nominalizations per se, but rather full clauses.
Elizabeth Ritter, in “Nominalizing inner aspect: Evidence from Blackfoot”, examines the properties of Blackfoot abstract nominalization, which is one type of Blackfoot nominalization, enhancing our understanding of the parameters of nominalization and addressing the issues of selecting verbal category. The author provides data that seem to show that abstract nominalizations are nominalized I-AspPs (Inner Aspect Phrases), rather than IPs (Inflection Phrases), O-AspPs (Outer Aspect Phrases), or vPs (Verbal Phrases). Also, Ritter provides evidence that I-AspPs are clausal functional categories, which have participant-based substantive content (with person features rather than tense features).
Andrea Wilhelm's contribution, “Nominalization instead of Modification”, deals with nominalizations (many of which are nominalizations of full, finite clauses) in Dënesųłıné, a member of the Northern Dene branch of Athabaskan. Wilhelm investigates the role nominalizations play in the modification of nouns in Dënesųłıné, demonstrating that nominalizations have a similar function to that of most noun modifiers (adjectives and relative clauses) in this language. The author relies on Chierchia's (Reference Chierchia1998) nominal mapping parameter and argues that nouns in Dënesųłıné are type <e> entities and do not shift to the predicative type <e, t> in the process of derivation.
In “Assigning reference in clausal nominalizations”, Heather Bliss carries out a detailed description and analysis of two different kinds of clausal nominalizations in Blackfoot: bare nominalizations and hp-nominalizations (-hp being a suffix which signals clause type). The author points out that a nominalizing head as well as a nominalizing feature on a functional head can establish reference in nominalizations. Interestingly, bare nominalizations and hp-nominalizations differ in how they realize the nominalizing feature [N]. Thus, Bliss proposes that “[N] is realized on a Num (a nominal functional head) in bare nominalizations, while it is realized within the verbal constituent” (p. 115) in the hp-nominalizations.
Keir Moulton, in “Simple event nominalizations: Roots and their interpretation”, argues against what he terms the Blob Theory, a view that holds that “word meanings are nothing but unstructured, polysemous blobs of content, with no formal properties” (p. 119), which is expressed in Borer (Reference Borer2005), among others. He examines simple event nominalizations in English (e.g., There was constant jeering and interruption from the audience.) and demonstrates that while these have some features of event nominals, they are devoid of argument structure. Moulton compares result nominals, complex event nominals, and simple event nominals in English, and analyzes simple event nominals as eventive root nominalizations. He shows that simple event nominals are counterexamples to the Blob Theory, because they are root nominalizations which have structured (i.e., not blobby) root meanings.
“Malagasy fact- and claim-type nominals: An exploration”, by Lisa deMena Travis, Jeannot-Fils Ranaivoson and Jean Lewis Botouhely, examines nominalization facts in light of Kayne's (Reference Kayne1994) claim that “nominals do not take complements” and that “CP complements of nouns are actually relative clauses” (pp. 164–165). The authors explore the ways nominals can be created in Malagasy : zero nominalizations, F-nominalizations (prefix f- added to a verb), claim-type nominals and fact-type nominals. They show that fact-type nominals are constructed through relativization of adjuncts and that claim-type nominals cannot take clausal complements directly. Overall, the findings of this chapter lend support to Kayne's proposal.
In “Derivation by gender in Lithuanian”, Solveiga Armoskaite unveils the role gender plays in the derivation of nouns in Lithuanian. As pointed out by the author, grammatical gender is traditionally seen as an abstract feature which is inherent to nouns, is used as a classificatory device and is an agreement trigger. First, Armoskaite shows that in Lithuanian, gender may be used to derive within or across categories (the derivation of nouns from nouns, verbs or adjectives). Armoskaite then interprets the processes of derivation by gender as gender shifting, assignment and fixing. The author also discusses the mechanics of the derivational patterns by gender (i.e., the derivation of nouns by overt nominalizer with inherent gender , by shifting feature gender , by feature gender assignment and by feature gender fixing). Finally, Armoskaite restates the role of gender as a derivational device and proposes future directions for gender studies.
In the last chapter, “Patterns of nominalization in Blackfoot”, Martina Wiltschko aims to develop a formal typology of nominalization patterns within which Blackfoot’s four nominalization patterns can be described, categorized, and analyzed. The author identifies different degrees of nominality for these patterns. Bare nominalizations and -hp (signaling clause type) nominalizations behave partially like nouns), while -a'tsis (an instantiation of a noun) nominalizations and -hsiN (signaling an event) nominalizations behave precisely like nouns. Hence, not all Blackfoot nominalizations are “authentic” nouns, because real nouns meet three semantic criteria: they must denote individuals; they must be compatible with plural marking; and they must allow for possessive prefixes. Moreover, Wiltschko reviews evidence from Halkomelem which confirms her assumption that there is a universal syntactic spine which is category-neutral, that is, which is not specified for nominality or verbality.
To sum up, Cross-linguistic investigations of nominalization patterns discusses syntactic, semantic, and morphological aspects of nominalization through the examination of data from seven different languages, four of which are indigenous languages. All the contributions in the book reflect recent advances in the study of nominalizations, describing, illustrating and interpreting linguistic data and developing a typology of nominalization patterns. In my opinion, the volume provides fresh insights into the understanding of the connection between a deverbal nominalization and its related verb, revealing that there are indeed universal “parameters of nominalization” (p. 25) (including a verbal category, a nominalizing head and a referent) in spite of typological differences (nominalizations can look like a phrase, a full clause, a true noun, a partial noun, a verb, etc.). However, and as expected, there are still questions to be answered. Most of the contributions in this book are case studies ; that is, they focus on a single language, although some mention other languages or suggest extensions of analysis for other languages. If more languages were to be investigated, could universal patterns of nominalization be uncovered? This volume is a first step towards answering this question. It constitutes a useful reference for students, especially graduate students, as well as linguists and researchers who are interested in the morphology-syntax and syntax-semantics interfaces and in nominalization.
