Using extensive data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (Davies, 2008), this groundbreaking book shows that the syntactic patterns in which English nominalizations can be found and the range of possible readings they can express are very different from what has been claimed in past theoretical treatments, and therefore that previous treatments cannot be correct. Lieber argues that the relationship between form and meaning in the nominalization processes of English is virtually never one-to-one, but rather forms a complex web that can be likened to a derivational ecosystem. Using the Lexical Semantic Framework (LSF), she develops an analysis that captures the interrelatedness and context dependence of nominal readings, and suggests that the key to the behavior of nominalizations is that their underlying semantic representations are underspecified in specific ways and that their ultimate interpretation must be fixed in context using processes available within the LSF.
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English Nouns explores the mechanisms by which English nominalizations come to have a variety of readings depending on their syntactic context. It debunks previous syntactic treatments using data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (Davies, 2008) and proposes a lexical semantic analysis within Lieber's Lexical Semantic Framework (2004).
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Part I. Preliminaries: 1. Introduction; 2. Terminology and methodology: 2.1 Terminology; 2.2 Methodology; Part II. Data: 3. Event/result nominalizations: 3.1 Previous claims; 3.2 Nineteen questions; 3.3 Adding it all up; 4. Nominalizations as a derivational ecosystem: 4.1 The derivational ecosystem; 4.2 Forms and readings; 4.3 Inanimate patient nouns; 4.4 Conclusion; Part III. Nominalization within the LSF: 5. A lexical semantic approach to nominalization: the basics: 5.1 Recap of the LSF; 5.2 E versus R skeletons: a first pass; 6. The eventive reading: 6.1 ATK nominalizations with the eventive reading; 6.2 -ing nominalizations; 6.3 Conversion nouns; 6.4 A note on simplex nouns; 6.5 Conclusion; 7. Referential readings: 7.1 Basic skeletons; 7.2 Referential readings for ATK, -ing, and conversion Ns; 7.3 Personal and participant nominalizations; 7.4 Abstract nominalizations; 7.5 Collectives; 7.6 Underpopulated habitats; 7.7 Modal and evaluative elements of affixal meaning; 7.8 Conclusion; 8. Nominalizations and compounding in the LSF: 8.1 Claims; 8.2 The corpus data; 8.3 The LSF analysis; 8.4 Conclusions and loose ends; 9. Nouns in the wild.
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English Nouns explores the mechanisms by which English nominalizations come to have a variety of readings depending on their syntactic context.

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781107161375
Publisert
2016-09-26
Utgiver
Vendor
Cambridge University Press
Vekt
430 gr
Høyde
235 mm
Bredde
169 mm
Dybde
15 mm
Aldersnivå
06, P
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Antall sider
206

Forfatter

Biographical note

Rochelle Lieber is Professor of Linguistics at the University of New Hampshire, where she teaches a wide range of courses on theoretical linguistics and the English language. She is the recipient of the Carpenter Professorship (2016) and the Lindberg Award for Outstanding Teacher and Scholar in Liberal Arts (2013) from the University of New Hampshire, and the Bloomfield Award given by the Linguistic Society of America for the Oxford Reference Guide to English Morphology (with Laurie Bauer and Ingo Plag, 2015). She is the author of four previous monographs and over fifty articles and book chapters on morphology and related topics, and is the co-editor of three handbooks on morphology.