ErgSemantics_Nominalization

ESD Test Suite Examples

To bark bothers Browne.
Chasing the cat is old.
What the dog chased bothers Browne.

Linguistic Characterization

Nominalization wraps the semantics of a verbal constituent into a nominal predication introducing a referential index bound by a quantifier. This process occurs both in lexical rules and in constructions, including nominal and verbal gerunds, interrogative clauses as subjects of verbs or as complements of prepositions, and infinitival clauses or verb phrases as subjects. Nominal gerunds are related by lexical rule to verbs inflected as present participles, and behave uniformly like nouns, being modified by adjectives, taking only oblique complements, and combining with determiners and possessive NPs. Verbal gerunds are nominalizations of full verb phrases via a unary construction, where the internal structure of the phrase is clearly verbal, including adverbial modifiers and NP complements. Interrogative clauses that appear as subjects or as complements in PPs also undergo nominalization via a unary construction, to introduce a nominal entity that forms a suitable semantic argument. Similarly, infinitival VPs and clauses that appear as subjects are nominalized via a unary construction to introduce the expected nominal entity.

Motivating Examples

• The hasty eating of fish can be dangerous. [Nominal gerund]
• Quickly eating those fish can be dangerous. [Verbal gerund]
• What he said surprised everyone. [Interrogative clausal subject]
• They responded to what he said. [Interrogative clause as object of preposition]
• To say that would compromise his secrecy. [Infinitival VP subject]
• For him to say that would make his guilt obvious. [Infinitival clausal subject]

MRS Fingerprints

h0:nominalization(ARG0 x1, ARG1 h1)
h2:_(ARG0 e)

{ h1 =q h2 }

Interactions

• Noteworthy interactions with other semantic phenomena (such as a generator-input creator might need to know about); interphenomenal well-formedness constraints

Open Questions

Grammar Version

• Note the grammar version (trunk + svn revision) consulted as this was written or updated.

More Information

• ErgSemantics main page

• Inventory of semantic phenomena (to be) documented

• How to cite this work