What exactly is the relationship between the verb
Recent research in linguistics has seen renewed interest in the study of cross-categorial or category-changing derivation, by which we mean the derivation of denominal verbs, deverbal nouns, “mixed categories” with both verbal and nominal features, and similar constructions. The goals of this article are to survey the most important empirical points that have played a role in contemporary theorizing and to outline and critically review the main analyses. For reasons of space, we focus on piece-based generative approaches to cross-categorial derivation, in particular those in Distributed Morphology (DM,
(1)
a.
Is one of the forms derived from the other, or are both derived from one common
b.
If one is derived from the other, then which is the
Schematically, these questions can be presented as follows: how can we tell whether a given verb is derived from a noun (2a), the noun from the verb (2b), or both from an uncategorized root (2c-d)?
(2)
Importantly, while the structures in (2a-b) imply that there is a
A
R
The different predictions that these analyses make will be fleshed out where relevant. Moreover, depending on whether or not one’s analysis allows for phonologically empty (“zero”) categorizers as in (2), Root Augmentation may be reduced to Affix Imposition with a zero categorizer. This problem is addressed in sections 2.2.5, 3.4, and 4.3.
The paper is structured as follows: In section 2 we evaluate the different arguments for and against directionality proposed in the literature. Section 3 discusses different formal approaches and their limitations, section 4 turns to the diachrony of these derivations, and section 5 concludes. We will set aside most of the literature on nominalizations, especially those with an overt nominalizing affix, given that these have already received a fair amount of attention (
A core problem in cross-categorial derivation is the question of
In what follows we review how these criteria have been applied to a number of different languages.
A longstanding question in many treatments of the English lexicon is the problem of derivational directionality in English noun—verb pairs such as
Kiparsky (
The first argument is that true denominal verbs and true deverbal nouns preserve the stress of the base, which is assigned at the first cycle of derivation and “inherited” by the next cycle (
English
a páttern | to páttern | to exháust | an exháust | ||
an índex | to índex | to debáte | a debáte | ||
an ínput | to ínput | to retúrn | a retúrn |
In addition to these two classes, there is a third class of noun-verb pairs, illustrated in
a. | to permít | a pérmit |
b. | to constrúct | a cónstruct |
c. | to protést | a prótest |
Similarly, Lohmann (
(3)
a.
Polysyllabic words with initial stress are most probably derived from nouns (cf.
b.
Words that are trisyllabic or longer are most likely derived from nouns:
c.
Disyllabic words with final stress are probably derived from verbs (cf.
Some additional listing is then necessary for exceptions like
Another paradigm of sorts that has been pointed out is that of “triplets” such as those in
English stress shift “triplets” (
a. | to compóund | a cómpound | to cómpound |
b. | to permít | a pérmit | to pérmit |
c. | to protést | a prótest | to prótest |
In the original analysis in Lexical Phonology, these patterns arise because the (zero) affixes involved attach at different
Zero categorizers at levels I & II (based on
level I | ||||
↓ | ↓ | |||
level II |
Criticism of this argument has mostly focused on whether there is a derivational “stress shift” in verb-noun pairs with differing stress placement, such as
English noun/verb pairs with stress shift (
a. | to tormént | a tórment |
to permít | a pérmit | |
to constrúct | a cónstruct | |
b. | to gèt awáy | a gét-awày |
to lèt dówn | a lét-dòwn | |
to pùsh úp | a púsh-ùp |
In a historical perspective, Minkova & Stockwell (
The second argument comes from the distribution of irregular verb inflection: Kiparsky argues that only root-derived verbs can take irregular inflectional endings and undergo ablaut, as in (4a), while true denominal verbs do not ablaut, (4b). These claims will line up with claims about the semantics of these verbs, which we put aside until section 2.2.4.
(4)
Claim about irregular vs. regular inflection
a.
Root-derived, irregular:
b.
Denominal, regular:
This distinction would also be expected under approaches in which frequency, productivity, or transparency of derivation would motivate the regular past tense inflection of denominal verbs. The question is whether any of the ablauting verbs in the root-derived class (4a) could reasonably be analyzed as synchronically denominal independently of this diagnostic—if yes, these would then constitute counterexamples to this generalization.
Of the two examples of Kiparsky (
If there is a derivational relationship between the verb
(5)
“True denominal”
a. #She taped the picture to the wall
b. #They chained the prisoner
c. #Jim buttoned up his pants
(6)
“Pseudo-instrumental”
a. He hammered the desk
b. They brushed their coat
c. She paddled the canoe
The infelicity of examples like those in (5) is argued to follow from a semantic principle of “canonical use”, formulated in (7).
(7)
Canonical Use Principle (CUP,
If an action is named after a thing, it involves a canonical use of the thing.
Kiparsky argues that the infelicity of (5) follows from the fact that
Moreover, Kiparsky argues that this distinction also explains the difference in grammaticality between (8a) and (8b):
(8)
Intended meaning:
a. I fertilized the bush
b. *I bushed some/the fertilizer
In three-place predicates with a theme and a location argument (location and locatum verbs), there seem to be semantic rather than syntactic restrictions on which argument can incorporate: while (8a) describes a canonical use of fertilizer, (8b) does
(9)
a. John papered the shelves.
b. John shelved the papers.
These two classes of “instrument verbs” have become known as the
(10)
a. strung up someone
b. #inked a drawing
Criticism of the
(11)
Lola taped the poster to the wall with band-aids / mailing-labels. (
This finding suggests that manner of motion or manner of use is what is relevant for this class, just like it is for the
(12)
?Screw the fixture on the wall with nails. (
Harley & Haugen (
(13)
a. Lola hammered the metal with a ball-peen hammer / ?with a hammer.
b. Lola taped pictures to the wall with duct-tape / ?with tape.
This, too, suggests that there is no structural/derivational distinction between the
(14)
a. John is going to school (for education)
b. John is going to the school (for a specific purpose/activity)
(15)
a. The pastor wants everyone to come to church once a week (for service)
b. The pastor wants everyone to come to the church once a week (for a specific purpose/activity)
If denominal verb formation is the result of some form of incorporation of a bare noun (cf. section 3.3), the CUP/CUC naturally becomes relevant in these constructions—but this is a property of the bare noun, not a requirement on denominal derivation as suggested by Kiparsky’s definition in (7).
Results from a series of experiments by Bleotu & Bloem (
(16)
a. He crowned her ??with a hat/with a rose garland. (presumably nominal
b. Tom paddled the canoe with a board/??with a spoon. (presumably root
The findings indicated that what mattered for acceptability ratings was the similarity of the modifying PP to the predicate, rather than the presumed derivational history of the predicate.
Whereas the first study classified similarity of PP to verb according to the authors’ intuitions, the second study asked participants to rate the similarity themselves (
(17)
a.
b.
c.
All three criteria predicted the results of the first experiment better than the binary classification of Kiparsky (
A similar conclusion was reached in work by Rimell (
(18)
a.
#I’ve been necktie-ing. (intended reading: wearing a necktie)
b.
You and your colleague work in a garment factory. On any given day you may be making gloves, socks, or neckties. At the end of the day, your colleague asks: What have you been doing today?
Answer: I’ve been necktie-ing.
The
First, the base noun cannot be interpreted as the Patient, Theme, or Holder of a result event (
(19)
a. #Mary was appling at lunch today.
(int. ‘eating apples’, theme)
b. #Beth was hatting when I saw her.
(int. ‘wearing a hat’, theme)
c. #It was stuffy inside, so Lee went around windowing.
(int. ‘opening windows’, result state holder)
Once the construction goes beyond a simple intransitive, the examples improve (
(20)
a. #Mary was appling at lunch today.
b. Mary appled Betty.
c. Mary appled into the room.
d. Mary has been appling (it) up all week.
Second, denominal verbs tend to be transitive (
(21)
a.
b.
On her account, “denominal” verbs are still actually root-derived. Affixed nouns cannot be zero-converted into verbs (cf. section 2.2.5), so she concludes that only roots can get “converted” in this sense (adapted from
(22)
a. The employee was typically happy during off-work hours.
b. #The employee frequently happinessed away during the off-work hours.
To sum up the
Borer (
Illicit Ø-derived verbs and nouns (
a. | a salut-ation | b. | *to salutation | c. | *a crystallize | d. | to crystal-lize |
an arriv-al | *to arrival | *an instantiate | to instant-iate | ||||
a writ-er | *to writer | *a fatten | to fatt-en |
Borer argues that if
Moreover, the existence of verbs derived from compounds whose second member contains a zero-derived noun (e.g.,
An alternative way of understanding this distribution is in terms of contextual allomorphy, in which Ø and the various other nominalizing morphemes (-
(23)
a. *the walk of the dog for three hours
b. *the dance of the fairy for a whole evening
c. *the (gradual) fall of the trees for two hours/in two minutes
On the other hand, nominalizers like -
(24)
a. *the salute of the officers by the subordinates
b. the saluting of the officers by the subordinates
c. the salutation of the officers by their subordinates
d. the subordinates’ saluting the officers (was upsetting)
This could be taken to suggest that there are structural differences in the
(25)
a. the frequent
b. the frequent
c. the more frequent
See also Lieber (
As discussed in section 2.2.4, Bleotu and Bloem (
Sharpe & Marantz (
The discussion of cross-categorial derivation need not center on zero derivation. In Semitic languages like Hebrew, morphological marking can be used to decide which form in a pair is the base and which is the derivative.
In her important work on denominal verbs in Hebrew, Bat-El (
(26)
Some forms in
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
What Bat-El (
In (26e) we saw an example of a verb in the template
(27)
Some more examples from Bat-El (
(28)
a.
b.
c.
Another kind of segmental transfer occurs in forms such as those in (29), also from Bat-El (
(29)
a.
b.
c.
Many of these cases are loanwords. This is where the diachronic consideration kicks in: since we know for a fact that the borrowed noun existed before the native verb, we know not only that the verb is the derivative, but also that the phonological reasoning is consistent with the history of these words. What this all means is that we have phonological evidence for the noun being the base and the verb being derived from it, at least in these cases. Nevertheless, we will see in section 3.2 that there is no knock-down argument for Affix Imposition (or rather Template Imposition) over Root Augmentation here.
What we have seen so far are cases in Modern Hebrew where a form has certain consonant clusters, or certain vowels, which only make sense if they refer to an earlier stage of the derivation: to the base. A different kind of evidence is adduced by Arad (
(30)
Forms derived from
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
Arad draws our attention to the verb
(31)
Additional examples are given in (32). We can call these
(32)
a.
b.
c.
Derived verb
Base noun
Root
Similar cases involve
(33)
a.
b.
c.
Derived verb
Base noun
Root
(34)
a.
b.
c.
Derived verb
Base noun
Root
(35)
a.
b.
c.
Derived verb
Base noun
Root
How strong is this type of evidence? The answer depends on one’s assumptions about the Hebrew verbal system. Some authors have proposed that Modern Hebrew is witnessing the innovation of new verbal templates; see Schwarzwald (
The last relevant case discussed by Arad (
(36)
a.
b.
c.
But the verb
(37)
Phonological regularization in denominal verbs (
a.
b.
Derived verb
Base form
Root
While the thrust of the argument is fairly clear, each individual case does open up opportunities to debate how convincing it is, and whether the verb might be derived from the root after all. Arad (
Arad (
The original claim centered around what Arad (
The immediate problem is that we don’t have a robust metric for semantic similarity or relatedness. Nevertheless, it’s possible to use Hebrew in order to estimate how closely related a base and its derivative are in general.
Some authors have critiqued a stronger version of the original claim, focusing on semantic
(38)
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
Let’s pause for a moment to remind ourselves of the original claim. The exercise we need to perform for the recycling example is to look for another verb with that original root. We have a few in (38a–c). Those meanings are not the meaning of the verb
Setting that misunderstanding aside, the broader question in the context of the current paper remains: is ‘recycling’ predictable from ‘cycle’, in Hebrew or any other language? Are the two meanings as closely related as the noun ‘frame’ is to the verb ‘framed’? As we noted, the field lacks an established battery of diagnostics (though see
(39)
a.
b.
c. (
The distinction between root- and category-derived words was also introduced into the discussion of
‘boiled’ | |||
‘opened; open’ | |||
‘closed’ |
The structural difference (
At first glance, this picture is confirmed by the morphology of
a. | aspr- |
ler- |
white- |
dirty- |
|
‘whitened’ | ‘dirtied’ | |
b. | *aspr- |
*ler- |
white- |
dirty- |
In a perfect world, the MG participial suffixes would therefore show how form and meaning are directly correlated with the amount of functional structure of the base of derived word forms. Unfortunately, these generalizations do not hold exceptionlessly. Anagnostopoulou and Samioti (
(40)
I
the
istoria
story.
tou
his
ine
is
pist
believe-
by
everyone
“His story can be believed by everyone.” (
Moreover, some
a. | axn- |
axn- |
steam- |
steam- |
|
‘steaming hot’ | ‘steam’ | |
b. | vathoul- |
vathoul- |
hollow- |
hollow- |
|
‘hollow’ | ‘hollow out’ |
However, despite the presence of this verbalizing morphology,
To explain this conundrum, Anagnostopoulou & Samioti (
Importantly, adding verbalizing morphology to these roots does not make the resulting
The important (if frustrating) lesson is that morphology alone cannot be used to distinguish between root- and category-derived participles in MG, and neither can meaning: Idiomatic meaning is found both in
In this section, we have gone over the empirical evidence that has been adduced in favor of (and against) the notion of derivational directionality. We have reviewed morphophonological, semantic, and psycholinguistic arguments and diagnostics for determining directionality, with a focus on the overall empirical picture. In the next section, we focus on theoretical issues raised by the notion of derivational directionality and the formal analysis of the different classes of derived verbs that have been proposed in the literature.
As we turn to the formal treatment of the patterns described above, it’s important to once again tease apart two sets of issues that overlap throughout the literature. We have described the arguments which guide us in deciding which form is the base and which is the derivative. In this section, we segue into discussion of whether a form is the result of Root Augmentation, derived from an abstract root (cf.
Transferring the insights of Arad (
(41)
Kiparsky/Arad analysis of the verbs
Yet each analytical choice needs to be argued for. The following options are also possible:
(42)
Alternative structures for the verbs
(43)
Possible structures for the nouns
But the problem runs deeper: consider the English noun
(44)
Since morphological arguments such as the presence vs. absence of overt nominalizers or verbalizers are not always decisive (sections 2.3–2.4 and coming up in 3.2), researchers have turned to the semantic content of roots and the context of their interpretation (for example, the adjectival and verbal heads in (44a) would be semantically vacuous in the “baking fat” interpretation). Moreover, if semantic primitives such as boundedness, mass/count, or event/thing/state can be properties of roots, for example (e.g.,
But even if not, it’s been proposed that some component of lexical meaning may survive only certain cycles in the derivation. Idiomatic interpretation (“special meaning”) and polysemy resolution have played an important role in distinguishing between de-radical and category-based derivation. In generative approaches, the “Marantz/Arad Hypothesis” (e.g.,
(45)
The Marantz/Arad Hypothesis (
Roots are assigned an interpretation in the context of the first category assigning head/phase head merged with them, which is then fixed throughout the derivation.
Marantz (
(46)
The (non-)compositionality generalization (
When affixes attach directly to the root, idiosyncratic meanings may arise. When affixes attach outside category defining heads, the result is a meaning predictable from the meaning of the stem.
As we’ve seen in sections 2.3–2.4, (46) does not always result in a clear-cut picture: the Hebrew data don’t implicate strong predictability, while Greek -
Determining the contextual conditions on polysemy and idiomatic meaning of roots and stems is thus an important preliminary for formal approaches to cross-categorial derivation because the answer restricts the types of derivations that are compositionally possible in these approaches. With this background in mind, in section 3.2 we draw once again on Hebrew, which has been argued to exemplify these issues most clearly. We then discuss different ways of transferring these insights into languages like English beyond the attempts in (41)–(43), approaching it through the syntactic work by Hale and Keyser (section 3.3) and translating it into a Spanning account (section 3.4).
Recall from section 2.3 that there are good morphophonological reasons to believe that a recent Hebrew coinage like the verb
(47)
This approach is a non-starter, because as we saw earlier, denominal derivations must know which consonants form clusters: the verb ‘to troll someone’ is
(48)
This approach has been critiqued on several grounds. Faust & Hever (
Discussions of this hypothesis often end up arguing “for” or “against” the root as a theoretical and empirical construct in Semitic, whereby in our view the evidence weighs heavily towards the root (
(49)
The term “Template Imposition” is from Faust & Hever (
(50)
This view essentially assumes that there are two types of roots: primary roots and augmented roots. Augmentation of the root can take various shapes, including clustering of two segments.
On all four views, the original syllabification of the base is discarded at some point.
One avenue to consider is nominalizations whose base is “wrong” in some sense. The Hebrew nominalization
Brice (
For the time being, then, we do not know of formal ways to tease the two analyses apart. The answer might depend on what we think the semantic properties of the derived form should be, a question we turn to next.
A recurring theme in our overview has been the idea that a derived form should share the semantics of its base to some extent, with the semantic relationship mediated by the derivational process. Keeping in mind the analytical options discussed above, we can again disentangle Template Imposition from Root Augmentation.
Under Template Imposition—which is what we believe Arad (
(51)
Under Root Augmentation, a novel quadrilateral root
(52)
How is the semantic generalization accounted for in each case? Under Template Imposition, the by-now familiar idea is that the base noun transfers its semantics and only its own semantics to the derived verb, regardless of other meanings its own underlying root might have; for generalized Affix Imposition, other intervening functional heads might be semantically null (say with -
Again, it’s difficult to tease these two accounts apart without committing to specific notions of predictability. One might ask why, if we extract a novel root like
Another influential approach to denominal verb formation is based on work by Hale & Keyser (
(53)
Hale and Keyser’s definition of conflation is given in (54).
(54)
Conflation (
a head X0 may enter into the Conflation relation with the head of its complement C if X0 selects C.
Conflation is essentially a “stricter” version of incorporation in the sense of Baker (
Hale and Keyser thus argue that argument structure can be reduced to syntactic structure and that the observed cross-linguistic uniformity of thematic roles derives from structural restrictions on argument selection in the VP (for example, whether an argument is merged as a complement or as a specifier of V) and whether conflation takes place.
Harley (
The thematic uniformity of these verbs then follows from the fact that the functional projection that introduces (or s-selects) the external argument is always the same (
In these approaches, analytic unergatives/unergative light verb constructions in languages like Basque are structurally identical to synthetic unergatives in languages like English: Both consists of a light verb and its complement, but they differ in that the selected noun moves into/
Importantly for our purposes, the morphological and semantic properties of the incorporated base noun should be reflected in the derived verb. Work by Harley (
Basic root properties (
Event | ||||
Thing | N/A? | N/A? | ||
State | ?? |
Incorporation of [+bounded] “things” (e.g.,
(55)
Unergative accomplishments (
a.
The mare foaled
in two hours/#for two hours. (+bounded, telic, no complement)
b.
The baby drooled
for two hours/#in two hours. (–bounded, atelic, no complement)
The same holds for semelfactives and unergative activities, which according to Harley form minimal pairs with (55), the difference being that the referent of the incorporating root is a [
(56)
Semelfactives (
a.
Sue hopped
#for five minutes/#in five minutes. (+bounded, no complement)
b.
The light flashed
#for five minutes/#in five minutes. (+bounded, no complement)
(57)
Unergative activities (
a.
Sue danced
for five minutes/#in five minutes. (–bounded, atelic, no complement)
b.
Sue whistled
for five minutes/#in five minutes. (–bounded, atelic, no complement)
In other words, (55)–(57) all have the same basic structure (or “L-syntax”, in Hale/Keyser/Harley terminology), (58); the Aktionsart differences follow from the type of incorporating element.
(58)
Roots whose referent is an “event” can take non-incremental themes as complements, resulting in transitive atelic semelfactives/activities (
(59)
Transitive atelic/semelfactive (referent of √ = “event”) (±bounded, +complement (
a.
John pushed the cart
for five minutes/#in five minutes. (–bounded, +complement)
b.
Sue kicked the wall
#for five minutes/#in five minutes. (+bounded, +complement)
The structure for these is given in (60).
(60)
The last row in
(61)
Deadjectival change-of-state verbs (
a.
Sue cleared the table
#for five minutes/in five minutes. (+bounded, telic)
b.
Bill lengthened the rope
for five minutes (–bounded, atelic)
Compositionally, these verbs again consist of a selecting verbalizer (
(62)
Complement-taking state-denoting roots (
a.
Jill cleared the table (of dishes).
(+bounded, +complement)
b.
Jill swept the table clear (of dishes).
c.
Jill flattened the metal (#of bumps).
(+bounded, –complement)
d.
Jill hammered the metal flat (#of bumps).
Harley argues that in these cases, the state root projects and takes a complement, parallel to the transitive event roots in (60). The structure for verbs derived from [
(63)
To summarize, the L-syntactic approach derives the semantic and syntactic properties of (different classes of) unergative and unaccusative verbs from their structural composition (light verb + complement noun/adjective), effectively treating these verb classes as underlyingly denominal and deadjectival. In English, the light verb is zero in the conversion verb classes discussed in this section, but this is not necessarily the case in all languages and contexts. Analyzing these verbs as underlyingly denominal and deadjectival leads to specific predictions concerning the argument and event structure properties of their different subclasses, which are connected to the [
Bleotu (
Telicity of denominal verbs in Romanian,
telic | 54.4% (93) | 40.9% (18) | 30.76% (8) |
atelic | 28.1% (48) | 47.7% (21) | 30.76% (8) |
both | 17.5% (30) | 11.4% (5) | 38.46% (10) |
Total | 171 | 44 | 26 |
While the majority of verbs based on count nouns are indeed telic, and most of the verbs based on mass nouns are atelic (as predicted by Harley), it is clear from
However, there are a number of methodological caveats that weaken the validity of this conclusion. First, the role of diachronic evidence for determining directionality and excluding verbs from the corpus is not defined. Bleotu states that sometimes “it is the nouns that are derived from the verb through backformation, and not the verbs that are formed from the nominal root” (p. 30) and excludes 42 verbs in which the direction of derivation appears to be
Second, if the primacy of diachronic evidence for distinguishing between denominal verbs and “backformations” is accepted, then the etymological information must be more detailed than what is discussed in her Appendix. For example, Bleotu does not systematically distinguish between inherited words and words that were borrowed from other Romance languages. Thus the “origin” of
Finally, there is the problem of the semantic classification of the Aktionsart of the individual verbs and the category of their base. For example,
In sum, these methodological problems weaken the conclusions concerning the connection between boundedness and telicity in denominal verbs that one might draw based on
Bleotu (
(64)
Bleotu (
Despite the notation, Bleotu argues against “silent items” such as zero categorizers: Spanning (together with Nanosyntax’ Superset Principle) lets one and the same vocabulary item realize different “sizes” of syntactic structure, e.g., both [N] and [N Proc Init]. Moreover, in languages in which there is morphology available that marks the additional verbal structure in the denominal verb, such as Romanian
However, if further projections in the extended domain are added, as in optionally telic verbs with a GoalP and PlaceP (
While theme vowels and other verbalizing morphology in languages like Romanian and Greek (see section 2.4) can be explained as spelling out
To conclude, once one commits to a view in which noun-verb pairs like
In the next section, we discuss some denominal verb classes that have not played a crucial role in the formal analyses discussed so far, but that could be relevant in deciding between the different approaches and analytical options (cf. also the discussion of
“Instrument verbs” expressing manner of motion or manner of action (
(65)
Denominal instrument verbs (
a.
John hammered the metal
for five minutes/in five minutes.
b.
Sue brushed the dog
for five minutes/in five minutes.
c.
Jill raked the leaves
for an hour/in an hour.
This could suggest that these verbs do not incorporate their underlying direct object/internal argument, but rather the instrument with which the action is performed. Harley therefore proposes that these show incorporation of a manner adjunct (“manner incorporation”), illustrated by the structure in (66).
(66)
Preliminary structure for “Sue hammered the metal” (from
Harley emphasizes the preliminary nature of this analysis. Moreover, this type of structure is not predicted by the H&K framework’s definition of conflation (the adjunct is by definition not the complement of the selecting head), nor is it incorporation in the technical sense (because the manner adjunct is not part of the complementation domain of the selecting head). Extending the conflation or incorporation domain to include adjuncts is moreover undesirable and would significantly overgenerate - clearly not all types of (manner) adjuncts can form the basis of such derived verbs, certainly not manner adverbs such as
(67)
In this account, instrument verbs essentially have the same structure as unergatives like
Apparent agent incorporation/conflation is likewise problematic for the formal accounts discussed above, and for similar reasons: Agents are assumed to merge in the specifier of
(68)
a. English:
b. Latin:
c. Ancient Greek:
d. Hebrew (
e. Romanian (
Bleotu (
(69)
Semantically this works well for verbs like
(70)
This analysis is essentially already implied by Flobert (
Denominal verbs with direct objects (hyponymous or cognate objects) are a problem for approaches in which a denominal verb consists of a (possibly silent) light verb
(71)
Cognate objects (ex. from
a. He
(Michael Chabon,
b. Hortense is
(72)
Hyponymous objects (ex. from
a. They are
b. He
Hale & Keyser (
Haugen (
Bleotu (
(73)
It is unclear under which circumstances nouns can select such cognate objects as complements (or be modified by them) or what constrains this process.
Gallego (
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The merged object forms a Small Clause with the root and therefore cannot incorporate itself (only complements incorporate, and roots don’t take complements in this approach, cf.
In this section we summarized the formal analyses that have been proposed for derived verbs, again focussing on Hebrew and English. Specifically, we compared how Affix Imposition, Root Augmentation, Spanning and Conflation handle various classes of denominal and deadjectival verbs, and the morphosemantic and morphophonological relationship between base and derivative in these classes. We also briefly discussed various classes that have not been at the center of the discussion so far and whose properties need further elucidation. In the next section we turn to derivational directionality in diachrony.
Even though discussions of derivational directionality in formal analyses often appeal to diachrony, this is rarely done systematically, focusing rather on the history of specific lexical items rather than diachrony of particular word-formation rules. This topic is also somewhat understudied within historical linguistics and descriptive approaches to the typology of language change. In particular, there is little work on the diachronic development of verbalizers (and other categorizers) and their interaction with argument structure changes in languages which have historically relied primarily on synthetic derivational morphology in building deadjectival and denominal verbs.
In this section, we look at directionality from a diachronic perspective. Although this area is understudied from a formal perspective (though see
From the H&K framework discussed in section 3.3, we identify a prediction for diachronic directionality in denominal and deadjectival verbs: If such verbs are built on nominal and adjectival stems, we expect to see nominal and adjectival morphology as part of their structure, at least historically (in the same way that we expect to see verbalizing morphology in deverbal nouns and adjectives, section 2.4); cf.
There are indeed some cases in which a synchronic verbalizer historically goes back to a noun- or adjective-forming suffix that seem to confirm this prediction with respect to diachronic directionality. One such case is the productive Modern Greek (MG) verbalizer
AG verbs in -
a. | c. | (√/ |
|||
‘am king; rule’ | ‘king’ | ‘govern’ | (√/‘king’) | ||
— | |||||
‘am a coppersmith’ | ‘coppersmith’ | ||||
(√/ |
|||||
‘am a horserider’ | ‘horserider’ | ‘ride’ | (√/‘horserider’) | ||
b. | d. | ||||
‘command’ | ‘commander, leader’ | ‘aim at’ | ‘target’ | ||
‘contend for a prize’ | ‘contest for a prize’ | ‘approach’ | ‘near’ | ||
Engl. |
|||||
‘lead the way’ | ‘leader’ | ‘hack’ |
The (historical) directionality is undisputed: No verbal suffix -
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“Upwards reanalysis” of AG nominal -
This type of reanalysis not only gave rise to MG -
AG deadjectival factitives in -
a. | ‘heavy’ | ‘make heavy’ | ||
‘deep’ | ‘deepen’ | |||
b. | ‘thin’ | ‘make thin’ | ||
‘great, big’ | ‘make great’ |
The deadjectival factitives in -
While the diachrony of these verb classes is relatively well understood, it must be emphasized that the synchronic problem of derivational directionality remains, even in languages with relatively rich derivational morphology. Thus, while the verbs in -
AG verbs in -
a. | ‘victory’ | ‘be victorious’ | ||
‘respect, esteem’ | ‘to treat with respect’ | |||
b. | ‘crown’ | ‘to crown’ | ||
‘straight’ | ‘to straighten’ |
While there is evidence that the vocalic stems -
These examples show that overt categorizing and derivational morphology is no guarantee for an unambiguous
The case studies in the previous section show diachronic reanalysis in derivational morphology in the absence of sound change (with the exception of the loss of the palatalizing glide in Greek examples). In this section, we look at case studies in which sound change, in particular the loss of verbalizing and nominalizing morphology, results in apparent changes in derivational directionality and possibly in zero categorizers.
(Morpho)phonological change as driver of syntactic change has long been a staple of the diachronic literature since the Neogrammarians (especially
There are some examples in the historical record that seem to show exactly this type of development, in that an overt categorizing or (verbal) derivational affix is lost via sound change, leading to an apparently “zero-derived” form. One such case is found in the history of English “labile” causative alternation verbs, in which the loss of overt causativizing morphology coincided with the rise of the “labile” type of causative alternation verbs. In the following, we will illustrate this with the development of the inherited Proto-Germanic causativizer -
Gothic causatives (cit. after
‘arise’ | ‘make arise’ | ||
‘drink’ | ‘make drink’ | ||
‘lie’ | ‘lay’ |
This suffix was lost in Old English, together with the palatalization and/or gemination of the preceding consonant. Its erstwhile presence is still visible in the ablaut alternation between the anticausative and the causative alternants (cf. the English pairs
Old English causatives.
‘sit’ | ‘set’ | ||
‘lie’ | ‘lay’ | ||
‘shrink/wither’ | ‘cause to shrink’ |
However, already in Old English the differentiation breaks down and both variants begin to occur in anticausative/unaccusative and in causative/transitive frames, eventually leading to the “labile” behavior of Modern English causative alternation verbs. The following examples illustrate this with originally causative
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a.
as
fire
wood
burns
“As the fire burns the wood.” (DOE,
b.
say.3
that
he
on
that
mountain
burn
should
“They said that he was going to burn on that hill.” (DOE,
The extent of this phenomenon and its subsequent spread is still a matter of debate (see
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Crucially, if the projection that introduces the cause event and/or the external causer (the causativizing projection spelled out as -
A skeptic might argue that this case is not quite pertinent to the discussion because it illustrates the loss of a (verbal)
To give another example, consider the English “zero-derived” noun-verb pairs like
If we consider this class from a diachronic perspective, we find that for the vast majority of the noun/verb pairs listed by Borer, the verb is older in the sense that it is attested earlier in the historical record, or has cognates in other Germanic languages and can thus be reconstructed for Proto- (North-West-)Germanic.
This distribution suggests that at least from a diachronic perspective, the pairs in the first and largest group consist of a verb and its derived noun, hence deverbal nouns (18 of which are not attested before the Early Modern Period), e.g.,
Diachronically, then, we effectively lose the phonological realizations of the nominal stem-forming suffixes of the inherited nouns in this class (these changes of course affected the verbal system as well, cf. (77)). Assuming that these stem-forming suffixes were categorizers, this change resulted in zero categorizers and the establishment of a morphological rule of
Having established the diachronic directionality of this class, the question remains if these nouns were ever AS nominals, rather than simple event or result nouns, as they overwhelmingly are in Modern English (though there are exceptions, e.g.,
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a.
mah-ānāṃ
great-
dev-ānāṃ
gods-
vī-
pursue-
“to the pursuit of the great gods” (RV 9.1.4ab)
b.
ū-
help-
nṝ́n
men.
“for the help of the men/to help the men” (RV 7.26.5a)
But this is not a reconstructable property of these stems, as other languages that have inherited this suffix (such as Ancient Greek and the older Germanic languages, including Old English) do not have it. This suggests that verbal noun-forming suffixes like Proto-Germanic *-
To conclude, this case study shows that categorizers (if defined as “low-” or “root-attaching”
In this section we have seen examples of clear instances of diachronic directionality, in which denominal and deadjectival verbs gave rise to new verbalizing morphology. We have also seen examples of loss of categorizing/derivational morphology due to sound change and the way in which these changes interact with the problem of zero categorization diachronically. In light of these diachronic developments, it might make sense to return to the problem of root content discussed throughout section 3. Alexiadou & Lohndal (
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A scale from ‘empty’ roots to ‘contentful’ roots (
Hebrew > Greek > Old English > English
They argue that this scale predicts three classes of languages: 1) languages in which the root is practically contentless and the basic unit of interpretation is the word (Hebrew), 2) languages where the root is strongly contentful and determines the meaning of a word (English) and 3) languages in between in which the basic unit of meaning is the stem (root+categorizer; Modern Greek). This move allows them to reconcile Borer’s view (roots have no content at all) with Harley (
In this article we have summarized and evaluated arguments for and against derivational directionality, with a focus on denominal verbs. We started out by discussing semantic and morphonological arguments in English and Hebrew, the languages at the center of the debate from a theoretical (specifically generative) perspective. The core arguments insist on morphonological and semantic “inheritance” of
Open issues and further research questions center around the problem of deriving the semantic properties of the derivative from those of the base, most clearly seen in the discussion of whether the telicity/Aktionsart properties of denominal verbs reflect the boundedness of the nominal base (section 3.3). The diachrony of the different denominal verb classes is also understudied, especially with respect to the question of when and how derived verbs are reanalyzed as primary verbs or roots (sections 2.3.2 and 4.2). Additionally, some generalizations have emerged concerning the difference of height of attachment (or “inner” vs. “outer” morphology, or cycles/phases) which suggest that category-changing derivation is only available up to a certain “height”. Like many of the claims surveyed here, this one, too, needs to be confirmed with a larger sample of typologically diverse languages, and motivated from a theoretical perspective.
Lowenstamm (
(i) a. cómparable, réparable, réfutable, préferable, dísputable b. compárable, repá(i)rable, refútable, preférable, dispútable
This alternation corresponds to the root-derived vs. deverbal distinction also in that root-derived forms, with initial stress, may differ in meaning from word-derived forms with antepenultimate stress (
(ii) a. This is the cómparable model in our line b. *This is the compárable model in our line
See also Ševčíková (
The same holds for the ‘childish’ example discussed by Rasin et al. (
Kastner (
Faust & Hever (
We set aside the possibility that new templates are created, as mentioned in section 2.3.2.
The verb might be back-formed from the noun in this case. Thanks to Odelia Ahdout (p.c.) for discussion.
The verbalizer is simply given as v in these trees, abstracting away from the possibility that additional structure such as Voice heads might be involved in the Semitic templates.
We refrain from assigning a label to the element
Haspelmath (
Reanalysis is defined here as a change event during L1 acquisition in which “a hearer successfully analyses an incoming sentence using a grammar different from the one that the speaker used to generate it” (
Note that this is a relatively small sample; for a detailed study of English conversion pairs in diachrony see Balteiro (
This suffix also independently developed into an infinitival suffix in Balto-Slavic, cf. OCS -
1 = first person, 3 = third person,
The additional file for this article can be found as follows:
Attestation of selected noun-verb conversion pairs in English. DOI:
We are grateful to Hagen Blix, Noam Faust, Hannes Fellner, Iris Kamil, Alec Marantz, Gabriel Pantillon, Markus Pöchtrager, Omer Preminger and Viktoria Reiter for discussion and comments, as well as to two anonymous reviewers. Laura Grestenberger’s research was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF V 850-G).
The authors have no competing interests to declare.