On the aspectual interpretation of deverbal formations in Spanish

Proposal
We identify two patterns of suffixation:
The 4th Workshop on Nominalizations
University of Stuttgart, Germany
June 2011
• Weak Suffix: A suffix provides grammatical category to a given
predicate. This suffix never selects a particular aspectual predicate
/ interpretation.
On the aspectual interpretation of deverbal formations in
Spanish: weak and strong patterns of suffixation1
Mª. Ángeles CANO
• Strong Suffix: A suffix provides grammatical category to a
given predicate. This suffix always selects a particular aspectual
predicate / interpretation.
& Matías JAQUE
It is expected to find finer types, but, as we will see, such types can be
classified under one of these two patterns.
Autonomous University of Madrid
mariangeles.cano@uam.es
jaquiasmate@gmail.com
1. Inheritance vs. shared functional projections
Aspectual reading and nominalizations:
Introduction
▪ Nominals associated with verbal predicates contain functional projections
that allow them to have an eventive interpretation: AspP, VoiceP, vP, etc.
(Marantz 1997, Alexiadou 2001, Borer 2005, Alexiadou & Schäfer 2010,
Sichel 2010).
(1) a. El ejército destruyó la ciudad. (event)
‘The army destroyed the city’
b. La destrucción de la ciudad por el ejército. (event)
‘The destruction of the city by the army’
▪ All verb-derived formations contain a verbalizing functional projection;
but they differ as to their internal make-up. In agreement with the main
assumptions in DM, the internal make-up is understood in terms of
organization of functional material (Alexiadou, 2010a).
(2) a. Faltan recursos en la Universidad. (state)
‘The University lacks resources’
b. La falta de recursos en la Universidad. (state)
‘The lack of resources at the University’
▪ In this presentation, we extend the idea of shared functional projections
to the domain of nominals with a stative interpretation.
▪ Different aspectual interpretations are determined by the presence of
different functional projections.
(3) a. La llegada de Juan {en cinco minutos / *durante una hora}
‘John’s arrival {in five minutes / *for an hour}’
(nominal achievement)
b. La búsqueda del niño {*en cinco minutos / durante una hora}
‘The search for the child {*in five minutes / for an hour}’
(nominal activity)
1
The research that underlies this work has been financed by the Project FFI200800603/FILO (MEC) and by two Fellowships (FPI and FPU). We are grateful to
Antonio Fábregas for his comments and suggestions, which have considerably
improved this work.
1
(4) La guerra contra ese país {*en una semana / *durante una semana}
‘The war against that country {*in a week / *for a week}’
i. ‘In the future, John will buy a house’. (tense reading)
ii. *‘Probably, John buys a house at this moment’. (modal
epistemic reading)
The aspectual type of the verb is maintained in the nominal version. The
nominals in (3) are affected by the same syntactic-aspectual restrictions as
their verbal bases (Varela 2010, for Spanish nominalizations).
(6) Faltará dinero en la empresa. (state)
‘The company will lack money’
i. ‘In the future, the company will lack money’. (tense
reading)
ii. ‘Probably, the company lacks money at this moment’.
(modal epistemic reading)
→ From a lexicalist approach, the aspectual reading of the nominal can be
seen as a case of inheritance, e.g., the nominalization inherits the eventive
(1) or stative (2) content from its verb.
→ From a syntactic approach (DM), nominals and verbal predicates share
some functional projections that supply them with an aspectual reading in
both syntactic environments.
Nominals derived from (5) and (6) use the same suffix (-a) and preserve
their aspectual type3:
We follow a syntactic approach to explain the kind of contrasts
exemplified in (1)-(3).
(7) La compra de la casa tuvo lugar en enero. (event nominal)
‘The buy of the house took place in January’.
(8) La falta de dinero en la empresa {*tuvo lugar en enero / ha durado
mucho}. (stative nominal)
‘The lack of money in the company {*took place in January / has
lasted long}.
2. Weak suffixes
2.1. Zero suffixation with vowel desinence (-a, -e, -o)
The zero suffixation (-a, -e, -o) does not select a particular aspectual base.
(9) a. #La película durante dos horas nos encantó.
‘#We liked the film during two hours’.
b. La falta de dinero durante el último año molestó a la gente.
‘The lack of money during the last year annoyed people’.
→ Eventive and stative predicates under the synthetic future
context (Gennari 2002, Soto 2008, Jaque 2010)2:
(5) Juan comprará una casa. (event)
‘John will buy a house’
2
3
Alexiadou (2010b), who analyses the case of Greek stative nominalizations, uses
other grammatical contexts in order to determine the stative nature of both verbal and
nominal predicates. For the nominal domain, she uses the for x-time modification and
the ability to take manner adverbials. We believe that the contexts adopted here for
Spanish nominalizations provide similar distinctions.
We focus on the kind of states singled out by this test, which roughly corresponds to
Kimian states (see Maienborn 2005; Rothmayr 2009).
2
A syntactic structure for zero suffixation with vowel desinence:
Table 1
‘take place’
temporal modification
inside DP
Event N
+
+
+
State N
-
+
+
Result N
-
-
(+)
durative
predicate
Other examples with zero suffixation:
Table 2
The desinence taken by the zero suffix can be spelled out by -a, -e or –o
over the N projection. This is also the gender mark of the nominal.
-o
Event
State
-e
Verb
Nominalization
Verb
rogar
‘to request’
ruego ‘request’
viajar ‘to
travel’
pesar
weigh’
‘to
peso ‘weigh’
costar
cost’
→ We assume that the v head corresponds to an Event, which licenses
eventive readings; took place predicates, etc. (10). On the other hand, the V
head corresponds to a non eventive predicate, so it is used for stative
expressions (11)4. V corresponds to the PRED projection in the system of
Rothmayr (2009), that is, the functional projection that introduces the
"situation argument".
Nominalization
viaje ‘travel’
‘to
coste ‘cost’
4
The strategy of representing syntactically types of eventualities has been proposed
largely in the literature. See Harley (1995), for different flavors of v; Marantz (1997); or
Rothmayr (2009), for a hierarchyzed view of aspectual operators.
3
Eventive predicate
→ The nominals derived over this projection cannot be subjects of took
place (8), but they license durative predicates (8) and temporal
modification inside DP (9b). The aspectual value of the resulting
nominalization depends on the aspectual type of the predicate.
(14) a. Juan construyó la casa el año pasado.
‘John built the house last year’
b. La construcción de la casa por Juan tuvo lugar el año pasado.
‘The building of the house by John took place last year’.
Obtaining a result nominal:
Eventive / Stative predicate
(15) a. Juan poseyó a su mujer anoche.
‘John possessed his wife last night’.
b. La posesión de la mujer por parte de Juan tuvo lugar anoche.
‘The possession of the woman by John took place last night’.
(16) a. Juan posee una casa.
‘John owns a house’.
b. La posesión de la casa {#tuvo lugar anoche / ha durado años}.
‘The possession of the house {#took place last night / has
lasted several years’}.
2.2. –ción
-ción can be seen as the lexical spell out of an NP layer that subordinates
the verbal structure. “If the affix just lexicalizes the nominal features, we
expect it to be able to combine with any kind of verbal predicate –maybe,
also, non verbal structures, like roots” (Fábregas 2010)5.
*Pure stative predicate
It seems that –ción does not take pure stative predicates (e.g., costar
‘to cost’ > *costación). This suffix needs at least an eventive reading
in the predicate. If the predicate has also a stative reading, the
nominalization can inherit it (e.g., (15), (16))6.
The predictions of Fábregas’ analysis (13) are not always borne out.
5
6
Note that Fábregas (2010) assumes that vP (13) corresponds to a verbal projection,
irrespectively of the aspectual reading.
4
The nominals aspiración (‘aspiration’) and admiración (‘admiration’), derived from
psychological state predicates, could be an exception.
Note that this aspectual restriction is irrelevant when the suffix takes a bare
root. That explains why in those cases there are nominals with several
interpretations:
b. La pertenencia de Juan a un grupo religioso {*tuvo lugar el
año pasado / ha durado muchos años}.
‘John’s membership to a religious group {*took place last year
/ has lasted several years}.
Event: función ‘function / session’7 (*fun-ar)
Object: nación ‘nation’ (cf. nacimiento), canción ‘song’ (cf. *can-ar)
Quality/state: coloración ‘colour’ (*colorar), posición ‘position’
(*pos-¿?)
repugnancia
‘repugnance’,
predominancia
Other
examples:
‘predominance’,
preponderancia
‘preponderance’,
precedencia
‘precedence’,
procedencia ‘origin’, coincidencia ‘coincidence’,
dependencia ‘dependence’, etc.
Two possible explanations for this gap:
A) There is, indeed, an aspectual restriction on the base. The apparent
cases of root formations are non segmentable units.

Eventive / stative predicate: this suffix cannot take the eventive
reading of the predicate.
Problem: This suffix does not impose a similar aspectual
restriction on the derived nominal. (cf. posesión)
(18) a. Juan desciende de italianos.
‘John descends from Italians’.
b. ??La descendencia italiana de Juan
‘The Italian origin of John’
B) There is not such an aspectual restriction. The suffix by itself does
not impose restrictions; the lexical gap can be explained by affix
rivalry and lexical blocking.
(19) a. Juan descendió de la montaña.
‘John descended from the mountain’.
b. {El descenso / *la descendencia} de Juan de la montaña
‘John’s descending from the mountain’
3. Strong pattern
3.1. –ncia
This suffix always selects stative predicates and derives stative
nominalizations.
(20) {el ascenso / *la ascendencia} de Juan al Everest.
‘John’s climbing of The Everest’.
Pure stative predicate
(17) a. Juan pertenece a un grupo religioso.
‘John belongs to a religious group’.
7
Other examples: ignorancia ‘ignorance’, absorbencia ‘absorbency’,
importancia ‘importance, significance’, diferencia ‘diference’, etc.
Examples taken from Fábregas 2010.
5
A syntactic structure for –ncia:
(22) a. una granja distante dos kilómetros del pueblo.
‘a distant farm two kms. from the village’.
b. una granja distante.
‘a distant farm’.
c. un profesor (muy) distante.
‘a (very) distant teacher’.
The –nte suffix seems to select atelic predicates (Cano 2010).
→ The projection of –ncia provides nominal features to a VP projection,
where V holds a minimal predication (e.g., non eventive predicate).
In this sense, a –ncia nominal is just the nominalization of a state. In (21),
we understand by state a root with some minimal semantic content which
is not dominated by other eventive projections, but just by VP.
A) Adjectives derived from States
(23) a. El papel rojo abunda.
‘There is a lot of red paper’.
b. abundante papel rojo
‘plentiful red paper’
3.2. –nte
(24) a. La granja dista del pueblo.
‘The farm is far from the village’.
b. una granja distante
‘a distant farm’
This suffix comes from the Latin desinence –ns/-ntis, which was used in
order to form present participles. In Spanish, in contrast to French or
Italian, this suffix is used to derive adjectives8. However, -nte adjectives
show different degrees of verbhood:
8
Other examples: lindante ‘adjoining’, constante de ‘consisting of’,
perteneciente ‘belonging’, sobrante ‘remaining’, coincidente
‘coincident’, equidistante ‘equidistant’, etc.
In other Romance languages, like French, this form has still a verbal value, as in
Latin:
i) La mère préparant le repas parle avec sa voisine.
‘The mother is talking to her neighbor while cooking the diner’.
‘La madre habla con su vecina mientras prepara la cena’.
ii) *La madre preparante la cena habla con su vecina.
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b. un camino descendente
‘a descending path’
B) Adjectives derived from typically bounded predicates with
stative reading
(25) a. Juan cortó el pastel. (bounded)
‘John cut the cake’.
b. Este objeto corta. (unbounded)
‘This object cuts’.
c. un objeto cortante (*del pastel)
‘a cutting (*of the cake) object’
D) Adjectives derived from Activities9
(30) a. dinero circulante
‘money in circulation’
b. eje deslizante
‘sliding axle’
c. bandera ondeante
‘fluttering flag’
(26) a. Este cuchillo corta este filete de carne.
‘This knife cuts this steak’.
b. #un cuchillo cortante
‘a cutting knife’
Analysis
(27) a. Juan disolvió la pintura. (bounded)
‘John dissolved the paint’.
b. Este líquido disuelve (cosas) bien. (unbounded)
‘This liquid dissolves (something) well’.
c. un líquido disolvente
‘a solvent liquid’
Given that the syntactic structure of –nte formations has to satisfy a
condition of atelicity, there are different options to meet such a
requirement.
A) Pure States
C) Adjectives derived from state / event alternating predicates
(28) a. Juan desciende por la colina.
‘John is descending from the hill’.
b. *una persona descendente
‘*a descending person’
(29) a. El camino desciende por la colina.
‘The path goes down the hill’.
9
7
In this work, we focus on –nte adjectives which select stative predicates.
(33) a. El niño colgó un cuadro.
‘The boy hung a picture’.
b. #un niño colgante
‘a hanging boy’
B) (Un)bounded predicates
(34) a. El puente cuelga.
‘The bridge hangs’.
b. un puente colgante
‘a hanging bridge’
D) Activities
The structure in (32) assumes the kind of explanation given by Alexiadou
and Schäfer (2010) for –er nominalizations. The aspectual operator in
AspP (GEN, in this case) binds an eventive variable (e) in the v head,
leading to a generic or non episodic reading. In this environment an
unquantized or unspecified object is necessary.
The presence of a vP determines an eventive aspectual reading of the
adjective. This correlates with a less “adjectival” behavior of these
formations: dinero circulante (estos días), ‘money in circulation (these
days)’.
C) State / Event alternating predicates
We assume that these predicates have two structures. One of them has
an eventive vP, while the other one has a VP. Note that the former
structure does not allow a –nte adjective (33), while the latter derives
an –nte adjective (34):
8
4. –ncia vs. –nte
• Internal stativity: A minimal semantic content inside the root under a
VP projection. Unless an eventive functional projection (v) is added, that
content remains stative. This approach builds on the difference between
Inner and Outer Aspect introduced by Verkuyl (1993) and applied to
infinitive nominalizations by Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia & Schäfer (2010)10.
We assume that the domain of inner aspect is related to vP and VP.
Many authors (Lacuesta & Bustos 1999) have pointed out the connection
between –ncia and –nte:
(36) descendencia ‘descendence’
-
descendente ‘descendent’
distancia ‘distance’
-
distante ‘distant’
ignorancia ‘ignorance’
-
ignorante ‘ignorant’
existencia ‘existence’
-
existente ‘existent’
(39) [ Tense [ AspP … [ vP [ VP [RootP]]]]]
Outer aspect
• External stativity: An interpretation derived from some syntactic
configurations over VP. For example, the GEN operator in Asp (32) joined
with an unquantized or unspecified object derives a “state”. Note that
stativity is a derived interpretation but not an atomic syntactic element
encoded in some functional projection (-nte adjectives derived from
typically bounded predicates under generic interpretation (32)).
(37) ¿[[X] ADJ] ia]N?
Metaphoric meanings absent in the verb arise in both derived formations
(distante / distancia / distar).
However, there are gaps in the paradigm:
(38)
V
cortar ‘to cut’
contaminar ‘to pollute’
hidratar ‘to hydrate’
diluir ‘to dissolve’
Inner Aspect
→
Adj
cortante ‘cutting’
contaminante ‘pollutant’
hidratante ‘hydratant’
diluyente ‘thinner’
The –nte suffix (less specified) is related to a more syntactic,
compositional process of word formation. As far as this suffix can operate
at any structural level (internal or external stativity), it is freer than –ncia.
N
*cortancia
*contaminancia
*hidratancia
*diluyencia
→
The –ncia suffix (more specified) is related to a more fixed group of
bases. This suffix has to be attached to internal states (e.g., it must operate
at just one structural level: VP).
4.1. Internal vs. External Stativity
The data in (38) show that –nte suffix is more productive than the –ncia
suffix. To account for this pattern we resort to a difference between
internal and external stativity.
10
9
See also Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou & Schäfer (2006), Harley (2007) and
Marantz (2005).
(40) [ Tense [ AspP … [ vP [ VP [RootP]]]]]
Base
-ncia
Suffix
internal state
-nte
-ncia
STRONG
Base
Eventive
WEAK
PATTERN
Stative
Zero
suffixation
(-a, -e, -o)
Derivative
ev. activity
eventive (compra
‘buy’)
-nte
stative (colgante ‘hanging’)
activity (Adj?) (circulante
‘in circulation’)
stative (falta ‘lack’)
Eventive
eventive (construcción
‘building’)
eventive/stative
eventive / stative
(posesión ‘possession’)
Stative
stative (cortante ‘cutting’)
external state
Suffix
(descendencia
stative (distante ‘distant’)
internal state
event/stative
stative
(pertenencia
‘membership’)
stative
‘origin’)
event/stative
PATTERN
5. Summary and predictions
Derivative
Final Remarks:
• A predicate of a certain aspectual type can produce a nominalization by
adding either a weak suffix or a strong suffix with a compatible aspectual
value.
-ción
•
If we consider the strong pattern of suffixation, we can formulate a
prediction from the derivative to the base, because of the aspectual
restriction of the suffix. However, as far as there are weak suffixes
without an aspectual restriction, a prediction in the opposite direction is
not possible: given a certain base, there are several available options.
*
10
Fábregas, A. (2010): “A syntactic account of affix rivalry in Spanish
nominalizations”, in Alexiadou, A. & M. Rathert (eds.). 67-91.
•
We expect to find some rivalry in aspectual areas shared by two or
more suffixes. That is, for instance, the case of –ción. Its aspectual
restriction can be derived from the more restrictive nature of –ncia. In the
case of competition (two suffixes for a stative noun), the more specified
suffix has priority. However, while this blocking effect accounts for
the –ción gap, it could be conflictive for the existence of zero formations
derived from pure stative predicates.
Gennari, S. (2002): “Spanish past and future tenses: Less (semantics) is more”,
in Gutiérrez-Rexach (ed.) From meaning to discourse: Trends in
Spanish semantics and pragmatics. Amsterdam: Elsevier. 21-36.
Harley, H. (1995): Subjects, Events and Licensing. PhD dissertation, MIT.
Harley, H. (2007): “External arguments: on the independence of Voice and v”,
Paper presented at the XXX GLOW Colloquium, University of
Tromsoe.
Jaque, M. (2010): Nominalizaciones de verbos estativos, Master thesis.
Autonomous University of Madrid.
Lacuesta, R. & E. Bustos (1999): “La derivación nominal”, in GDLE, cap. 69,
Espasa Calpe: Madrid.
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