Download The role of unboundedness in the acceptability of nominal infinitives

Barbara Hentschel, Freie Universität Berlin
[email protected]
The role of unboundedness in the acceptability of nominal infinitives in Spanish:
Results of an experiment on verb classes and event readings
Spanish nominal infinitives (NI) of the type ‘determiner+infinitive+de-PP’ are a particular
type of event nominalization that has so far primarily received attention regarding its internal
syntactic structure (cf. Alexiadou, Iordăchioaia & Soare 2010).
NI differ from other event nominalizations in various ways and seems to be compatible only
with intransitive verbs. Transitive verbs with an agent- or theme-argument in the PP-position
are considered rather inacceptable (cf. Ramírez 2003: 129). However, this restriction cannot
be explained from a purely syntactic perspective and data on the topic appear to be far from
clear. Therefore, the talk draws on experimental data focusing on the interaction between the
NIs’ internal makeup – verb classes and argument selection – and their external distribution,
i.e. the event reading. The experiment is to show that acceptability of NIs does not only
depend on the verb class, but also on the type of event reading and that readings associated
with unboundedness are preferred.
NI occur in episodic readings, cf. (1), but also in non-episodic interpretations, such as generic
or habitual, cf. (2) and (3), or in ‘manner’-readings, in which a property is predicated of an
event type, cf. (4):
(1) Desde su despacho, estaba escuchando [el gritar de los niños].
‘From his office, he heard the children’s screaming.’
(2) [El tocar del piano] es un arte que requiere perstistencia.
‘Playing the piano is an art that requires persistence.’
(3) [El corretear de los niños durante la clase] es una mala costumbre.
‘The children’s running around during class is a bad habit.’
(4) [El cazar de los Podencos] es muy sofisticado.
‘The way Podencos hunt is very sophisticated.’
Crucially, in the non-episodic readings the event denoted by the NI is viewed without
spatiotemporal boundaries (cf. Mari, Beyssade & Del Prete 2013) and, thus, associated with a
[-b]ounded feature as presented in Jackendoff (1991: 19ss.). Jackendoff’s [±b] distinction
concerns the way an entity is referred to. The feature does not have to be carried by the entity
itself, but can also be evoked by matrix expressions.
The experiment manipulated the variables 1) verb class – intransitive vs. transitive – and 2)
event reading – episodic vs. generic –. It, thus, consisted of four variable level conditions and
was performed with 40 speakers of European Spanish. 32 experimental items were presented
along with distractor items in a ratio of 1:1,5 using counter-balancing and pseudorandomization (cf. Gibson & Fedorenko 2010; Schütze & Sprouse 2011). A clear distinction
between episodic and generic readings was drawn by the choice of matrix predicates under
which the NI were embedded as well as additional context material. Acceptability was
measured numerically on a seven-point Likert scale (cf. Weskott & Fanselow 2011).
The results reveal significant differences between the four variable level conditions,
acceptability decreasing as follows: [intransitive, generic] > [intransitive, episodic] >
[transitive, generic], [transitive, episodic]. The data show a correlation between the
combinations of verb classes and event readings on the one hand and acceptability on the
other. They, thus, provide evidence that NI are not only more acceptable in intransitive
structures, but also in generic, i.e. [-b] event readings.
References
Alexiadou, A., G. Iordăchioaia & E. Soare (2010): “Number/aspect interactions in the syntax
of nominalizations: a Distributed Morphology approach”, Journal of Linguistics 46, 537–
574.
Mari, A., C. Beyssade & F. Del Prete (2013): “Introduction”, Mari, A.; C. Beyssade & F. Del
Prete (eds.): Genericity. Oxford: Oxford UP.
Jackendoff, R. (1991): “Parts and Boundaries”, Cognition 41, 9-45.
Gibson, E. & E. Fedorenko (2010): “The need for quantitative methods in syntax and
semantics research”, Language and Cognitive Processes, 1–37.
Ramírez, Carlos J. (2003): “The Spanish Nominalized Infinitives: A proposal for
classification”, Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics 21, 117-133.
Schütze, C.T. & J. Sprouse (2011): “Judgment Data”,
http://web.mit.edu/hackl/www/lab/turkshop/readings/schutze-sprouse2011.pdf
(accessed 01/09/2014), to appear in: Podesva, R. J. & D. Sharm (eds.) (2014): Research
Methods in Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 27-50.
Weskott, T. & G. Fanselow, G. (2011): “On the Informativity of Different Measures of
Linguistic Acceptability”, Language 87, 249–273.
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