Lexical Borrowing Targets Spans

Languages, vol. 7, pp. 289

Abstract

In this study, I revisit the claim that nominals denoting complex events must derive from discernible verbal stems and must be headed by an overt nominalizer. I show that Turkish has a set of nominals, crucially of foreign origin, which provides counter-evidence to both claims. From the perspective of Turkish grammar, they are morphologically noncompositional, manifesting neither a detectable verbal basis nor an overt nominalizer although they are categorically complex event nominals. Since (zero-)derived nominals of Turkic origin do not allow argument structure, the puzzling makeup of underived complex event nominals in question boils down to their loan word nature. I show that their behavior is different from both derived nominals as well as gerundive nominals in important ways. I claim that they are defective nominalizations lacking an nP representation. After reviewing previous accounts of these nominals, I consider three syntactic approaches to word derivation, which differ in their theoretical assumptions only in granularity, and conclude that the Spanning approach of Bye and Svenonius provides us with a conceptually superior account.

Authors 1

1. Deniz Tat corresponding Aachen Leiden Institute for Area Studies

   Leiden University · UiT The Arctic University of Norway

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Language and Culture, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, 9019 Tromsø, Norway

   Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS), Leiden University, 2311 BZ Leiden, The Netherlands