Papers by Gianina Iordachioaia
In linguistics, the study of quantity is concerned with the behavior of expressions that refer to... more In linguistics, the study of quantity is concerned with the behavior of expressions that refer to amounts in terms of the internal structure of objects and events, their spatial or temporal extension (as duration and boundedness), their qualifying properties, as well as how these aspects interact with each other and other linguistic phenomena. Quantity is primarily manifest in language for the lexical categories of noun, verb, and adjective/ adverb. For instance, the distinction between mass and count nouns is essentially quantitative: it indicates how nominal denotation is quantized—as substance (e.g., water, sand) or as an atomic individual (e.g., book, boy). Similarly, the aspectual classes of verbs, such as states (know), activities (run), accomplishments (drown), achievements (notice), and semelfactives (knock) represent quantitatively different types of events. Adjectives and adverbs may lexically express quantities in relation to individuals, respectively, events (e.g., little, enough, much, often), and one might argue that numerals (two, twenty) are intrinsic quantitative expressions. Quantitative derivation refers to the use of derivational affixes to encode quantity in language. For instance, the English suffix -ful attaches to a noun N1 to derive another noun N2, such that N2 denotes the quantity that fits in the container denoted by N1. N2 also employs a special use in quantitative constructions: see hand—a handful of berries. The challenge for the linguistic description of quantity is that it often combines with other linguistic notions such as evaluation, intensification, quality, and it does not have a specific unitary realization—it is usually auxiliary on other more established notions. Quantitative affixes either have limited productivity or their primary use is for other semantic notions. For instance, the German suffix ‑schaft typically forms abstract nouns as in Vaterschaft ‘fatherhood’, but has a (quantity-related) collective meaning in Lehrerschaft ‘lecturer staff’; compare English -hood in childhood and the collective neighborhood. This diversity makes quantity difficult to capture systematically, in spite of its pervasiveness as a semantic notion.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2020
Word Structure, Jul 1, 2020
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2013
Oxford University Press eBooks, Nov 19, 2020
In ‘Categorization and nominalization in zero-derived nouns’ Iordăchioaia discusses a type of nom... more In ‘Categorization and nominalization in zero-derived nouns’ Iordăchioaia discusses a type of nominalization generally neglected in the generative literature after Chomsky (1970), namely zero-derived nouns (ZNs). While overtly suffixed nominals are taken to systematically nominalize verbal constructions with argument structure, ZNs are considered to represent quite lexicalized uses corresponding to Grimshaw’s (1990) result or simple event nominals. In current syntactic models of word formation like DM or XSM, the implication is that ZNs are simple categorizations of roots as nouns in specific syntactic contexts and cannot instantiate real nominalizations of verbal structure. One important argument that Borer (2013) brings in support of this hypothesis is the alleged inability of ZNs to realize verbal argument structure. Iordăchioaia shows that, depending on the ontological type of the root that the base verb is built on, ZNs may in fact realize argument structure and receive compositional deverbal readings of the kind that nominalizations with overt suffixes resent. Building on Beavers and Koontz-Garboden’s (2020) distinction between property concept and result roots, she argues that ZNs corresponding to verbs built on the two types of root exhibit a contrast in their potential to realize argument structure. She then compares ZNs derived from change of state verbs (which are built on result roots) with ZNs derived from psych verbs (which are built on property concept roots) and shows by means of corpus data that the former often instantiate inchoative or causative change of state readings with which they realize argument structure. By contrast, the apparent semantic arguments of psych ZNs are not structural, as they involve idiosyncratic prepositional realizations, similarly to underived psych nouns. <269>
De Gruyter eBooks, Feb 6, 2023
We carry out a large-scale study of noun-verb zero derivation pairs in English in order to identi... more We carry out a large-scale study of noun-verb zero derivation pairs in English in order to identify possible semantic contrasts between the two derivational directions: V-toN (zero nouns) and N-to-V (zero verbs). We compile a dataset of 4,879 N-V word sense pairs from the Princeton WordNet, which are annotated for noun and verb semantic classes and are assigned a morphosemantic relation. These sense pairs are labelled with a derivational direction from the Oxford English Dictionary. This makes it possible to investigate, on the one hand, the morphosemantic relations and, on the other hand, the noun and verb semantic classes that typically associate with each direction of zero derivation with the aim of offering a better understanding of the semantics involved in this morphological process.
Zeitschrift für Wortbildung / Journal of Word Formation, 2020
We investigate deverbal zero-derived nominals in English (e.g., to walk > a walk) from the per... more We investigate deverbal zero-derived nominals in English (e.g., to walk > a walk) from the perspective of the lexical semantics of their base verbs and the interpretations they may receive (e.g., event, result state, product, agent). By acknowledging that, in the absence of an overt affix, the meaning of zero-nominals is highly dependent on that of the base, the ultimate goal of this study is to identify possible meaning regularities that these nominals may display in relation to the different semantic verb classes. We report on a newly created database of 1,000 zero-derived nominals, which have been collected for various semantic verb classes. We test previous generalizations made in the literature in comparison with suffix-based nominals and in relation to the ontological type of the base verb. While these generalizations may intuitively hold, we find intriguing challenges that bring zero-derived nominals closer to suffix-based nominals than previously claimed. Dieser Beitrag...
Taming the TAME Systems, 2015
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Oct 5, 2020
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Nov 25, 2013
Zeitschrift für Wortbildung, Jul 1, 2020
Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft
In this paper we bring evidence from English and Italian deverbal zero nominals (to climb > th... more In this paper we bring evidence from English and Italian deverbal zero nominals (to climb > the climb-Ø N ) that zero is a possible spell-out of a nominalizer otherwise overtly instantiated in suffixed nominals (examin-ation ). We argue in favor of a Distributed Morphology approach, a separationist theory that recognizes and easily implements zero morphology with underlying syntax-semantics. Abstracting away from other theoretical trends and their foundational reasons to refrain from using zero suffixes, we address three properties that have been argued to fundamentally distinguish zero nominals from overtly suffixed nominals, with the implication that they instantiate a different word formation process: i) realization of verbal argument structure, ii) possibility of embedding verbalizing suffixes, and iii) semantic transparency in relation to the verb. By means of corpus data and two manually collected datasets of 561 English and 174 Italian zero nominals based on lexicographic ...
Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft
In this paper we offer an overview of the linguistic phenomena that have traditionally been handl... more In this paper we offer an overview of the linguistic phenomena that have traditionally been handled by means of zero affixes and of the theoretical debate around the advantages and disadvantages of employing such null morphemes in theoretical modeling. While the advantage of positing zero affixes is straightforward from an empirical perspective (see inflectional syncretism and affixless category change, among others), their theoretical legitimacy has been controversially debated for several decades. In this overview, we present the main problems that have been brought forward against zero affixation and some of the mechanisms that have been proposed as an alternative. Finally, we show how the different articles in our edited collection contribute to this debate by addressing the following three research questions: (1) How do current theories of derivational morphology deal with linguistic phenomena that seem to involve zero affixes? (2) How do zero derivational affixes compare with ...
Glossa: a journal of general linguistics
The question whether synthetic compounds should be analyzed as including a verbal core or as root... more The question whether synthetic compounds should be analyzed as including a verbal core or as root compounds has issued a long theoretical debate in the linguistic literature since the ‘70s. It is precisely their mixed properties that make this debate so difficult to settle. We investigate compounds headed by suffix-based deverbal nouns and propose that they are ambiguous between true synthetic compounds, which include verbal structure, and root compounds. We trace this ambiguity back to Grimshaw’s (1990) distinction between argument structure nominals (realizing verbal arguments) and result or simple event nominals (which do not realize verbal arguments). The true synthetic compounds are headed by argument structure nominals and realize the verb’s internal argument as a non-head (e.g. book reading, book reader), but deverbal nouns may also head root compounds when interpreted as simple event or result nominals and realize a modifier as their non-head (e.g. police questioning). We ac...
Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 2022
The question whether synthetic compounds should be analyzed as including a verbal core or as root... more The question whether synthetic compounds should be analyzed as including a verbal core or as root compounds has issued a long theoretical debate in the linguistic literature since the '70s. It is precisely their mixed properties that make this debate so difficult to settle. We investigate compounds headed by suffix-based deverbal nouns and propose that they are ambiguous between true synthetic compounds, which include verbal structure, and root compounds. We trace this ambiguity back to Grimshaw's (1990) distinction between argument structure nominals (realizing verbal arguments) and result or simple event nominals (which do not realize verbal arguments). The true synthetic compounds are headed by argument structure nominals and realize the verb's internal argument as a non-head (e.g. book reading, book reader), but deverbal nouns may also head root compounds when interpreted as simple event or result nominals and realize a modifier as their non-head (e.g. police questioning). We account for the differences and similarities between synthetic compounds and argument structure nominals in the framework of Distributed Morphology and show how Voice-related properties account for further characteristics of synthetic compounds concerning event implication and accommodation of idioms.
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Papers by Gianina Iordachioaia
How do theories of derivational morphology deal with linguistic phenomena that seem to require the use of zero affixes? How do they motivate the need for zeros and how do they implement them, or why do they argue against zeros and how do they technically do without them?
How do zero derivational affixes compare with their “overt analogues” (i. e. overt derivational affixes)?
What insights can we obtain from language-specific properties, typological generalizations and/or larger data-oriented studies on the question whether zero affixation is necessary in derivational morphology?
This volume addresses both these issues in two thematic parts. The first part, “Categories and categorization”, consists of papers that tackle the problem of defining categories and mixed categories and its reflex on the inventory. The second part, “Issues in category change”, comprises investigations on category change, focusing on nominalizations, which is the test ground for a theory of category change and word formation. The papers included in this part discuss, among others, the similarities and mismatches between derived nominals and the corresponding verbs in terms of argument realization and eventive interpretation.
The languages investigated in the volume include English, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. This book targets researchers and advanced students in theoretical linguistics.
Volumul este dedicat profesorului Emil Ionescu la împlinirea vârstei de 60 de ani, a cărui activitate universitară reprezintă un efort continuu de a îmbina cele trei subdiscipline lingvistice: lingvistica generală, lingvistica formală și lingvistica computațională.
Cartea se adresează atât cercetătorilor în domeniu, cât și studenților din ciclul superior de studii.
research for more than half a century. The study of polarity phenomena can be extremely revealing about the internal structure of a language, as they usually involve an interaction at the interface between syntax, semantics and pragmatics. In the past, most attention was paid to negative polarity items. However, recent years have witnessed a growing interest in positive polarity items. As a continuation of this trend, this issue collects four papers dedicated to positive polarity items, which enrich the empirical domain with novel observations from different
languages and appeal to diverse theoretical concepts such as scalarity and presupposition in their modeling of positive polarity. The results show that positive polarity is a distributional phenomenon that has different sources and most likely cannot be modeled in a unifying way, although there may be subsets of positive polarity items that allow unifying accounts.
walk > a walk-Ø), which have received much less attention in the literature than the suffix-based
nominals (SNs, cf. walking, examination, assignment). In the generative literature, in particular,
after Grimshaw's (1990) seminal work on SNs and their possibility to inherit verbal event structure
realizing arguments, ZNs have been taken to lack all these properties: e.g., in syntax-based models
of word formation, which take argument realization in deverbal nouns to indicate the inheritance
of verbal functional structure from the base verb, ZNs have been analyzed as derived not from a
verb but from an uncategorized root, as implemented in Borer (2013). The prediction of such
accounts is that the interpretation of ZNs should be faithful to the ontology of the root and
independent of verbal functional structure. Following Rappaport Hovav & Levin's (1998ff)
ontology of verbal roots as expressing either manner (of events) or results, I show that some ZNs
derived from result verbs denote events, which can only come about from the event structure of
their base verbs. In support of this, such ZNs also realize argument structure, as plenty of corpus
examples from the BYU corpora show. A further implication of this study is that zero deserves a
derivational status similar to that of overt suffixes (contra Borer 2013).