Argument structure of nouns in Catalan : a descriptive approach

CREMADES CORTIELLA, Elga. Argument structure of nouns in Catalan : a descriptive approach. In Of Books and Roses : First California Symposium on Catalan Studies, 24. 4. 2017, University of California, Los Angeles. 2017.

Basic information

• Original name: Argument structure of nouns in Catalan : a descriptive approach
• Authors: CREMADES CORTIELLA, Elga (724 Spain, guarantor, belonging to the institution).
• Edition: Of Books and Roses : First California Symposium on Catalan Studies, 24. 4. 2017, University of California, Los Angeles, 2017.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Field of Study: 60201 General language studies
• Country of publisher: United States of America
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: URL
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14210/17:00096482
• Organization unit: Faculty of Arts
• Keywords in English: argument structure; Catalan; nominals; syntax
• Tags: kontrola_RIV, rivok

Abstract

Nowadays most researchers agree on the idea that nouns, like verbs or adjectives, are predicative categories. However, there are also some differences between nouns and verbs, the most relevant of which being related to case assignment. Unlike verbs, nouns seem unable to assign direct case to their arguments. This is crucial for the materialization of argument structure of nouns and nominalizations. Whereas some arguments are identically expressed in verbal and nominal structures (cf. 1a and 2a for the case of Catalan), others show multiple possibilities of variation (1b and 2b): (1) a. Telefonaré a la mare (I will call mum.) b. Odio aquesta gent. (I hate these people.) (2) a. la telefonada a la mare (the call to my mother) b. el meu odi {per/cap a/vers/contra} aquesta gent (my hatred against these people) The aim of this paper is to present a study about the syntactic properties of argument structure of nouns in Catalan. Amongst other things, it will be shown that the realization of NP in Catalan depends basically on three factors: (i) the kind of argument; (ii) the number of expressed arguments in the same phrase, and (iii) the semantic factors involved. Although based on a syntactist approach to argument structure, empiric data will be given so as to provide evidence for the main assumptions, since the analysis has taken into consideration all the occurrences of 200 nouns extracted from the Corpus textual informatitzat de la llengua catalana (CTILC).

Links

• MUNI/A/1126/2016, interní kód MU: Name: Románské jazyky a románské literatury (Acronym: ROMJAZLIT)

Investor: Masaryk University, Category A