Grammatical Aspect and the Extensionality of English Argument-taking Derived Nominals

Grammatical Aspect and the Extensionality of English Argument-taking Derived Nominals

  The main goal of this paper is to show that the semantic concept of events is taken not as primitive but as derived from aspect in the nominal syntax (as well as in the sentential syntax). By appealing to the two-component theory of aspect (Comrie 1976, Smith 1991, Cowper 1999 among others), I claim that the extensionality of English argument-taking derived nominals arise from the Latinate nominalizing suffix that functions to provide a grammatical aspect, perfectivity. In this view, nominalization in English is understood as a neutralizing process taking the intensional property of events (denoted by root verbs or verbal nouns) and extensionalizing it in the nominal syntax.