Deverbal semantics and the Montagovian generative lexicon ΛTyn

Abstract

We propose a lexical account of action nominals, in particular of deverbalnominalisations, whose meaning is related to the event expressed by their baseverb. The literature about nominalisations often assumes that the semantics ofthe base verb completely defines the structure of action nominals. We arguethat the information in the base verb is not sufficient to completely determinethe semantics of action nominals. We exhibit some data from differentlanguages, especially from Romance language, which show that nominalisationsfocus on some aspects of the verb semantics. The selected aspects, however,seem to be idiosyncratic and do not automatically result from the internalstructure of the verb nor from its interaction with the morphological suffix. We therefore propose a partially lexicalist approach view of deverbal nouns. Itis made precise and computable by using the Montagovian Generative Lexicon, atype theoretical framework introduced by Bassac, Mery and Retor'e in thisjournal in 2010. This extension of Montague semantics with a richer type systemeasily incorporates lexical phenomena like the semantics of action nominals inparticular deverbals, including their polysemy and (in)felicitouscopredications.