θ-Role Assignment in Derived Nominals

On the Aspectual Properties of English Derived Nominals

English provides several distinct mechanisms by which verbs may be nominalized, as illustrated in (1-2). The form electing in (1a) is sometimes termed the “verbal” gerund, while the perfectly homophonous form in (1b) is termed the “nominal” gerund. Nominal gerunds in English are distinguished from verbal gerunds syntactically, by their inability to assign objective case to an object (hence the ...

On (θ, θ)-Derivations in Semiprime Rings

Thematic Role Assignment in Context

Two experiments are described in which participants read sentences of the form “He drank some . . .” in contexts which either did or did not introduce something drinkable. Participants were more likely to report that the sentence stopped making sense at the verb “drank” if nothing drinkable had been introduced. When participants responded, in this case, that the verb did make sense, their react...

Focus Acoustics in Mandarin Nominals

In addition to deciding what to say, interlocutors have to decide how to say it. One of the important tasks of linguists is then to model how differences in acoustic patterns influence the interpretation of a sentence. In light of previous studies on how prosodic structure convey discourse-level of information in a sentence, this study makes use of a speech production experiment to investigate ...

Events and Modification in Nominals

It is a familiar lesson from physical theory that interactions yield an important probe into structure. In the experiments of Rutherford almost 90 years ago, bits of matter were projected together; the physical properties of their interactions yielded evidence for a nucleus, hidden in the heart of atom. In semantics, the results of Donald Davidson in a famous 1967 paper might be viewed in a sim...