Nominalization

This volume explores the progress of cross-linguistic research into the structure of complex nominals since the publication of Chomsky's 'Remarks on Nominalization' in 1970. In the last 50 years of research into the division of labour between the mental lexicon and syntax, the specific properties of nominalized structures have remained a particularly central question. The chapters in this volume take stock of developments in this area and offer new perspectives on a range of issues, including the representation of morphological complexity in the syntax, the correlation of nominal affixes with different types of nominalizations, and the modelling of non-compositional meaning within syntactic approaches to word formation. Crucially, the contributors base their analyses on data from typologically diverse languages, such as Archi, Greek, Hiaki, Icelandic, Mebengokre, Turkish, and Udmurt, and explore the question of whether, cross-linguistically, nominalizations have a uniform core to their structure that can be syntactically described.

Artemis Alexiadou is Professor of English Linguistics at Humboldt University of Berlin and Vice Director of the Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics (ZAS) in Berlin. Her work on the syntax and morphology of noun phrases and argument alternations has been published in multiple international journals, and she is the co-editor of the OUP volumes The Syntax of Roots and the Roots of Syntax (with Hagit Borer and Florian Schäfer; 2014) and External Arguments in Transitivity Alternations (with Elena Anagnostopoulou and Florian Schäfer; 2015). In 2014 she was awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize by the German Research Foundation for excellence in research.
Hagit Borer is a Professor of Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London. Her research involves the division of labour between the lexicon and syntax, and touches on morphosyntax as well as the syntax-semantics interface. She is the author of the three-volume work Structuring Sense: Volume 1, In Name Only (OUP 2005) focuses on nominal structure; Volume 2, The Normal Course of Events (OUP 2005) explores event structure; and Volume 3, Taking Form (OUP 2013) looks at morphosyntax and word formation. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2017.