From noun to verb and verb to noun: A cross-linguistic study of class-changing morphology.

摘要

Although a number of recent studies of deverbal nominalizations and denominal verbalizations have made claims which are language universal in scope, no independent test of these claims has been made. Hopper and Thompson (1985), Givon (1979), and Langacker (1987), for example, each present a framework for defining 'noun' and 'verb' and discuss class-changing mechanisms. Comrie (1985) and Comrie and Thompson (1985) provide semantic classifications for these grammatical morphemes. Greenberg (1966) hypothesized on the position of derivational morphemes with respect to that of inflectional morphemes and lexical roots.;A database was constructed from the twenty-six languages of a stratified probability sample. Three hypotheses are tested, concluding that it is a universal tendency for languages to have both an agentive deverbal nominalizer, and for languages not to have more verbalizers than nominalizers; and contrary to Greenberg's hypothesis, derivation is not always found between a root and an inflectional morpheme.;Using the tools of grammaticization theory, synchronic patterns of uses of deverbal nominalizers are interpreted as diachronic paths of development. It is observed that the nominalizations at the start of these paths have clause function meanings (e.g., agent nominalizers), while those at the endpoints of these paths function at discourse level by providing labels for entities (e.g., result nominalizers). Analysis of these patterns suggest the conclusion that deverbal nominalizers are not idiosynchratic in their meaning.;Examination of denominal verbalizers supports the claim that nominalization and verbalization are asymmetric operations rather than 'reverse functions'. Verbalizers tend to be more closely bound semantically to their lexical bases than are nominalizers. In addition, the occurrence of agentive and action nominalizers is suggested to be universal due to similarities of human cognition. Verbalizers, however, do not occur with such regularity, and their presence is linked, in part, to a language's morphological type.;Discussion of models of lexical representation and definitions of 'noun', 'verb', 'nominalization' and 'verbalization', together with the results of this study suggest that dynamicity be incorporated into models of lexical representation.