Nominalization with – age and the instrument reading ...

Nominalization with –age and the instrument reading: morphological constraints on the semantico-argumentational properties of the base verb 1. Introduction- The polysemy of deverbal nouns is frequently discussed in the literature, particularly the polysemy of event nominals—nominalizations. Recent works question the event nominal/result nominal dichotomy (originally Grimshaw 1990), and note the existence of nine or ten distinct interpretations in French (cf. Event, Property, State, Product, Means, Path, Manner, Location, Collective, Period; Fradin 2012a, b). However, one interpretation associated with nominalising suffixes has never been evoked—the instrument interpretation. Our proposal is dedicated to the instrument interpretation of nouns with –age (henceforth Nage), illustrated in (1): allumage 'ignition', attelage 'harnessing', bandage 'bandaging', barrage 'damming', embrayage 'clutch', garnissage 'filling', gommage 'exfoliating', guidage 'guidance system', maquillage 'makeup'. Nominalization with –age in French (arrivage 'arrival', chauffage 'heating', montage 'editing') has been the topic of many studies focused on identifying the (semantic, syntactic) properties specific to these nominals in contrast to competing nominalizations (Dubois 1962; Kelling 2001; Martin 2007; Ferret & alii 2010; Fradin 2012b). While the instrumental Nage is rare, it is hardly more exceptional than the well-studied State or Means interpretations, and yet, it has never been addressed in these works. We will present the results of a study on the instrumental Nage, based on 482 deverbal nouns with the –age suffix, collected from the letters A, and C-P of the TLFi. The Nage items selected display the following properties and therefore classified as instrumental: (i) they can head a prepositional phrase introduced by avec (prototypical instrument nominals are Z in the structure 'X Vbase Y avec Z'; Cadiot 1991; Namer & Villoing 2008); (ii) they designate artefacts: Z is a countable object that exists as an entity before and after the event in which it was used as an instrument (Fradin & Winterstein 2012). We will outline the linguistic conditions that determine the presence of the instrument interpretation for these nouns (following Ferret 2012 for Noir instruments). We will argue that this interpretation is not based on a semantic drift from the corresponding event Nage; rather, it results from the specific properties of the morphological rule, in particular, from the semantic and argument properties of the base verb. 2. Instrumental deverbal nouns: evaluation of various analyses The Instrument reading of deverbal nouns in French is specific to certain morphological rules: suffixation with –eur/-euse (aspirateur 'vaccum cleaner', perceuse 'drill'), with–oir (hachoir 'grinder', grattoir 'scraper'), VN compounding (ouvre-boîte 'can-opener', presse-citron 'lemonsqueezer'), and V>N conversions (réveil 'alarm clock', presse 'squeezer/printing press'). The instrumental interpretation of deverbal nouns never appears alone. It has received various treatments in the literatture: (i) Underspecification of the morphological rule, constrained by use in context (Corbin & Temple 1994; Corbin (to appear)). We will show that this view is undermined by Ferret (2012). (ii) Derivation from the Agent interpretation of the same nominal through independently established extension mechanisms, such as metaphor and metonymy (Booij 2005: 222; Booij 1986). We will show that this representation cannot apply to instrumental Nage, since no agentive reading is associated with these items, as it is impossible with this suffix. (iii) Construction independently of other interpretations through the morphological rule (cf. Plénat 2005; Bonami & Tribout 2012; Tribout & Villoing 2012). We will show that this representation is not relevant either, since instrumental Nage is never a unique reading, but always associated with an event homonym. 3. Instrumental Nage: properties We argue that the instrument interpretation relies on the semantic and aspectual properties of the base verb, which are also present in the morpho-semantic constraints leading to the Product, State and Means interpretations (Bisetto & Melloni 2007; Fradin 2011; Fradin

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Nominalization with –age and the instrument reading: morphological constraints on the semantico-argumentational properties of the base verb 2012a). Our analysis is supported by Ferret's (2012) analysis of instrumental deverbal nouns with –oir, which shows that only transitive causative verbs with external causation, whose sense includes a manner component (in the sense of Levin & Rappaport 1995) can produce an instrumental Noir (arrosoir 'watering can', égouttoir ‘draining board', tranchoir 'slicer'). We will show that (a) Nage instrumentals are sensitive to the same semantic properties of their verbal base, that is, Nage instrumentals are only possible with such verbs (allumage, montage) and that (b) the three constraints (transitivity, external causation and manner) must combine, and are not sufficient independently. (i) The base verb must be transitive: the instrumental Nage corpus contains no intransitive bases. (ii) Causation must be external; no transitive verb with internal causation can produce an instrumental Nage (although event Nage is possible: sautage de barrières 'jumping/exploding barriers/obstacles'; traversage de rue 'crossing' ; cf. Ferret & Villoing 2012: 94). (iii) The transitivity constraint is also obligatory, since intransitive verbs with external causation cannot produce an instrumental nominal (ouvrage 'opening'/cassage 'breaking' (de gueule)). (iv) The presence of a "manner" component in the semantic composition of the verb is essential; transitive verbs with external causation which do not include a manner component cannot produce an instrumental interpretation: le coulage (du bateau) 'sinking (of a ship)’, le montage (de blancs en neige) 'whipping (egg whites)', le rentrage (des vaches) 'bringing (the cows) back', le tournage (de la roue) 'turning (of the wheel)'). These constraints on the formation of instrumental deverbal nominals must be specified in the morphological rule, both in the case nominalization and in the case of typical instrumental suffixation (such as –oir, -eur). In the final section of this work, we propose a formalization of the Nage rule, within the framework of Levin and Rappaport (1995 and later works). Following Ferret et al (2010) and Ferret (2012), we propose that the rule selects the event structure of the base verb rather than its argument structure. References ■Bisetto A. & C. Melloni. 2007. Result Nominals: a Lexical-Semantic Investigation. In On-line proceedings of the Fifth Mediterranean Morphology Meeting (MMM5) Fréjus 15-18 September 2005.■Booij G.. 1986. Form and meaning in morphology, the case of Dutch agent nouns. Linguistics 24: 503-518.■Booij G.. 2005. The Grammar of Words: An Introduction to Linguistic Morphology, Oxford, Textbooks in Linguistics.■Bonami O. & Tribout D. 2012. Underspecification and the semantics of lexeme formation. IMM15.■Cadiot P. 1991. A la hache ou avec la hache? Représentation mentale, expérience située et donation du référent. Langue Française 91: 7-23.■Corbin D. (to appear). Le lexique construit. Armand Colin, Paris.■Corbin D.& Temple M. 1994. Le monde des mots et des sens construits: catégories sémantiques, catégories référentielles. Cahiers de lexicologie, 65: 213-236.■Dubois J. 1962. Etude sur la dérivation suffixale en français moderne et contemporain, Paris, Larousse.■Ferret K. 2012. Construction des N déverbaux dénotant un Instrument ou un Lieu : les N-oir(e) du français, Paris 8 Saint Denis, 27 février 2012. ■ Ferret K. & F. Villoing 2012. «L’aspect grammatical dans les déverbaux en –age et -ée», 73-127, Lexique 20 ■Ferret K., Soare E.& Villoing F. 2010. Rivalry between French –age and –ée: the role of grammatical aspect in nominalization. In Pre-proceedings of the Seventeenth Amsterdam colloquium, 16-18 December, 2009.■Fradin B. 2011. Remarks on State denoting nominalizations. Recherches Linguistiques de Vincennes 40: 73-99.■Fradin B. 2012a. Les nominalisations et la lecture 'moyen'". Lexique 20: 125-152. ■Fradin B. 2012b. Sur la corrélation existant entre les suffixes -age et -ment et les distinctions sémantiques observables dans les nominalisations du français. NOMICO 7 septembre 2012, Nancy. ■Fradin B. & G. Winterstein. 2012. Tuning agentivity and instrumentality: deverbal nouns in -oir revisited. Décembrettes 8, Bordeaux. ■ Grimshaw. J. 1990. Argument Structure. MIT Press. ■Kelling C. 2001. Agentivity and Suffix Selection. In LFG ’01 Conference, Stanford, CA, pp.147162.■Levin B.& Rappaport M. 1995. Unaccusativity, Cambridge, MA, MIT. Press. ■Martin F. 2009. The Semantics of Eventive Suffixes in French. In Schäfer F. ed. 'SinSpec', Working Papers of the SFB 732, vol. 1. Stuttgart, University of Stuttgart.■Tribout, D. & Villoing F. 2012. Verb>noun conversion and verb-noun compounding in French: a case of morphological rivalry, Décembrettes 8, Bordeaux.■Trésor de la langue française informatisé (http://atilf.atilf.fr/).

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