Tackling directly the structure of nominalizations, Ahdout and Kastner, in their chapter ‘Bases, transformations, and competition in Hebrew niXYaZ’, examine a set of interactions between syntax, morphological marking, and nominalization in Modern Hebrew, where one kind of morphological marking is associated with a number of distinct morphosyntactic patterns. They report a difference between two main groups of niXYaZ verbs – syntactically active/unergative and syntactically nonactive: unaccusative and passive (. The authors then offer a distinct syntactic representation for each group, and show, on the basis of 415 verbs, that despite sharing morphological marking, the two groups correspond to distinct nominalization patterns: Verbs of the nonactive group, mostly passives, fail to produce a nominalization, while active-unergative verbs nominalize rather freely. Although the difference in structure of niXYaZ active vs. nonactive verbs may potentially account for the gaps in nominalization, they propose that the incongruence of passives with a nominalized form is not syntactic, but rather stems from pragmatic effects, to do with the markedness of niXYaZ when contrasted with the alternant morphologically active form, XaYaZ. The markedness of the niXYaZ forms, according to Ahdout and Kastner, translates to a dispreference of speakers toward using this form, opting instead for the nonmarked form, XaYaZ. Crucially, and unlike passive verbs, the same option is not available for active/unergative verbs in niXYaZ, as they do not substantiate a transitivity alternation with a XaYaZ form. As such, no competition with XaYaZ exists, and nominalization is enabled. Thus, the chapter identifies the involvement of both grammatical factors and extragrammatical factors in the process of nominalization.
(Axial) Parts and Wholes