Nominals and Event Structure

This chapter discusses three semantic approaches to event nominalizations: The Davidsonian, the Kimian, and the truthmaker-based approach. It argues that a combination of the three approaches is required for the semantics of the full range of event and state nominalizations as well as the related phenomenon of adverbial modification. The chapter also presents data regarding a distinction between two sorts of nominalizations of psychological and illocutionary verbs that challenge the received view of the identity of the events described by verbs and by (non-gerundive) deverbal nominalizations. These data bear on a distinction between ‘actions’ and ‘products’ introduced by the Polish philosopher Twardowski.