A Neo-Constructionist Account of Morphologically Null Deverbal Nominals with Argument Structure in Polish

Abstract:The data from Polish leaves no doubt as to the licensing of argument structure (AS) by morphologically null deverbal nominals and therefore presents a challenge to the widely held view that argument structure in nominals can only be licensed by an overt nominalizer (Alexiadou 2001, 2009; Alexiadou and Grimshaw 2008; Borer 2003, 2005, 2013). The aim of this paper is twofold: to contribute to the discussion of AS-licensing in nominals by broadening its empirical scope and to demonstrate that syntax-based approaches such as Borer's exoskeletal model can account for the data in question, providing that we allow for the possibility of synthetic spell-out of nominalized verbal stems as put forward in Fábregas 2014 for Spanish. It is demonstrated that his analysis can be extended to Polish notwithstanding its more complex verb morphology, which includes three types of prefixes (lexical, aspectual, and superlexical), secondary imperfective markers, and theme vowels.