Is there a pluralia tantum subcategory of nominal gerunds? Developing Gaeta's notion of morphological differentiation

J. Lachlan Mackenzie

doi:10.1016/j.langsci.2018.08.015

Is there a pluralia tantum subcategory of nominal gerunds? Developing Gaeta's notion of morphological differentiation

J. Lachlan Mackenzie^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Inspired by Gaeta's study of morphological distinctiveness as the basis for category formation, this article considers the possibility that by virtue of their invariable suffix -ings English pluralia tantum nominal gerunds (PTNGs) such as surroundings can be regarded as a subcategory of nominal gerunds. It is shown that the set of PTNGs is semantically very disparate with regard to the verb that underwent nominalization in the course of their formation. Differences are observed in a very large corpus with regard to the quantifiers and other items that co-occur with PTNGs, namely quantifiers regularly associated with plural count (e.g. many) or with mass nouns (e.g. much), but there is too much variability among PTNGs for the totality of them to be a candidate for category status.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	179-189
Number of pages	11
Journal	Language Sciences
Volume	73
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2018.08.015
Publication status	Published - 2019

Funding

Due acknowledgement must be given to funding received from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the project The construction of discourse as social interaction: Contrastive implications and applications (FFI2013-40517-P, PI María de los Ángeles Gómez González). I am very grateful to the anonymous peer reviewers for their constructive suggestions towards improvement of the original submission. Due acknowledgement must be given to funding received from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the project The construction of discourse as social interaction: Contrastive implications and applications (FFI2013-40517-P, PI Mar?a de los ?ngeles G?mez Gonz?lez). I am very grateful to the anonymous peer reviewers for their constructive suggestions towards improvement of the original submission.

Funders	Funder number
Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness
Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad	FFI2013-40517-P

Keywords

Count nouns
Mass nouns
Morphological distinctiveness
Nominal gerunds
Pluralia tantum

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10.1016/j.langsci.2018.08.015

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abstract = "Inspired by Gaeta's study of morphological distinctiveness as the basis for category formation, this article considers the possibility that by virtue of their invariable suffix -ings English pluralia tantum nominal gerunds (PTNGs) such as surroundings can be regarded as a subcategory of nominal gerunds. It is shown that the set of PTNGs is semantically very disparate with regard to the verb that underwent nominalization in the course of their formation. Differences are observed in a very large corpus with regard to the quantifiers and other items that co-occur with PTNGs, namely quantifiers regularly associated with plural count (e.g. many) or with mass nouns (e.g. much), but there is too much variability among PTNGs for the totality of them to be a candidate for category status.",

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AB - Inspired by Gaeta's study of morphological distinctiveness as the basis for category formation, this article considers the possibility that by virtue of their invariable suffix -ings English pluralia tantum nominal gerunds (PTNGs) such as surroundings can be regarded as a subcategory of nominal gerunds. It is shown that the set of PTNGs is semantically very disparate with regard to the verb that underwent nominalization in the course of their formation. Differences are observed in a very large corpus with regard to the quantifiers and other items that co-occur with PTNGs, namely quantifiers regularly associated with plural count (e.g. many) or with mass nouns (e.g. much), but there is too much variability among PTNGs for the totality of them to be a candidate for category status.

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Is there a pluralia tantum subcategory of nominal gerunds? Developing Gaeta's notion of morphological differentiation

Abstract

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Keywords

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