Morphology & Syntax Workshop

Relative nominals and event nominals in Hiaki   

 Heidi Harley (University of Arizona)

 

Hiaki (Yaqui) exhibits an interesting formal overlap between nominalizations which create relative-clause like structures and nominalizations which create event nominals. The same nominalizer which usually derives a subject relative nominal, when applied to an argumentless predicate such as a weather verb or an impersonal passive, derives an event nominal. I argue that this is because the event argument IS the ‘subject’ of an argumentless predicate, the only accessible argument for the nominalizer to reify. In the process of proposing a uniform semantics for the relative nominalizers and the event nominalizer, a detailed analysis of both is provided. The nominalizers are argued to select an AspP complement. In entity-referring relative nominals, null operator movement is involved; in the event-referring event nominals, no operator is needed or possible. The syntax and morphology of the relative nominalizers is worked out in detail, with attention to the genitive-marked subjects of object, oblique and locative relative nominals.