{"id":1706,"date":"2011-08-27T10:00:35","date_gmt":"2011-08-27T08:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=1706"},"modified":"2011-08-19T09:07:59","modified_gmt":"2011-08-19T07:07:59","slug":"quantification-definiteness-and-nominalization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=1706","title":{"rendered":"Quantification, definiteness, and nominalization"},"content":{"rendered":"
Quantification, definiteness, and nominalization.<\/strong> Ed. by Anastasia Giannakidou<\/strong> and Monika Rathert<\/strong>. (Oxford studies in theoretical linguistics 24.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Pp. xvi, 413. ISBN 9780199541096<\/a>. $55.<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Dimitrios Ntelitheos<\/a><\/strong>, United Arab Emirates University<\/em><\/p>\n

This book is a collection of updated versions of fifteen talks presented in a workshop on QP Structure, Nominalizations, and the role of DP at Saarland University in December 2005. The collection is introduced by the editors\u2019 thorough overview of quantifiers and definiteness in recent syntactic theory. The book is divided into three parts exploring connections between quantification, definiteness, and nominalization.<\/p>\n

The first part starts with an article by Lisa<\/strong> Matthewson<\/strong> analyzing the element –nukw<\/em> in St\u2019at\u2019imcets as assuming a presuppositional element to the semantic definition of the item. Lisa Lai-Shen<\/strong> Cheng <\/strong>explores the cooccurrence of Chinese mei<\/em> \u2018every\u2019 with dou<\/em> \u2018all\u2019 and reduplicated classifiers, relying on selectional\/interpretive differences in Mandarin and Cantonese classifiers. Urtzi<\/strong> Etxeberria<\/strong> discusses contextually restricted quantification in Basque, showing that quantifiers are restricted by both nominal restriction and the presence of Q-determiners. Luisa<\/strong> Mart\u00ed <\/strong>argues from contextual restrictions that the Spanish indefinite algunos<\/em> introduces a contextual variable and proposes a hierarchical organization of the basic building blocks of indefinites. Kook-Hee<\/strong> Gil<\/strong> and George<\/strong> Tsoulas<\/strong> discuss quantification and DP\/QP structure in Korean and Japanese, addressing the status of classifiers and indeterminate quantification.<\/p>\n

The second part of the book starts with Louise<\/strong> McNally<\/strong>\u2019s article arguing that there is room for semantic variation within property-based analyses of existentials. There<\/em>-existential predicates are better analyzed as involving true property predications and not semantic incorporation. Donka<\/strong> Farkas<\/strong> and Henri\u00ebtte de<\/strong> Swart<\/strong> extend a previous analysis of crosslinguistic variation in article choice in generic and non-generic contexts. Amim von<\/strong> Stechow<\/strong> introduces a new positive operator Pos (a universal quantifier over degrees) to derive the semantics of German temporal adjectives by viewing times as \u2018degrees\u2019. Helen de<\/strong> Hoop<\/strong> proposes that animacy affects the \u2018prominence\u2019 of noun phrases, thereby contributing to the interpretation of animate noun phrases similarly to definiteness.<\/p>\n

The final part, on nominalizations, begins with Artemis Alexiadou<\/strong>\u2019s discussion of the role of syntactic locality in morphological processes. Using data from Greek derived nominals, the author distinguishes verbalizers from projections that introduce arguments and shows that result nominals and nominals with argument structure share the same basic verbal structure. Manfred<\/strong> Bierwisch<\/strong> treats nominalizations as syntactically and semantically conditioned lexical phenomena. Heidi<\/strong> Harley<\/strong> explores the internal structure of event nominalizations based on the properties of verb-particle constructions and proposing an analysis of verbalizing morphemes as underspecified spell-outs of an eventive v head. Thomas<\/strong> Roeper<\/strong> and Angeliek<\/strong> van Hout<\/strong> treat \u00a0\u00a0–ability<\/em> nominalizations on par with passive structures based on thematic restrictions on the DP-specifier position. Finally, Tal Siloni<\/strong> and Omer<\/strong> Preminger <\/strong>address crosslinguistic restrictions on voice alternations within nominalizations.<\/p>\n

The volume is an essential reference on the syntax and semantics of quantification, nominalization, and definiteness. The breadth of empirical coverage and the unique explorations of the interfaces between syntax, semantics, and the lexicon make this volume important reading for specialists, as well as graduate students interested in the nominal domain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quantification, definiteness, and nominalization. Ed. by Anastasia Giannakidou and Monika Rathert. (Oxford studies in theoretical linguistics 24.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Pp. xvi, 413. ISBN 9780199541096. $55. Reviewed by Dimitrios Ntelitheos, United Arab Emirates University This book is a collection of updated versions of fifteen talks presented in a workshop on QP Structure, Nominalizations, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1706"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1707,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1706\/revisions\/1707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}