Interpreting French deverbal -oir nouns : evidence from dictionaries and Web corpora
Résumé
Recent results in Lexeme Formation theory, focusing on deverbal adjectives and nouns in French, tend to confirm the assumption that a deverbal lexeme may be interpreted in relation to any participant of the base verb, or to the base verb process itself, as soon as the morphological rule at play is not explicitly constrained (cf. Dal (1999), Plénat (2005), Hathout & al. (2003), Roché (2003) ; Villoing (to appear), Namer & Villoing (2006) ; Kerleroux (1996)).
This result has a major, hitherto unformulated, theoretical consequence for the morphology-syntax boundary: the syntactic argument/modifier distinction turns out to be irrelevant in morphology. Studies on deverbal nouns show that the dependent meaning of a deverbal noun corresponds either to an argument , or to a modifier.
Our aim is to test this hypothesis through the analysis of –oir suffixed French deverbal nouns (henceforth V-oir). At first blush, these nouns are good candidates with which to test this hypothesis, since their interpretation is mainly that of instruments and locations (for an analysis on instrument nouns in spanish and italian see Rainer (2004a,b)). Now, these kinds of semantic participants are hardly ever realized as syntactic arguments of the verb.
This result has a major, hitherto unformulated, theoretical consequence for the morphology-syntax boundary: the syntactic argument/modifier distinction turns out to be irrelevant in morphology. Studies on deverbal nouns show that the dependent meaning of a deverbal noun corresponds either to an argument , or to a modifier.
Our aim is to test this hypothesis through the analysis of –oir suffixed French deverbal nouns (henceforth V-oir). At first blush, these nouns are good candidates with which to test this hypothesis, since their interpretation is mainly that of instruments and locations (for an analysis on instrument nouns in spanish and italian see Rainer (2004a,b)). Now, these kinds of semantic participants are hardly ever realized as syntactic arguments of the verb.