Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

376 MARY L. NUNES

1.1 Locating the vNP on a clause-to-noun cline

In Ross's (1973) study of what he appropriately refers to as the "nouniness

squish," he presents a cline of eight English-nominal types. At the top of

the cline are nomináis exhibiting clausal syntax and introduced by that (e.g.

that Max gave the letters to Frieda); at the bottom are nouns like spatula

(1973: 6). The dividing line between the clausal-vs.-NP syntax of the eight

nominal types occurs between what are generally referred to as gerundive

nominais (e.g. Max's giving the letter to Frieda) and action nominais (e.g.

Max s/the giving of the letter to Frieda). Whereas gerundive nominais

require the inclusion of the clausal subject as possessor and do not preposi-

tionally mark the verb's object, action nominais not only optionally replace

the clausal subject with the noun-phrasal definite article, but mark the post-

head NP with of, as is typical in NPs.

Because the concern of the current study is with NPs headed by

nominalized verbs (which may or may not take arguments), rather than

with nominalized clauses (which necessarily include the verb's argument

structure), the syntactic clausal-vs.-NP distinction between gerundive and

action nominais coincides with the most general delimitation assumed in

this work: nominals in which a verb's full argument structure is required for

grammaticality are excluded.^3 Thus, the nominals at issue here are those

which, with one exception discussed below, fall between action nominals

and nouns on Ross's cline. These are nominals headed by derived nouns,

such as destruction.

Like nonderived nouns (cf. lc), but in distinction to the -ing forms

heading action nominals (cf. la), vNs (cf. lb) can function on their own to

head NPs. In other words, derived nouns can head NPs without further NPs

filling out the understood argument structure of the underlying verb.

(1) a. *the giving/dying!destroying/creating

b. the gift/death/destruction/creation

 the spatula/boy / dog/sky

By and large, the NP constructions under investigation in this study are

those headed by derived nouns like those included in (lb). The analysis

does not attempt to account for action nominais, per se, which primarily

function contrastively in relation to vNPs headed by nominalized verbs

entailing action. That is, the function of action nominais such as that in (2a)

is to focus on the verbal action more exclusively than do their vNP counter­

parts (cf. 2b):