Linguist Forum

Specializations => Morphosyntax => Topic started by: teenywheeny on April 15, 2015, 08:24:49 AM

Title: Nominalization
Post by: teenywheeny on April 15, 2015, 08:24:49 AM

Hi!

Can somebody please help me with the following sentence:

"Heart healthy and with 6 grams of protein per serving, pistachios are a delicious way to fuel your life."

Is "per serving" nominalized in this case?

Thanks!

Title: Re: Nominalization
Post by: panini on April 15, 2015, 10:24:46 AM

"Serving" is (derivationally, semantically) ambiguous in English: it can be a nominalization ("serving children beer is a bad idea") or it can be a noun that is only historically related to the verb "serve".  "Per" is actually useful, since in the reading "for each", it requires a noun referring to a measure, not an action. The lexicalized measure noun doesn't take an NP complements but the nominalization does. (I assume you can take it from here)

Title: Re: Nominalization
Post by: teenywheeny on April 15, 2015, 12:20:02 PM

Thanks, panini!

Title: Re: Nominalization
Post by: teenywheeny on April 24, 2015, 11:26:47 PM

Another one:

He is ready to defend your health with one swift sip.

Is "with one swift sip" nominalized?

Title: Re: Nominalization
Post by: Daniel on April 25, 2015, 08:22:17 AM

Depends on what you mean. It would be hard to argue that is a grammatical transformation of any kind (in contrast to -ing words), but certainly "zero derivation" occurs often from verbs to nouns-- "a nice walk", "a foreceful hit", etc.

http://etymonline.com/index.php?search=sip
Looks like "sip" was first a verb, then attested in the 1500s as a noun. So calling it a nominalization now is silly, even if in some sense etymologically true.