Nominalization, event, aspect and argument structure: a syntactic approach

In this paper we argue that for nominalizations the distinction between process nouns, i.e. complex event nominals, and result/object nouns made by, among others, Grimshaw (1990) and Alexiadou (2001), is too strict. We propose instead a dichotomy that is based on agentivity. We claim that both process nouns and result nouns have a +agentive and a -agentive value, associated with a difference in argument structure. We argue that in the two values both types of nouns are eventive and that the difference between process and result nouns is simply an aspectual difference. Besides the two eventive types, with a difference in argument structure, we distinguish a non-eventive type, object nouns, without argument structure.