25.12.2013 Views

0 INTRODUCTION

0 INTRODUCTION

0 INTRODUCTION

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

1. THE CONCEPT OF NOMINALIZATION<br />

this prototype and, depending on the degree of similarity, they enjoy a certain degree of<br />

membership in that category. As Rosch (1978: 30) notes:<br />

[t]o increase the distinctiveness and flexibility of categories, categories<br />

tend to become defined in terms of prototypes or prototypical instances<br />

that contain the attributes most representative of items inside and least<br />

representative of items outside the category.<br />

Therefore, a prototypical noun will be “maximally distinct” from a prototypical<br />

verb. Langacker (2002 [1991]: 60) agrees that physical objects are prototypical for nouns,<br />

and overt physical actions for verbs (cf. also Lyons 1968: 318; Bates and MacWhinney<br />

1982; Givón 1984: chapter 3; Hopper and Thompson 1984, 1985), but he maintains that<br />

not just these prototypical instances, but all members of the class instantiate an abstract<br />

noun schema, while all verbs instantiate an abstract verb schema. According to this view,<br />

there is no reason for not including action nominalizations in the category noun, despite<br />

their referring to actions as verbs do.<br />

1.2.1.2. Mixed categories<br />

The recognition of mixed categories is argued for by Construction Grammar (Goldberg<br />

1995) and Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (Pollard and Sag 1987, 1994);<br />

according to Malouf (2000: 6) this view “preserves the best features of both formal and<br />

functional approaches.” Categories are still discrete and well-defined, as in Generative<br />

Grammar, while still respecting the tight link between empirical observations and<br />

categories proposed by cognitive linguists and prototype theory. According to this view,<br />

grammatical categories are therefore much more numerous and much less general than is<br />

commonly assumed. For instance, the fact that the noun child can occur as a noun with<br />

14

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!