25.12.2013 Views

0 INTRODUCTION

0 INTRODUCTION

0 INTRODUCTION

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

1. THE CONCEPT OF NOMINALIZATION<br />

The concept of agnation has also been used in Transformational Grammar as the base for<br />

the relation between nominalized structures and their ‘deep structure’ clauses, as noted by<br />

Heyvaert (2003: 53): “[n]ominalizations and the clauses they are said to be<br />

transformationally derived from are agnates in that they have the same major lexical<br />

items, but differ in structure.”<br />

However, Heyvaert criticizes the fact that, although used in the analysis of<br />

nominalization, agnation has only been partially exploited. According to her, the<br />

relationships of agnation often fail to be linked up with the semantics of the nominalized<br />

construction in question. Furthermore, agnation is usually regarded as a one-to-one<br />

correspondence between the nominalized constructions and the clausal structures instead<br />

of being interpreted as a “network or grouping of structures.” In her analysis of<br />

nominalizations, Heyvaert overcomes these weaknesses in the use of agnation. Thus, the<br />

relation of agnation proves to be decisive for the detection of the components of a certain<br />

construction (Heyvaert 2003: 56), e.g. the status as a constituent of the chunk in bold in<br />

(23a) is confirmed by the evidence in (23b) to (23d):<br />

(23) a. Sam’s washing the windows was a shock to everybody.<br />

(Langacker 1991: 32)<br />

b. You will wash the windows, won’t you?<br />

c. What will you do? Wash the windows.<br />

d. I will wash the windows. Will you? Yes, I will.<br />

Likewise, agnation serves for the telling apart of structures that, though looking<br />

alike, are quite different. For instance, at first sight the structures not going to school in<br />

(24a) and (25a) seem to be the same. However, when taking into account their agnates, it<br />

39

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

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!