Supine nominals as participial nominalisations

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the morpho-syntactic properties of nominal supines in Romanian in relation to their past participle morphology. In view of the morphological similarity between the participle and the nominalization (highlighted by the presence of –t/s in both the verbal and the nominal environment), we claim that the same syntactic structure is present in both. The question we want to then investigate concerns the type of participle involved in the nominalization. Recent work in this area distinguishes between resultant state and target state participles. We show that only the former feeds supine formation.

Keywords

• nominal supine
• target-state participle
• resultant-state participle