Result nominalizations in Romanian light verb constructions

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the class of Romanian nominalizations which enter light verb constructions with the light verbs a face ‘make, do’ and a avea ‘have’. We show that such nominalizations are not event, but result. In order to test this hypothesis, we have chosen two of the most productive suffixes which appear with these nominalizations in light verb constructions, namely -ţie and -re. As will be seen, the two suffixes may attach to the same verb stems, giving rise to doublets (e.g. from a afirma ‘state’: afirmaţie vs. afirmare). The syntactic analysis of these doublets proves that -re is specialized for event readings, while –ţie generally gives rise to result nominals. Returning to light verb constructions, when a verb has both -ție and –re nominalizations available, the light verb will always select the result deverbal noun, the one ending in -ţie, while its -re counterpart will have an event reading and thus will be banned from the light verb construction.

Keywords

• light verb constructions
• result nominalizations
• Romanian
• –ţie suffix
• –re suffix