LingLunch : A. Jugnet & P. Miller

Anne Jugnet et Philip Miller (CLILLAC-ARP)
Polar Nouns

Nominalizations are often considered to be peripheral members of the class of nouns as they typically inherit syntactic and/or semantic properties from their verbal or adjectival base, e.g., they usually denote eventualities (second order entities) rather than first order entities. In this paper we focus on a subclass of nominalizations, which we call ‘polar nouns’, which differ even more radically from prototypical nouns in that they can have a polar question (third order entity) type reading when they appear in certain syntactic contexts selecting indirect interrogatives or possibilities, as in (1):

(1) Our success depends on their presence at the meeting    
(≈whether or not we succeed depends on whether or not they are
present at the meeting)

Note that these nouns can have usual eventuality-type denotations in other contexts:

(1') Success was infrequent.
(≈events of success were infrequent;
≠ whether or not they succeded was infrequent)

Now it has been known since Baker 1968 and Grimshaw 1979 that certain NPs can have question-type meanings in a subset of interrogative contexts (so called ‘concealed questions’). But these involve only identity questions, and not polar questions (Nathan 2006).

(2) Kim told me their answer/decision.       
(≈Kim told me what their answer/decision was;
≠ Kim told me whetheror not they answered/decided)

Like nouns heading concealed questions, polar nouns have typical nominal syntax: they are heads of NPs and can have a variety of typically nominal dependents. But they clearly differ from prototypical nouns semantically, as well as from classical concealed question nouns, in that they do not allow identity questions, compare (1) and (2) to (3) and (4):

(3) #Whatwas their success? #What was their presence?
(4) Whatwas their answer? What was their decision?

This leads us to question any purely semantic delimitation of the class of nouns.

Thepurpose of this talk is to describe the central properties of this (so far overlooked) subclass of nouns that can have polar question type meanings. The set of polar nouns is relatively limited (e.g.,absence,presence, existence, consent, participation, acceptance, attendance,survival, recovery,...) and the polar interpretation is possible in a narrow set of contexts. We argue that polar nouns have to denote simple eventualities and feature (at least) one participant that can be characterized based on his/her/its involvement in the eventuality. In order for the polar reading to appear, this participant must be syntactically expressed, typically as a possessive NP or as a PP and the resulting NP must be definite (compare (1) and (1')). Thus the special semantics of these nouns in these readings leads to specific and atypical constraints on nominal syntax.

References

• Baker,Carl L. 1968. IndirectQuestions in English.Ph.D thesis, U Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
• Grimshaw,Jane. 1979. Complement selection and the lexicon. LinguisticInquiry10: 279-326.
• Nathan,Lance E. 2006. Onthe Interpretation of Concealed Questions.PhD thesis. MIT.