主题：The Syntax and Semantics of ER-Nominals

主讲：胡旭辉 & John Maier

简介：胡旭辉，北京大学外国语学院，外国语言学及应用语言学研究所，助理教授、研究员。剑桥大学理论语言学博士。 

John Maier, Associate Professor, Institute of Foreign Philosophy, Peking University (Ph.D. Princeton)

时间：2016-05-19 15:10:00

地点：北京大学人文学苑 哲学系地下B114

摘要：This talk aims to investigate the semantic and syntactic nature of ER-nominals such as teacher, murderer, smoker, etc. We will begin our talk by presenting the range of readings that an ER-nominal can exhibit. Another issue we present is that although ER-nominals usually involve a verbal stem, non-verbal ER-nominals also exist, like Londoner, foreigner, etc. We then present the three questions that are to be addressed in this talk: (a) what are the underlying semantic characteristics of ER-nominals? (b) How is an ER-nominal derived syntactically? (c) How are the semantic characteristics of ER-nominals realised cross-linguistically? For question (a), we propose that the semantic diversity of ER-nominals is to be explained in terms of the behavior of an underlying generic operator. To address question (b), we propose that there is a single syntactic derivation responsible for both verbal and non-verbal ER-nominals, thus differing from the previous studies like Alexiadou & Sch?fer (2010) and Borer (2013). Both verbal and non-verbal nominals have the same pattern of [ER+ Predicate ], in the sense that a predicate can be a verb, an adjective and a nominal predicate (a nominal coerced into an adjective). We then examine how the syntactic derivation and the semantic effects of English ER-nominals are realised cross-linguistically by drawing upon data from Yixing Chinese where a transparent pattern of the equivalent to ER-nominals is available. Our analysis of Yixing data provides support to our hypotheses by showing that the semantic and syntactic patterns in English are realised in Yixing, and that some predictions concerning noun-to-adjective coercion are confirmed.