State nouns are Kimian states

The study of states in the verbal domain has recently been enriched with the distinction between K-states and D-states (Maienborn 2005; Rothmayr 2009). This new line of research has not been extended to state denoting nouns, which have been in general much less studied than those nouns denoting objects or events (Grimshaw 1990). This paper takes this task and shows that in Spanish noun-denoting states systematically behave like K-states, even when they are derived from D-state verbs. We further argue that only verbs which contain a structure with a K-state meaning can have corresponding state denoting nouns. The result is that, far from being idiosyncratic, it is possible to predict – given the aspectual properties of a verbal predicate – whether a state can be expressed in the nominal domain. Keywords: states; K-state; D-state; nominalizations; deverbal nouns; aspect

Published online: 12 December 2012
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.4.03fab