Bare Nominalizations in Norwegian

By a bare nominalization (BN) we mean a noun whose form can appear as, or be similar to, the stem of a verb, and which carries no derivational affix, that is, none of the affixes standardly used for the construction of nouns from verbs. In Norwegian, such affixes include -ing, -else, -sjon as the most regular. For each of them, the relation to the meaning induced can vary from verb to verb, but the gender of the noun induced is always the same: -else and -sjon always induce masculine gender, -ing always induces masculine or feminine, according to parameters of norm and style. BNs, in contrast, have a gender defined specifically for each noun, dependent neither on the associated verb nor on aspects of the form of the noun.

Examples

A:

abort aksept al anfall ange anger angrep anke anklage anlegg anløp anrop anslag appell applaus arbeid arrest arv attest avdrag avkok avl avslag avreise avskjed avsky avtale avvik

B:

babel bad baksnakk bank bann bønn begjær begrep behag behov bekomst belegg bero beslag besvær besøk bidrag bifall bistand bitt blunk bluss bortfall bortfeste brak brask bram brann bruk brum brus bry bryderi brygg brudd bråk brøl bu bukk bud bygg byks bytte bør bot bøy

D:

dank dask dekke del dikt dop drag drass drap drift drikk drill drit drift dropp drypp drøm drønn duft dyd dukk dunder dunk dunst dusj dykk dytt død dom dåp døs

E:

ebbe ekserpt eksistens eksperiment eksport angst etterfyll ettersyn

F:

fabel fabulat fagnad fall fangst faste ferdsel fik fiske fjas fusk flass fleip flenge flikk flimmer flir floke flokk flom flukt fly flyt flytt flås flo fnys fold forakt forbehold forbruk forbud fór foredrag forfall forekomst forelegg foresett forslag foretak forfall forhold forhør forlik forlis forløp forspill forsvar forsyn forsøk foss fossregn frafall frakt fremkast fremkomst fravik fred frelse fremme fritak fryd frykt

Enumeration

By a preliminary count and estimate, the language has about 3500 de-verbal nouns, and among them about 800 BNs. To be able to get an overall profile of their functions, the following predominantly semantic criteria can serve as candidates for classification, with accompanying abbreviations and markings of values:

Parameter	        Abbreviation	Description	                       Value marks
Ontological status  	Ontstat	        Situation vs. Thing	                s, t
Resultativity	        Res	         Result of event vs. not	        1, 0
Agentivity	        Ag	         Agentive vs. Non-agentive	      1, 0
Aspect	                Asp	         Aspectual types	                     Type name(s) (connected with ‘&’ when many)
Institutionalization	Instit	         Institutionalized vs. not	         1, 0
Domain	                Dom	         Physical vs. Cognitive vs.            phys, cog, 
                                              Emotional vs. Apriori vs. Social    emot,     aprio, soc,
                                             vs. FinanJurAdminManag (=fjam)  fjam (connected with ‘&’ when many)
Valency preservation  Val	  Valency preserving vs. not	        1 - 0
Theta-role, for things	Th	 The role that the entity has 
                                             relative to the sit-type expressed 
                                      by the root	                                 Role name(s)    (connected with ‘&’ when many)

The deployment of value marks can be used in a general BN inventory as indicated below. Here '-' stands for ‘does not apply’ (as with aspect specification of a thing), and ‘inh’ stands for ‘inherent’ (as in ‘inherent object’). '&' standing in a column by itself means 'can be all/either of the options defined for the column', a situation often obtaining when a word is characterized in isolation (and has many uses in principle), less so if annotated as a corpus occurrence.

Ontstat Res Ag Asp Instit Dom Val Th

bønn_s	‘prayer’		s	0	1	dur	1	cog	0
bønn_t	‘prayer’		t	0	1	--	1	cog	0	inh
begjær	‘desire’		s	0	0	dur	0	emot	0
begrep	‘concept’	t	0	0	-	1	cog	0	inh
behag	‘pleasure’	s	0	0	dur	0	emot	0
behov	‘need’		s	0	0	dur	0	All	1
besøk	‘visit’		s	0	1	dur	&&	soc&fjam  0
bifall	‘approval’	s	0	1	dur	&&	soc&fjam  0
bistand	‘support’	s	0	1	all	&	fjam	  0
bitt		‘bite’		t	1	1	-	0	phys	  0	inh
brak		‘crash’		s	&&	0	inst	0	phys	  0
brann	‘fire’		s	&&	0	dur	0	phys	  0

For annotation of BN occurrences in a corpus, one can in turn pull such value sequences together in short-hand expressions, as indicated below in an annotation snippet for a construction including the light verb expression finne behag i ‘find pleasure in’, the shorthand reflecting the above stated values for behag:

finne	behag
find	       pleasure
V	       BN=s00dur0emot0

While the classification categories here are rather broad, there is enough overlap with the system of types and attributes discussed above that the annotations can “steer” an annotation assignment towards a more detailed analysis of a given BN (occurrence), when needed.

TO BE CONTINUED