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1.3.1.6.Summary
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The preceding sections have shown that the types of deverbal nouns mentioned in the header of Table 17 differ with regard to the number of verbal features they retain and the number of nominal characteristics they assume. What all these types have in common is that, despite their verbal basis, they have the distribution of a nominal. Apart from this, each type has assumed more or less nominal characteristics, which makes it possible to order them according to the degree of verbalness (or nominalness) they exhibit, with nominalizations the highest degree of verbalness and er-nouns exhibiting the highest degree of nominalness.
      Bare-inf nominalizations clearly constitute the most verbal type, given that they retain all the verbal characteristics included in the list while assuming none of the nominal ones. In addition, their reference remains abstract in that it refers to the state of affairs denoted by the base verb. The er-nominalizations are at the other end of the scale given that, apart from the fact that they have an argument structure, they are fully nominal in behavior, and are furthermore the only nominalizations that typically denote concrete entities. The other three types of nominalization come in between these two extremes. Interestingly, a higher degree of verbalness also seems to correspond to a higher degree of productivity. As we have seen in the preceding sections, inf-nominalizations can take virtually any type of verb as their input (with the exceptions of those verbs that do not allow any form of nominalization), whereas in particular ing- and er-nominalizations are much more restricted in this respect.
      This concludes our discussion of nominalization for the moment. We will return to the nominalizations in Section 2.2.3, where we will focus more specifically on their property of inheriting the argument structure of the input verb.

Table 17: Verbal and nominal characteristics of deverbal nouns
  bare-inf det-inf ge ing er
productivity full full partial partial partial
reference abstract abstract abstract abstract concrete
v- properties presence of arguments yes yes yes yes yes
  prenominal theme/recipient with objective case yes yes no no no
  prenominal recipient-PP yes yes no no no
  adverbial modification yes yes yes? no no
n-properties adjectival modification no yes yes yes yes
  theme with genitive case no no? no yes yes
  theme/recipient realized as postnominal PP no yes yes yes yes
  definiteness no yes yes yes yes
  indefiniteness no no yes yes yes
  quantification/relativization no no yes yes yes
  pluralization no no no yes/no yes

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