The redundancy of lexical categories

In this paper I argue that the familiar lexical category labels, N, V, A, P or equivalently the features such as [±N, ±V] are redundant in a theory which admits a level of argument structure. I modify Zwart’s (1992) conception of a-structure by arguing that major class members always include a ‘referential role’: for nouns, (for ‘eventuality’) for verbs and (‘attribute’) for adjectives. is coindexed with the role of the modificand. A-structures are canonically associated with sets of F(unctional) features, but ‘mixed’ a-structure types may be associated with ‘mixed’ F-features, without the need to postulate ‘mixed’ lexical categories. Categorial information can thus be read off a-structure representations without the need for purely syntactic category features. I first develop a (constructional) semantics for compound nouns (N N) in which the a-structure of the modifying noun receives a new r(eferential) role with demotion of the original role. The new role is coindexed with the role of the modificand and the attributive relationship interpreted as some pragmatically characterized relationship, ρ. Relational adjectives are given a similar argument structure representation with the same semantic interpretation, but in their lexical representation. I sketch an analysis of participles in which the role of the verb is demoted by introduction of an role. Deverbal nominals are obtained by demoting the role and adding an role (essentially naming an event). By assuming that a-structure is articulated we can account for the typologically observed patterns of argument realization in nominalizations.