Phasing in Mixed Categories: Evidence From Irish

In this short squib, I look at the phenomenon of "mixed category" verbal nouns in Irish. I argue that the verbal character of these elements follows primarily from their internal semantics as predicates. Unlike previous accounts I argue that nominal characteristics of these categories follows from two sources. In one group, they are nominal because, following Borsley and Kornfilt (2000), they have nominal functional morphology. In the other group, there is no nominal functional structure and the “nominality” of verbal nouns is epiphenomenal. So-called nominal characteristics follow from their status as heads the heads of semantically and phonologically complete units.