Events and Modification in Nominals

It is a familiar lesson from physical theory that interactions yield an important probe into structure. In the experiments of Rutherford almost 90 years ago, bits of matter were projected together; the physical properties of their interactions yielded evidence for a nucleus, hidden in the heart of atom. In semantics, the results of Donald Davidson in a famous 1967 paper might be viewed in a similar (although perhaps less dramatic) light. Davidson proposed that when we combine verbs and adverbs together, the logical properties of that interaction yield evidence for a semantic nucleus in the heart of the clause an event argument. In recent years, the consequences of Davidson’s "discovery" have been elaborated by a number of different researchers across a variety of linguistic domains. In this paper I want suggest to suggest a further area of elaboration. Specifically, I will propose that the interactions between nouns and adjectives yield evidence for an event argument inside the nominal as well. Furthermore, this position seems to exist in both of the nominal projections countenanced by current linguistic theory: DP and NP. Postulating this element sheds light, I believe, on some well-known facts of adjectival modification. But as we will see, it also raises a large number of interesting new problems concerning event modification inside the nominal and its relation to event quantification outside in the clause. I’ll begin by sketching the basic data that motivate the account.