Inherent polysemy of action nominals

This research on deverbal nouns clarifies the nature of an intriguing pattern of inherent polysemy, widely attested in deverbal action nominals, but peculiar with respect to standard cases of dot objects. The event/result polysemy is formally codified at the level of Event and Qualia Structures of the base verbs and corresponding nominals, while the relation between the senses is identified as causal. However, event/result nouns are crucially different from standard complex types, since there is no mutual interdependence between the types but the event sense is primary with respect to the result sense. Troubles with co-predications are the direct indication of such an asymmetry and can be explained in relation to different syntactic and semantic requirements of the event and result types.