Revisiting -ej(ar) verbs in Catalan: Argument and event structure

Abstract

We explore the properties of the Catalan verbalizing suffix -ej(ar), centering on intransitive verbs. After presenting the rich variety of outputs that this suffix allows, we focus on two generalizations. The first one has to do with the consistent eventive nature of verbs derived with this suffix, even from bases that count as individual-level predicates, like colour adjectives or proper names. Importantly, their eventivity is orthogonal to their dynamic/non-dynamic status. The second one is the robust unergative status of intransitive -ej(ar) vebs. We show that previous work on -ej(ar) has failed to capture these two properties. Adopting a Ramchandian, nanosyntactic perspective, we propose that this suffix is the spellout of the subeventive structure of a caused process, i.e., the heads Init and Proc. The (non-)dynamic interpretation of the verbs is claimed to emerge from interactions among the contents of the roots involved in the predicate, at the conceptual, non-grammatical level. We finally extend the proposed analysis to account for the behaviour of transitive -ej(ar) verbs.