Case and the Event Structure of Nominalizations

This article explores the distribution of morphological case in Spanish nominalizations and shows that there is a connection between morphological case and event structure. Most nominals govern genitive case de on their internal arguments but some allow or require a different morpheme, a, reminiscent of Differential Object Marking (DOM). It is argued that the event structure of the nominalization is the crucial factor in choice of a, in as much as the latter is limited to process nominals that do not entail a change of state. The same distinction between process and change of state nominals is then extended to two other empirical puzzles regarding the interpretations of genitive arguments in nominalizations. I present a formal analysis assuming a syntax of events inspired in Ramchand (2008)