Deverbal Nominals and Telicity in Japanese

Kishimoto (1996) observes that the NP modified by a deverbal nominal with kake is restricted to the object of a transitive verb and the subject of an unaccusative verb, excluding the subject of a transitive verb and an unergative. In this paper we first claim that kake nominalization should recognize the two meanings, the "halfway" reading and the inception reading, for its accurate description. Based on the observation that the "halfway" reading occurs with (transitive) accomplishment verbs while the inception reading is possible with any verb, we further claim that telicity is a key notion to account for the "halfway" reading. Moreover, we argue that the "halfway" interpretation requires that an event extend over an interval so that a halfway point of the event can be measured. Achievement verbs, although telic, denote a punctual event, and therefore the nominal cannot receive the "halfway" reading: it can only have the inception reading. We also demonstrate that telicity can be invoked by contextual information. Our analysis overcomes the problems that Kishimoto's macrorole-based analysis faces and yet subsumes its generalization: the lowest ranking nonagent macrorole argument generally serves as the delimiter of the action denoted by the verb.