Is there a pluralia tantum subcategory of nominal gerunds? Developing Gaeta's notion of morphological differentiation

Publication date: Available online 14 September 2018Source: Language SciencesAuthor(s): J. Lachlan MackenzieAbstractInspired by Gaeta's study of morphological distinctiveness as the basis for category formation, this article considers the possibility that by virtue of their invariable suffix -ings English pluralia tantum nominal gerunds (PTNGs) such as surroundings can be regarded as a subcategory of nominal gerunds. It is shown that the set of PTNGs is semantically very disparate with regard to the verb that underwent nominalization in the course of their formation. Differences are observed in a very large corpus with regard to the quantifiers and other items that co-occur with PTNGs, namely quantifiers regularly associated with plural count (e.g. many) or with mass nouns (e.g. much), but...

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