Antilocality in Samoan nominalizations

Abstract

Based on data from nominalizations in Samoan, this paper develops a novel analysis of the source of the unaccusative restriction on nominalizations, which has been argued to follow from selectional properties of the nominalizer n. Focusing on genitive case alternations on external arguments, sensitive to the presence of additional aspectual layers, I demonstrate that the ban on external arguments in nominalizations is expected under general antilocality constraints.