Prefixation in German nominalizations

In the study of derivational morphology, multiply derived words are particularly informative regarding the connection between their morphosyntactic structure and their interpretation. For example, in German, three different kinds of preverbal elements (prefixes, particles, resultatives) behave differently in verbs and in nominalizations: there are restrictions on which preverbal can co-occur, which elements can occur in which nominalization context, as well as restrictions on how the preverbal elements can interact with the interpretation of the Root in either domain. Crucially, the alignment of the three classes of preverbal elements changes across categories (that is, they form different classes under nominalization than they do in the verbal domain). In this talk, I argue that these patterns follow in a theory that combines a careful differentiation of the structures at play with locality conditions on contextual interpretation.