Nominals with the suffix -ač in Croatian

Abstract

The paper presents an analysis of Croatian agentive nominals with the suffix -ac within the Distributed Morphology approach, adopting and applying Alexiadou & Schafer’s (2010) model. The internal morphological structure of the -ac nouns, and their eventive properties were considered in detail. The analysis has shown that the eventive/non-eventive properties of -ac nouns do not depend on animacy, but rather on the episodic vs. dispositional distinction. However, instrument nominals are distinguished from animate nominals in some respects. Croatian -ac nouns exhibit properties that cannot be completely captured by the framework adopted.