Categories in the Lexicon

This article argues against the hypothesis that roots are stored in the lexi-con without categorial specification, such as noun and verb, as proposed inMarantz (1997, 2001). On the basis of evidence from Dutch, we show thatcertain generalizations and rules cannot be expressed without having rootsthat are lexically specified for their category. Furthermore, we show thatthe arguments put forward by Barner and Bale (2002) for categorial un-derspecification are not valid with respect to the data from Dutch. Finally,following Kiparsky (1997), we show that analyses of denominal verbs inEnglish that embrace the categorial underspecification hypothesis run intoserious problems. We conclude that roots are stored in the lexicon with acategorial specification.