This is the preliminary version of the paper that ultimately appeared as Harley 2005: How do verbs get their names?

The questions I address in this paper are, what is the interpretation of √P, and what are possible denotations for the incorporated head that is the root of the verb? I will argue that boundedness information specified on the lexical head which is incorporated in denominal verbs is present in the surface verb form, lending support to the notion that the sources of these verbs are in fact nominal roots. I claim that the syntactic nature of the lexical-syntactic structure entails that the boundedness of the nominal root of a location/locatum verb affects the telicity of the resulting verb, while the boundedness of the instrumental nominal root of a denominal activity verb is predicted not to affect the resulting verb’s telicity. As a side point, I argue that the interpretation of the v head is fully contextually determined, based on the denotation of the √P which is its sister, and the presence or absence of the specifier of vP.