Chapter 17
Nominalization and its pervasiveness in Xavante
The aim of this presentation is to show the ubiquitous character of nominalizations in Xavante, a Jê language spoken in central Brazil by approximately 15,000 speakers. After a brief presentation of background information, we will give a synchronic description of lexical and grammatical nominalizations. The section devoted to grammatical nominalization points out the hybrid nature of constituents we are inclined to call ‘nominalized clauses’: it offers an analysis of their internal (clausal) structure and their syntactic (nominal) behaviour. A final section presents a diachronic hypothesis involving several contexts where nominalizations can be argued to have operated at the clause level in a previous state of the language.
Article outline
- Introduction
- 1.Background information
- 1.1Nouns
- 1.1.1Noun classes
- 1.1.2Noun stems
- 1.2Verbs
- 1.2.1Verb classes
- 1.2.2Verb stems
- 1.3Parallels between nouns and verbs
- 1.3.1Clitics and particles
- 1.3.2Predicate function
- 1.3.3Valency
- 2.Nominalizations
- 2.1Lexical nominalizations
- 2.1.1‘Agent’ deverbal nouns
- 2.1.2‘Non-agent’ deverbal nouns
- 2.1.3‘Action’ deverbal nouns
- 2.2Grammatical nominalization
- 2.2.1Clause nominalization
- 2.2.1.1Internal properties
- 2.2.1.2External properties
- 2.2.2Nominalization and discourse
- 2.2.2.1Insubordination
- 2.2.2.2Re-finitization
- 3.Diachronic hypothesis
- 3.1Stative verbs
- 3.2Negation
- 3.3Aspect
- Conclusion
- Appendix
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Abbreviations
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Notes
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References