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In:Nominalization in Languages of the Americas:
Edited by Roberto Zariquiey, Masayoshi Shibatani and David W. Fleck
[Typological Studies in Language 124] 2019
► pp. 169–194

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Chapter 3
Nominalization in cross-linguistic diachronic perspective

 | University of Pavia
Published online: 8 August 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.124.03cri
While more and more data are now available on languages rich in nominalizations, such as those of Latin America, the literature on nominalization is mainly synchronically orientented. The paper discusses several pieces of diachronic evidence about the origins of nominalization cross-linguistically. This evidence challenges the idea, widely held in the functional-typological literature, that the use of nominalizations reflects a non-default treatment of particular expressions, and that this motivates the distinguishing properties of nominalizations vis-a-vis other constructions. Diachronic evidence also points to possible motivations for the fact that nominalizations fail to consistently display the same structural properties, both cross-linguistically and within individual languages, and fail to be consistently used in the same contexts from one language to another.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Some traditional assumptions about nominalization
  • 3.Nominalization and the origins of nominalizers
  • 4.Diachrony and the structural diversity of nominalizations
  • 5.Diachrony and the distribution of nominalizations
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Abbreviations
  • Notes
  • References
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2019. The ‘relative’ illusion and the origin of non-subject nominalizers in Cahita (Uto-Aztecan). In Nominalization in Languages of the Americas [Typological Studies in Language, 124], ► pp. 301 ff. DOI logo

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