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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. 391–417

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Chapter 10
The rise of the nominalizations

The case of the grammaticalization of clause types in Ecuadorian Siona

 | University of Leiden
Published online: 8 August 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.124.10bru
The nominalization of verbs in Ecuadorian Siona is carried out by nominal classifiers. The major types of nominalization in the language are event nominalization and subject nominalization. Object nominalization needs additional morphology. When verbs are not nominalized they carry portmanteau morphology that marks the categories of subject, clause type (assertive, reportative, interrogative, and dependent clauses) and tense. A peculiarity of the system is that the reportative, interrogative and dependent clause subject paradigms show a remarkable resemblance with nominal classifiers in the language. This paper proposes that the reportative forms grammaticalized from a reported speech construction through clause union, the interrogative forms grammaticalized from a (pseudo-)cleft construction through insubordination and the dependent clause forms developed from nominalizations that were used adverbially.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Nominalization in Ecuadorian Siona
    • 2.1The role of nominal classifiers
    • 2.2Types of nominalizations
    • 2.3Functions of nominalizations
  • 3.Subject agreement morphology
    • 3.1Clause type paradigms
      • 3.1.1Assertive clauses
      • 3.1.2Non-assertive clauses
      • 3.1.3Dependent clauses
    • 3.2Tense and subject agreement morphology
  • 4.The source of the subject agreement suffixes
  • 5.Reconstructing the non-assertive and dependent constructions
    • 5.1The origin of the reportative
    • 5.2The origin of the interrogative
    • 5.3The origin of the dependent verb marking
  • 6.Summary
  • Acknowledgements
  • Abbreviations
  • Notes
  • References
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