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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. 491–514

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Chapter 13
Nominalization in Shawi/Chayahuita

 | Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen/Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics/University of Queensland
Published online: 8 August 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.124.13roj
This paper deals with the Shawi nominalizing suffixes -su’~-ru’~-nu’ ‘general nominalizer’, -napi/-te’/-tun‘performer/agent nominalizer’, -pi’‘patient nominalizer’, and -nan ‘instrument nominalizer’. The goal of this article is to provide a description of nominalization in Shawi. Throughout this paper I apply the Generalized Scale Model (GSM) (Malchukov, 2006) to Shawi verbal nominalizations, with the intention of presenting a formal representation that will provide a basis for future areal and typological studies of nominalization. In addition, I dialogue with Shibatani’s model to see how the loss or gain of categories correlates with the lexical or grammatical nature of nominalizations. strong nominalization in Shawi correlates with lexical nominalization, whereas weak nominalizations correlate with grammatical nominalization. A typology which takes into account the productivity of the nominalizers is also discussed.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Shawi language
  • 3.The Generalized Scale Model (GSM)
  • 4.Strong nominalization
    • 4.1Performer/Agent nominalizer -napi (very frequent)/ -te’ (less frequent)/ -tun (rare)
    • 4.2Patient nominalizer -pi
    • 4.3Instrument nominalizer -nan
  • 5.Weak nominalization
    • 5.1General nominalizer -su’
      • 5.1.1Purposive -ka-1/2/3-su’(= mare’)
      • 5.1.2Prohibitive ama V-imp-(su’)-we
  • 6.Discussion
  • Acknowledgments
  • List of conventions used
  • Notes
  • References
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