A case of non-derived stand-alone nominalization

It has been argued that stand-alone nominalizations derive from a copula-type nominalization (Yap, Matthews & Horie 2004; Yap & Matthews 2008). This paper takes a detailed look at the history of a stand-alone type main-clause nominalization in Japanese and argues that there is no evidence for this type of development.Instead it is proposed that the stand-alone type is one of several uses of nominalizations. In light of evidence that stand-alone nominalizations need not be derived, several languages for which the copula-type>stand-alone development has been proposed are re-examined and the conclusion is that the non-derived view for stand-alone nominalizations should be seriously considered in the absence of evidence to the contrary.