Versatile Nominalizations

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Abstract

This paper constitutes a sort of first report of work in progress on the historical development of nominalizations and the related question of the kinds of uses to which they can be put. The author concentrates to some developments in Tibeto-Burman which, in any case, constitute the most interesting set of examples he has found so far. The discussion starts with some data from Chantyal, a language which displays an unusually broad range of functions for nominalizations. Then he discusses some aspects of the history of these constructions, utilizing data from similar constructions in a number of Tibeto- Burman languages of the Nepal Himalayas and environs. The paper ends with a brief discussion of whether the range of constructions exemplified for Chantyal can constitute a unified grammatical category of any sort. In the essay, the author refers to a form as a nominalization if it includes among its functions the naming of activities or states. This is done, in part, simply to help keep track of forms regardless of where they are along grammaticalization chains, ie regardless of whatever other label we might, in a synchronic grammar, want to assign to the form.