Nominalizations in Bodic Languages

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Abstract

One postulated genetic grouping within Tibeto-Burman branch is an agglomeration of languages spoken in the western reaches of the Sino-Tibetan speaking area, a grouping referred as Bodic. While a number of interesting isoglosses cut through this group, on the whole they exhibit a rather impressive typological consistency. In particular, languages in this group make extensive use of nominalizations, as documented in some publications by the author. In these languages, constructions headed by nominalizations — or forms morphologically identical to them — are used for more than the 'expected' functions of nominalizations such as the reification of events and processes, and the expression of clauses as arguments of predicates. For simplicity of exposition, the author refers to a morphological form and the construction that it heads as a nominalization if it includes within its uses the naming of activities or states, contrasting this term with 'nominalization in the strict sense', which refers specifically to the function of naming activities and states. Given this, one of the fullest range of uses of nominalizations among the Bodic languages is to be found in Chantyal, a Tamangic language spoken in Nepal.