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Article published In:
Language Contact with Chinese
Edited by Zhiming Bao
[Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 38:1] 2023
► pp. 41–61

Nominalization in Wutun

ORCID logo | University of Helsinki, Finland
In this paper I discuss the various functions of nominalization in Wutun, a mixed Sinitic language spoken by ca. 4000 people in Qinghai Province, Northwest China. Nominalization in Wutun is expressed by the multi-purpose marker -de (cognate to Standard Mandarin de 的), which functions on both the lexical and clausal levels. Lexical nominalization takes the verb as its domain to derive nouns or adjectives, while clausal nominalization takes the entire clause as its domain and allows the clause to be treated as a noun phrase. Clausal nominalization in Wutun is used to form nominal complement clauses, relative clauses and adverbial subordinate clauses. In addition, the multi-purpose marker -de in Wutun has functions that go beyond nominalization, including pronominal function, pre-nominal modification and stand-alone usage, which is related to aspect and emphasis and plays an important role in stance-taking.
Keywords: Wutun language, lexical nominalization, clausal nominalization, mixed languages
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Lexical nominalization
  • 3.Clausal nominalizations
    • 3.1Nominal complement clauses
    • 3.2Relative clauses
    • 3.3Adverbial subordinate clauses
  • 4.Other uses of the general-purpose morpheme -de
    • 4.1Pronominal function
    • 4.2Pre-modification
    • 4.3Stand-alone usage
  • 5.Summary and conclusions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • List of abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 5 May 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.00103.san
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