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Nominalization in Languages of the Americas
Edited by Roberto Zariquiey, Masayoshi Shibatani and David W. Fleck
[Typological Studies in Language 124] 2019
► pp. 591–624

Chapter 17
Nominalization and its pervasiveness in Xavante

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The aim of this presentation is to show the ubiquitous character of nominalizations in Xavante, a Jê language spoken in central Brazil by approximately 15,000 speakers. After a brief presentation of background information, we will give a synchronic description of lexical and grammatical nominalizations. The section devoted to grammatical nominalization points out the hybrid nature of constituents we are inclined to call ‘nominalized clauses’: it offers an analysis of their internal (clausal) structure and their syntactic (nominal) behaviour. A final section presents a diachronic hypothesis involving several contexts where nominalizations can be argued to have operated at the clause level in a previous state of the language.

Article outline
  • Introduction
  • 1.Background information
    • 1.1Nouns
      • 1.1.1Noun classes
      • 1.1.2Noun stems
    • 1.2Verbs
      • 1.2.1Verb classes
      • 1.2.2Verb stems
    • 1.3Parallels between nouns and verbs
      • 1.3.1Clitics and particles
      • 1.3.2Predicate function
      • 1.3.3Valency
  • 2.Nominalizations
    • 2.1Lexical nominalizations
      • 2.1.1‘Agent’ deverbal nouns
      • 2.1.2‘Non-agent’ deverbal nouns
      • 2.1.3‘Action’ deverbal nouns
    • 2.2Grammatical nominalization
      • 2.2.1Clause nominalization
        • 2.2.1.1Internal properties
        • 2.2.1.2External properties
      • 2.2.2Nominalization and discourse
        • 2.2.2.1Insubordination
        • 2.2.2.2Re-finitization
  • 3.Diachronic hypothesis
    • 3.1Stative verbs
    • 3.2Negation
    • 3.3Aspect
  • Conclusion
  • Appendix
  • Abbreviations
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 8 August 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.124.17est
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