Clausal nominalization in Budai Rukai

This paper aims to explore the morphosyntactic characteristics of the two nominalizers -anә and -Ø occurring pervasively in both clausal and lexical nominalizations in Budai Rukai, one of the Formosan languages spoken in the southern part of Taiwan. It shows that relativization plays a role in the emergence of nominalization constructions under investigation. Budai nominalization constructions also exhibit both nominal and verbal properties. Their distinctive nominality is signaled by the presence of case markers and genitive subjects. Yet their internal structure resembles in nearly all respects that of a sentence. Retention of adverbial phrases, oblique-marked object argument, and various verbal categories including tense, aspect, voice and valency morphemes is clear evidence of the verbal nature of such a nominalization process. The result of this work matches various cross-linguistic observations attested in Koptjevskaja-Tamm (2003), Malchukov (2006), Comrie and Thompson (2007), and Noonan.(2007).

Published online: 29 June 2011
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.96.19sun