Nominalization In the Kiranti And Central Himalayish languages of Nepal

Abstract

Numerous grammars have been published on Kiranti and Central Himalayish languages in recent years and though nominalization has been a pervasive feature in most of them, it is not always clear from the nomenclature that we are dealing with nominalizations at all. Nominalization is used in many of these languages not only in converting finite clauses into relative and complement structures, but also in converting verbs and other word classes into adjectivals, participles, and demonstrative-like elements. Less well understood is the use of nominalization in ‘free-standing’ predications. Such nominalizations have been defined in various ways by different authors. I hope to demonstrate, however, that we are dealing primarily with equivalent structures and that their various functions can be distinguished, not only by their pragmatic contexts, but also by the syntactic structures in which they occur. Not all of them occur in every language, but the ones that do occur can be seen as forming different parts of a multi-functional instrument

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