[Lingtyp] Demonstratives as nominalizers

[Zahid Akter]

Hi Riccardo,

Thanks so much! In a Tibeto-Burman language (Pangkhua, Bangladesh) I've worked on, the (distal) demonstrative has been grammaticalized as an article, while the nominalizer has come from the word for 'person/people'. However, in Pangkhua the predicate is often marked by the proximal demonstrative and seems to indicate the strength of assertion or stance, a function that (clausal) nominalization usually serves. Given the more common cross-linguistic diachronic pathway of a distal demonstrative (Juergen's data also confirms this) >article>nominalizer, marking a predicate by the proximal demonstrative for a similar function like a nominalizer in Pangkhua is confounding. I'm not calling it nominalization, but this motivated me to look for data from other languages.

Cheers,
Zahid


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________________________________
From: Riccardo Giomi <r.giomi at uva.nl>
Sent: Monday, October 21, 2024 1:21 AM
To: LINGTYP LINGTYP <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>; Zahid Akter <Zahid_Akter at outlook.com>
Subject: Re: Demonstratives as nominalizers

Dear Zahid and all,

I don't know if this is (directly) relevant to your query, but I would suppose "sheer" demonstrative/nominalizer multifunctionality is one thing, while another one is demonstrative/article/nominalizer. Since both demonstrative>article and article>nominalizer are common diachronic changes, in principle I would expect the latter, three-way syncretism to be much more common (and potentially not relevant to what you are after?).

Best wishes,
Riccardo

Riccardo Giomi
Assistant Professor of Functional Linguistics
University of Amsterdam
Faculty of Humanities: Department of Linguistics
Spuistraat 134, 1012 VB, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
________________________________
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Zahid Akter via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Sent: 20 October 2024 11:33
To: LINGTYP LINGTYP <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: [Lingtyp] Demonstratives as nominalizers

Dear Typologists,

I’m looking for languages where demonstratives function as nominalizers. If you are aware of any such cases, I would greatly appreciate your references.

Best regards,
Zahid



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