Nominalization and its Discontents:
Workshop on Nominalization and its Uses in Tibeto-Burman Languages

The Sino-Tibetan Linguistics Special Interest Group at La Trobe University  (Alec Coupe, Stephen Morey, Yu Defen, Xu Huiling, Seino van Breugel, Randy LaPolla, Mark Post, David Bradley, Tonya Stebbins, Namgay Thinley and others) had been discussing the use of forms that might be called nominalizations in Tibeto-Burman languages (whether they are in fact nominalizations--which would imply that "finite" is a relevant concept; their use in relativisation--if in fact the structures we talk about as relativisation are relativisation; their use in genitives--again, if in fact they are genitives; their use in clause junctures--whether they are clause junctures or embedded clausal participants; other modification structures; the question of "stand alone" nominalizations--are they simply copula clauses without the copula, as can be shown for some in Rawang, or is there a type that is in fact a nominalization, and yet it acts as a main clause, and no copula can be assumed; the origins of and functional motivations for all these structures; and other questions), and decided to have workshop with each of us talking turns to present on the question of nominalization and related issues in the languages we work on. We decided that we would first read relevant papers by Matisoff, Noonan, Genetti, Watters, DeLancey, and ourselves, and each of us should submit a list of things we think we should all talk about, and we will jointly come up with a set of agreed-upon items. Then we will write our papers. The first presentation was by Stephen Morey on Singhpo on 3 August, 2006. We hope that people in the US and elsewhere can also join the discussion, so all of the papers relevant to the topic are being distributed over the Tibeto-Burman Linguistics listserv. Everyone is welcome to participate in the discussion and circulation of papers. (The listserv can also be used for other topics related to Tibeto-Burman; the nominalization workshop is just one thread.) A CALL FOR PAPERS has also gone out from Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area for a special issue on nominalization (see LTBA Announcements).

Last updated 21 November, 2007