Deverbal nominalizations in Ktunaxa

Abstract

This paper presents an overview on deverbal nominalizations from Ktunaxa, a language isolate spoken in eastern British Columbia, Canada. Deverbal nominalizations are formed uniformly with a left-peripheral nominalizing particle k (Morgan 1991). However, they do not form a single homogenous class with respect to various syntactic properties. These properties are illustrated with novel data, showing that deverbal nominalizations fall into at least two classes, which are analyzed here as nominalization taking place at either vP or VP, where vP-nominalizations include the external argument and VP-nominalizations do not. Evidence for this division comes from how possession is expressed, the interpretation of the passive (and passive-like constructions), and the licensing of verbal modifiers. As both classes of deverbal nominalizations are constructed uniformly with the nominalizing particle, these properties are derived syntactically from the size of the verbal constituent being nominalized.

Unpacking -ish: a bimorphemic account of Kirundi causatives

“…Thus, the lower head -ish both relates a causing event to a verb and unaccusativizes the verbal projection. To do this, I follow Gatchalian (2022) in suggesting that the embedded verb ends up as a small clause below v with the causee implication of the higher argument in this clause being derived via implication (this contributes to the potential for variation between causee and instrument readings). One necessity of the small clause is that it be transitive, in order to require the inclusion of an intermediary in causativized unaccusatives.…”