Mo-MOT 1 Invited Speaker A Endemic Nominalization Alana Johns, University of Toronto

The morphosyntax of a language clearly exhibits organizing characteristics that make it appear more or less similar to other languages on the surface. For example, isolating languages contrast with more polysynthetic languages where utterances we call words form complex units. Semitic languages are characterized by non-concatenative morphology whereby each root forms a set of consonantal patterns which intersect with vowel morphemes, thereby producing regular stem changes. (1) kataba kutiba yaktubu ka:tib kita:b kutub maktab ‘He wrote’ ‘It was written’ ‘he writes’ writer book books office Equally Romance and Slavic languages have gender features that, were they to be plucked out of the system, would necessitate a complete overhaul. The Inuit language has at times been claimed to have nominal properties in the verbs (Johns 1992 and references therein). This claim is largely based on the fact that “transitive” verbs or verbs which inflect for two arguments display marking which appears also in possessives. (2) taku-ja-ra taku-ja-tka nasa-ra nasa-tka see-part.1s/s see-part.1s/p hat-1s/s hat-1s/p ‘I see him’ ‘I see them’ ‘my hat’ ‘my hats’

[Qairnirmiut]

Nominalization has been associated with ergativity in a large number of languages (Alexiadou to appear; Salanova 2007, etc.). In fact ergativity is not the only instance in Inuktitut where nominalization seems to play a larger role than we observe in other languages. There are frequent instances of nominalization followed by verbalization word-internally. (3) a. taqa-ju-mmari-alu-u-junga fatigue-Participle-genuine-a.lot-be-part.1s V N V ‘I’m really tired’ [S. Baffin] b. Sunaliami tiki-ju-tsa-u-vet? Ai-jau-guma-laak-Ket? What.time arrive-nom-potential-be-interr.2s go-psv-want-fut.-interr.2s ‘What time are you supposed to arrive? Will you want to be picked up? [Labrador] Nominalization exists (probably) in every language. In languages where it is more common, this is suggests that we need to understand nominalization beyond simple

Mo-MOT 1 Invited Speaker

category change. This paper pursues the idea that endemic nominalization can feature systematically within the verbal domain. References Alexiadou, A. To appear. Ergativity in Nominalization. In J. Coon, D. Massam & L. Travis (eds.) Oxford Handbook on Ergativity. Oxford University Press. Johns, A. 1992. Deriving Ergativity, Linguistic Inquiry 27: 57-87. Johns, A. 2014. Eskimo-Aleut. In R. Lieber and P. Štekauer eds.,The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology, 702-723. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Salanova, A. 2007. Nominalization and Aspect. Ph.D. thesis MIT.