Nominalization in Mayrinax Atayal
摘要
This is a preliminary, descriptive study of nominalization in Mayrinax Atayal as spoken in Chinshui Village, Taian Township, Miaoli County. Like most other Formosan or even Austronesian languages, nominalization in Mayrinax occurs at both the lexical and the clausal level. Except for focus and tense/aspect/mood markers, however, there are no productive morphological devices to produce lexical nominals; nominalized elements and verb forms are, therefore, identical. An examination of the functions of Mayrinax derived nominals shows that they may designate actions or states, and may also manifest the agent, patient, locative, or instrumental argument of an event. These findings should prove useful to future typological or comparative research.