Nominalization in Yami
摘要
In the Philippine and Formosan languages, the morphemes that occur in indicative verb forms are also used in nominalization, as has already been pointed out by others. Some have even hypothesized that these indicative verb forms were derived by nominalization. However, the relationship between nominalization and the evolution of the focus system cannot be fully understood without complete descriptions of nominalization throughout Austronesia. This paper contributes to that end by providing data from Yami, a Philippine language spoken on Orchid Island, sixty-five kilometers southeast of Taiwan. Three topics in Yami were analyzed to facilitate typological comparisons and enhance explanations of the evolution of the focus system from nominalization: 1) the processes of noun formation from different lexical categories, 2) the structure and function of clausal nominalization, and 3) the distinction of nominalization from indicative verb forms. The results show that lexical nominalization in Yami can be divided into participant and action nominalizations. The process of participant nominalization resembles focus-marking morphological processes. Clausal nominalizations have no lexically derived noun. There is no clear division between indicative verbs and nominalization when the enclitic pronoun is in the genitive case. However, movement of the pronominal A to the beginning of the sentence further differentiates indicative verbs from nominalization.