Chapter 141Nominalization and Focus
Relative heads, content nominalization, copular identification, naming, and the limits of an exhaustive cleft analysis.
141.1 A relative-headed expression as a copular subject
A description ending in a general noun such as p can stand as the subject of a copular statement. Nakagawa's example identifies what is placed on a shelf as food Nakagawa (2024: 512, example 1178).
‘What one puts on the shelf is food.’
Nakagawa 2024: 512; Saru, Example 1178
NMLZ is the conventional gloss for p; Nakagawa analyzes it here as the head of a relative construction, corresponding to the object of omare and anu.
The construction identifies a referent through a description. The source also translates it as a statement about putting food on the shelf. Neither paraphrase by itself demonstrates the exhaustive meaning ‘food and nothing else’, or a special construction devoted to contrastive focus.
141.2 A participant or the content of a situation
Nakagawa distinguishes relative-headed p/pe from a complement marker introducing the content of a situation. His next comparison has a speaker unable to understand why people speak and cry; the incomprehensible content is their conduct and its reason Nakagawa (2024: 512–513, example 1180).
Satō makes a related distinction between a relative construction, whose head can be understood as a participant in a corresponding sentence, and a content clause. He cautions that the finer uses of the nominalizing forms need further investigation Satō (2008: 175–177, §22.1). The full comparison appears in Chapter 101 (P and Pe: Participants, Content, and Clause Endings) and Chapter 102 (Lexical Heads and Formal-Noun Nominalization).
Concreteness is only part of the distinction. Hi occurs with places, times, and propositional content; Nakagawa explicitly records variation in the locative constructions he compares Nakagawa (2024: 511–512, examples 1175–1177).
141.3 Nominal function without a separate nominalizer
Bugaeva allows “zero-nominalization” when a morphologically unmarked clause has a nominal function. She distinguishes this from constructions with an overt nominalizing word and notes that the verb retains its person marking in both types Bugaeva (2016: 99–100, examples 4a–4b). Her proposal concerns complement structure; it does not make every bare verb sequence an identificational or focus construction.
Different authors consequently use “nominalization” for partly different sets of structures. The presence or absence of an overt p or hi is one piece of evidence alongside the function of the whole expression.
141.4 Formal nouns and clause endings
Formal nouns also enter clause endings. Nakagawa gives a statement about the name Piratur among his examples with a formal noun and ne Nakagawa (2024: 393, example 778, after Tamura 1985:30).
The words for manner and voice, the quoted name, and the clause ending each contribute to this expression. Its occurrence does not establish a separate “naming cleft” construction. The source's analysis belongs with the formal-noun endings described in Chapter 120 (Formal Nouns and Evidential Constructions).
141.5 Context and focus interpretations
A copular identification can answer a question about what something is; a topic-marked phrase can contrast one matter with another. These interpretations depend on the expression and context. The mere sequence of a nominalizing form and ne does not establish one common focus meaning for relative descriptions, content clauses, and evidential endings. The directly described topic contrasts are treated in Chapter 140 (Topics and Anakne).