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• Masayoshi Shibatani (Rice University, Kobe University, University of Tokyo)

dans le cadre DILIS

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  While Functional Typology yields certain generalizations about form-function correlations, it, like a (synchronic) descriptive grammar, does not explain how a language ends up displaying such generalizations. By incorporating a diachronic perspective, the diverse marking patterns of grammatical nominalizations in Amami Ryukyuan are explained in terms of two competing economic motivations; namely, the hearer’s economy motivating innovations toward diversity in form, and the speaker’s economy driving changes toward form uniformity. This dynamicization of functional typology is also useful in understanding crosslinguistic patterns of gender- and classifier-marking, which, we contend, have been mishandled by leading researchers in the field such as Corbett (1991) for the former and Allen (1977) and Aikhenvald (2019) for the latter. In particular, we advance the claim that grammatical genders and (numeral) classifiers nominalize numerals, demonstratives, and other structures and at the same time classify what is being denoted according to the gender- and classifier-classes of the language. In other words, genders and classifiers are specifically classifying types of nominalization, while ordinary nominalizations classify minimally, if at all.