Himalayan Linguistics

This paper aims to provide a first description of deverbal nominalizers in Brokpa and the range of functions they carry. Brokpa exhibits four productive deverbal nominalizers as well as an unproductive one. They all form clausal nominalizations which can function as complement clauses or as modifiers of other nominals in the form of relative clauses. I argue that Brokpa allows three different types of relative clauses: pre-headed, post-headed and internally headed relative clauses. This paper furthermore shows that two nominalizers developed temporal reference and can now also function as finite tense markers.