Nominalization in cross-linguistic diachronic perspective

While more and more data are now available on
languages rich in nominalizations, such as those of Latin
America, the literature on nominalization is mainly synchronically orientented. The paper discusses several pieces of diachronic evidence about the origins of nominalization cross-linguistically. This evidence
challenges the idea, widely held in the functional-typological literature,
that the use of nominalizations reflects a non-default treatment
of particular expressions, and that this motivates the
distinguishing properties of nominalizations vis-a-vis other constructions.
Diachronic evidence also points to possible motivations for the fact
that nominalizations fail to consistently display the same structural
properties, both cross-linguistically and within individual languages,
and fail to be consistently used in the same contexts from one
language to another.