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Nominalization
 
 
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In linguistics
Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
, nominalization refers to the use of a verb
Verb

In syntax, a verb is a word that usually denotes an action , an occurrence , or a state of being . Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood and grammatical voice....
 or an adjective
Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntax role is to grammatical modifier a noun or pronoun, giving more information about the noun or pronoun's definition....
 as a noun
Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open class lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition....
, with or without morphological
Morphology (linguistics)

Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of structure of words . While words are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most languages, words can be related to other words by rules....
 transformation, so that the word can now act as the head
Head (linguistics)

In linguistics, the head is the word that determines the syntax type of the phrase of which it is a member, or analogously the word stem that determines the semantic category of a compound of which it is a component....
 of a noun phrase
Noun phrase

In grammar, a noun phrase is a phrase whose Head is a noun or a pronoun, optionally accompanied by a set of modifiers.Noun phrases are very common linguistic typology, but some languages like Tuscarora language and Cayuga language have been argued to lack this category....
.

Nominalization happens in languages around the world. Some languages allow verbs to be used as nouns, while others require some form of morphological
Morphology (linguistics)

Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of structure of words . While words are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most languages, words can be related to other words by rules....
 transformation. English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 has cases of both.

English
Grammatical nominalization
This is process by which a grammatical expression is turned into a nominal group
Nominal group (language)

In English, a nominal group typically comprises a noun surrounded by other items that all in some way characterise that noun. Within a clause, a nominal group functions as though it is that noun, which is referred to as the head; the items preceding the head are called the premodifiers, and the items after it the postmodifiers....
, also known more loosely as a noun phrase.






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Encyclopedia


In linguistics
Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
, nominalization refers to the use of a verb
Verb

In syntax, a verb is a word that usually denotes an action , an occurrence , or a state of being . Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood and grammatical voice....
 or an adjective
Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntax role is to grammatical modifier a noun or pronoun, giving more information about the noun or pronoun's definition....
 as a noun
Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open class lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition....
, with or without morphological
Morphology (linguistics)

Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of structure of words . While words are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most languages, words can be related to other words by rules....
 transformation, so that the word can now act as the head
Head (linguistics)

In linguistics, the head is the word that determines the syntax type of the phrase of which it is a member, or analogously the word stem that determines the semantic category of a compound of which it is a component....
 of a noun phrase
Noun phrase

In grammar, a noun phrase is a phrase whose Head is a noun or a pronoun, optionally accompanied by a set of modifiers.Noun phrases are very common linguistic typology, but some languages like Tuscarora language and Cayuga language have been argued to lack this category....
.

Nominalization happens in languages around the world. Some languages allow verbs to be used as nouns, while others require some form of morphological
Morphology (linguistics)

Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of structure of words . While words are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most languages, words can be related to other words by rules....
 transformation. English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 has cases of both.

Nominalization in various languages


English


Grammatical nominalization
This is process by which a grammatical expression is turned into a nominal group
Nominal group (language)

In English, a nominal group typically comprises a noun surrounded by other items that all in some way characterise that noun. Within a clause, a nominal group functions as though it is that noun, which is referred to as the head; the items preceding the head are called the premodifiers, and the items after it the postmodifiers....
, also known more loosely as a noun phrase. An example is the change from "The experiment involved combining the two chemicals" to "The experiment involved the combining of the two chemicals".

A nominal form is sometime preferable to its corresponding sentence with a relative clause.

-with relative clause: He got an eraser, which was shaped like a Lego.

-the same, nominalized: He got a Lego-shaped eraser.

Lexical nominalization
Some verbs and adjectives can be used directly as nouns, such as change, good, murder, and use. Others require a suffix:
  • applicability (from applicable)
  • carelessness (from careless)
  • difficulty (from difficult)
  • failure (from fail)
  • intensity (from intense)
  • investigation (from investigate)
  • movement (from move)
  • reaction (from react)
  • refusal (from refuse)
  • swimming (from swim)
  • nominalization (from nominalize)


In prescriptivist stylistics
Stylistics (linguistics)

Stylistics is the study of varieties of language whose properties position that language in wiktionary:context. For example, the language of advertising, politics, religion, individual authors, etc., or the language of a period in time, all are used distinctively and belong in a particular situation....
, nominalizations are considered to make sentences more difficult to follow and to promote wordiness. For these reasons, nominalizations are usually discouraged in writing. However, they can be warranted when it is necessary to use the nominalized verb or adjective as the head of a noun phrase. Very common nominalizations (like the noun "changes") are usually not discouraged.

Other Indo-European languages


Many Indo-European languages have separate inflection
Inflection

In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the way language handles grammatical relations and relational categories such as grammatical tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, grammatical aspect, grammatical person, grammatical number, grammatical gender, grammatical case....
al morphology for nouns, verbs, and adjectives, but often this is no impediment to nominalization, as the root
Root (linguistics)

The root is the primary lexicology unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantics content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....
 or stem
Word stem

In linguistics, a stem is the part of a word that is common to all its inflection variants. Stems are often root , e.g. atomic, its root is atom, but its stem is atom?ic....
 of the adjective is readily stripped of its adjectival inflections and bedecked with nominal inflections—sometimes even with dedicated nominalizing suffixes. For example, Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 has a number of nominalization suffixes, and some of these suffixes have been borrowed into English, either directly or through Romance languages
Romance languages

The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages comprising all the languages that descend from Latin language, the language of ancient Rome....
. Other examples can be seen in German—such as the subtle inflectional differences between deutsch (adj) and Deutsch (noun) across genders, numbers, and cases—although in cases of ancient roots, it may be moot to wonder which lexical category
Lexical category

In grammar, a lexical category is a linguistic category of words , which is generally defined by the syntactic or morphology behaviour of the lexical item in question....
 came first. Spanish, whose o/os/a/as inflections commonly mark both adjectives and nouns, shows a very permeable boundary as many roots straddle the lexical categories of adjective and noun (with little or no inflectional difference).

Chinese


In all of the Chinese languages, particles are used to nominalize verbs and adjectives. In Mandarin, the most common is ? de, which is attached to both verbs and adjectives. For example, ? chi (to eat) becomes ?? chide (that which is eaten). Cantonese uses ? ge in the same capacity, while Minnan uses ę.

Two other particles, found throughout the Chinese languages, are used to explicitly indicate the nominalized noun as being either the agent or patient of the verb being nominalzed. ? (suo in Mandarin) is attached before the verb to indicate patient, e.g. ? (to eat) becomes ?? (that which is eaten), and ? (zhe in Mandarin) are attached after the verb to indicate agent, e.g. ? (to eat) becomes ?? (he who eats). Both particles date from Classical Chinese
Classical Chinese

Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any Chinese spoken language....
 and retain limited productivity
Productivity (linguistics)

In linguistics, productivity is the degree to which native speakers use a particular grammatical process, especially in word formation. Since use to produce novel structures is the clearest proof of usage of a grammatical process, the evidence most often appealed to as establishing productivity is the appearance of novel forms of the type th...
 in modern Chinese languages.

Japanese


Japanese makes use of several particles, such as ? no, ?? mono and ?? koto, for nominalization.