What’s nominalization?

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Nominalization is the use or creation of nouns from words that normally act as verbs, adjectives or adverbs. Many verbs, for example, are expressions of action. However, the act itself can also be expressed as a thing, an activity, a noun.

The italicized words in the previous paragraph are two cases of nominalization. The word “to act” is normally a verb, as in the sentence “I act innocently to avoid punishment.” The same word is used as a noun in “The deed does not deceive my mother.” When a word remains unchanged between these two usages, it is referred to as a zero-derivation conversion in linguistics. That’s not unusual in many languages.

The second example in the first paragraph is more common and of more interest to people studying the structure of languages. In “My action deserved a rebuke,” the verb “to act” was converted into a noun by adding a suffix. Such changes are referred to as derivational morphology. Different languages ​​have different grammar rules for nominalization. The use of affixes – attaching or inserting additional sounds to a given word to change its meaning – is very typical.

There is a type of affix called a suprafix which is somewhat rare. Also called a noun derived from the initial accent, the nominalization is obtained exclusively by the syllabic inflection. The verb “protest” against the noun underlining the first syllable “protest” is an example.

While not an affix, another common method of nominalization in many languages ​​is to precede or follow a word with a simple, functional particle. In the Mandarin Chinese dialect, the ideogram character pronounced “de” will follow a verb or adjective to turn the word into a noun. The “to” particle that precedes an English verb is called an infinitive and can be a noun, as in “To err is forgivable for children.”

Usually interchangeable with the infinitive above, English also uses the present participle form of verbs ending in “-ing” as a type of noun called a gerund. An example sentence that uses a gerund phrase is: “Acting on fear has unpredictable consequences.” Gerunds and infinitives are also called verbal nouns. Conversely, a deverbal noun, as in “Acting is an unpredictable vocation”, expresses something concrete.

Descriptive adjectives are also nominalized more commonly than verbs. “Red” can be an attribute of an apple or a child’s favorite color. “An innocent child” is easily changed to “innocence”. Nominalization of adjectives is often as simple as tacking on the “-y” suffix, but it can also get a bit cumbersome, as in “unpredictability”. Adverbs that modify verbs, and often already end with the suffix “-ly” can also be converted into a noun, but this is inconvenient and quite rare.

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