In grammar

Grammar

In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...

, deverbal nouns are noun

Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open 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 .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

s derived from verb

Verb

A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...

s or verb phrases; it is a form of nominalization

Nominalization

In linguistics, nominalization or nominalisation is the use of a verb, an adjective, or an adverb as the head of a noun phrase, with or without morphological transformation...

 (forming a noun). This can be found in the English language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 but also in many other languages. An example from English is the word construct:

• Verb: /kʌnˈstɹʌkt/ — To build; to form.
• Noun: /ˈkanstɹʌkt/ — Something constructed from parts.

Russian

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

 also has several types of deverbals in its verbal declension/conjugation paradigms.

Definition

Verbal noun

Verbal noun

In linguistics, the verbal noun turns a verb into a noun and corresponds to the infinitive in English language usage. In English the infinitive form of the verb is formed when preceded by to, e.g...

s (VNs) and deverbal nouns (DVNs) are both nouns formed from verbs (formally, lexicalized nouns derived from or cognate to verbs), but are distinguished syntactic word classes. DVNs differ functionally from VNs in that DVNs operate as autonomous common nouns, while VNs retain verbal characteristics.

For example, gerund

Gerund

In linguistics* As applied to English, it refers to the usage of a verb as a noun ....

s are verbals, not deverbals; compare:

• Fencing is fun. (verbal – an activity; replaceable by the infinitive "to fence")
• The white fencing contributes to the neighborhood character (deverbal – a common noun, replaceable by other nouns like "bench")

Semantic types of deverbals

Deverbals may be categorized semantically according to what facet of the process (that the verb refers to) is reified (construed as a thing). For example:
Agent nouns: invader, singer – the agent of the action.
Patient nouns: draftee – the object of the action.
Result nouns: dent, bruise
Manner nouns: walk, as in "She has a funny walk."
Ability nouns: speech, as in "She regained her speech."
Episode nouns: destruction, as in "The bomb's destruction was widespread."

Japanese

In Japanese, verbal nouns are treated (grammatically and orthographically) as verb forms, while deverbal nouns are treated as nouns. This is reflected in okurigana

Okurigana

are kana suffixes following kanji stems in Japanese written words. They serve two purposes: to inflect adjectives and verbs, and to disambiguate kanji with multiple readings...

 (following characters), which are used for verb conjugation and, similarly, for verbal nouns, but not for deverbal nouns. For example, 話す、話し、話 (hana-su, hana-shi, hanashi) are the verb, nominalized verb (VN), and deverbal noun (DVN) of "converse", "conversation (the act)", "conversation (the episode)" – the first two are written with following hiragana

Hiragana

is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...

characters (す、し), as verb forms, while the latter is written without following characters, as a noun. A more dramatic example is found in 氷る、氷り、氷 (koo-ru, koo-ri, koori), meaning "freeze", "freezing", "ice (literally: freezing)", where the verbal origins are more distant from the current use of the noun.