Nominalization
Encyclopedia
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. The term can also refer specifically to the process of producing a noun from another part of speech via the addition of derivational
affix
es (e.g., legalize versus legalization).
Nominalization happens in languages around the world. Some languages simply allow verbs to be used as nouns, while others require some form of morphological
transformation. English
has cases of both.
suffix
to create a noun. In other cases, English uses the same word as a noun without any additional morphology. This second process is referred to as zero-derivation
.
In prescriptive stylistics
, nominalizations are considered to make sentences more difficult to follow and to promote wordiness. For these reasons, nominalisations 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.
Examples of nouns formed from adjectives:
Examples of nouns formed from verbs:
An especially common case of verbs being used as nouns is the addition of the suffix -ing, known in English as a gerund.
change
murder
In addition to true zero-derivation, English also has a number of words which, depending on subtle changes in pronunciation, are either nouns or verbs. One such type, which is rather pervasive, is the change in stress placement from the final syllable of the word to the first syllable.
progress
An additional case is seen with the verb use, which has a different pronunciation when used as a noun.
use
al morphology for nouns, verbs, and adjectives, but often this is no impediment to nominalization, as the root
or stem
of the adjective is readily stripped of its adjectival inflections and bedecked with nominal inflections—sometimes even with dedicated nominalizing suffixes. For example, Latin
has a number of nominalisation suffixes, and some of these suffixes have been borrowed into English, either directly or through Romance languages
. 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
came first. Spanish and Portuguese, 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).
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. 所 (suǒ in Mandarin) is attached before the verb to indicate patient, e.g. 吃 (to eat) becomes 所吃 (that which is eaten), and 者 (zhě in Mandarin) are attached after the verb to indicate agent, e.g. 吃 (to eat) becomes 吃者 (he who eats). Both particles date from Classical Chinese
and retain limited productivity
in modern Chinese languages.
makes frequent use of nominalization (instead of relative pronoun
s) via several particles
such as の no, もの mono and こと koto.
[mo buje-m]-jo muçhore ŗo buje-i
I go-1sg-from before he go-3sg
‘He will go before I go.’
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, nominalization or nominalisation is the use of a 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...
, an adjective
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
, or an adverb
Adverb
An adverb is a part of speech that modifies verbs or any part of speech other than a noun . Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentences, and other adverbs....
as the head
Head (linguistics)
In linguistics, the head is the word that determines the syntactic type of the phrase of which it is a member, or analogously the stem that determines the semantic category of a compound of which it is a component. The other elements modify the head....
of a noun phrase
Noun phrase
In grammar, a noun phrase, nominal phrase, or nominal group is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like word optionally accompanied by modifiers such as adjectives....
, with or without morphological
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
transformation. The term can also refer specifically to the process of producing a noun from another part of speech via the addition of derivational
Derivation (linguistics)
In linguistics, derivation is the process of forming a new word on the basis of an existing word, e.g. happi-ness and un-happy from happy, or determination from determine...
affix
Affix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
es (e.g., legalize versus legalization).
Nominalization happens in languages around the world. Some languages simply allow verbs to be used as nouns, while others require some form of morphological
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
transformation. English
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...
has cases of both.
English
Two types of nominalisation are found in English. One type requires the addition of a derivationalDerivation (linguistics)
In linguistics, derivation is the process of forming a new word on the basis of an existing word, e.g. happi-ness and un-happy from happy, or determination from determine...
suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
to create a noun. In other cases, English uses the same word as a noun without any additional morphology. This second process is referred to as zero-derivation
Conversion (linguistics)
In linguistics, conversion, also called zero derivation, is a kind of word formation; specifically, it is the creation of a word from an existing word without any change in form...
.
In prescriptive stylistics
Stylistics (linguistics)
Stylistics is the study and interpretation of texts from a linguistic perspective. As a discipline it links literary criticism and linguistics, but has no autonomous domain of its own...
, nominalizations are considered to make sentences more difficult to follow and to promote wordiness. For these reasons, nominalisations 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.
With derivational morphology
This is a process by which a grammatical expression is turned into a noun phrase. For example, in the sentence "Combine the two chemicals," combine acts as a verb. This can be turned into a noun via the addition of -ation, as in "The experiment involved the combination of the two chemicals."Examples of nouns formed from adjectives:
- applicability (from applicable)
- carelessness (from careless)
- difficulty (from difficult)
- intensity (from intense)
Examples of nouns formed from verbs:
- failure (from fail)
- nominalization (from nominalize)
- investigation (from investigate)
- movement (from move)
- reaction (from react)
- refusal (from refuse)
An especially common case of verbs being used as nouns is the addition of the suffix -ing, known in English as a gerund.
- swimming (from swim)
- running (from run)
- editing (from edit)
With zero-derivation
Some verbs and adjectives in English can be used directly as nouns without the addition of a derivational suffix. Some examples include:change
- I need a change. (change = noun)
- I will change. (change = verb)
murder
- The murder of the man was tragic. (murder = noun)
- He will murder the man. (murder = verb)
In addition to true zero-derivation, English also has a number of words which, depending on subtle changes in pronunciation, are either nouns or verbs. One such type, which is rather pervasive, is the change in stress placement from the final syllable of the word to the first syllable.
progress
- Progress is important. (progress ˈprɒɡrɛs = noun)
- Our plan must progress nicely. (progress prəˈɡrɛs = verb)
An additional case is seen with the verb use, which has a different pronunciation when used as a noun.
use
- The use of drugs is dangerous. (use ˈjuːs = noun)
- Use your fork! (use ˈjuːz = verb)
Other Indo-European languages
Many Indo-European languages have separate inflectionInflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
al morphology for nouns, verbs, and adjectives, but often this is no impediment to nominalization, as the root
Root (linguistics)
The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family , which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....
or stem
Word stem
In linguistics, a stem is a part of a word. The term is used with slightly different meanings.In one usage, a stem is a form to which affixes can be attached. Thus, in this usage, the English word friendships contains the stem friend, to which the derivational suffix -ship is attached to form a new...
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 originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
has a number of nominalisation 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 language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, 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 part of speech is a linguistic category of words , which is generally defined by the syntactic or morphological behaviour of the lexical item in question. Common linguistic categories include noun and verb, among others...
came first. Spanish and Portuguese, 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 Chinese languages, particles are used to nominalise verbs and adjectives. In Mandarin, the most common is 的 de, which is attached to both verbs and adjectives. For example, 吃 chī (to eat) becomes 吃的 chīde (that which is eaten). Cantonese uses 嘅 ge in the same capacity, while Minnan uses ê.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. 所 (suǒ in Mandarin) is attached before the verb to indicate patient, e.g. 吃 (to eat) becomes 所吃 (that which is eaten), and 者 (zhě in Mandarin) are attached after the verb to indicate agent, e.g. 吃 (to eat) becomes 吃者 (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 modern spoken form of Chinese...
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...
in modern Chinese languages.
Japanese
Japanese grammarJapanese grammar
The Japanese language has a regular agglutinative verb morphology, with both productive and fixed elements. In language typology, it has many features divergent from most European languages. Its phrases are exclusively head-final and compound sentences are exclusively left-branching. There are many...
makes frequent use of nominalization (instead of relative pronoun
Relative pronoun
A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause within a larger sentence. It is called a relative pronoun because it relates the relative clause to the noun that it modifies. In English, the relative pronouns are: who, whom, whose, whosever, whosesoever, which, and, in some...
s) via several particles
Japanese particles
Japanese particles, or , are suffixes or short words in Japanese grammar that immediately follow the modified noun, verb, adjective, or sentence. Their grammatical range can indicate various meanings and functions, such as speaker affect and assertiveness....
such as の no, もの mono and こと koto.
Zero-derivation in other languages
A few languages allow finite clauses to be nominalized without morphological transformation. For instance in Eastern Shina (Gultari) the finite clause [mo buje-m] 'I will go' can appear as the nominalized object of the postposition [-jo] 'from' with no modification in form:[mo buje-m]-jo muçhore ŗo buje-i
I go-1sg-from before he go-3sg
‘He will go before I go.’
See also
- Nominal
- PronominalPronominalPronominal can be used either to describe something related to a pronoun or to mean a phrase that acts as a pronoun in the context of nominal. An example of the second case is, "I want that kind". The phrase "that kind" stands in for a noun phrase, or nominal, that can be deduced from context, and...
- Initial-stress-derived nounInitial-stress-derived nounInitial-stress derivation is a phonological process in English, wherein stress is moved to the first syllable of any of several dozen verbs when they become nouns or adjectives. This is called a suprafix in linguistics...
- Deverbal nounDeverbal nounIn grammar, deverbal nouns are nouns derived from verbs or verb phrases; it is a form of nominalization . This can be found in the English language but also in many other languages...
- Verbal nounVerbal nounIn 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...