Nominalization

In linguistics, nominalization refers to the use of a verb or an adjective into a noun, with or without morphological transformation, so that the word can now act as the head of a noun phrase.

Nominalization happens in languages around the world. Some languages allow verbs to be used as nouns, while others require some form of morphological transformation. English has cases of both.

Nominalization in various languages

English

In English, some verbs and adjectives can be used directly as nouns, for example, change and good. 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, 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 inflectional morphology for nouns, verbs, and adjectives, making it difficult or impossible to use a verb or adjective as a noun. Latin has a number of nominalization suffixes, and some of these suffixes have been borrowed into English, either directly or through Romance languages.

Chinese

In all of the Chinese languages, particles are used to nominalize verbs and adjectives. In Mandarin, the most common is 的 de, which is attached 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 explicit 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. 食 (to eat) becomes 所食 (that which is eaten), and 者 (zhě in Mandarin) are attached after the verb to indicate agent, e.g. 食 (to eat) becomes 食者 (he who eats). Both particles date from Classical Chinese and retain limited productivity in modern Chinese languages.

Japanese

Japanese makes use of several particles, such as の no and こと koto, for nominalization.