English nominalization Two types of nominalization occur in English. The first requires the addition of a
derivational suffix to a word 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.
Derivational morphology and nominalization Derivational morphology 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 the suffix
-ation, as in "The experiment involved the
combination of the two chemicals." There are many suffixes that can be used to create nouns. Huddleston (2002) provides a thorough list that is split into two main sections: person/instrument nominalizations and action/state/process nominalizations. An especially common case of verbs being used as nouns is the addition of the suffix
-ing, known in English as a
gerund.
Zero-derivation nominalization Some verbs and adjectives in English can be used directly as nouns without the addition of a derivational suffix, depending on the syntax of a sentence. Zero-derivation nominalization is also called
conversion.
Stress- and pronunciation-dependent nominalization In addition to true zero-derivation, English also has a number of words which, depending on changes in pronunciation (typically syllable stress), can change functional category to either act as a noun or a verb. One such type, which is rather pervasive, is the change in stress placement from the final syllable of the word to the first syllable (see
Initial-stress-derived noun). An additional case is seen with the verb
use, which has a different pronunciation when used as a noun. The nominal case of
use has a word final
voiceless alveolar fricative /s/, while the verbal case of
use has a word final voiced alveolar fricative, /z/. Which of two sounds is pronounced is a signal, in addition to the syntactic structure and semantics, as to the lexical category of the word
use in the context of the sentence. In some circumstances, adjectives can also have nominal use, as in
the poor to mean poor people in general. See
nominalized adjective.
Other Indo-European languages Many
Indo-European languages have separate
inflectional 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 nominalization 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 which
lexical category came first may be moot. 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
varieties of Chinese,
particles are used to nominalize 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 varieties, are used to explicitly indicate the nominalized noun as being either the agent or patient of the verb being nominalized. 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) is 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 varieties. There are also many words with zero-derivation. For instance, 教育
jiàoyù is both a verb (to educate) and a noun (education). Other cases include 变化
biànhuà (v. to change; n. change), 保护
bǎohù (v. to protect; n. protection), 恐惧
kǒngjù (v. to fear; n. fear; adj. fearful), etc.
Vietnamese In
Vietnamese, nominalization is often implicit with zero derivation, but in formal contexts or where there is a potential for ambiguity, a word can be nominalized by prepending a
classifier. , (indicating quality) and are the most general classifiers used to nominalize verbs and adjectives, respectively. Other nominalizing classifiers include (indicating object like đồ dùng, đồ chơi, đồ nghề, đồ hiệu, sometimes used a pejorative word like đồ xấu xa, đồ ăn hại) , , (indicating an animal, like con gà, con chó, con kiến and can be used a pronoun), (indicating the portrait of something or someone, like nét đẹp, nét chữ, nét vẽ, nét ngài nở nang (
The tale of Kieu)), (indicating the form or appearance of something, vẻ đẹp, vẻ bề ngoài, vẻ sang trọng) (indicating job, task, affair, like việc làm, việc học, việc đi lại).
Tibeto-Burman Nominalization is a pervasive process across
Tibeto-Burman languages. In
Bodic languages nominalization serves a variety of functions, including the formation of
complement clauses and
relative clauses.
Japanese Japanese grammar makes frequent use of nominalization (instead of
relative pronouns) via several
particles such as
の no,
もの mono and こと
koto. In
Old Japanese, nouns were created by replacing the final vowel, such as
mura (村, "village") created from
muru (群る, "gather"), though this type of noun formation is obsolete.
Dual nature of syntactic nominalization Syntactic nominals share some properties with lexically-derived nominals, they must be formed in the syntactic components, consisting of verbal projections. The duality of nominalization in
Japanese grammar brings up the issue of whether or not VP (vP) should be postulated for the projection of arguments inside the nominal.
Nominal and verbal properties in Japanese Causative, passive, and honorific verb marking inside
kata-nominals provide evidence that a vP structure should be postulated. -kata (-方) 'way' suffixed to the "renyookei" (adverbial) form of a verb: The syntactic nominals that are shared with ordinary
lexical nominals {{interlinear|number=(1) a. {{interlinear|number=b. Nominalized versions {{interlinear|number=(2) a. {{interlinear|number=b. The arguments of syntactic nominals, just like those of lexical nominals, cannot be marked with a nominative,
accusative or
dative case. Following are not attested forms in Japanese. {{interlinear|number=(3) a. {{interlinear|number=b. The arguments of these nominals, although both subjects and objects are marked only with
genitive cases. As proven above,
syntactic and
lexical nominals share some structural similarities. Further analysis reveals that syntactic and
constituent (linguistics) at the sentential level are similar as well. This proposes that syntactic nominals are produced at the syntactic level and it can be applied to any clause type. Lexical nominals are created by the lexicon which limits the clauses in which they can be applied.
Hawaiian In
Hawaiian, the particle
ʻana is used to nominalize. For example, "hele ʻana" is Hawaiian for "coming." Hence, "his coming" is "kona hele ʻana."
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: {{interlinear|indent=3|lang = scl-Latn ==Syntactic analyses==