Nominalisatie

Nominalisatie, in the linguistic sciences, refers to the process by which a word of another grammatical category—most commonly a verb or an adjective—is transformed into a noun or a noun phrase. The term is widely used in the study of Dutch, Germanic, and other languages where derivational morphology allows the creation of nouns that encapsulate actions, states, or qualities.

In Dutch, nominalisation frequently employs suffixes such as ‑ing, ‑heid, ‑schap, and ‑iteit, attached to verb stems (bijvoorbeeld “lopen” → “loop‑ing”) or adjectives (bijvoorbeeld “dik” → “dikte”). The resulting nouns can function as subjects, objects, or complements and often appear in more formal or written registers. A related strategy is the use of infinitive clauses (“het rijden” for “the driving”), which preserve the verb’s infinitive form while serving a nominal function.

Nominalisation serves several communicative purposes. It enables the condensation of complex actions into single lexical items, facilitating abstraction, argumentation, and the construction of technical terminology. In academic and legal texts, it contributes to a dense, impersonal style that foregrounds concepts over agents, a feature sometimes criticised for reducing readability.

Cross‑linguistically, nominalisation is a common grammatical device. In English, it appears in forms like “decision” (from “decide”) or “development” (from “develop”), while Romance languages often use suffixes such as ‑ción (Spanish) or ‑tion (French). Despite typological differences, the underlying cognitive function—reifying processes or properties as entities—remains consistent.

The study of nominalisation intersects morphology, syntax, and discourse analysis, offering insight into how languages structure information and how speakers manipulate form to achieve particular rhetorical effects.