Nominalisering

Nominalisering, or nominalization in English, is the process by which a word or phrase is converted into a noun or a noun phrase. In linguistics, it often involves turning a verb or a whole clause into a nominal head that can function as the subject, object, or complement of a sentence. Nominalizations are common in many languages and can affect both form and meaning.

Forms and mechanisms vary. They can be morphological, with affixes that create nouns from verbs (for example, English -tion, -ment, -ing; such as action, development, running) or from adjectives (for example, kindness, generosity). Nominalizations can also arise from entire clauses, producing noun phrases like “the decision to postpone” or “the fact that you arrived.” In English, gerunds (the -ing form) often serve as nominalizations, while many languages use dedicated suffixes or periphrastic constructions to achieve the same effect. Zero-derivation, where a word inherently functions as a noun without a visible change, also occurs.

Syntactically and semantically, nominalizations allow the speaker to treat events, states, or actions as discrete entities. They can be modified by determiners, adjectives, or quantifiers and can take agents, patients, or other arguments through surrounding prepositional or relative phrases. Semantically, nominalizations can shift focus from who does what to what is being done, emphasizing process, result, or abstraction.

Style and usage vary by genre. In formal or bureaucratic writing, nominalizations are common and can create concise, dense prose. In other contexts, they may reduce clarity or vigor, so writers often balance nominalizations with explicit verbs to maintain readability. Nominalisering is a central feature of how languages encode action and event within noun phrases.