Nominalizingabstracting

Nominalizingabstracting is a term used to describe the combination of two related linguistic processes: nominalization, which turns verbs or actions into nouns, and abstraction, which generalizes specific content into broader concepts. In practice, the term is used in linguistics, stylistics, and text analysis to denote how a text encodes processes as entities and how it abstracts particulars into general ideas.

Nominalization: The grammar changes verbs into noun forms; e.g., "investigate" -> "investigation," "decide" -> "decision." Noun phrases such as "the implementation of the plan" or "the analysis of data" can function as units in clauses, often achieving density and formality.

Abstraction: Beyond nominal forms, abstraction involves selecting essential features and reporting them in generalized terms. This may manifest as abstract nouns like "principle," "trend," or "method," enabling discussion at a higher level than concrete steps.

Together, nominalizing and abstracting influence writing style and information structure. They can improve preciseness and compactness but may reduce readability and obscure agents or dynamics if overused.

Applications include linguistic analysis of academic prose, rhetoric studies, and natural language processing tasks that identify and transform nominalizations or extract abstract representations from text.

Related concepts include nominalization and abstraction in cognitive linguistics and style studies.

For example, "The committee's decision was final" shows nominalization, while "The plan's results indicate a general trend" illustrates abstraction.