Substantivized

Substantivized, or substantivization, is the process by which a word is converted into a noun, or used as a noun within a sentence. The resulting noun may retain a distinct lexical meaning or serve a purely functional role to fulfill syntactic requirements.

In English, substantivization often involves using adjectives or other word classes as nouns, typically with a definite article: the rich, the poor, the elderly. These phrases refer to a class of people rather than to individuals. English also uses gerunds derived from verbs as nouns, such as Running is fun or Cooking takes time. The form running or cooking behaves as a noun, even though its base is a verb.

In other languages, nominalization can be explicitly marked. German commonly forms substantive nouns from adjectives or verbs, as in das Gute or das Lernen. Russian and Finnish use nominalization extensively through inflection or suffixation to turn verbs into nouns.

Substantivization serves several functions: it allows speakers to refer to abstractions (freedom, beauty), classes of individuals (the poor), or activities and processes (reading, running) in a noun-like way. It can shift meaning toward abstraction or generalization, and it interacts with articles, case, gender, or number in languages that mark these categories.

The term substantivized identifies words functioning as nouns, regardless of their original category. The process—nominalization or substantive derivation—varies by language in form and degree.