nominalisaatio

Nominalisaatio, or nominalization, is the linguistic process by which verbs, adjectives, or entire clauses are turned into noun phrases. It serves to package actions, events, properties, or ideas into a noun head that can take modifiers, case, and other grammatical marks. Nominalisation occurs in many languages, and its use affects both meaning and syntactic structure.

In Finnish, nominalisaatio is productive and varied. The most common verb-based method is the suffix -minen, which forms abstract nouns denoting an action or its result. Examples include kirjoittaa → kirjoittaminen (the act of writing) and oppia → oppiminen (the act of learning). Other nominal forms come from adjectives, producing nouns that denote a property or quality, as in kaunis → kauneus (beauty). Participial forms like kirjoitettu (written) or tehty (done) can function as adjectives or, in some contexts, as nominal modifiers or heads of noun phrases.

Nominalised forms function syntactically as nouns: they can be subjects or objects, take possessive and case endings, be pluralised, and be modified by adjectives. They also enable the substitution of a clause with a noun phrase, which can condense complex information into a single noun phrase, a common feature in academic and formal writing. For example, subject phrases such as Kirjoittaminen vie aikaa (Writing takes time) illustrate how an action is presented as a topic.

Nominalisaatio plays a key role in sentence economy and discourse organization but can affect readability when overused. It is a cross-linguistic phenomenon, with English often using -ing forms or other mechanisms to achieve similar results.