nominaliseringen

Nominalisation (also called nominalization) is the linguistic process by which a word that is not a noun—typically a verb or an adjective—is turned into a noun or a noun phrase. This allows actions, processes, or qualities to be referred to as discrete entities within sentences. In many languages, nominalisation is a productive way to increase noun density and to shift emphasis from events to objects or concepts.

Morphology and mechanisms vary by language. In English, nominalisation commonly occurs through affixation or conversion, yielding forms such as decision from decide, painting from paint, or running from run. Other English nominalisations are formed with suffixes like -tion, -ment, or -ing. German uses -ung and other suffixes (das Lesen from lesen), while French often relies on -tion or -ment. Swedish frequently uses -ning for qualitative or processual nouns, and the process is referred to as substantivering or nominalisering in Swedish discussions. Some languages also permit bare conversion, where a verb is used as a noun without an overt morphological change, as in English “the run” or “a run.”

Syntactic and stylistic effects are central to the phenomenon. Nominalisation allows longer, more compact noun phrases and can foreground processes or abstract concepts, making sentences more formal or dense. However, it can reduce readability and increase ambiguity if the relation between the noun and its governing verb or agents is unclear. In academic and technical writing, nominalisations often appear to compact statements, though they may trade clarity for precision.

See also: gerund, substantivation, derivation.