nominalizingderivative

Nominalizing derivative is a term used in linguistics to describe a noun that is formed from another word through a nominalizing derivation. In practice, it refers to deverbal or sometimes deverbal-like nouns created by affixation or conversion that encode an action, process, state, or agent associated with the base word.

Mechanisms of nominalizing derivatives vary by language. In English, common nominalizing suffixes include -ment (enjoyment), -tion (creation), -ing (building), and -er/-or (teacher, actor). Some nouns arise through conversion, where a verb is used as a noun without a change in form, and others involve more productive suffixes or compounding. Other languages rely on dedicated nominalizing morphemes such as -ment/-ure in French, -tion in Spanish and many Romance languages, or -ung in German. The exact set of productive nominalizers and their semantics can differ across languages.

Semantically, nominalizing derivatives often express action or process (building, development), result or product (document, artifact), or agentive nouns (teacher, driver). They can be abstract or concrete and frequently participate in standard noun syntax, taking determiners, numerals, and modifiers, and serving as subjects or objects within clauses. Some nominalizations are highly productive, while others are irregular or semantically opaque.

In linguistic analysis, nominalizing derivatives are important for understanding how languages encode actions and states as nouns, how noun phrases are formed, and how deverbal nouns interact with syntax and semantics. They are discussed under topics such as nominalization, deverbal nouns, and derivational morphology, with cross-linguistic variation shaping their distribution and interpretation. See also: nominalization, deverbal noun, derivational morphology.