nominalizáló

Nominalizáló is a linguistic term referring to a device, morpheme, or construction that turns a verb, an adjective, or a clause into a noun or a noun phrase. It is a mechanism of nominalization, the process by which non-noun forms are converted into nouns, allowing actions, events, or properties to be talked about as entities.

In Hungarian and many other languages the nominalizáló often appears as a derivational suffix or set of suffixes. Common Hungarian nominalizers include -ás/-és, which form nouns denoting the action or result of a verb (for example olvasás from olvas, meaning reading; írás from ír, meaning writing). Other suffixes such as -tat/-tet and related patterns may produce agentive or instrumental readings. Some nominalizations are formed from adjectives or other stems, yielding abstract or concrete nouns.

Syntactically, nominalized forms can function as subjects or objects within clauses and may take modifiers such as adjectives, determiners, or numerals. They enable the creation of noun phrases from verb phrases or entire clauses, a feature that supports abstraction and argument structure. In languages with explicit nominalizers, a clause that is nominalized can be treated more like a single noun unit within larger sentences (for example, in hungarian, phrases like a tény, hogy érkezett “the fact that he arrived” illustrate how a clause can be referred to as a noun-like unit).

Cross-linguistically, nominalizers include affixes, clitics, or syntactic constructions that convert verbs or clauses into nouns. They are central to discussions of morphology, syntax, and information structure. See also: Nominalization, Hungarian grammar.