verbalnominalizer

Verbalnominalizer is a term used in linguistics to describe a morpheme or a syntactic process that turns a verb or verb phrase into a noun or a noun phrase. It covers nominalizations of actions, events, and states encoded by verbs, as well as nominal clauses derived from verb phrases.

Morphological nominalizers include suffixes and prefixes, such as English -ing (Running is fun), -ment (agreement), -ation (nomination). Some forms function as agent nouns: driver, writer. Many languages also use conversion, or zero-derivation, to create nouns directly from verbs, e.g., a run from run.

Nominalization serves several functions: it allows abstraction and discourse focus, permits modification by determiners and adjectives, and enables clausal content to be treated as a single noun. It also affects argument structure, permitting complements and modifiers attached to the nominalized form.

Cross-linguistic patterns show diverse realization: German uses -ung and -heit; Japanese uses nominalizing particles such as no (の) to turn clauses into noun phrases; Turkish uses -me/-ma to nominalize verbs. In linguistics, verbal nominalizers are studied in morphology, syntax, and semantics and are important in language processing and translation.