verbalnoun

A verbal noun, also known as a nominalized verb, is a noun that derives from a verb and refers to an action, process, or state. Verbal nouns behave like nouns in syntax: they can function as subjects or objects, take determiners and adjectives, and may be plural in some languages. Unlike ordinary verbs, they do not require tense and agreement to mark time in the same way, and they are typically inflected for number or case rather than for tense.

In English, the term covers several related forms. The most familiar are gerunds, forms of -ing that function as nouns, as in "Running is fun." Another noun-like use is the bare nominalization, as in "the run of good weather" or "the run on the bank." Some grammars treat infinitives used as nouns, as in "To run is healthy," as verbal nouns or as a subclass of infinitivals. The exact status—gerund, nominalized infinitive, or independent deverbal noun—varies by theoretical framework.

In other languages, verbal nouns are often more clearly distinct words with their own morphology, such as German das Laufen or French la marche, or Russian бег as a noun derived from бегать. Some languages allow productive nominalization with affixes or internal conversion; others limit nounhood to certain subtypes. Verbal nouns can bear modifiers, be countable, and participate in noun phrases, though their behavior may differ from ordinary nouns.

The category of verbal noun is a topic of cross-linguistic variation and is sometimes contrasted with deverbal adjectives and participles. It is also related to the broader concept of nominalization, the process by which verbs and other predicates are turned into nouns for syntactic purposes.