The syntax nominalization

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The syntax nominalization

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THE MINISTRY OF HIGHER EDUCATION SCIENCE AND
INNOVATIONS OF THE REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN
SAMARKAND STATE INSTITUTE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
FACULTY OF _____________________________
COURSE PAPER
THEME: THE SYNTAX NOMINALIZATION

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................... 3
CHAPTER I. NOMINALIZATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY ........................... 5
1.1 The types of nominalization linguistics ................................................................ 5
1.2 The role of nominalization .................................................................................. 17
Conclusion on chapter I ............................................................................................ 21
CHAPTER II. THE MORPHOLOGY OF NOMINALIZATIONS AND THE
SYNTAX ................................................................................................................... 22
2.1 The classification of nominalization ................................................................... 22
2.2 The process of nominalization ............................................................................ 28
Conclusion on chapter II. .......................................................................................... 32
CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................... 33
REFERENCE ............................................................................................................ 35

INTRODUCTION
We should pay great attention to the development of relations with foreign
writers, the experience of translating and publishing the best examples of world
literature. “As a result of the reforms carried out by our President, almost all
centuriesof world literature, including Shakespeare, have been translated into Uzbek,
and his comedies and tragedies have been staged in theaters [1, 3].
Nominalizations are nouns that are morphologically derived from expressions
(base expressions) of possibly other syntactic categories. Nominalizations present
major challenges for semantics. Nominalizations involve the interface of semantics
with morphosyntax and the particular issues for compositional semantics that this
entails, such as the question of how the argument structure of the nominalization
relates to that of the base expression. Moreover, given that nominalizations may
denote objects that are not already part of the semantics of the base expression, they
pose particular challenges for ontology, raising the question of how the objects
denoted by the nominalization relate to the meaning of the base expression.
Nominalizations have also played a major role in philosophy, and in fact the
linguistic study of nominalizations may shed light on a range of philosophical
debates. Various types of nominalizations appear to stand for abstract objects or
highly derivative or minor entities of some sort, and philosophers have often made
use of nominalizations for the purpose of a philosophical argument. Obviously, the
study of nominalizations can be illuminating as regards the nature of the abstract,
derivative, or minor entities that nominalizations are taken to denote, and as regards
the ontological operations that serve to introduce such objects,
The actuality of the course work:
This aims of the course work is to investigate the nominalization as from
theoretical point of view, so from practical, and define the use of nominalization, its
syntactic functions. Moreover to give general definition of the nominalization
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The subject and object of the course work. The object of the course work is
that, in practical part I observed the information that was given in theoretical part and
showed their usage in tables and slides. The subject of my course paper is the syntax
nominalization.
The practical and theoretical value of the course work:
Theoretical value is that I investigated the viewpoint of different scholars
about the nominalization.
Practical value is that having observed all the information, I showed the usage
of nominalization in tables and slides.
The task of investigation:
- To give general information about the nominalization.
- To dwell on the classification of the nominalization.
- To dwell on the question of nominalization.
The scientific novelty of the work is scientific analysis of the information
sources and references, description, comparative analysis and interpretation of
sources, conceptual analysis of the literature, synthesis, study, content-analysis.
The structure of the course work. The research consists of an introduction,
2 chapters, a conclusion and a list of references and consists of 36 pages.
4

CHAPTER I. NOMINALIZATIONS IN SYNTACTIC THEORY
1.1 The types of nominalization linguistics
Nominalizations are nouns that are morphologically derived from an expression
of another category, or another noun. Thus, driver is a deverbal nominalization
derived from the verb drive, thought a deverbal nominalization derived from the verb
think, happiness a deadjectival nominalization derived from the adjective happy, and
motherhood a nominalization derived from the noun mother. Also numerals like eight
are generally taken to be nominalizations of adjectives when appearing in argument
position rather than in modifier or quantifier position. There are cases where it is not
clear whether the noun is derived from the verb or vice versa, for example need
(section 4). Moreover, there is the view of distributive morphology [2,9], according to
which the lexicon just contains category-less roots and both the base expression and
the nominalization may be obtained from the same root.
There are also derivative uses of the term “nominalization,” especially in the
philosophical literature. Philosophers sometimes call expressions “nominalizations”
even if they do not involve a morphological process of nominalization, for example
that-clauses; that-clauses, when appearing in argument position, are considered
nominalizations of sentences: they act as referential terms standing for an object
obtained from the meaning of a sentence (a proposition). Complex NPs with that-
clauses such as the fact that S are another example. “Nominalization” has also been
used as a purely semantic term, in application to expressions (or uses of them) that
appear to involve the very same semantic operation as is involved in the semantics of
particular types of morphosyntactic nominalization. Thus, quantifiers such as
something, everything, and nothing have been argued to range over the same things as
are semantic values of deverbal or deadjectival nominalizations, and in that sense are
nominalizing quantifiers [3,534].
Morphosyntactic issues
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A significant part of the semantic literature on nominalization is devoted to
questions of how nominalizations relate to the argument structure of the base
expression, for example the question which argument position of the base expression
a nominalization can pick up as its referential (external) position and whether the
nominalization preserves the other argument positions of the base expression. In
addition, there is a focus in the linguistic literature on polysemies often displayed by
nominalizations, in particular result nominalizations such as destruction or building (I
will come back to the issue of polysemies of nominalizations. The present chapter
will instead focus on the semantics of nominalizations of what Montague would call
“philosophical entities,” such as nominalizations standing for events, facts, and
tropes. Against that background, it will present a case study of nominalizations of
modal predicates, which have hardly received any attention in the linguistic literature.
Philosophical issues. Nominalizations play a significant role in philosophy and
have been used as important tools in philosophical theorizing. Nominalizations can
serve to form terms standing for philosophically interesting categories of objects,
abstract objects such as properties, relations, and propositions, as well as concrete
objects of the sort of events and tropes (particularized properties). Thus,
nominalizations have played a major role in discussions in metaphysics, in particular
in relation to questions about the existence and nature of abstract objects, events, and
tropes.
Nominalizations have played a major role in the debate as to whether there are
universals or properties. A common view is that adjective nominalizations such as
wisdom stand for properties. This raises the question of whether properties are
ontologically real or derivative, introduced by the use of the expression itself. But the
view that adjective nominalizations stand for properties has itself been challenged.
When occurring in NPs of the sort Socrates’ wisdom, adjective nominalizations have
generally been taken to stand for tropes or particularized properties, rather than
properties acting as universals. This view can be traced to Aristotle and has been
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taken for granted throughout most of medieval and modern philosophy. Even when
adjective nominalizations occur as bare nouns (as in wisdom is rare), their function of
referring to properties has been questioned. On a par with nouns such as giraffes and
water, bare adjective nominalizations act like kind terms in the sense of Carlson,
displaying different properties from explicit property-referring terms (such as the
property of being wise). Kinds as semantic values of bare mass nouns or plurals in
turn may be viewed as pluralities of concrete entities, rather than as single abstract
objects [3,534]. The philosophical literature generally does not address the question of
how the meaning of the nominalization relates to the adjective. Event
nominalizations, as opposed to deadjectival trope nominalizations, have been
discussed only much more recently in philosophy, in particular in connection with
Davidson’s view of events as primitive entities that also serve as implicit arguments
of eventive verbs. According to that view, the verb walk takes an event of walking as
an implicit argument and the nominalization walk serves to make reference to an
event in an NP like John’s walk. The Davidsonian view of events has had an
enormous influence in linguistic semantics, and almost every linguistic account of
deverbal nominalizations takes it for granted.
Strategies for introducing objects with nominalizations
Given the view on which nominalizations are derived from base expressions,
there are three ways in which the nominalization could obtain its semantic value:
1. by picking up an argument of the base expression,
2. by introducing an object by abstraction from the meaning or use of the
base expression,
3. by mapping an argument of the base expression to a closely related
object.
We will see that all three strategies are involved in actual types of
nominalizations. Strategy 1 is involved in the semantics of event and trope
nominalizations; strategy 2 is involved in fact nominalizations and certain
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nominalizations of modal predicates; strategy 3 is involved in nominalizations of
(non-stative) attitude verbs.
Picking up an argument of the base expression: Davidsonian event semantics
Nominalizations are nouns that are derived from an expression (the base
expression) of a possibly different category, such as a verb or an adjective. Thus the
nominalization laughter is derived from the verb laugh and can serve to form the
referential term John’s laughter, referring to an event. The nominalization happiness
is derived from the adjective happy, and can serve to form the referential term John’s
happiness, referring to a trope or particularized property, that is, the manifestation of
happiness in John. In a derivative sense, also nominal constructions obtained from
sentences are called nominalizations, such as the fact that John is happy, which is in a
way derived from the sentence John is happy.
Nominalizations obviously have a semantics that is related to that of the base
expression and so should have a meaning that is obtainable from – or at least
systematically related to – that of the base expression. For some nominalizations this
is straightforward; for example, agent nominalizations such as driver stand for entities
that are arguments of the base expression. But for nominalizations that are event and
trope nominalizations the relation to the meaning of the base expression is less
obvious. Such nominalizations appear to introduce “new” entities into the semantic
structure of sentences, entities that would not be part of the semantic structure of
sentences without the nominalization and whose ontological status may appear
problematic.
There are different accounts as to how to derive the meaning of a
nominalization from that of the base expression. For event nominalizations derived
from verbs such as laughter, walk, or scream as well as adjective nominalizations
such as wisdom or happiness one strategy by which this can be achieved is that the
nominalization picks up an implicit argument of the base expression. In the case of
event nominalizations, this would be the implicit Davidsonian event argument of the
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verb. In the case of adjective nominalizations, this would be an implicit trope
argument of the adjective (a manifestation of wisdom in the case of the
nominalization wisdom). The Davidsonian account of event nominalizations is due to
Higginbotham’s development of Davidson’s semantics of adverbials. According to
Davidsonian event semantics, events act as implicit arguments of verbs, and
adverbials are predicates of the implicit event argument of the verb.
The semantic status of events as implicit arguments of verbs goes along with a
particular view about the ontology of events, on which events are primitive entities
not to be defined in terms of objects, properties, and times. This means that predicates
with different meanings can be used to describe one and the same event. Events thus
are not conceived as entities strictly dependent on the content of a (canonical)
description, say composed of the meaning of the verb and its arguments.
Given Davidsonian event semantics, NPs with a deverbal nominalization as
head such as John’s walk can be given a straightforward semantics on which they
pick up the implicit event argument of the verb as their referent [4,95].
The implicit event argument of the verb will be the very same event as is
described by the event nominalization.5
Given the Davidsonian account, it is clear why the same expressions that act as
adverbials generally are able to act as predicates or adjectival modifiers of the event
nominalization of the verb.
The Davidsonian account of event nominalizations allows a rather
straightforward extension to the semantics of nominalizations of adjectives. This,
though, requires an enrichment of the ontology of natural language so as to include
tropes besides events. While this view was more recently defended in Moltmann, it
was in fact also the standard view about adjective nominalizations throughout the
philosophical literature on tropes. It is a view that goes back to Aristotle and was
common throughout the Aristotelian tradition in medieval and early modern
philosophy. Also in contemporary metaphysics, philosophers generally use adjectival
9

nominalizations when giving examples of tropes. Tropes are “particularized
properties,” that is, concrete manifestations of properties in objects. They are not
properties as universals, but rather properties as particulars, dependent on particular
objects as their bearers.
Adjectives, to an extent, exhibit the very same alternation of expressions acting
both as modifiers of the adjective and as predicates (or adjectival modifiers) of the
adjective nominalization.
Mary’s happiness stands for the particular way happiness manifests itself in
Mary, an entity which is also an implicit argument of happy. Mary’s paleness stands
for the particular manifestation of paleness in Mary, which is also an implicit
argument of pale.
Why should the implicit argument of an adjective be a trope, rather than a
state? This in turn raises the question, what are states, in the context of natural
language ontology? That is, how are our intuitions about states reflected in natural
language? States are certainly the sorts of things we refer to with terms like the state
of Mary’s being happy as well as simply the gerund Mary’s being happy. States in
that sense have different properties from the entities that NPs with adjective
nominalizations stand for, such as Mary’s happiness. For example, “Mary’s being
happy” cannot be profound and “Mary’s being pale” cannot be extreme. By contrast,
such properties are among the sorts of properties that “Mary’s happiness” and
“Mary’s paleness” can have. Tropes involve a particular manifestation of the property
in question whereas states just consist in an individual having that property.
Here max is a suitable maximality operator. Since there may be various tropes
of happiness of Mary at a period of time, the definite NP Mary’s happiness is taken to
stand for the maximal trope of happiness of Mary at that time, to ensure uniqueness.
Davidsonian event semantics has been enormously influential in linguistic
semantics, and, going along with it, the Davidsonian account of event
nominalizations. However, there is an alternative approach to the semantics of event
10

nominalizations, based on Kim’s conception of events. What has sometimes been
objected to in the Davidsonian semantics of events is that it fails to account for the
intuition that only a sentence with an explicit event-referring term such as (3b) is
about an event; a sentence containing just a verb describing an event such as (3a) is
only about an agent, John, and not about an event.
Introducing a referent by abstraction: Kimean event semantics
On the second strategy, a nominalization introduces a new entity on the basis of
the meaning of the base expression, in addition to perhaps further expressions or
entities. This can be called the “Kimian account” of nominalizations, since it goes
along naturally with the way Kim conceived of events, as entities obtained from a
property, an object, and a time.
While the Kimian account, as we will see, appears unsuitable for event
nominalizations, it will have an application to one kind of nominalization of a modal
predicate, namely possibility.
The Kimian account of event nominalizations matches a view on which events
are introduced into the semantic structure of a sentence generally only by means of
nominalizations (underived event nouns such as fire, war, or noise would be
exceptions). Events then are conceived as entities that strictly depend on an
individual, a property, and a time. Kim’s account of events then consists in the
following statement of existence and identity conditions for events:
Kim’s account of events does not explicitly define events in terms of a
property, an object, and a time. Rather the account consists in an implicit definition of
events, stating their existence and identity conditions in terms of an object, a property,
and a time. Kim’s account in fact introduces events by a form of Fregean abstraction.
Given Kim’s ontological account of events, the semantics of event
nominalizations appears straightforward, as below, where the denotation of walk,
[walk], is taken to be the one-place property of walking:
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The availability of event-characterizing properties conveyed by an event
description would distinguish descriptions of events from explicit fact descriptions of
the sort the fact that S. Whereas adjective modifiers of event nominalizations may just
be event-characterizing, all of the content of a sentence S in a fact description of the
sort the fact that S must be fact-constitutive.
Events are relatively independent of the description used to refer to them. Facts,
by contrast, are entirely reflected in the meaning of explicit fact-referring terms of the
sort the fact.
The difference in description, however, won’t account for various differences in
properties between events and facts. An object introduced by Fregean abstraction has
just those properties specified by the method of introduction. Thus, given (8), events
have identity conditions and existence conditions relative to a time, but they won’t
have other intrinsic properties. (They may, though, act as objects of mental attitudes.)
This means in particular that events won’t have a part structure, won’t have a spatial
location, won’t enter causal relations, won’t act as objects of perception, and won’t
have properties of intensity or other measurable properties. This of course is highly
counterintuitive. It is certainly part of our notion of an event for an event to have
those properties. By contrast, though, it is part of our notion of a (non-worldly) fact to
lack those properties.
These differences between events and facts are linguistically well reflected,
namely in the applicability of part-related constructions such as partitive part of as
well as predicates of concreteness of various sorts, as seen below:
The main objection to Kim’s account of events has been that it assimilates
events to facts. Note that any property, however unspecific or logically complex, can,
for Kim, be event-constitutive. Any predicate expressing a nonnatural or
indeterminate property, any explicitly or implicitly quantified predicate, and any
negated or disjunctive predicate can, on Kim’s account, individuate an event (together
with an individual and a time). But this is characteristic of (non-worldly) facts, not
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events. Nonspecific properties, negation, disjunction, and quantification can be fact-
constitutive, but generally not event-constitutive. Events as concrete objects must be
maximally specific or at least grounded in specific properties (Moltmann 2007;
2013a; 2013b; 2019b).
One might try to account for the groundedness of events by imposing the
restriction that events can be constituted only by fully determinate properties or rather
property changes. However, if events are introduced by abstraction, even if based on
such specific property changes, they will still lack the typical event properties. That is
because the only properties they can have are those that come with the strategy of
their introduction.
Moreover, if events are “introduced” into the semantic structure of sentences
only by nominalizations, then the descriptive content of a nominalization would have
to be fully event-constitutive, but this is generally not the case.
However Kim’s account is suited as an account of fact nominalizations, that is,
nominalizations of the sort the fact that S, for a true sentence S. These are
nominalizations standing for facts as non-worldly facts, that is, facts that correspond
to true propositions and are tied to the content of the fact description itself. More
precisely, (8) gives a semantic account of a simple fact description of the sort the fact
that Mary is happy today, introducing a fact on the basis of an individual (Mary), a
property (happiness), and a time (the time of today).
Mapping an argument of the base expression to a closely related object: product
nominalizations and attitudinal-object nominalizations
The Davidsonian account of event nominalizations appears to apply well to
verbs describing physical events. However, it does not apply well to nominalizations
derived from attitude verbs such as think, decide, claim, and request. Such verbs
display a distinction between two sorts of deverbal nominalizations that display sharp
semantic differences (and not just in English): nominalizations of the sort thought,
decision, claim, and request on the one hand and gerunds such as thinking, deciding,
13

claiming, and requesting on the other hand.13 This is a distinction that the Polish
early analytic philosopher Twardowski introduced as the distinction between actions
and what he called “products.” According to that distinction, nominalizations such as
thought, decision, claim, and request describe non-enduring “products” of actions of
thinking, judging, claiming, and requesting, the actions described by the base verbs.
By contrast, gerunds such as thinking, judging, deciding, claiming, requesting, and
promising describe actions, the very same entities described by the base verbs. The
non-enduring products of actions are as concrete and particular as the actions and in
fact, according to Twardowski [5,132], spatiotemporally coincident with them. The
notion of a product is closely related to that of a modal object, and so it is appropriate
to elaborate on the action–product distinction as introduced by Twardowski and
further elaborated in Moltmann.
Actions and products differ fundamentally in their properties. Most
importantly, as Twardowski emphasizes, only products and not actions may bear truth
conditions or, more generally, satisfaction conditions.
Note that the applicability of predicates of satisfaction makes clear that
products cannot be identified with propositions, since propositions cannot be fulfilled,
implemented, executed, kept, or broken. Rather products are entities sui generis,
sharing some similarities with both propositions and events, but are not to be
identified with either of them [6,127].
Products differ from actions furthermore in entering relations of exact similarity
just on the basis of being the same in content, provided they involve the same force
and possibly physical manifestation.
While the ability of products to have truth or satisfaction conditions and to
enter similarity relations based on a shared content can be attributed to Twardowski,
there is another important difference between actions and products not noted by
Twardowski and that concerns part whole relations. The part structure of products is
strictly based on partial content, not the temporal parts (sub-events) an act would
14

have. A part of a thought, a belief, or a decision is a partial content. By contrast, the
part structure of actions is that of events, consisting of temporal parts. Parts of
products generally are distinct from the parts of the actions. Part of John’s decision
cannot be part of the action of deciding. Part of John’s claim cannot be part of the
speech act. Part of John’s promise cannot be part of John’s act of promising.
There are further properties distinguishing actions and products. Only products
not actions can enter causal relations on the basis of content; that is, only products can
have causal effects in virtue of their content. John’s claim may cause astonishment or
puzzlement in virtue of its content, but not so for John’s act of claiming.
John’s remark may trigger a lot of comments in virtue of its content, but not so
for John’s making a remark. John’s promise may have made Mary happy in virtue of
its content, but not so for John’s act of promising. Acts, of course, enter causal
relations, but not that of content-based causation.
Actions and products also differ in properties relating to the understanding of
their associated content. Understanding a claim or request means something quite
different from understanding an act of claiming or requesting. Only the former relates
to the content of the product, not the latter.
Related to properties of content-based causation and understanding are
properties of content-based evaluation. Attitudinal objects are evaluated with respect
to both their content and force, but not so for actions. A thought being interesting is
something quite different from the act of thinking being interesting. It is also
something different from an abstract proposition being interesting. Similarly, John’s
thought process may be unusual, without his thought or the corresponding abstract
proposition being unusual.
Thus, an ontological distinction must be made between cognitive or
illocutionary acts and their non-enduring products. For the semantics of
nominalizations this means that non-gerundive nominalizations of psychological and
illocutionary verbs do not just pick up the implicit event argument of the verb. Rather
15

their semantics will be more complex involving a function mapping an implicit event
argument onto its non-enduring product.
The action product distinction does not apply to stative attitude verbs such as
believe, intend, fear, and hope. Mental states do not, at least not generally, come with
products. Yet the entities that the nominalizations of stative attitude verbs describe,
such as belief, intention, fear, hope, display the very same characteristic types of
properties as cognitive or illocutionary products. In particular, they have truth or
satisfaction conditions:
Nominalizations of stative attitude verbs stand for entities that share the
characteristic types of properties of cognitive and illocutionary products, but are not
themselves products of acts. This motivates the broader category of what I call
attitudinal objects, which comprises both cognitive and illocutionary objects and
state-like entities such as beliefs and intentions (Moltmann 2013b; 2017a). Attitudinal
objects thus form an ontological category of concrete particulars that have content-
related properties (having satisfaction conditions, entering similarity relations based
on sameness of content, and having a part structure based on partial content). The
term attitudinal-object nominalization should hence replace the more narrow term
product nominalization, for nominalizations of attitude verbs.
Thus, nominalizations of verbs and adjectives in English consist in event
nominalizations and trope nominalizations, as well as attitudinal-object
nominalizations, and they involve an ontology of events, tropes, and attitudinal
objects. They manifest two ways for a nominalization to obtain its referent, by picking
up an implicit argument of the base expression and by mapping such an argument to a
closely related object.
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1.2 The role of nominalization
Nominalization serves to simplify complex ideas by reducing the number of
words needed to convey them. This is especially important in scientific writing, where
clarity and precision are critical. Nominalized phrases such as "the analysis of data" or
"the investigation of phenomena" allow writers to express complex concepts in a
single word or phrase. This not only makes sentences shorter and more concise but
also helps readers understand the main idea more easily.
Another advantage of nominalization is that it allows writers to focus on the
subject matter rather than individual actions or events. For example, instead of writing
"we conducted experiments," a writer could use "experimental procedures were
employed." This phrasing emphasizes the methods used rather than the individuals
performing them, which can be important when conducting research.
Nominalization is a linguistic process that transforms a verb or an adjective into
a noun. This process involves the addition of suffixes to verbs, such as -tion, -ment,
and -ance. Nominalization is a common feature of academic writing and it is used to
create abstract nouns that encapsulate complex ideas.
One example of nominalization can be seen in the following sentence: "The
government's decision to increase taxes was met with widespread criticism." In this
sentence, "decision" is a nominalized form of the verb "decide." By using the noun
form, the writer is able to convey a complex idea in a more concise manner.
Another example can be seen in the sentence: "The construction of new
buildings in downtown areas has led to increased traffic congestion." In this sentence,
"construction" is a nominalized form of the verb "construct." Again, by using the
noun form, the writer is able to convey a complex idea more succinctly.
Nominalization can also be used to create abstract nouns from adjectives. For
example, "happiness" is a nominalized form of the adjective "happy," while "strength"
is a nominalized form of the adjective "strong." However, the overuse of
nominalizations can have negative impacts on academic writing. Excessive
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nominalizations can obscure meaning by creating longer sentences that readers may
find challenging to comprehend quickly. Additionally, overuse may lead to ambiguity
in sentences as noun-based phrases tend to lack verb tenses which would help define
tense-related meanings. Nominalization is a crucial tool for academic writing, but it
should be used judiciously. The technique enables writers to convey complex ideas
and concepts accurately while maintaining a formal tone. However, writers must
ensure that they do not overuse nominalization in their writing, as this can lead to
confusion and ambiguity.
One of the most striking linguistic features of legal writing is the use of
complex heavily postmodified nominal phrases. The two following examples are
taken from Wills Act, 1970 and a Seller – Buyer contract, 1998. The nominal phrases
are shown in square brackets.
Chomsky believes that “nominalisation is a process by which a verb phrase is
transformed into a nominal”. A similar attitude to nominalisation is presented by
Quirk who considers nominalisation a process of turning a verb or an adjective into a
noun. Halliday [7] describes nominalisation more generally – as any element or group
that can function as a noun or a noun group. Mathews defines nominalisation
similarly to Halliday – as “any process by which either a noun or a syntactic unit
functioning as a noun phrase is derived from any other kind of unit”. Bhatia refers to
it as “the third type of complex nominal phrases that is conventionally called
nominalisation, and is overwhelmingly used in legislative provisions”.
The creators of the texts do not take into consideration an aesthetic viewpoint.
From the point of view of creators nominalisation can be understood as a means of
condensation and clarity. In my view the high occurrence of nominal phrases causes a
certain degree of ambiguity in legal text interpretation.
The idea of determiners in grammar is quite new, and there is still some debate
about them whether or not they constitute a word class. Members of the same word
class behave in the same- they serve the same function in an utterance.
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Determiners are sometimes considered a weird word class because almost all its
members (with the exception of articles) belong at least to two word classes. Many
words used as determiners can also be used as pronouns or as adverbs.
As a closed word class determiners have a certain function in language. They
“signal nouns in a variety of ways: they may define the relationship of the noun to the
speaker or listener (or reader); they may identify the noun as specific or general; they
may quantify it specifically or refer to quantity in general"[8]. “The determiner class
is one of the structure classes that straddle the line between a word class and a
function. On the one hand, our most common determiners, the articles, do indeed
constitute a small, closed structure class. At the other end of the spectrum are the
possessive nouns, which function as determiners while retaining their membership in
the open class noun. In between are the subclasses of determiners that belong to the
closed pronoun class: Demonstrative, possessive, and indefinite pronouns all function
as determiners; and, of course, as pronouns they also function as nominals (in fact,
'pronominal' would be a more accurate label than 'pronoun').
The investigation conducted into the legal texts confirmed a high frequency of
determiners in them. Their high occurrence is not unintentional and accidental. As it
has been mentioned nominalisation is a frequent phenomenon in legal writing. Every
nominal phrase found in the analysed legal texts starts with a determiner. The
determiner that accompanies a noun has an important role – it is a carrier of reference.
This paper does not deal with all determiners, the concentration will be put on
the demonstratives this, these, that and those.
The categorisation of this, that, these and those has been complicated. J. C.
Nesfield in his Outline of English Grammar published in 1919 says that this and that
belong to demonstrative pronouns. He does not mention that they may function as
determiners.
Later in Zandwort’s Handbook of English grammar we find “There are four
demonstrative pronouns in common use this and that and their plural variations these
19

and those. This and these refer to what is near in space, time or conception, that and
those to what is farther off. He demonstrates also their temporal usage. This may refer
to what follows and that to what precedes”. According to Greebaum and Quirk “the
demonstratives this, that, these, those function both as pronouns and demonstrative
determiners”.
20

Conclusion on chapter I
In syntactic theory, nominalizations refer to the process in which a verb or an
adjective is turned into a noun. This process involves morphological and syntactic
changes that allow the word to function as a noun in a sentence. One common way
that nominalizations are created is through the addition of suffixes. For example, the
verb "analyze" can be turned into the noun "analysis" by adding the suffix "-sis."
Similarly, the adjective "active" can become the noun "activity" by adding the suffix
"-ity."
Nominalizations can also involve changes in word order or the addition of other
words to create a noun phrase. For example, the verb "run" can be nominalized by
changing the word order and adding a determiner and an adjective, resulting in the
noun phrase "a quick run." The syntactic properties of nominalizations can differ from
their base verbs or adjectives. For example, nominalizations often have different
syntactic roles and can be used as subjects, objects, or complements in a sentence.
They may also require different syntactic constructions or take on different
grammatical functions than their base forms.
In syntactic analysis, the study of nominalizations helps to understand how
language structures can be transformed and how different parts of speech can interact.
It also helps to explain how nominalizations contribute to sentence structure and
meaning..
21

CHAPTER II. THE MORPHOLOGY OF NOMINALIZATIONS AND
THE SYNTAX
2.1 The classification of nominalization
According to the classification of nominalization raised by Halliday, there are
altogether five kinds of nominalization, namely, nominalization of process,
nominalization of quality, nominalization of circumstance, nominalization of relator
and nominalization of zero. Since nominalization not only involves the transformation
of grammatical classes, more importantly, it also contains the change of function.
As a special genre, abstract draws a lot of attention among researchers. Day
defined abstract as a “highly summarized discourse that enable readers to grasp the
purpose, methodology and main results of a paper quickly and let readers evaluate
whether this paper is worth reading”. Chinese scholar Xu claimed that, “An abstract is
a highly condensed form of a longer piece of writing so that readers can know the
main contents and scope of the thesis and decide whether it is necessary to read the
whole. It should be a high generalization and objective description without any
subjective comments or explanation.” From these definitions, it can be seen that they
all thought that abstract is very important since it can help readers to understand the
overall content of a paper and get some useful points, so abstract has some essential
characteristics. It is agreed that a well-written abstract is featured by conciseness,
objectivity and coherence. First, because abstract is a highly condensed discourse and
it summarizes the major points of a paper, thus its language should be precise and
concise, which means using fewer words to convey more information. Second, due to
the formality and scientificity of the academic papers, language in abstract should be
objective, stating facts and data rather than subjective opinions. The expressions of
abstract must conform to features of scientific and technical discourse [10,31].
Finally, as a complete discourse, abstract should be logical and coherent. In order to
let readers understand the major points of the paper, expressions in abstract should be
linked logically and coherently [9,718].
22

Ant Conc and manual sorting are adopted in the present research for identifying
all the nominalizations. File view tool in AntConc is used to check different use of
five types of nominalization in original text, hence, the collocating patterns of each
type of nominalization can be identified, besides, with the assistance of Concordance
Tool, frequencies of those collocating patterns can be calculated as well. Since the
accuracy of identification of nominalization can not be guaranteed by only using
AntConc, so manual sorting will also be applied to identifying five types of
nominalization.
This research involves three procedures. First, two separate corpus are
constructed, which includes 120 English abstracts from two Chinese journals and two
international journals. Second. Finally, this study will use specific examples to
analyze how Chinese and Western scholars use different methods to achieve features
of abstracts. From this part, some useful suggestions about how to use nominalization
properly and flexibly will be offered.
As a highly concise summary of the full text, language used in abstracts should
be concise and specific. Thompson proposed that one important feature of written
English is syntactic simplicity. Hence, abstracts undertake an important task, which is
to express abundant information as much as possible within fewest words.
Nominalization is one of the best methods to condense information and increase the
conciseness of abstracts. After analyzing all the abstracts, it is found that both Chinese
and Western scholars prefer to use process and quality nominalizations to increase the
conciseness of abstracts.
One of the powerful function of nominalization is to increase lexical density of
the original congruent sentence, in this way, the length of the original sentence is
shortened and more space are left for more valuable information [11,430]. According
to the statistical results, it can be seen that process nominalization is frequently used
by Chinese and Western scholars to increase lexical density.
23

Apart from process nominalization, quality nominalization can achieve
conciseness through improving economy. Owing to the written and formal style of
abstracts [12,1221], both Chinese and Western scholars are under the pressure of
making their language concise, meanwhile, informative. Nominalization is an
effective tool which can help writers improving economy of language, moreover,
increasing the conciseness of abstracts. The following table presents some frequently
used quality nominalization by Chinese and Western scholars,
Actually, the most powerful function of nominalization is to downgrade
sentences to nominal groups through rank shift. Packing information into some noun
phrases allows writers to expand semantic meaning of nominlization by adding
modifiers or qualifiers. Moreover, through rank shift, noun phrases or clauses are
replaced by clause complexes, therefore, writers can simplify the sentence structure,
condense the textual space [12,30]. So when expressing the same content, in terms of
conciseness, metaphorical expressions are superior to congruent expressions.
Consequently, language will be more perspicuous and succinct. A better
understanding of how this works can be gained from specific examples.
3) On the basis of the findings, pedagogical implications are discussed.
4) The findings suggest that the development of L2 learners’ processing pattern
of the complex words is the transition from the decompositional processing route to
the whole word processing one.
From example , it can be found that there are two nominalizations, implications
and findings. If the writer uses the congruent form to express this sentence, at lease
three clauses are needed, i.e., we find something, the findings implicate something,
and we discuss the implications. Apparently, this kind of expression is too wordy and
complex. Through nominalization, three clauses are rank shifted into a lower level, a
nominal form; in this way, the sentence is predigested and information is condensed.
As a result, expressions become more natural and easy to understand. By using
nominalization, the whole expression becomes more concise, and the interrelationship
24

between processes are clear. In example, this sentence is fairly long and contains a lot
of lexical items. The writer uses three nominalization findings, development and
transition to construct a very simple structure, and readers can easily grasp the
relationship among three processes in this sentence. It can be seen that using
nominalization makes sentence shorter and briefer. Through rank shift, noun phrases
are employed to convey the same meaning that is otherwise congruently expressed in
a more complex structure. In this way, scholars use the simplest and shortest
expressions to convey the most important meaning, leaving more space for other
points. On the whole, abstract are characterized by the use of the briefest words to
express the richest content, and they contain a large amount of information.
Nominalization can effectively improve the lexical density and conciseness of
abstracts [13,81]. Using nominalization is conducive to the decrease of the number of
clauses, accommodating more information within the same space.
Nominal forms usually possess the feature of static, by transforming a process
or quality into a noun, writers can state a fact and eliminate the subjectivity of their
expression. Through using of nominalization, the participant in the original action is
deleted, weakened or hidden as modifiers of the nominalization. At the same time,
nominalization usually is non-finite, and is therefore not forced to express tense and
mood. Accordingly, nominalizations are on a higher level of abstraction and can
enhance the objectivity of abstracts.
Another function of process nominalization is to anonymize the original actor
of the sentence, in this way, the sentence becomes a statement without any personal
judgment, the whole expression seems more objective and formal [14,51]. In
academic genre, subject is seldom mentioned in the sentence, because the writer
intends to make every step of his research objective, readers can believe that his
research does not involve any subjective factor. For the sake of avoiding using first
person pronoun as the subject of the sentence, writers use nominalization to hide the
original actor and obscure the time maker. Because when using nominalization of
25

process, writers of abstracts need not to take tense into consideration, they only
displays researches process and results, language becomes more objective to some
extent.
Results show that both Chinese and Western scholars prefer to use
nominalizations that describe research processes and methodologies to hide the
original actor. Such as evaluation, if the writer uses sb evaluate sth, it seems too
subjective, and such expression is seldom used in academic genre. So evaluation is in
conformity with the requirement of academic writing. When the action is taken by
writers themselves, they will choose to use nominal form to hide their identity for the
purpose of being objective. More examples are given to explain how to achieve
objectivity through the use of nominalization of process.
All the nominalizations used in these sentences are transferred from their verbal
form, and they originally describe the research methodology or procedure, if writers
use the congruent from, an actor must exist, thus the expression will contain
subjective factor. By using nominalizations, functions of original actor were
weakened, and only facts are presented. The focus of the sentence are shift from the
people who undertaken the research to the researches. Moreover, process
nominalization is detached from the limitation of tense and mood, thus the
descriptions can be used under any conditions. Process nominalization fulfills the task
of enhancing the objectivity of abstracts. Therefore, both Chinese and Western
scholars frequently employ process nominalization to weaken their influence on
expressions, presenting a statement.
Modality can express speaker’s proposition and attitude effectively, for it not
only can express speaker’s own willing, but also can state the speaker’s judgment and
evaluation toward an event. It can be found that through the analysis of modality,
researchers can basically know the speaker’s judgment and attitude toward an event.
For example,
26

The word capacity is the nominal form of the modal word can, it transfers the
modal meaning into “thing” which is hard to question. Thus it possesses the property
of nouns, which is “thingness”. Writers does not use expression like sb can do
something, it sounds too subjective, and readers may have doubts about its validity.
On the contrary, they applied a process nominalization, decorating their opinion as a
objective statement to highlight their statement. Thus it’s difficult for readers to judge
the origin of the modality, they have to take the modal meaning conveyed by this
process nominalization as a relatively neutral opinion, actually, the speaker’s
subjective inclination is hidden behind the process nominalization. Moreover, process
nominalization are always used to hide the modality and decrease the interpersonal
function of a sentence. Through this way, the origin and meaning of modality are
omitted, make the audience lose the ability of evaluating and they can not question the
validity of the information.
Hiding personal opinion. In abstracts, all the statements should be objective,
expressions involving subjective judgment should be avoided. Under most
circumstances, adjectives are used to modify things and add author’s evaluations,
however, in formal text, adjectives should be transferred to nouns. With the help of
quality nominalization, personal judgments are replaced by objective illustration.
27

2.2 The process of nominalization
Nominalization refers both to the process by which complex nouns are created
and to the complex nouns that are derived by that process. Nominalizations common
in the languages of the world include event/result nouns, personal or participant nouns
(agent, patient, location, etc.), as well as collectives and abstracts. It is common for
nominalizations to be highly polysemous.
Many of the key theoretical debates concerning nominalization arise because
derived nouns exhibit widespread and pervasive polysemy. For example, in English
deverbal nouns formed with suffixes like -ing, -ation, -ment, and -al are ambiguous
between readings that can broadly be characterized as eventive and non-eventive.
Various terms have been proposed in the literature for this distinction, including
Event versus Result, Process versus Result, and Event versus Referential.
With the eventive reading, the nominalization receives roughly the
interpretation of the corresponding sentence (The doctor examined the patient). With
the non-eventive interpretation, a variety of referential readings can be available,
depending on the verbal base of the nominalization:
Individual nominalizations can express both eventive and referential readings
and often are amenable to several different referential readings, depending on the
syntactic contexts in which they are found:
Within the eventive nominalizations, Grimshaw makes an additional distinction
between what she calls complex event and simple event nominal. In Grimshaw’s
terms, the complex event reading requires the nominalization to appear with the full
argument structure of the corresponding verb. In cases where full argument structure
is absent, Grimshaw uses the term “simple event.” Both complex and simple nouns
may have simple event interpretations, as the example in illustrates, but only derived
nominals may have complex event interpretations for Grimshaw.
In effect, Grimshaw’s distinction between complex event reading and simple
event reading refers to the syntactic context of the deverbal noun, rather than to the
28

reading of the noun itself; in either the simple or complex event reading, the noun is
construed eventively.
Other types of nominalization also typically exhibit polysemy. For example, the
affix -er in English typically forms agent nouns, but it also forms instrument,
experiencer, stimulus, location, means, and even patient nouns as well, as has been
pointed out many times in the literature [15,1083]:
As Booij [20,503] shows, the roughly same range of polysemy is available in
Dutch:
The suffix -ee in English is less prone to polysemy than -er, typically forming
animate patient nouns, but in some cases its referent is construed as an agent noun ,
and in some cases as what would be the object of a preposition for its base verb
(Barker, 1998):
Nouns derived with the affix -er in English are also argued to exhibit a
distinction between an eventive reading and what is variously called in the literature a
non-eventive reading [16,310], a dispositional reading, or a dynamic reading [17,81].
With the eventive reading, an -er nominal like trimmer in a phrase like a trimmer of
hedges putatively must refer to someone who has actually participated in an event of
hedge-trimming. In a compound like hedge-trimmer, however, the -er nominal need
not refer to an actual event, but can be interpreted dispositionally: a hedge-trimmer is
someone/something that has the disposition, that is, the ability or capacity, to trim
hedges, although he/she/it may never have actually trimmed a hedge. This reading, as
Cohen [19,103] points out, is one of dynamic modality, akin to the sense of can we
get in a sentence like:
Even collective and abstract nominalizers can display polysemy, although their
range of readings is typically less broad than the other nominalizers (Lieber, 2016).
For example, the suffix –(e)ry, which frequently forms collectives in English
(jewelry), can sometimes form nouns that denote events (bribery), types of behavior
29

(clownery), or even locations. As Lieber documents, it is the norm rather than the
exception for nominalizations to accommodate multiple readings.
Nominalization lies at the heart of the ongoing debate between syntactic and
lexicalist analyses of word formation; central to this debate is the attempt to explain
the pervasive polysemy described. In syntactic analyses of nominalization, different
readings of complex nouns are made to follow from their syntactic derivation, that is,
from some combination of argument structure, underlying syntactic structure, and the
operation of movement rules. Non-syntactic analyses of nominalization take a variety
of forms. Some rely on morphological rules that refer to argument structure, others on
lexical semantic representations, but all agree in denying that the different readings of
nominalizations are to be explained by their syntactic structure or by the operation of
syntactic rules.
The first treatment of nominalization within generative theory, Lees (1960)
captures the relationship between the sentence and the nominalization via
transformational rule.
In the earliest forms of generative theory, transformational rules provided the
only mechanism for expressing such semantic relationships. Transformations had the
power to rearrange constituents, build structure, and add morphology. The assumption
was that transformations were meaning-preserving rules, so that the rearrangements
effected by the rule carried the eventive reading of the base verb over to the
nominalization.
Chomsky’s [18,221] article “Remarks on Nominalization” is considered to be a
watershed in the analysis of nominalization. Derived nominals, for Chomsky, are
complex nouns formed with affixes like -ation, -ment, -al, and -ure in English; a
phrase with a derived nominal such as that displays the internal syntax of a noun
phrase. What would be the subject of the corresponding sentence appears as a
possessive phrase, the sentential object appears as a prepositional phrase, and
modification is obligatorily adjectival. Gerundive nominals are derived with -ing and
30

$occur in noun phrases that have the internal syntax of sentences: the “object” of the - ing nominal is a noun phrase rather than a prepositional phrase, and modifiers must be adverbial. Chomsky distinguishes a third category as well, which he calls mixed nominalizations. As in gerundives, these are derived with the -ing affix, but like derived nominalizations they have the internal syntax of noun phrases rather than sentences, requiring a post-nominal prepositional phrase and adjectival modification. Chomsky [18,221] argues that derived nominals in English are too idiosyncratic to be accounted for by syntactic rules. Formally, it is impossible to predict whether a derived nominal will exist, and if it does, what affix it will take. Derived nominals are often semantically idiosyncratic. Gerundive nominals, on the other hand, are regular enough to merit a syntactic analysis: every verb has an -ing nominal form with predictable semantics. Chomsky does not himself offer a formal analysis of nominalization. He does, however, suggest that a verb like refuse and its nominalization refusal could be derived from a single lexical entry which is underlyingly neutral as to syntactic category, a suggestion that has been picked up in subsequent syntactic analyses \. Most significantly, Chomsky’s arguments excluding derived nominals from syntactic analysis are often taken to be the impetus which gave rise to morphology as a separate field within generative theory, and which therefore opened the debate between lexicalist and syntactic analyses of nominalizations. 31$

Conclusion on chapter II.
Nominalizations of the sort this chapter has discussed, nominalizations of
“philosophical entities,” have been at the center of philosophical discussions for a
long time. The chapter has argued that a new ontological category needs to be
acknowledged for nominalizations of modal predicates, the category of modal objects,
which is close to that of attitudinal objects, a category of objects distinct from that of
events and states reflected in nominalizations of attitude verbs. This chapter has
distinguished three different strategies with which nominalizations introduce objects
and argued that they are all involved in the introduction of modal objects.
32

CONCLUSION
Nominalizations are words or phrases derived from verbs, adjectives, or other
parts of speech that function as nouns in a sentence. They serve the purpose of turning
verbal or adjectival ideas into noun phrases. The process of nominalization involves
morphological and syntactical transformations.
Morphologically, nominalizations can be formed through suffixation,
conversion, or compounding. Suffixation involves adding a specific suffix to a word
to create a noun form, such as adding '-tion' to the verb 'educate' to make 'education.'
Conversion, on the other hand, involves changing the word's syntactic category
without adding any affixes, as in 'the verb to run' becoming 'the run.' Compounding
involves joining two or more words together to form a new noun, like 'football' or
'blackboard.'
The morphological properties of nominalizations include the addition of
prefixes or suffixes, changes in word stress patterns, and alterations in the word's base
form. For example, in the nominalization 'information,' the suffix '-tion' is added to
the verb 'inform,' and the stress moves from the second syllable to the third syllable.
Syntactically, nominalizations can function as subjects, objects, or complements in a
sentence. They can also be modified by articles, adjectives, and possessive
determiners. For example, in the sentence "His dedication to his job was admirable,"
the nominalization 'dedication' functions as the subject complement and is modified
by the possessive determiner 'his.'
In terms of syntactic structures, nominalizations can occur in various positions
within a sentence. They can appear as the head of a noun phrase, with determiners,
adjectives, or prepositional phrases modifying them. They can also occur as the
complement of a preposition, such as in the phrase "the importance of education."
Additionally, nominalizations can function as the subject or object of a verb, as in
"The discovery of new evidence confirmed the theory."
33

Overall, the morphology of nominalizations involves various ways of forming
noun forms from other word categories, while the syntax of nominalized
constructions determines their role and position within a sentence.
34

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