Talk:nominalization

Most common term?

@Angr: what is the most common term: "nominalization", "substantivation" or "substantivization"? --Barytonesis (talk) 10:55, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

I think "nominalization" is, and Google Books Ngrams agrees. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:58, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Meaning

M-W[1] requires the base from which the noun is made to be "a clause or a verb"; no "adjective" mentioned.

Lexico:nominalize[2] allows adjectives as base.

Collins[3] allows adjectives as base and mentions sleepiness as nominalization of sleepy.

--Dan Polansky (talk) 07:27, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Definition

The current definition is this:

The use of a word which is not a noun (e.g. a verb or adjective) as a noun, with or without morphological transformation.

It kind of does not make sense; the "use of a word which is not a noun as a noun" does not fit the possibility of "with morphological transformation" since if morphological transformation took place, then it is no longer the same original word. Maybe there is something I don't understand here.

Original definition from 2007:

an act or the process of nominalizing: making into a noun

The above makes better sense to me, although it is not explicit about whether the source can be an adjective. However, what if the source can be a clause, as M-W suggests? Then, the above definition is fine since it does not say what it is that is being turned into a noun, whereas the top definition speaking of a word being used as a noun is too narrow.

Do we know of linguistic sources explaining in greater detail what "nominalization" is? --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:37, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

@Dan Polansky This is a subject I am quite interested in because nominalized words are so often used in vague, nebulous non-statements and political propaganda, lending a superficial air of objectivity. I'm hardly surprised that this entry is itself rather nonspecific. For example, you might hear someone lamenting corruption without calling anyone corrupt. In this case, corruption is the nominalization of corrupt. There are a few articles and academic papers on the subject of nominalizations as well. I'll probably do some work on this entry at some point. I see you're blocked here, so feel free to respond on my talk page over on Wikiversity if you like. AP295 (talk) 22:57, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I've been meaning to read this PhD thesis on the subject: Nominalizations, agentless passives and social actor mystification: newspaper editorials on the Greek financial crisis. As Orwell implies in the essay I recommended to you earlier on Wikiversity, nominalizations find frequent use in political writing and speaking to make it seem more objective and lend it an air of officiality. It apparently also finds use when politicians or journalists have to bullshit their way through a speech or article without actually criticizing anyone in particular or generally in order to avoid making specific statements. AP295 (talk) 23:25, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

To answer your questions, the source can be a verb, adjective, or another noun, e.g. (cronyism from crony) as in the NYT article "Zombie Nouns". There's not so much to say about "the process of", which usually consists of tacking ity, tion or ism onto another word, so perhaps the two definitions in this entry are more or less correctly structured as is, though I think the countable sense should probably be above the uncountable sense. I added the quote from the NYT article to the countable sense but it could probably use a few more. AP295 (talk) 00:11, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

I reworked it a bit, and I believe this is the best way to resolve your earlier complaint "if morphological transformation took place, then it is no longer the same original word" and a more natural way to structure the entry altogether. AP295 (talk) 01:33, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

comment

@-sche Dan Polansky is essentially right in that it's incorrect to say one is using a verb or adjective as a noun, as nominalized words are in fact different from the adjectives and verbs they're derived from. The nominalization "corruption" is a noun. One is not using a "corrupt" as a noun, but a different word altogether. As far as I know it was more accurate the way I had it. AP295 (talk) 07:23, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

And I'm not out to wreck your dictionary, you know. You don't have to babysit me. AP295 (talk) 07:24, 7 December 2023 (UTC)