Delahunty and Garvey
e. the request to withdraw (to-infinitival clause)Noun complement clauses are also discussed in our chapter on Multi-
clause Sentences.
Nominalization
In our chapter on Morphology and Word Formation, we describe how a word
belonging to one part of speech may be derived from a word belonging to a
different part of speech. Nominalizations are nouns derived from words be-
longing to other parts of speech. Here we focus only on nouns derived from
verbs. These derived nouns can head noun phrases, just like any other noun.
However, their relationship to verbs allows them to have subjects and objects.
For example, amusement is derived from amuse, which is a transitive verb and so
grammatical in a sentence with both a subject and a direct object, such as (45):
(45) a. The clown amused the children.We can nominalize (45a) as the NP (45b):
(45) b. The clown’s amusement of the children.Notice that in the nominalization, the subject of the clause in (45a) shows
up as a genitive premodifier, The clown’s, and that the direct object of the
verb in (45a), the children, shows up as the object of the preposition of.
Exercise
- Nominalize the following sentences.
a. Werner inspected the package.
b. Pamela enjoys bobsledding.
c. The truth gradually emerged. - Change the following noun phrases to sentences by reversing the nomi-
nalization.
a. Manuel’s toleration of teasing
b. Oscar’s avoidance of hard work
c. Helen’s expectation that she would be rescued - Nominalization occurs more frequently in written texts, and espe-
cially technical and academic texts, than in speech. Pick a paragraph