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CHAPTER 2

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

This chapter presents the review of related literature

and studies relevant in the nominalization of verbs. The

concepts derived from these readings give further insights

into the topic under consideration.

Chomskys Remarks on Nominalization

In his 1970 paper Remarks on Nominalization, Noam

Chomsky (1970) provided several arguments for the lexical

hypothesis, namely the idea that nouns like refusal,

rejection, growth, and so on are nouns throughout the

entire syntactic derivation (Chomsky, 1970).

In Chomskys view, a person who has learned a language

has acquired a system of rules that relate sound and

meaning in a certain specific way. He has, in other words,

acquired a certain competence that he puts to use in

producing and understanding speech (Chomsky, 1970). Since

the central task of descriptive linguistics is to construct

grammars of specific languages, language-learning then is

the process of selecting a grammar of the appropriate form

that relates sound and meaning (Chomsky, 1970).

Grammar is a tightly organized system. If we modify

one part, it generally involves widespread modification of

other facets. It follows, then, that enrichment of one


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component of the grammar will permit simplification in

other parts. Thus certain descriptive problems can be

handled by enriching the lexicon and simplifying the

categorical component of the base, or conversely; or by

simplifying the base at the cost of greater complexity of

transformations, or conversely (Chomsky, 1970).

However, the proper balance between various components

of the grammar is entirely an empirical issue. There are no

general considerations that settle this matter but rather,

the evaluation procedure must itself be selected on

empirical grounds to get the correct answer. It would be

pure dogmatism to maintain, without empirical evidence,

that the categorical component, or the lexicon, or the

transformational component must be narrowly constrained by

universal conditions, the variety and complexity of

language being attributed to the other components (Chomsky,

1970).

It is in this regard that Chomskys lexicalist

hypothesis on nominalization arose. According to a paper by

Frederick J. Newmeyer (2011) on Chomsky (1970), Chomsky

argued that an important class of nominalizations what he

called derived nominals were listed in the lexicon as

such; that is, they did not occur underlyingly in full

sentences, nor were they derived transformationally from


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verbs (Newmeyer, 2011). He also enumerated, based on

Chomskys (1970) paper, three types of nominalization in

English. First, he called attention to gerundive nominals,

as in (1):

(1) a. Johns riding his bicycle rapidly (surprised me).b. Marys not being eager to please (was

unexpected).

c. Sues having solved the problem (made life easy

for us).

Second, he pointed to derived nominals, as in (2):

(2) a. Johns decision to leave (surprised me).b. Marys eagerness to please (was unexpected).

c. Sues help (was much appreciated).

And he referred to an intermediate class, as in (3),

all of whose members have the suffix ing like gerundive

nominals:

(3) a. Johns refusing of the offerb. Johns proving of the theorem

c. the growing of tomatoes

(Newmeyer, 2011).

Chomsky had no problem with the idea that gerundive

nominals are desentential, given that they exhibit all the

hallmarks of full sentences. His lexicalist hypothesis,


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however, posited that derived nominals (DN) are dimply

listed as nouns in the lexicon (Newmeyer, 2011).

Furthermore, Newmayer states, Chomsky gave three

arguments for lexicalist hypothesis. He calls the first one

the Idiosyncrasy Argument (Newmeyer, 2011). It was well

accepted that a transformational rule should capture a

regular productive relationship, but the relationship

between DNs and their corresponding verbs is highly

irregular, because, for one thing, not every DN has a

corresponding verb (Chomsky, 1970). In those cases in which

no verb corresponding to a DN exists, a transformational

account would have to invent an abstract verb whose only

function would be to undergo the nominalization

transformation, e.g. do to deed. Chomsky further argued

that lexicalist treatment of DNs could allow their

irregularity to be captured in a natural manner (Newmeyer,

2011).

Chomskys second argument for the lexicalist

hypothesis was dubbed by Newmeyer as the Internal

Structure Argument (Newmeyer, 2011). Its point of

departure is that fact that the structures in which DNs

occur resemble noun phrases in every way. They can contain

determiners, pronominal adjectives, and prepositional

phrase complements, but not adverbs, negation, aspect, nor


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tense (Newmeyer, 2011). Such facts follow automatically if

DNs are nouns in the lexicon and are inserted as such; that

is, a lexicalist treatment predicts them to have the same

distribution as ordinary nouns (Newmeyer, 2011).

Chomskys third argument, the Frozen Structure

Argument, was more complex. The problem in need of

explanation is that DNs occur in noun phrase corresponding

to base structures, but not to transformationally derived

structures (Chomsky, 1970).

Based on his findings, Chomsky concludes that the

transformational hypothesis is correct for the gerundive

nominals and the lexical hypothesis for the lexical

hypothesis for the derived nominals and perhaps, though

much less clearly so, for the mixed forms (Chomsky, 1970).

The Process of Nominalization

Conversion is the formation of new words by converting

words of one class into another class, i.e. by turning

words of one part of speech to those of another part of

speech in traditional terms (www.jimyspa.com).

Nominalization is one such process. Quoting The Oxford

Companion to English Language (1992), Jezdinka (2008)

defines nominalization as the process or result of forming

a noun from a word belonging to another word class or the

process or result of deriving a noun phrase by a


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transformation from a finite clause (Jezdinka, 2008). To

put it simply, nominalization is the process of

transforming verbs, adjectives, or adverbs into nouns

(Cameron, 2011).

Two types of nominalization are found in English. One

type requires the addition of a derivational suffix to

create a noun. In other cases, English uses the same word

as noun without any additional morphology. This second

process is referred to as zero-derivation

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalization).

In creating nominalizations with derivational

morphology, a grammatical expression is turned into a noun

phrase by use of affixes. For example, in the sentence

Combine the two chemicals, combine acts as a verb. This

can be turned into a noun via the addition of the suffix

-ation, as in The experiment involved the combination of

the two chemicals. Additional examples of this is failure

(from fail), movement (from move) and reaction (from

react). An especially common case of verbs being used as

nouns is the addition of the suffix ing, known in English

as a gerund. Some examples are swimming (from swim),

running (from run), and editing (from edit)

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalization).


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In nominalization using the process of zero-

derivation, verbs and sometimes adjectives in English can

be used directly as nouns without the addition of a

derivational suffix. Some examples include:

Change

I need a change. (noun) I will change. (verb)

Murder

The murderof the man was tragic. (noun) He will murderthe man. (verb)

In addition to true zero derivation, English also has

a number of words which, depending on subtle changes in

pronunciation, are either nouns or verbs. One such type is

the change in stress placement, as in the case of REcord

(noun) and

reCORD(verb)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalization).

Moultman (2006) refers to nominalization as the

linguistic process that turns expressions of various

categories into nouns (Moultman, 2006). He enumerated four

views, or four types of nominalization:

1.Nominalizations that refer to an argument of the baseexpression. Some cases of this kind are agent and

result nominalizations, as well as event

nominalizations.


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2.Nominalizations that refer to reifications ofmeanings. These are supposed to act as singular terms

referring to the meaning of the adjectives from which

they are derived, i.e. the properties such adjectives

express.

3.Nominalizations that introduce new objects. Theserefer to objects whose nature is entirely given by the

meaning of the base expression without being identical

to that meaning.

4.Nominalizations that do not refer at all. In thisview, there are no actual objects nominalizations of

the relevant sort stand for.

There are several reasons for nominalization. One is

that it makes texts impersonal and authoritative. By

turning actions into nouns we make the texts sound less

personal and more authoritative. Another is to add

informationnominalization is particularly useful because

we can do several things to add information to nouns. The

last is to avoid repetition. We can use nominalization to

avoid repetition when we want to refer back to a previously

mentioned idea; i.e. nominalization can paraphrase what has

been said

(www.slideshare.net/pietvanderlaan/nominalization).


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Deverbal Nouns

There are three kinds of nominalizations: deverbal

(verbs to nouns), de-adjective (adjectives to nouns) and

miscellaneous others (www.jimmyspa.com). For the purpose of

discussion in this paper, we will concentrate on deverbals,

or the nominalization of verbs.

In grammar, deverbal nouns are nouns derived from

verbs or verb phrases. Deverbals may be categorized

semantically according to what facet of the process is

construed as a thing

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deverbal_noun). Deverbal

nouns are extremely common in written and spoken English

(Crouch, De Paiva, Gurevich and King, 2006).

Despite the frequency of deverbal nouns, most lexical

resources currently available do not provide systematic

correspondences between deverbals and verbs (Crouch, et.al,

2006). Citing Roeper (2005), Monika Rathert and Artemis

Alexiadou (2010) even assert that deverbal nouns have been

important and controversial in linguistic research, as they

constitute an instance of structures showing categorically

ambivalent behavior (Rathert and Alexiadou, 2010).

As is often the case with derived words, some

deverbals are highly lexicalized and no longer retain a

connection to the original verb (Crouch, et.al, 2006).


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Also, according to Crouch, et.al. (2006), the

linguistic literature distinguishes two types of nominals:

so-called process nominals and result nominals. Process

nominals imply that the event has taken place, and the

nominal refers to the action. Result nominals, by contrast,

refer to the goal or result of the process. Thus, result

nominals are less action-like (Crouch, et.al, 2006).

On the other hand, Andersen (2000) postulates that

deverbal nouns are hybrid forms between the categories noun

and verb. This means more specifically that they share

some characteristics typical of verbs and some

characteristics typical of nouns (Andersen, 2000).

Although nouns and verbs are semantically related, the

issue of whether nouns, like verbs, license argument

structure has provoked a great deal of controversy

(Alexiadou, 2001). For instance, according to Andersen

(2000), typical nouns have specific reference as opposed to

typical verbs, which do not refer at all. Typical nouns

denote countable entities or objects and are easily

pluralized as opposed to verbs (Andersen, 2000). However,

in recent years, there is a certain amount of consensus

that nouns do not behave uniformly with respect to the

licensing of argument structure. Some nouns are

systematically like verbs in their argument-taking


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capacities, while others are quite different and in fact

take no arguments at all (Alexiadou, 2001). Specifically,

Grimshaw (1990) in Alexiadou (2001) claims that nouns

denoting complex events, like verbs, also have an argument

structure, since they denote events breaking into aspectual

subparts. On the other hand, nouns that denote simple

events do not have an argument structure (Alexiadou, 2011).

In this regard, deverbals are a hybrid of the

properties of nouns and verbs. Deverbal nouns have

reference, but they tend to have generic reference rather

than specific, which means they often lack determiners,

plural markers, and have argument structure (Andersen,

2000). The ability to refer is a typical nominal property,

the most typical way being the anaphoric reference where an

antecedent is involveda characteristic also shared by

deverbal nouns (Andersen, 2000).

So, all in all, Andersen (2000) concludes, deverbal

nouns share characteristics of both nouns and verbs

(Andersen, 2000). The most productive morphological types

are the ones which are closest to the verb. The process

nominals are closer to the verb than the result nominals.

Arguments against Nominalization

As mentioned before, nominalizations make your texts

impersonal and authoritative. Hence, it is widely used in


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the academic circles, by lawyers, bureaucrats and business

writers. Nominalization, they think, makes them sound

intellectual and deep, and so they tend to use it a lot.

However, some writers beg to differ. Some of them

think that overuse of nominalizations can actually do more

harm than good.

According to Helen Swords New York Times Article

Zombie Nouns (July 23, 2012), she calls nominalized words

as zombie nouns because they cannibalize active verbs,

suck the lifeblood from adjectives and substitute abstract

entities for human beings (Sword, 2012). She adds that

zombie nouns are at their worst when they gather in

jargon-generating packs and infect every noun, verb, and

adjective in sight (Sword, 2012). They also impede clear

communication, and send the students a dangerous message

that people who use big words are smarter or at least

appear to be than those who dont (Sword, 2012). All in

all, Sword concludes, a paragraph heavily populated by

nominalizations will send the readers straight to sleep

(Sword, 2012).

Brady Spangenbergs article in The Grammar Gang Blog

(http://thegrammargang.blogspot.com) on avoiding

nominalizations (April 4, 2009) points out to

nominalization as one major cause of clunkiness that


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is, it seems as if the writer goes through the series of

wordy gymnastics and still doesnt get his or her point

across (Spangenberg, 2009). Nominalizations make4

sentences feature many more prepositions, helping verbs,

and passive constructions, all of which tend to slow down

your sentences and confuse your readers (Spangenberg,

2009).

Jocelyn Sykoras article on nominalizations

(http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/student_acad/ctl/tutors/resou

rces/writing_pamphlets/nominalizations.shtml) asserts that,

while nominalizations are useful in some cases, problems

arise when nominalizations and weak verbs begin to form

patterns. These patterns result in clunky and unclear

sentences (Sykora, 2010).

According to Bridget McKenna (2010) in her online

article Words that Move (and Words that Dont)

(http://www.hypnosis101.com/wordpress/nlp/hypnotic-

language/nominalizations/), nominalizations have a way of

limiting us in our thinking. It is because once we have

defined something, we can sometimes find it difficult to

re-define it. She cites as example love: as a noun it has

the attributes of a thing, while as a process it now has

duration and is subject to change (McKenna, 2010). In

short, nominalization is freezing a process.


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Dr. Kip Wheelers(2012) article calls nominalization a

type of wordiness (Wheeler, 2012). He begins by saying

beginning writers have trouble developing sufficient

length, while more advanced writers have trouble being

concise. As young writers become more comfortable writing,

they often develop bad habits such as what he calls

grammatical nominalization, referring to a type of

wordiness in which both a noun and a verb is used when a

verb alone is enough. Nominalization may also involve

phrases like there is or there are to begin sentences,

or excessive use of to-be verbs, making the sentence weak

(Wheeler, 2012).

Joe Cheals(2008) article also states that the

conscious mind likes to work with things they are more

solid, graspable and fixed. Nominalizations, according to

Cheal, are the conscious minds attempt at stopping the

world to have a look at it, to work with it and perhaps to

feel a sense of control (Cheal, 2008). While nominalization

is a useful thing, at other times it can be unhelpful and

confusing, and one of its confusing aspects is that they

are likely to have a wide degree of meanings. Thus, Cheal

enumerates the following cons in the use of nominalizations

(Cheal, 2008):

Misunderstanding due to vagueness


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Collective term and therefore lacks specificity Creates an inaccurate representation of the world Creates a stuckness if treated as real Can create polarity tensions, dilemmas and paradox.

The book Hot Text: Web Writing that Works (2010:209)

state that continuous transforming of actions into things

gets prose clotted. Readers struggle to figure out who does

what, because the prose seems full of objects with only a

few fuzzy actions.

Nick Daws in his article dated May 31, 2010

(http://www.mywritingblog.com/2010/05/nominalization-and-

why-you-should.html) one common characteristic of

nominalization is that it makes a term more verbose. While

it is not ungrammatical, high levels of nominalization can

make any book or article sound flat and dull (Daws, 2010).

All in all, these arguments against the use of

nominalizations agree over one thing: that use of

nominalization makes a work wordy and vague.

Arguments for Nominalization

Though some writers advise against nominalization,

there are some instances that nominalization can be useful,

especially in presentation of facts.

An article by David Crystal dated August 27, 2008 in

his blog (http://david-crystal.blogspot.com/2008/08/on-


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nominalisations.html) quotes a correspondent to be saying

that there seems to be instances where nominalizations are

useful, particularly in academic writing (Crystal, 2008).

In fact, he says, nominalization has been present in

English since the beginning. What was actually being asked

to avoid are the overuse of two processes: (a) long words

formed with a suffix and (b) sentences where a noun phrase

derives from a finite clause (Crystal, 2008). But overuse

is not the same as use, Crystal argues, and no one can

avoid using nominalizations. Nominalization allows us the

option of being more abstract and impersonal (Crystal,

2008).

According to Barsalou, et.al. (2010) nominalizing a

process may license a variety of (mistaken) assumptions

about it: (1) a simple, well-defined representation

suffices to capture the processs content; (2) the process

is relatively stable across time and contexts; (3) the

process is easy to manipulate and influence; and (4) the

process enters into relatively simple causal relationships

(Barsalou, et.al, 2010). Although nominalizing a process

distorts it, advantages may result as well, warranting the

simplification. Nominalized processes may be relatively

easy to learn, store, and retrieve; they may be relatively

easy to communicate; they may be well suited to various


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types of reasoning. Because nominalized representations are

relatively simple, compact, and stable, they are efficient

cognitive units (Barsalou, et.al, 2010).

While Jose Carillo (http://josecarillo.blogspot.com)

agrees that nominalization sometimes causes such nouns as

those ending in ion make English so dense its sheer

torture to read, he concedes that nominalization isnt

always bad for the health of English prose (Carillo,

2011). In fact, he enlists five semantic situations where

nominalizations can actually prove useful:

1.Nominalization to make abstract things more concreteand credible. This is actually what many academics and

bureaucrats do to their prosebut to great excess. If

done sparingly and with restraint, however, this form

of nominalization can actually make abstract

statements more convincing.

2.Nominalization as a transitional device. By serving asa subject referring to an idea in a previous sentence,

a nominalization can provide smooth transition.

3.Nominalization to attenuate extremely harsh orforceful statements. In making extremely sensitive

statements, it is often prudent to use a

nominalization instead of its more direct and vigorous

verb form.


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4.Nominalization to more clearly identify the object ofits verb-form. For stronger emphasis, it is sometimes

desirable to use a nominalization to clearly identify

the object of the verb in the sentence.

5.Nominalization to replace awkward the fact thatphrases. When making a transition to the next

sentence, the easy but lazy way is to use the phrase

the fact that Nominalization of that phrase results

in a better sounding sentence and a more elegant

transition. (Carillo, 2011)

Carillo then concludes that since nominalization isnt

all that bad for the prose, there should be no hesitation

in using it when it is called for (Carillo, 2011).

Although Joe Cheal, as mentioned earlier in this

paper, stated some disadvantages of nominalization, he also

listed some advantages in using it. According to him, it

appears that part of the human condition is the need to

nominalize, to capture processes, and convert them into

things (Cheal, 2008). The following are the reasons why

nominalization is also important:

Convenient way to capture and label a process,thereby giving the conscious mind a grasp of reality

by providing points of reference.


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It is an umbrella term to cover a range ofexperiences.

Creates a trans-derivational search which is usefulfor trance work and artful vagueness. (Cheal, 2008)

South Australias Department of Education and

Childrens Studies

(www.decd.sa.gov.au/eyreandwestern/.../Nominalisation_Power

point....) also noted some reasons in the use of

nominalizations. One is that it helps to achieve a higher

degree of abstraction and technicality. Another is that

nominalization is significant in constructing a distant and

abstract world that can be reflected on. Lastly,

nominalization is one of the language choices that enables

movement towards highly written texts

(www.decd.sa.gov.au/eyreandwestern/.../Nominalisation_Power

point....).

In conclusion, it is still safe to say that the use of

nominalizations has certain advantages in making prose

better and easier to understand, as long as it isnt

overused and abused.

Related Studies

Some related studies, mostly descriptive, have been

done on the topic of nominalization.


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A paper by Maria Lapata (2002) discusses the

disambiguation of nominalization. She notes that any

attempt to automatically interpret nominalizations needs to

take into account the following: (a) the selectional

constraints imposed by the nominalization compound head;

(b) the fact that the relation of the modifier and the head

noun can be ambiguous; and (c) the fact that these

constraints can be easily overridden by contextual or

pragmatic forms (Lapata, 2002). Moreover, the

interpretation of nominalizations poses a further challenge

for probabilistic approaches, since the argument relations

between a head and its modifier are not readily available

in the corpus (Lapata, 2002). Thus, treating the

interpretation task as a disambiguation problem, she re-

created the missing distributional evidence by exploiting

partial parsing, smoothing techniques, and contextual

information.

First, Lapata selected a random sample of 1, 277

tokens, which were manually inspected and found out to have

796 nominalizations. Out of these, 596 were used as

training data for finding the optimal parameters and the

remaining 200 as test data. These were given to two

graduate students who served as judges to decide whether

modifiers are subject or object of a given nominalized


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head. Given a page of guidelines but no training, they

were given the corpus sentence in which the nominalization

occurred together with the previous and following sentence.

Comparing the smoothing variants, they found out that verb-

argument pairs with low-frequency verbs introduce noise due

to the errors inherent in the partial parser. They then

proceeded to study the influence of context on the

interpretation task, and explored the contribution of

context alone and in combination with the different

smoothing variants. These were combined using Ripper

(Cohen, 1996), a system that induces classification rules

from a set of pre-classified examples. The experiments

revealed that data sparseness can be overcome by taking

advantage of smoothing methods and surface contextual

information (Lapata, 2002).

Friederike Moltmann (2006) in his paper argues that

there is a fourth kind of nominalization which requires a

quite different treatment. While standard views in the

semantics of nominalizations are that they map mere

meanings into objects, that they refer to their implicit

arguments, and that they introduce new objects, the fourth,

Moltmann says, introduce new objects, but only partially

characterize them (Moltmann, 2006). Such nominalizations

generally refer to events or tropes (properties). This


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fourth kind does not refer at all; rather, the process of

nominalization would go along with rules for forming true

or false sentences with the nominalization on the basis of

true or false sentences involving the relevant base

expression. Moltmann (2006) then proceeds to compare trope

(adjectival) and event (verbal) nominalizations, stating

the only way of connecting the semantics of event or trope

nominalizations to that of the base expressions is on the

basis of the notion of the truth maker (Moltmann, 2006).

He concludes that by incorporating truth makers into

semantic structure, there are possibilities of a

compositional analysis of sentences involving truth makers

(Moltmann, 2006), thereby making nominalizations easy to

connect.

Solveiga Suinskien (2010) discusses in her study

nominalization as a cohesive device in British newspaper

editorials. She notes that the main purpose of editorials

is to contribute to the molding of public opinion on

current affairs and as such, they ought to have an

argumentative structure; thus, they need linguistic means

to serve the factual evidence in as convincing way as

possible (Suinskien, 2010). Nominalization, as a text

cohesive device of newspaper language, is used for

embedding as much information into a few words as possible.


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To manipulate the reader, the central actions are often

expressed in nominal form thus omitting the actor and

leaving the reader in doubt (Suinskien, 2010).

Employing textual analysis, Suinskien collected

samples of editorials published from January 1, 2009 to

December 1, 2009, from different social stratification of

English newspapers: the up-market (aimed at the upper

middle-class readers), mid-market (aimed at lower middle-

class and skilled working-class readers), and down-market

(aimed at working class readers). The titles were first

randomly selected and then nominalizations used in the

corpus to be investigated were chosen.

The findings showed that since editorials are composed

under rather strict space constraints, nominalization

allows a notion which is verbal in origin to be inserted

into an idea unit like it is a noun (Suinskien, 2010).

Consequently, she adds, most nominalizations can be re-

written as a phrase or clause. Nominalizations also

depersonalize the agent. The nominalizing of verbs

disconnects the participant from the action that they

performed by condensing that transitive relationship from

the clause into a single, general noun (Suinskien, 2010).

In conclusion, Suinskien states that the high

frequency of nominalizations in editorials is due to lack


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of space or even may be of time. The style of writing

editorials needs a certain device for talking about

abstract ideas. The precise lexical choice is a measure of

information density (Suinskien, 2010).

In an attempt to convince the readers that

nominalization is a most powerful device in English, Gao

Wenyan (2012) made a comparative study in nominalization in

medical paperd. Gao first asserts that medical writings are

generally standardized in language and concentrated on

highly technical terms but can be difficult to understand

due to its many forms and complexity. He suggests that

nominalization plays a crucial role in building the logical

structure of medical English papers and improving its

formality.

For the study, Gao obtained 10 Discussion Sections of

medical papers, and employed an analysis involving 3 steps:

(1) identifying the frequency of nominalization; (2)

comparing the lexical density; and (3) analyzing thematic

progression which contributes to the textual cohesion. The

results of his study implied that there are two essential

directions. One is that the results could serve as a

starting point for courses on genre analysis of medical

papers with special emphasis on their grammatical metaphor

in the form of nominalization which enhances the features


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of scientific precision, conciseness and objectivity.

Second, an understanding of the functional role and textual

consequences of grammatical metaphor is essential for a

full understanding of the meaning of any text (Gao, 2012).

Janelle Cameron (2011) published a thesis on teaching

nominalization to secondary ELD teachers. She states that

nominalization can be a powerful skill for language

learning students to acquire as they attempt to comprehend

content area texts at the secondary level (Cameron, 2011).

A commonly held belief is that language learners only need

language instruction through the intermediate level and are

then ready for full participation in mainstream courses;

however, teachers and administrators are often unaware of

the linguistic demands of academic text and also the

language proficiency requirements of content area

classrooms (Cameron, 2011). Rather than being thrust into

mainstream classrooms once intermediate level proficiency

is obtained, English language learners require advanced

language instruction specific to the academic content they

study. Knowing the particular linguistic demands of a

content area at the secondary level sets up the first

pedagogical challenge, while knowing how to instruct those

linguistic demands poses the next challenge for teachers

(Cameron, 2011).


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Selecting a focus group of teachers and students,

Cameron demonstrated the relevance of nominalizations by

recording the number of nominalizations found in randomly

selected passages from the 7th and 8th grade mandated history

curriculum. The findings showed that 38% of the sentence

subjects in the selected text and 85% of all headings were

nominalizations, proving the significance of recognizing

and understanding nominalizations within the text. Thus,

quoting Schleppegrell (2004), Cameron argues that a lack of

understanding of these nominalizations limits students

comprehension of the entire text (Cameron, 2011), proving

its importance. Even more surprising was that, the teachers

themselves do not recognize nominalizations, nor know how

to teach them, thus the need to instruct them first on how

to instruct it to students (Cameron, 2011).

With these intitial findings, Cameron proceeds to

assess the teacher-participants, then conducted training

sessions on nominalizations. The implications became clear:

if correlation between student comprehension and use of

nominalization could be shown, many more teachers might be

interested enough in the concept to learn what

nominalization is and how to teach it (Cameron, 2011).


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Local Studies

While there are no studies on nominalization in

English conducted locally, there are several studies on

Filipino, particularly Tagalog, language, its

nominalization and structure as compared to English

conducted by foreign researchers. It is worth to note that

these studies are somehow connected to the topic at hand.

Daniel Kaufman (2008) in particular presented a study

on exclamatives and temporal nominalizations in

Austronesian, touching particularly on Tagalog. In his

paper, Kaufman examines two functions of nominalization,

exclamatives and temporal adjuncts, as they are attested

commonly throughout Austronesian languages (Kaufman, 2008).

The question of identifying nouns and verbs in

morphologically conservative Austronesian languages

naturally looms large in any discussion of nominalization.

In particular, Philippine verbs have been argued to possess

many nominal properties, which in turn has been argued to

be the result of older reanalysis of nominal categories

into verbal ones (Kaufman,2008). For example, in the

following sentences, (a) employs the patient voice which

corresponds with genitive case on the agent and nominative

case on the patient, while (b) employs the actor voice

(Kaufman, 2008):


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(a) S(in)unog ni Malaya ang bandila.Malaya burnt the flag. (lit. The flag was Malayas

burnt thing.)

(b) Nag-sunog si Malaya ng bandila.Malaya burnt a flag. (lit. Malaya was the burner of

the flag.)

Nominals, although by no means requiring

presuppositionality, have been argued to inherently possess

referential properties either by virtue of their lexical

category or due to their proto-typical functions in

discourse. Thus, Kaufman concludes, they are thus uniquely

suited for anaphoric functions. Following this line of

thought, it can now be explained why Philippine nominals

are interpreted specifically as when-clauses rather than

hypotheticals (i.e., if-clauses) or as indicating

simultaneous action (i.e. as-clauses) (Kaufman, 2008).

Matthias Gerner (2011) published a study on the

typology of nominalization in Asian languages. In

particular, he states that in Tagalog, action

nominalization is realized by partial prothetic

reduplication of the verbal stem. For example (Gerner,

2011):

mag-huli pag-huhuli

catch (to catch) catch (catching)


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In conclusion, Gerner states that an extended typology

will yield empirically testable hypotheses about the

connection between the nominalizations and other variables,

and that nominalizers also make way for new functions and

meanings.

nominalization c2

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