Languages. Scientific text and words
Nominalizations make the text coherent by linguistic means that it is the cohesion of the text. Each text has coherence and cohesion. Nominalizations very often present in the titles, chapters, and other names – it is called general cohesion.
Semantic features of nominalizations derived from verbs
Material nominalizations
Material processes or processes of doing involve some physical activity and show that something is going on in the external world. Material processes are carried out by a participant called the agent. Other participants involved in material processes are effected, affected, recipient, and beneficiary.
e.g. Recurrence rates due to the movement of tectonic plates are more or less uniform.
Happening nominalizations
Not all participants carry out the process by means of their own energy.
The participant is neither controlling nor initiating the process. So the question used in material nominalizations „What did X do?“ should be replaced by the question „What happened to X?“. The participant in happening processes is called the behavior.
e.g. The dog died.
Mental nominalizations
Mental processes involve the processes of feeling, thinking, and perceiving. So there are mental processes of perception, cognition, and affection. The process of perception is the process of perceiving something through the five senses. That is sight, touch, smell, hearing, and taste. The process of cognition is the process of knowing. This process is realized by the stative verbs as believe, doubt, guess, know, recognize, understand, ect. The process of affection is realized by the verbs like, love, dislike, hate, enjoy, want. The key participant in mental processes is the sensor. And the second participant is called the phenomenon.
e.g. I doubt that we will ever see such a great manager again.
Verbal nominalizations
Verbal processes are processes of saying and communicating. Examples: tell, announce, declare, ask, record, inquire, suggest, mention, state, ect. And the verbal process typically contains three participants, the sayer, the recipient, the verbiage.
e. g. We previously showed that a specific hypnotic suggestion reduces involuntary conflict and alters information processing in highly hypnotizable individuals.
Relational nominalizations
The category of relational processes rests on the notion of being. Example: is, was, were (to be). To relate, to connect, to cohere, to combine. The participants: the carrier and the attribute.
e.g. .
Existential nominalizations
Existential processes denote the existence of somebody or something. They involve the presentative their which is followed by such verbs as be, exists, stand, remain, appear, emerge. The participant is called existent. Examples of nominalized: existence, appearance, subsistence, domination, coexistence.
e.g. Domination is the condition of having control or power over people or things.
Textual functions of nominalizations
Thematic nominalizations
Nominalizations are found in the There or in the Rheme of the sentence. Nominalizations which are found in the Theme of the sentence are referred to as Thematic nominalizations.
Thematic nominalizations are of two types:
1. Related to the source verb.
e.g.
2. Not related to the source verb.
e.g.
Nominalizations that are in relation to the source verb can be anaphoric or cataphoric.
e.g. (cataphoric thematic nominalization)
e.g. (anaphoric thematic nominalization)
Nominalizations in the text function explicitly (nominalizations somewhere close have their source verb and they may function as anaphoric or cataphoric) and implicitly (nominalizations don‘t have a source verb). Nominalizations make the text coherent by linguistic means that it is the cohesion of the text. Each text has coherence and cohesion. Nominalizations very often present in the titles, chapters, and other names – it is called general cohesion. As the source verb is placed somewhere in the text.
Alike as thematic nominalizations, thematic nominalizations have two types.
1. With the source verb.
e.g.
2. Without source verb.
e.g.
