0 INTRODUCTION

1. THE CONCEPT OF NOMINALIZATION
and derivational morphemes, but only the latter are relevant here. These “serve both for
systematic semantic differentiation (e.g. father: fatherhood –abstract noun) (...) and for
determining word class (e.g. read, reader, readable –verb, noun, and adjective).”
1.2. The problem of categoriality
Nominalizations range from the fully-nominal ones, such as writer or liar, which refer to
objects or people and have all the features of a canonical noun, to nominalizations such as
verbal –ing nominals or gerunds, which show a mixture of nominal and verbal features
(cf. Chapter 2 for further details). The formations analyzed in this study, that is, action
nouns like vitrification, rising and observation, are not typical nouns in that they refer to
actions instead of objects. As mentioned above, under the label ‘action nominalizations’
are also classified –ing forms, which can show both nominal and verbal features, making
their categorization more difficult. In order to solve this controversy, this section revises
the literature on categorization in order to find a theoretical framework which can account
for the classification of nominalizations.
The following quotation from Sapir (1921: 119) aptly summarizes the
preconceived notion of nouns and verbs:
There must be something to talk about and something must be said
about this subject of discourse once it is selected. This distinction is of
such importance that the vast majority of languages have emphasized it
by creating some sort of formal barrier between the two terms of the
proposition. The subject of discourse is a noun. As the most common
subject of discourse is either a person or a thing, the noun clusters about
concrete concepts of that order. As the thing predicated of a subject is
generally an activity in the widest sense of the word, a passage from one
moment of existence to another, the form which has been set aside for
the business of predicating, in other words, the verb, cluster about
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