Grammar 45 - Nominalisation - Adjectives into Nouns 1

The adjectives ('careless' and 'patient') have been converted into nouns ('carelessness' and 'patience'). Thus we see that adjectives can also be nominalised.

Just as we used suffixes to nominalise verbs, we can use them to nominalise adjectives. While verbs use a lot more suffixes, adjectives use a limited number. The suffixes used to nominalise adjectives are:

-ness
-ence
-th
- y
-ity

Here are some examples of the ‘adjective to noun’ pairs of words:

Happy-happiness
Ready-readiness
Intelligent-intelligence
Violent-violence
Wide-width
Long-length
Brave-bravery
Fluent-fluency
Capable-capability
Respectable-respectability

As is often found in English, there are some adjectives with their own unique rules of grammar regarding their nominalisation. Such words include 'hot-heat', 'proud-pride' and 'high-height'. Nominalisation helps communication to become impersonal and objective, both of which are generally required in academic writing. Nominalisation also helps to provide more information with fewer words. Look at this example:

‘The worker was honest. The manager praised him at the weekly meeting.’ This can be rewritten as:
‘The manager praised the worker’s honesty at the weekly meeting.’ by using the nominalised form of ‘honest’ which is ‘honesty.’

Nominalisation is a good tool to have and it helps us to provide more information with fewer words. However, it must be noted that sometimes carelessness in using nominalisation indiscriminately could give unnecessarily more information. Take the quiz on grammar that follows and learn to nominalise adjectives into nouns.