Nominalisation

Wisdom in proverbs, sayings

‘Courage is not the absence of fear. It is acting in spite of it.’ -Mark Twain

‘The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean’
Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes

‘The death of Dr. Hudson is a loss to the republick of letters.’

William King Quotes Source: Letter

‘Books are humanity in print.’

Barbara W. Tuchman Quotes

‘Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary
competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the
deserts that our lives have already become.’
C.S. Lewis Quotes

http://www.worldofquotes.com/topic/Literature/index.html
 Register continuum

everyday, informal, spoken

technical/abstract; formal/impersonal; written

Spoken language emphasises Written language emphasises

action (verbs) things and concepts (noun
groups)
decide – activity decision - thing
argue - argument -
celebrate – celebration –
discover –
understand –
explore -
 Verbs to nouns
Once something has been ‘nominalised’ it can be:
•described eg presentation ceremony
•quantified (counted) eg last ceremony
•classified eg wedding ceremony
•qualified eg poorly advertised ceremony
•specified eg 2103 merit ceremony

Language for greater abstraction and technicality

AC English: Expressing and developing ideas
(sub-strand) in the Language strand
Year 8 CD: Understand the effect of nominalisation in the writing of
informative and persuasive texts (ACELA1546)
Glossary support
Nominalisation:
•a process for forming nouns from verbs (for example, ‘reaction’
from ‘react’ or ‘departure’ from ‘depart’) or from adjectives (for
example, ‘length’ from ‘long’, ‘eagerness’ from ‘eager’)
•a process for forming noun groups/phrases from clauses (for
example, ‘their destruction of the city’ from ‘they destroyed the
city’)
•nominalisation is a way of making a text more compact and is
often a feature of texts that contain abstract ideas and
concepts
Expressing and developing ideas (sub-strand) in
Language strand….
Year 10 CD: Analyse how higher order concepts
are developed in complex texts through
language features including nominalisation,
clause combinations, technicality and
abstraction (ACELA1570)

Also refer to the content elaborations for this

content description….
 References
Beverly Derewianka: A New Grammar
Companion (2nd edition) e:lit PETA 2011
www.decd.sa.gov.au/literacy -various resources
on secondary literacy, grammar & AC
David Crystal publications: eg How Language
Works
Google search = nominalisation