英语论文网

Chapter One Literature Review  

Previous  relevant  researches  will  be  presented  in  this  chapter.  At  the  beginning, some  definitions  about  nominalization  will  be  reviewed,  and  then  patterns  of nominalization  will  be  presented,  which  would  be  used  as  the  criterion  for  classifying nominalization  in  the  current  empirical  study.  Next,  researches  under  different perspectives  will  be  elaborated.  The  functions  of  nominalization  and  the  empirical studies in China will also be involved in this chapter, serving as a reference against the results and findings of the current study.  

1.1 Definitions of Nominalization

The  study  of  English  nominalization  has  a  very  long  history,  and  scholars  from different  linguistic  schools  have  made  their  own  contributions  to  the  theoretic development  of  this  phenomenon.  Therefore,  it  is  necessary  to  present  several definitions  of  nominalization  from  different  perspectives  so  as  to  show  the developmental history of this notion. Richards  et  al.  (309)  defines  nominalization  as  a  grammatical  process  of  forming nouns  from  other  word  classes,  usually  verbs  and  adjectives.  The  following  are  some examples: The  definition  is  undoubtedly  restricted  to  the  lexical  level,  which  falls  into  the study  of  nominalization  in  a  narrow  sense.  Richards  thinks  that  transformation  from verbs  and  adjectives  into  nouns  would  take  full  account  of  the  complex  phenomenon. However there are some instances in English where words of other parts of speech can also be nominalized, such as modal verbs, and nouns themselves. Therefore, Richards’ definition of nominalization is somewhat superficial. Bussmann  (327)  defines  nominalization  as  a  creative  word  formation  process through which words of all parts of speech could be converted into nouns. Although this definition still rests on the lexical level, compared with Richards’, it could  be  applied  to  a  wider  range,  as  it  provides  a  fuller  account  of  the  derivational source other than verbs and adjectives, for example, (1a) You should serve in the army. (1b) It is your obligation to serve in the army. (2a) He must support his old parents. (2b) It is his responsibility to support his old parents. The above two definitions reflect people’s early understanding of nominalization in English, but as the research on this phenomenon goes on, researchers gradually find that nominalization  occurs  not  only &n本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。