Nominalization in Latin

Abstract

Abstract This book is devoted to verbal nouns, defined as nouns which have a systematic correspondence with a clause structure. The book aims to contribute to the much-debated question of ‘abstract nouns’ in general and ‘verbal derivatives’ in particular by showing that syntactic parameters are useful for a better classification of what are traditionally called nomina actionis. It adopts a descriptive approach and it provides methods and criteria for identifying these nouns which retain some verbal properties and for distinguishing them from nouns with concrete reference. This distinction is important for a better understanding of Latin texts and for the presentation of these words in dictionaries. The book investigates the use of verbal nouns in various text types: narrative texts and technical treatises (rhetoric, architecture, and legal texts). It shows that verbal nouns, as well as gerunds, gerundives, participles in participial clauses, and also, partly, infinitives, are competing expressions with a low ‘sententiality’ that serve, to different extents, to condensate clausal expressions. They form a system in which the elements are partly overlapping and partly complementary. The fact that Latin does not have a verbal noun available for every verb should not be viewed as a ‘deficiency’, but as a facet of this complex system.