Representing actions with nouns

Forms of nominalisation

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Clause to noun

An extremely useful function of nominalisation is to refer to and summarise the ideas which have been expressed in a previous clause.

The federal government yesterday announced that big new money is needed.
This announcement cast another cloud on the nation's financial markets. (Bank of English)

The words this announcement are used to refer back to a previous stretch of writing, ie the details of who did the announcing, and when, plus the gist of what was announced: big new money is needed. By referring back in this way, the writer is able to link the given information with the new idea which follows: "(it will cast) another cloud on the nation's financial market".

	There is a large class of nouns such as announcement which summarise a previous stretch of writing in order to provide a link between given information and new ideas . The technical term for a noun which functions in this way is summarising noun. The use of such nouns is one of the ways in which sentences are linked together to form coherent texts.
	Note that writers can use neutral summarising nouns such as announcement or evaluative summarising nouns such as boast and lie to reflect their attitude towards the stretch of text referred to.
	Summarising nouns tend to be countable, with a very small number uncountable .

For further information about summarising nouns, plus some useful lists, see Representing actions with nouns: Reasons for representing actions with nouns.

Introduction
 Differences between spoken and written English
 Three different types of nominalisation
 Verb to noun
 Verb to -ing form (commonly called gerunds)
 Another type of verb-to-noun nominalisation
 Adjective to noun
 Clause to noun