Nouns derived from members of other word classes

Nouns derived from adjectives and from verbs are extremely numerous, and it should be easy for you to think of many other examples on the lines of those given here. Here are some suffixes used to derive nouns from adjectives:

(10) -ity, e.g. purity, equality, ferocity, sensitivity

(11) -ness, e.g. goodness, tallness, fierceness, sensitiveness

(12) -ism, e.g. radicalism, conservatism

All these three suffixes mean basically ‘property of being X’, where X is the base adjective. Of the three, -ness is the most widely applicable, and the great majority of nouns formed with it are not lexical items. For example, once one has learned DIOECIOUS, one can be confident of both the existence and the meaning of DIOECIOUS - NESS. Even so, at least one noun in -ness is lexicalized: HIGHNESS, which means not ‘property of being high’ (for which we use HEIGHT), but rather ‘royal personage’, as in Her Royal Highness.

Some of these nouns are formed from bases other than the free form of the corresponding adjective, e.g. FEROCITY from feroc- (not ferocious), CONSERVATISM from conservat- (not conservative). The FEROCITY pattern is fairly general for adjectives in -ious (compare RAPACITY, CAPACITY alongside rapacious and capacious) but not absolutely general (for example, to delicious and specious there correspond DELICIOUSNESS and SPECIOUSNESS, not ‘DELICITY’ or ‘SPECITY’). This gappiness is a reason for counting all nouns in -ity as lexical items.

Even more numerous are suffixes for deriving nouns from verbs. Here are just a few:

(13) -ance, -ence, e.g. performance, ignorance, reference, convergence

(14) -ment, e.g. announcement, commitment, development, engagement

(15) -ing, e.g. painting, singing, building, ignoring

(16) -((a)t)ion, e.g. denunciation, commission, organization, confusion

(17) -al, e.g. refusal, arrival, referral, committal

(18) -er, e.g. painter, singer, organizer, grinder

The suffixes in (13)–(17) all have much the same function (they form abstract nouns meaning ‘activity or result of Xing’), but they are certainly not freely interchangeable: for example, we have PERFORMANCE but no ‘PERFORMMENT’ or ‘PERFORMATION’, and we have COMMITMENT, COMMITAL and COMMISSION but no ‘COMMITTANCE’. It is true that some verbs allow a choice of suffixes (e.g. COMMIT), but the nouns thus formed are not synonyms: one can commit a crime, commit an accused person for trial, or commit oneself to a task, but, of the three nouns, only COMMISSION corresponds to the first meaning, only COMMITTAL to the second, and only COMMITMENT to the third. Comparison of ANNOUNCE- MENT (corresponding to ANNOUNCE) and DENUNCIATION (corresponding to DENOUNCE) confirms that verbs that are similar in shape do not necessarily choose the same noun-forming suffixes (ANNUCIATION scarcely exists outside the idiomatic context the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin). Sometimes a noun’s meaning may even be quite far removed from that of the corresponding verb: for example, IGNORE means ‘deliberately refuse to acknowledge’, yet IGNORANCE means not ‘deliberate refusal to acknowledge’ but rather ‘unawareness’. Of the suffixes in (13)–(17), -ing is the most general, and indeed all verbs can form nouns with it irrespective of whatever other suffixes they may use; but even -ing nouns may have semantic and grammatical idiosyncrasies (one can look at a painting or a building, but one listens to a song rather than to a singing). This semantic waywardness will be discussed further, along with a phonological restriction on the use of noun-forming -al.

The suffix -er in (18) is the one most generally used for forming nouns denoting a person performing the action of the corresponding verb (agent nouns). But it is not the only agent suffix (TYPIST and INFORMANT use other suffixes), and this is not its only function; for example, DIGGER is more likely to denote a piece of machinery than a person, and we have already encountered -er with the meaning ‘inhabitant of ’ (e.g. LONDONER).

This is an appropriate place to recall that, although affixation is by far the most common way in which lexemes are derived in English, it is not the only way. Some non-affixal ways of deriving abstract nouns (other than conversion) are:

(19) change in the position of the stress, e.g. nouns  alongside verbs .

(20) change in the final consonant, e.g. nouns BELIFE, PROOF, DEFENCE alongside verbs BELIEVE, PROVE, DEFEND

(21) change in a vowel, e.g. nouns SONG, SEAT alongside verbs SING, SIT.

By contrast with some languages, however, the derivational use that English makes of vowel change is minimal. Languages that exploit it much more consistently are members of the Semitic family, such as Arabic and Hebrew