Edited by Jorge Fernández Jaén and Herminia Provencio Garrigós
[IVITRA Research in Linguistics and Literature 25] 2020
► pp. 2–19
Nouns and labelling
The advance of nominalization in Spanish
Beyond its communicative function, language plays a key role in the labelling of things and events of reality, which has significant cognitive effects. Whereas the verb performs an essentially predicative function, the labelling task is carried out by the noun and is the reason why nouns are the essential protagonists in science and doctrinal texts of all ages. This very fact allows us to understand that nominalization is especially abundant in these types of texts. This paper proposes (or “uses”) an historical approach to the increasing extension of the processes of nominalization of verbs and adjectives through a survey of some of the tables of contents of science books from Renaissance times.