A comparative study of nominalisation in L1 and L2 writing and speech

Abstract

Research by Van Rooy and Terblanche (2009) has shown that non-native students use nominalisations less than native speakers when writing. The frequency and use of nominalisations is examined across different spoken and written registers of black South African English corpora and first language corpora. The aim of the study is to explain the fairly similar frequency of nominalisations in second language and first  language texts, as well as to examine possible functional differences between types of nominalisations, for example, abstract versus concrete. Differences regarding the type of suffix, the frequencies of suffixes in the corpora, mode and nativeness are examined. There seems to be a link between texts that are informationally dense (Biber, 1988) and nominalisations characterised by semantic complexity. Nominalisations with heavy semantic loadings will probably be more common in texts with an informational focus than in conversation. According to Biber et al. (1999: 322) nominalisations are typically associated with  informationally dense texts, as opposed to greater involvement on the part of the reader and writer of a text. Biber et al. (1999: 322) also state that the relative difference between registers is much more visible for derived nouns than for nouns as a whole. However, studies done by Biber (1988) and Biber et al. (1999) only focus on four  frequently used suffixes: -tion, -ment, -ness and -ity, all suffixes that are used to derive abstract nouns. The present study analyses a more elaborate list of nominalisations than Biber’s 1988 study.

Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2009, 27(1): 39–52