Nominalization in Formal Style

Nominalization turns an event, process, or quality into a noun phrase: анализирати → анализирање, одговоран → одговорност, or одлучити → одлука. It is indispensable in Serbian academic, legal, and administrative prose, where writers must name procedures and concepts. It also removes tense, person, and often the agent, so a dense noun phrase can conceal exactly who did what and when.

The English label gerund is misleading here. Serbian has no general English-style -ing form that freely serves as noun, participle, and adverb. Depending on the context, English reviewing may correspond to a verbal noun, an infinitive, a да-clause, a finite clause, or a verbal adverb. This page focuses on choosing and editing nominal expressions, not on deriving every suffix or remapping every argument; those systems are covered on verbal nouns and nominalization architecture.

Four resources, four kinds of meaning

Formal Serbian uses several nominal resources that should not be treated as interchangeable.

The -ње pattern is productive, though lexical restrictions and meaning still matter. By contrast, -ће forms such as откриће are lexicalized; learners cannot attach -ће freely to any verb. Compare a process with its result:

Откривање profiles the activity. Откриће names what was discovered. The distinction is lexical and aspectual, not a cosmetic suffix choice.

A verbal noun packages an event but suppresses its tense

Праћење names an institutionalized ongoing activity. The main verb смањује supplies tense; the noun itself does not say when any particular monitoring occurred or who performed it.

When those details matter, a finite clause is clearer:

The finite version identifies the technicians, past time, imperfective monitoring, and the completed discovery. The nominal version is better for naming a general procedure; the finite version is better for reconstructing an event.

-ост names an established quality, not any convenient abstraction

Established nouns such as доступност, тачност, безбедност, and одговорност are central to formal writing.

The suffix is productive, but it is not universal. Serbian often has another established abstract noun: лепота, not an invented лепост for ordinary “beauty”; брзина, not брзост for ordinary “speed”; слобода, not слободност for ordinary “freedom.” Dictionaries and actual usage, not an English noun in -ity, determine the lexical choice.

Nor does an abstract noun always improve the style:

This is useful when reliability is the object of evaluation. In a direct report, Независна лабораторија је потврдила да су мерења поуздана identifies the evaluator and uses the adjective more transparently.

Lexical nouns often beat mechanically derived nouns

Serbian administrative prose uses conventional nouns such as одлука, захтев, пријава, провера, процена, промена, and анализа. Their meaning is not always identical to a verbal noun.

Провера can name a bounded check, while проверавање more strongly profiles an ongoing or repeated checking process. Одлука is the conventional result or act; bulky доношење одлуке focuses on the decision-making process.

Here the process is exactly what was postponed, so the verbal noun is justified. If the text merely reports the result, Комисија је одлучила... is shorter and identifies the actor.

Stacked genitives create genuine ambiguity

A nominalized event can attract an object, an agent, and several institutional modifiers, often all in the genitive. Serbian case marking does not by itself reveal every semantic role.

The phrase can mean that someone interpreted a report belonging to the director, or that the director interpreted a report. The ambiguity is structural, not a learner's failure to memorize a case ending. Rewrite it:

Each finite relative clause assigns roles openly. Another option is an explicit agent phrase, though од стране + genitive is (formal) and often heavier than an active clause:

In most informative prose, Надлежни орган је одбио захтев is clearer. The passive agent phrase is useful when the affected item must remain the topic, not as an automatic marker of formality.

Nominalization can conceal aspect and modality

The noun усвајање does not by itself say whether adoption was completed, attempted, required, or merely considered. Compare:

The second makes the deliberating agent and unresolved alternative explicit. A finite clause can also distinguish усваја as an ongoing procedure from усвоји as a bounded result. Dense prose should not force readers to infer distinctions the writer can state.

Editing a dense formal passage

Here is a plausible but overloaded (administrative) version:

Every phrase is interpretable, but decomposed predicates such as извршење анализе and извршено је доношење add nouns without adding information. No responsible institution appears. A finite revision is more precise:

The revision supplies one actor, three ordered predicates, bounded perfective steps, and a clear result. If the actor is genuinely unknown or legally irrelevant, a mixed version can retain one justified passive: Документација је анализирана, а након провере услова захтев је одобрен. Editing does not mean eliminating every noun; it means making each noun earn its place.

Practice

Task 1: Unpack the noun phrase

Rewrite процена квалитета рада комисије in two ways: one where the commission evaluates the quality of someone else's work, and one where someone evaluates the quality of the commission's work. Use finite clauses to remove the ambiguity.

Task 2: Preserve a useful term

Edit a three-sentence formal paragraph so that безбедност података remains a technical concept, but replace at least two process nouns with active finite predicates. Explain what tense and aspect your revision restores.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Serbian has no one-to-one equivalent of the English -ing gerund.
• Productive -ње process nouns, lexicalized -ће formations, -ост abstracts, and lexical event nouns have different meanings.
• Nominalization removes tense, person, and often aspectual and modal detail.
• Stacked genitives can obscure agent and object relations; finite clauses restore them.
• Good formal prose balances stable nominal concepts with explicit finite predicates and accountable actors.