The Nominalizer
“In order to be walked on, you have to lie down.” – Brian Weir
The word “nominalizer” probably isn’t a word that most people know. Basically, though, it makes it so you can talk about a verb phrase. This on its own probably doesn’t make sense either – I think it’s much easier to look at some examples and explain from there. First let’s think in English:
I saw Jack eating an apple
In this sentence there are two sections (more distinctly visible in Japanese, but we’ll get to that). You have “Jack eating an apple” and you have the “I saw.” A better way to think of it: You are seeing the action of Jack eating an apple. In Japanese, the two sentences (separated) would look like this:
(を) 見た*
Saw ____
a ジャックさん が りんご を たべる
Jack eats an apple
*You’re going to learn the kanji for “to see” in the next chapter. 見る = みる – you just learned the particle, so it shouldn’t be too hard for you. We use it so much this chapter I figure you ought to just start using it now.
Our “nominalizer の” is the thing that connects these two sentences together.
a ジャックさん が りんご を たべる の を 見た
I saw Jack (doing the action of) eating an apple.
See what we did there? We talked about the verb phrase (Jack eating an apple). We said we saw the action of Jack eating the apple. It doesn’t have to be another action, though. Basically, you treat the first part (Jack eating an apple) like a noun. So, what can you do to nouns? Well, lots of things. Let’s look at those.