1. Introduction

The phenomenon of nominalization is a common phrase in natural language that combines noun and verb characteristics. Lees proposed in the early days that nominalized phrases were derived from sentence conversion, but there was a problem of insufficient explanatory power. Chomsky proposed listing nominalized terms in the lexicon, which promoted syntactic simplification and restriction. The research on nominalization generative grammar has gone through three stages: local lexicon theory, finite phrase structure scheme, and mixed extended projection syntax model. These theoretical developments not only deepen the understanding of the characteristics of nominalization construction, but also provide important basis for the modular division and functional definition of form and syntax, promoting the optimization of generative grammar theory models. The mixed extended projection model provides an effective tool for explaining the rich nominalization phenomena in English.

2. The first stage: Chomsky's (1970) view on the generation of partial nominalized word libraries

In depth exploration of Chomsky's (1970) generative grammar explanation of English nominalization phenomena, particularly the generation mechanisms of nominals, gerunds, and gerunds. Chomsky believes that nominal verbs are generated by syntax, while some gerunds are generated within the lexicon. Named verbs have the syntactic structure characteristics of verbs, regular forms, and predictable semantics; On the other hand, nouns have irregular forms, difficult to fully predict semantics, and exhibit lexical specificity. Aronoff (1976) proposed the concept of "generative lexicon", which holds that lexicon has generativity and can explain the internal hierarchy and word formation rules of words. However, Chomsky's theory of transliteration lexicons has ad hoc features, such as the lack of linguistic features of words in the lexicons, and the morphological differences between transliterated nouns and verbs only appearing in the phonetic form.

3. Phase 2: Nominalization of Restrictive Phrase Structure Scheme

Explored the generative grammar explanation of nominalization phenomena, particularly the application of the DP hypothesis in explaining noun phrase structures. Abney (1987) proposed that noun phrases and inflectional phrases share a common syntactic structure, with the extension projection of noun phrases being the projection of D, which expresses a grammatical consistency relationship. This hypothesis advances Chomsky's view on the subject predicate relationship of noun phrases and solves the problem of predicate in noun phrases through the DP structure. The nominalization phrase type is DP, which was adopted by subsequent research. The advantage of DP structural analysis lies in explaining the argument structure of nominalized phrases from the perspective of syntactic generation. However, Abney's approach failed to effectively explain the issue of mixing noun and verb categories in the process of nominalization. He proposed that - ing select IP, VP, and V as its "scope" in the noun verb generator and complete the nominalization operation through feature replacement. But there are technical issues with this feature replacement, such as - ing usually not being the maximum projection and cannot be attached to IP/VP. Another approach suggests that nominalization does not involve feature replacement or category switching, which is consistent with Chomsky's root theory. Distributed morphology provides a solution to the specific problems of internal composition and output of word libraries.

4. Phase 3: A Nominalization Hybrid Extended Projection Model Based on Distributed Morphology

In depth exploration of the generative grammar explanation of nominalization phenomena, particularly the nominalization hybrid extended projection model (MEP) based on distributed morphology. The theory of Distributed Morphology (DM) divides traditional word libraries into terminal tables, vocabulary tables, and encyclopedia tables, advocating for the integration of word formation and sentence construction. It believes that syntactic terminals have clear limitations, and root words as syntactic operation objects are no longer a special case. The phenomenon of nominalization is generated by syntax, with the root as the initial term for syntactic operations. If the root is classified as a noun in syntax, it is pronounced as a noun form at the syntax phonological interface.

5. The explanatory power of generative grammar for nominalization phenomena

In depth exploration of the explanatory power of generative grammar on the phenomenon of English nominalization, particularly based on the DP hypothesis and the MEP syntactic model proposed within the DM framework. The article first analyzes the issue of permission for quantitative expressions in English nominalization, pointing out that nominalization phrases without nP do not include quantitative NF projections, resulting in uncountable nouns, while gerunds and gerunds can. Next, the article discusses the impact of DP containing nP on the quantification or pluralization of nominalized phrases, as well as the association between the countability of nominalized phrases and lexical forms (situational types).

6. Conclusion

Summarized the research on the generative grammar of nominalization phenomena, including theories such as the transfer of noun databases, DP hypothesis, distributed morphology, and mixed extended projection hypothesis. These theories provide explanations for phrase types in nominalization structures, internal complex semantic relationships, subject verb relationships, and argument implementation. The nominalization structure is usually a DP structure, which includes both dynamic and nominal functional frameworks, and the language category of the root is determined by the segment it belongs to.