What is this called?

Discussion of natural languages, or language in general.
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vec
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What is this called?

Post by vec »

What are these kinds of transformations called again?

The hunter killed the bear. > The bear's killing (at the hands of the hunter) was tragic.
The bear killed the hunter. > The bear's killing (of the hunter) was tragic.

I remember something from Latin about these being called genetivus subiectivus and genetivus obiectivus, but what are they called in modern grammars and what kinds of transformations are these, exactly? What other ways are there to nominalise this kind of information?

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Přemysl
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Post by Přemysl »

I have heard things like this called action nominalization. One of the strategies is a genitive like construction. While I don't remember all the other strategies (or which word order typologies they were associated with) another method was sentential. If I am recalling correctly this meant things like "That the bear was killed at the hands of the hunter was tragic" and "That the bear killed the hunter was tragic". All of this is rather fuzzy as it has been a couple years since I read on this.

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