Nominal Style

Nominalstil is a structural transformation used to achieve high information density. It involves several key shifts:

• Nominalization: Verbs and adjectives are converted into nouns. This often uses suffixes like -ung (die Planung - the planning), -heit/-keit (die Freiheit, die Schnelligkeit - the freedom, the speed), -tät (die Aktivität - the activity), or -ion (die Produktion - the production), as well as the nominalized infinitive (das Lesen - the reading). When converting a clause, personal pronouns become possessive articles (e.g., er becomes sein). For example: weil er krank ist → wegen seiner Krankheit (because he is sick → because of his sickness).
• Functional Verb Phrases: While nominalized phrases can simply act as subjects or objects of standard verbs (e.g., Die Lösung des Problems dauerte drei Stunden - The solution to the problem took three hours), they are also frequently paired with 'placeholder' verbs to carry the tense. These Funktionsverbgefüge include verbs like erfolgen, durchführen, or treffen (to occur, to carry out, or to make) (e.g., eine Entscheidung treffen instead of entscheiden - to make a decision instead of to decide).
• Case Shift: The 'core' noun of the verbal phrase becomes a genitive attribute. For transitive verbs, the direct object becomes the genitive (das Problem lösen → die Lösung des Problems - to solve the problem → the solution of the problem). For intransitive verbs, the subject becomes the genitive (der Zug kommt an → die Ankunft des Zuges - the train arrives → the arrival of the train). If a noun cannot grammatically show the genitive case (e.g., bare plurals or uncountable nouns without adjectives), the von-Ersatzform (von + Dative) must be used instead (e.g., die Produktion von Autos, der Konsum von Alkohol - the production of cars, the consumption of alcohol).
• Prepositional Attributes: Verbs with prepositional objects become prepositional attributes attached to the noun, though the preposition sometimes changes (e.g., sich für den Fehler schämen → die Scham über den Fehler - to be ashamed of the mistake → the shame about the mistake).
• Adverb to Adjective: Adverbs describing the action become adjectives. 'Schnell reagieren' (to react quickly) becomes 'eine schnelle Reaktion' (a quick reaction). Note that some adverbs like oft (often) lack a direct adjective form and require synonyms like häufig (frequent) (e.g., häufiges Vorkommen - frequent occurrence).
• Clause Compression: Subordinate clauses are replaced by prepositional phrases. This uses genitive prepositions like wegen (because of) or dative prepositions like nach (after). Core mappings include: weil/da → wegen/aufgrund (because/since → because of/due to); obwohl → trotz (although → despite); wenn/falls → bei (if/in case → in case of); während → während (while → during).
• Extended Participle Attributes: Relative clauses are often compressed into complex adjective phrases placed before the noun, known as the erweitertes Partizipialattribut (e.g., das von uns gelöste Problem instead of das Problem, das von uns gelöst wurde - the problem solved by us instead of the problem that was solved by us).
• Reintroducing the Actor: Since the original subject often disappears, you can reintroduce the 'agent'. While standard passive uses von (by) for human agents, Nominalstil prefers durch (e.g., die Prüfung durch den Lehrer - the examination by the teacher) to avoid a double genitive or confusion with the von-dative replacement.

When using Nominalstil, you may encounter 'Genitive Chains' (extreme nominal chains like die Lösung des Problems des Kunden - the solution of the problem of the customer). A common stylistic strategy to break these up is using von + Dative (die Lösung des Problems von dem Kunden - the solution of the problem from the customer). While this style is essential for professional writing, overusing it can lead to 'Beamtendeutsch' (bureaucratese), which is often criticized for being unnecessarily complex.