ABSTRACT
The concept of language universals as propounded by Chomsky is one that is interestingly real. All languages have certain things in common especially as they are used by their native speakers. The idea of generative grammar reveals that a native speaker has the intuitive ability to generate infinite number of lexical items for use as follow by the grammar of the language. The point is that all languages have different ways of deriving new words and nominalization is one of them. It is useful for the derivation of nouns from other word classes. The Igbo language is an agglutinating language in which nominalization is highly productive. The language is verb based and most inflections and derivation on the verb as we shall notice in this work.
Most works on nominalization are limited to the lexical items that have referent ability. In other words, the criterion for being a nominal traditionally is the referent power of the lexical item.
However, this study uses the syntactic criterion in the determination of nominal and also classifies these nominal based on he word class of the lexical items. The researcher reveals relevant works that have been done on Morphology and nominalization and draws data from interview granted native speakers and also from relevant Igbo texts.
The analysis of this work reveals that Igbo language beyond realizing nouns by way of affixation can derive nominal by shifting the syntactic position of lexical items. In other words, if a clause comes to pose at the subject or object position, then, there is clausal nominalization.
Also, the analysis of our data and the entire research process reveals that lexical items of a language can switch class. In other words, the class of the item is at the discretion of the native speaker to alter to suit his communication need with due consideration of the prescriptions of the grammar of the language.
