Unit and activity nominalizations

Unit-nom’s generally involve the plain form of a Germanic verb but a derived form (often with -tion) for a Romance verb. Most often, there is a Unit-nom for the single-word synonym of a phrasal verb, but not for the phrasal verb itself. With phrasal verb of variety (ii) go over and its semi-synonym examine we get:

(We can have John’s going over the accounts but this is a complement clause, not a nominalization.)

And with cut in on, a phrasal verb of type (v), and its semi-synonym interrupt, we get:

Other examples involve phrasal verbs of variety (iii):

There are, however, a number of phrasal verbs of variety (iii) which can be used (with zero derivation) as a Unit-nom. For example:

Other examples are:

The suffix -ing is Germanic and can be used on some phrasal verbs, generally occurring just on the verb. It most frequently creates an Activity-nom; for example, cleaning up, putting off, talking into, making up. In the case of telling off we have a Unit-nom (this is countable; for example, I had four tellings off from the teacher last week).

And matters can be much more complex. One day recently, a parks attendant in Melbourne explained to me: I’m just doing a bit of rubbish pick-ing upp-er-ing. This includes -ing on pick, plus both -er and -ing on up. Why? (Well, it sounds pretty good.)