Nominalization refers to the process of producing a noun from another linguistic category, i.e., transforming a grammatical expression into a noun. One of the most distinctive linguistic characteristics of modern academic writing is its reliance on nominalized structures. Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) refer to this characteristic of academic writing as a heavy reliance on ‘grammatical metaphor,’ where a proposition is expressed in an incongruent form. Nominalization, as the primary way to create grammatical metaphor, is accordingly used with meanings beyond their normal ‘category meanings.’ Halliday’s works on “grammatical metaphor,” though influential, have mainly been theoretical rather than descriptive, limited in the scope of the grammatical features considered, and are not supported by empirical analysis.