writing and vocabulary

Question

Which of the following suffixes can be added to a verb to turn it into a noun? a) -ion b) -ness c) -ity d) -ent

Answer 1

The suffix in your choice a), -ion, would seem to be the most productive way to form nouns from verbs (if not the only means among your three other choices, i.e., -ness primarily makes nouns out of adjectives, e.g., good-goodness, -ity is a noun suffix but doesn't appear to be very productive in Modern English, and -ent is not only non-productive also but seems to be much more prevalent as an adjective than a noun suffix). Examples of verb/-ion-noun pairs are create-creation, submit-submission and direct-direction.