Nominalization of です？


Basically I’m wondering if です can be nominalized.

For example how would you say:

> _”I don’t like being mean.”_ or
>
> _”It’s good to be nice!”_

Can I say:

> 酷いであるのが好きじゃない？
>
> 優しいであるのがいい？

These are my attempts but I don’t feel confident in these!




i-adjective + である is not grammatical for the same reason i-adjective + だ is
not grammatical: i-adjectives already serve as a predicate without need for a
copula (or in other words, you can imagine that the meaning “is”/“to be” is
embedded in the i-adjective). i-adjective + です is grammatical, but the です here
is not the usual copula, it is just a polite marker which serves no purpose
but to make the i-adjective polite — you can tell the difference because it
never conjugated (i.e., 優しいでした and such is incorrect).

Unfortunately this reality makes the phrasing of your question very hard to
respond to because it’s unclear if you’re asking “how to nominalize です
(politeness)” or “how to nominalize i-adjectives”.

The former is easy to answer: you don’t, because you generally don’t have
politeness in relative clauses.

The latter is more complicated.

Since an i-adjective is a predicate, you can stick it right next to the の:

> 優しいのが好き  
>  “I like kind things”

But as you can see it doesn’t have the intended meaning.

To get the intended meaning you need to use 優しくする:

> 優しくするのが好き  
>  “I like being nice to people”

**Aside for Advanced Learners**

Unfortunately this is all a little oversimplified and “優しいのが好き” can, depending
on what subject you consider is omitted or what context is available, also
mean other things like

> “I like the fact that he is kind”  
>  「(彼が)優しいのが好き」
>
> “I like when someones interaction style is kind” (=“I like when people are
> kind to me”)  
>  「優しいの(＝接し方)が好き」
>
> (And most confusingly, this last imagined context _can_ also lead to it
> meaning “I like being nice to people”, but _only_ with the right context,
> which is why it is not the default go-to phrase when you are trying to say
> this.)

But it’s hard to all explain at once. Hope this helps!

