This thesis investigates the syntactic structure of Chinese derived nominals and argues for a syntactic account (Hazout (1990) and Borer (1991, forthcoming) and against a lexical account (Chomsky 1970, Grimshaw 1990) of nominalization. It is shown that derived nominals exhibit both nominal and verbal properties. Since these verbal properties, such as word order, VP reconstruction effects, VP sensitive context deletion and constituent structure, are structureal and not lexical in nature, it is argued that derived nominals are best analyzed as syntactically derived from an underlying VP, via head-raising.