I sure appreciate this thread and the time taken to expplain nominalizers.
I've had a hard time with understanding the uses for 'koto' and 'no' myself. However, one thing keeps running me into a wall:
Though 'to' or 'with' can be added to a verb, that phrase is still describing an action, thus is still a verb.
I've never been taught growing up that adding an '-ing' suffix to a verb makes it a noun. I was shown that a noun is strictly a person, place, thing or idea. If the word decribes an action of any kind, no matter the tense, it is still an action word, thus always a verb.
"to watch T.V." stills sounds like an action phrase to me, therefore, with only the word "T.V." representing a noun of any kind, being a thing.
So I'm getting hung-up, admittedly, on the explanations given in this regard. I guess my resulting question is, are these sorts of action phrases able to become noun phrases only for Japanese structure's sake?
I think it is natural to feel that way. You are right. Verbs are verbs. Adding "to" or "ing" to the verb does not change the category of the word. However, we are not talking about how the word sounds like or its semantic meaning.
(Strictly speaking, the phrases "to watch TV (or watching TV)" is produced only under certain circumstances. Imagine what comes after or before it in real conversation. "Watch TV" is also uttered only in specific instances, like "Watch TV online!", urging someone to take action.)
When it comes to nominalizers, we are only talking about syntactic aspects or how words are combined in the sentence (also, we are not talking about tense). Probably, native speakers of Japanese would feel the same way if someone asked the difference between taberu + koto (no) vs. taberu. Semantically, taberu koto (no) and taberu have little difference. Difference arises only in combination with other words in a sentence.
If you are uncomfortable with the idea of nominalizers you can think of it roughly in this way:
1. Sentences are made of combination of words.
2. Certain words come with certain words (this is called syntax).
3. In Japanese and English, a group of words, called "noun", can come to A and B position in the sentence "A is B" or the sentence "A wa B desu" (Actually, there are other sentences that should be included in this explanation, but for convenience and to avoid confusion, let's not talk about other sentences).
4. A certain group of words, called "verb", cannot come to A or B position without modification.
5. If you want to put a word of this group ("verb') in A or B position, you need to add "to" or "ing" to the word in English or "koto" or "no" to the word in Japanese (strictly speaking, "no" cannot be attached to the word that comes to position B).