0 INTRODUCTION

5. CORPORA AND METHODOLOGY
(Jespersen 1942 [1909] Vol. VI: 385). Lloyd (2011: 203) gives an attributive meaning to
this suffix, that is, they “generally signify the entity to which they are attributed, e.g.
OFFICIAL (i.e. person in office)” (2011: 172). In many cases formations ending in –al
have a counterpart in –(a)tion. These formations are derivatives from the same root and
almost identical in meaning. They differ in that the derivatives ending in –al, unlike those
in –(a)tion, are considered to be English coinages. Examples include accusal-accusation;
approval-approbation; committal-commission (Jespersen 1942 [1909] Vol. VI: 385).
Nevertheless, there are some pairs in which the –al formation is rare and its meaning is
different from that of the formation in –(a)tion. Take as instances disposal-disposition;
interposal-interposition; proposal-proposition (Jespersen 1942 [1909] Vol. VI: 385).
5.2.2. Identifying nominalizations in the corpora
The nominalizations under analysis in the present study are identified by using the set of
suffixes described in the preceding section, repeated here for convenience: –ing, –(at)ion,
–ment, –ance, –age, –ure and –al. A similar method has been used in previous studies (cf.
Biber 1988; Tyrkkö and Hiltunen 2009). It can be argued that this method leaves out
certain kinds of nominalizations, such as that-clauses (That she comes is nice) and
nominalizations created by conversion (use). However, as previously noted (see Chapter
1), only nominalizations created by suffixation are to be analyzed here.
For the purpose of identifying nominalizations in my data, I searched for all the
words containing the selected suffixes, taking into consideration all possible spelling
variants. WordSmith 3.0 Concordance was used for this purpose. Its use simplifies the
search, since the concordancer provides a list of all the words containing a particular string
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