0 INTRODUCTION

6. FINDINGS
alien bodies from wounds avoiding suppuration. Finally, (182) speaks of the necessity of
giving an account of nutrition before going into the next step, which is represented here by
the right performance of which task.
At the same time, nominalizations used as complements of a preposition greatly
increase the lexical density of a particular text. Thus, (183) below is the perfect instance of
the power of encapsulation the English language has. In the NP some noble Theorems
about the great and different effects of bleeding, that depend entirely upon the infinitely
useful demonstration of the circulation of the Blood, that crowd into my thoughts, the
nucleus, that is, the noun Theorems, has a determiner and an adjective as their pre-head
dependents, and a PP as well as a relative clause (that crowd into my thoughts) as their
post-head dependents. The PP that functions as the post-head dependent of the noun
Theorems also contains an NP that shows both pre-head (the determiner the and the
adjectives great and different) and post-head dependents (of-PP which also contains a
relative clause). Within this very complex NP, there are three action nominalizations
(bleeding, demonstration and circulation). All of them act as complements of a
preposition, and the PP they belong to in turn modifies the preceding NP, giving more
information on the processes mentioned by the author.
(183) I must confess I can hardly forbear running out into a long
digression concerning some noble Theorems about the great
and different effects of bleeding, that depend entirely upon the
infinitely useful demonstration of the circulation of the Blood,
that crowd into my thoughts; (E3 1697 Cockburn Continuation
of the account of distempers Academic)
In the light of these data, all types of nominalizations behave quite uniformly
syntactically speaking. It is clear that nominalizations are mainly used obliquely, that is, as
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