0 INTRODUCTION

6. FINDINGS
The data presented above seems to indicate that, generally, Romance nominals are
borrowed as wholes into English. Later, when they are assimilated into the language, their
bases are used to create new words using native suffixes. However, since the way of
introduction of Romance nominalizations will be extensively analyzed in Section 6.2
below, it is at this point that we will analyze why these new hybrid formations, apparently
synonyms of already existing words, are needed in the language.
6.1.5.3. Frequency of the elements of the doublet
Table 16 shows the origin of the most frequent element of the doublet. In the majority of
cases, the Romance element is employed more frequently (59.2% vs. 13.3% for the –ing
nominal). These results are in line with those of Table 14, which showed that
nominalizations formed from Romance suffixes have a higher token frequency than native
ones. Going back to Table 16 below, when both elements show the same frequency, this is
usually low, with only one or two occurrences in the text.
Table 16. Origin of the most frequent element of the doublet. 19
–ing nominal Romance Equal
13 (13.4%) 58 (58.8%) 27 (27.8%)
6.1.5.4. Constituents of each nominalization phrase
In order to give an account of possible differences in the grammar of the two elements of
the doublets, they were then classified according to the type of constituents with which
they usually collocate, that is, according to the structure of the phrase as a whole.
19 Nominalizations where both members are of Romance origin have been excluded from the count here.
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