0 INTRODUCTION

6. FINDINGS
expansion the point when many Romance nominalizations became part of the English
vocabulary.
The aim of this section, then, is to clarify the factors that may have favoured the
use of Romance nominalizations such as, for instance, the writing tradition and the
translation of Latin and French texts, as well as to analyze the method of acquisition of
these formations into scientific discourse. In order to do that, Section 6.2.1 thus pays
attention to the earliest attestations of Romance nominalizations in order to date their
entrance into the English language. Section 6.2.2 tries to discern whether these formations
were the result of borrowing or of another word formation process. Section 6.2.3 assesses
the influence of translation in the acquisition of Romance nominalizations. Finally, Section
6.2.4 summarizes the main findings.
6.2.1. Earliest attestations of Romance nominalizations
In order to date the earliest attestations of the Romance nominalizations in my corpora, I
resorted to the information provided by the OED and the MED. However, it must be
clarified that determining the first attestation of a word is problematic, since words may
have appeared first in the spoken language, and only later in the written language (cf.
Görlach 1991: 137). A second clarification relates to the fact that for the purposes of this
dissertation, if the word has different shades of meaning, the date taken into account will
be that of the action noun, as in (201) below.
(201) [cf. OED s.v. contemplation n. 1. “The action of beholding, or
looking at with attention and thought.” (1500) (...) 3. a. spec.
“Religious musing, devout meditation.” (?c1225(1200)]
201