0 INTRODUCTION

6. FINDINGS
nominalizations in the three selected categories of medical writing as a way to assess
lexical richness. Finally, Section 6.3.3 summarizes the main findings.
6.3.1. Frequency of nominalizations according to origin and text category
The analysis of the frequency of the nominalizations employed took into account the
variables of origin and text category. Since the collection Early Modern English Medical
Texts (EMEMT) makes a clear distinction between the different categories of medical
writing, the data analyzed in this section have been taken exclusively from a selection of
texts from this corpus (see Tables 5, 6 and 7 in Chapter 5). Baayen and Renouf (1996: 90)
point out that “the way in which words are put to use (...) may vary substantially from
genre to genre, from text type to text type, and even from author to author,” and that “there
is some evidence that suggests that the productivity of affixes is similarly subject to
variation as a function of text type and style.” According to the data in Table 20 (see also
Figure 8), this is so in the case of nominalization in medical writing. As expected,
Romance nominalization is much higher in texts intended for more learned audiences, such
as surgeons and specialists on particular medical topics, who read surgical and academic
treatises, than in texts, such as remedy books, intended for wider audiences including
laymen. Thus, the choice between native and Romance nominalizations is conditioned by
text category and style.
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