0 INTRODUCTION

6. FINDINGS
limited to the practical values of conceptualization, communication,
management, and cooperation.
In the particular case of Latin abstract terms, Miller (1997: 245) suggests that, in
ME, their use might sometimes have had stylistic motivations rather than being the result
of the absence of an equivalent in OE. In a similar vein, Blake (2008 [1992]b: 507) points
out that “Latin words may well carry far more connotation than English words, which were
not associated with particular contexts or themes.” It seems that, in ME, a preference for
Romance nominalizations may have existed in certain contexts in the sense that they
appear more “professional” or “specific.” This trend might have been maintained during
the EModE period. In texts intended for learned audiences such as the surgeon collective
or specialist physicians, Romance nominalizations can be used more freely, since it is
expected that they will be easily understood. Furthermore, these Romance nominalizations
“may lose its functionality and become associated with and a marker of a particular style
or register” (Cowie 2000: 182, see also Halliday 1993: 68).
6.3.2. Variation in the verbal bases of nominalizations according to audience
This section analyzes the kind of bases that were used in the formation of nominalizations
in the medical categories in order to test for lexical richness. The lexical richness of a text
is usually defined as “a function of the number of types in relation to tokens” (Broeder,
Extra and van Hout 1989: 89-90). Lexical richness is closely related to the kind of
audience, because the more learned the audience, the richer the lexicon they can handle.
Table 21 gives an overview of the number of bases, or types, found for different audiences,
and Table 22 focuses on the bases specific to a particular kind of audience.
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