0 INTRODUCTION

7. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
Finally, as expected, some bases were found in all three categories of medical
writing, whereas other bases were specific to a particular category. When bases were
shared by texts for popular and learned audiences, they were usually everyday words like
stand, drink and so on, whereas bases shared only by learned texts were overwhelmingly
Romance (e.g. discover, compromise). This, again, was related to the level of knowledge
expected of the audience.
This dissertation has offered a thorough analysis of action nominalizations in
EModE, focusing on their development and use in scientific texts. As for their
development, –ing nominalizations evolved to a more verbalized structural pattern, in
which the preferred structure was that of –ing forms having only post-head dependents
(NPs). However, this was a gradual process and at the time nominal, mixed and verbal
–ing formations co-existed. The gap left by the increasingly infrequent nominal –ing
nominalizations was filled by Romance formations. As regards their use, it has been shown
that this differed according to variables such as audience and text category. As far as their
function is concerned, it has been shown that nominalizations began to be used as
grammatical metaphors in the packaging and distribution of information, in that they were
very useful for the agglutinative style of scientific writing. However, apart from this
primary structural function, nominalizations developed a second one: they became markers
of scientific style.
In the present dissertation it has been possible to draw a number of conclusions
relating to nominalizations. However, other questions have also been raised, and these
might usefully be the object of further research. It has been demonstrated here that factors
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