Patterns of english scientific writing in the 18th Century: adjectives and other Building-blocks

Abstract

[Abstract] It is often claimed that the written register tends to reflect a nominal style, in which nouns, phrases and adjectives abound, whereas a verbal style, containing higher proportions of verbs, complement clauses and adverbs, among others, is typical of the oral register (Sager et al, 1980; Biber, 2008). Another feature of the written register, and particularly of scientific writing, is that the vocabulary is in general characterised by its specificity and a tendency to have non-Germanic, classical origins (Moskowich, 2008). These two factors, the nominal style and the nature of the vocabulary, may be said to be typical of English scientific writing. This observation is usually made of present day English. It is the aim of this study to ascertain whether written scientific texts adhered to such a pattern in the past, looking at English astronomy texts produced throughout the 18th century and contained in CETA (Corpus of English Texts on Astronomy). My specific focus will be on attributive adjectives as elements indexical of that nominal style. At the same time, I will try to explore how this nominal style is reflected in the nature of adjectives as regards adjectival suffixation and the etymological origin of suffixes in scientific writing, as well as in the genres to which the different text samples have been assigned.